dan raphael


Trees Wind Earth Breathing


how the wind finds its ways, leaves’ quick mitosis draws me into the canopy lungs 
I can spend days walking across and through, resting on subtle mouths 
to send my wet shadow to the root crown where the soil’s switchboard, 
where worm-math multiplies and divides, increasing content 
while reducing volume, repetition creating diversity

if I could hold my breath long enough, if I could sample a thorough exhale 
til an ecology is apparent, interactive gestures across a half-full auditorium 
with no stage, performers dispersed among us, music sweats from the ceiling; 
3 people remove their clothes to become star-windows 
with an ear pressed to the floor I stretch and slither, many no longer floor-dependent
as if gravity was bribed to go away for a couple hours trailing an anti-halo of oily light,  
tight clothes limiting the depth of breathing so we must accelerate,  

as the residents of blades of grass hurry to open their thousand windows 
when the rain begins, when mist gets comfortable and still, 
refracting how I can be in two separate bodies inhaling the sphere between us, 
2 deep lungfulls enough to build a library from, a pantheon of sciences
naming all the rhythms then demonstrating how they orchestrate 
since only prodigies and quantum computers can calculate the interactions 
of 3 or more bodies, the many pulsing systems whose contrails knot into our world 
guarantees every straight line, every wide boulevard, will have obscuring mist
and some sharp edges,  every galaxy an appetizer or a barely touched plate

choreography for two or more,     dissolving sand,      reforming sidewalks, 
dancers who improvise during traffic jams, idling engines unify 
their valvic rhythms into a percussion of  various rocks and recyclables
falling on a tightly skinned meadow, a crisply sheeted bed 
microscopic clouds think a trampoline winking across the county 
as spontaneous horses canter a time-elapse calligraphy, a sequenced massage 
of the community’s soles where nerve endings can be accessed 
for maintenance or collaboration, where I can be over-clocked, under-fed
& not missing a pulse or tone, thinking like a tree whose trunk’s been atomized 
across a ten mile radiance combining snapshots, brushstrokes and emissions 
through a thousand random windows into a breath I can yoyo in and out, 
the weave and flow of these currents with the thousand doors inside me,
the binary spectrum-weave of open and closed, 
                                                         an absence of walls 
                                                        never enough light
                              			    how’d this tree get in
 


Getting in Tune


going to the station—be it police, radio or transit, 
between situations, illegible contexts, my waving hand 
brushed something other than air, i feel the pollen 
before i answer by sneezing, thirsty globules, 
goblets too heavy to lift and leaking

what would you do—a doorway no higher than shoulders and no joints to bend
would be an arrow, a trackless trolley, wheels instead of hands to ride cables
or feetside up among furrows and the last evidence of three buildings ago
so few empty lots, kept fallow by competition
suddenly there’s one less or one more, a mirrored pair, a trio in two bodies

a house that looks like a train, a train that looks like a drive-through, 
one-way carwash of hungry scrubbers, soap with ulterior motives, 
a clean few would agree on, some might call censorship, edited for our safety

a piece of the sky is missing, black lightning streaks on pale blue air, 
hungry desiccant thunder from beneath the urban horizon
some of the river would like to decohere and rain up, 
not enough fish for a quorum, the earthworms too deep 
to sense what’s at their door, an urge to trade, to get inside 
by being eaten and scatter into a micro-army of chemicals 
meant for other times and species

whether visual or audio recordings, words whose referents 
left the planet sideways centuries ago, as if one more tomorrow 
will keep its promise with the radio alarm indecisive as a slot machine 
i don’t want to receive the rewards of craftily recombining like haggis 
in a genetically modified stomach, digestion in another direction 
not needing a reinfusion of bioflora for another 100 meals

where the flesh of my world is tattooed by all manner of lights—
incomplete, overfull, premature, unshielded, trans-spectral, 
bones ready to unscroll, calcium dreaming of underwater,
seas before there was rain, thirst before throats

where did the vacuum at my center find so much to erupt with, 
as nature abhors introduced contexts/constructs, an intention deficit, 
extension surplus, so many more ephemeral notes than voices 
but if the symphony is in tatters, if the puzzle 
doesn’t have enough spaces for the answers 
									
a tunnel where the heart should be, lungs in the sky instead of clouds, 
drops of distilled information falling from skyborn interstices
absorbed by buildings and machines but bouncing off soil and skin  



“Cause if my eyes don’t deceive me
there’s something going wrong around here”  (Joe Jackson)


wash hands for at least a minute
if anyone approaches act invisible
don’t accept what the trees offer

nothing to connect to but gravity
this last day of the last school
no work, no play, illusory weather
no direct light, no traffic going my way
the light bulbs are growing fur, the ventilation can’t decide
on a language, my ears are moist, my eyes impatient 

everything on a curve or three
what I put in my mouth and what I taste
are barely related, like a huge grocery store
where everything’s scrambled but you can get
almost everything on your list in the one aisle you’re allowed

in the neighbor’s recycling is an atlas of roads not taken
in these new untied states of America, places commercial flights
no longer go, bars that only serve regulars and cousins
my passport begins to stink and moan, I think
I’m crossing a street but it’s another border

I want to get off the bus but I’m the driver
slowing from almost dead batteries when multiple lightning strikes
vacuum tornadoes on my tail, brave dogs jumping in
through windows opened barely in time
the rain sounds like cellophane, like celery being eaten
the road’s the color of ranch dressing

next morning the house has rotated 180 degrees
maybe the whole city, hunger has taken the weekend off
I’ve stopped but the roadsides are blurring by
at double the limit, since sunrise the sky’s darkened, thickened
my glass seems stuck to the table as it overflows
 


Do Not Pass Go


not enough time to lose consciousness
separation in several senses
not seeing double but around 120%
got in my mouth without my awareness

too quick to accumulate
different speeds conjuncting
as an octopus’s two year life span
is the same amount of time as a human’s 80 

a day in grams
penny pressed wider than my palm


><><>< 


fine together, fine apart
a month kept away from me
the apartment of routine
bright windows don’t open
from the door it’s down a ladder

as if restrictions require companions
since I’m tightening the belt, the walls anyway
upstairs and downstairs off limits
shy floorplan, are these doorways or window frames
discomfort interrupting more often than pain

no contain without taint


><><><


crutches incorporated into structure
stink never sleeps
as the MRI makes dozens of thin slices of me
swearing nothing’s shuffled or takes the opportunity
for some waltz or do-si-do

 
as the mirror reverses me
asymmetry is the standard
build up and wear away, wash and revise


no perfect smooth
no one-on-one some others can’t meander between
camp awhile, find a path off the maps
a gulley of evaporation pre-existing the first rain
the first commute, the first escape
anyone who goes that way never comes back
maybe because of where it leads, what’s learned
expanses more dangerous than edges
a panorama of one, an arm becomes a third leg


><><><


talk about without naming the subject
back on the road, modified vehicles, ephemeral turnoff
not every ramp has two ends

the streams and creeks flowing invisibly through a city
are still flowing, eroding, transporting
weather delayed, caramelized or crystallized, 
precise but slippery measurements, relative but not related
pressure always gets out, mold always gets in
I’m hoping a breeze will follow
unaware of all it’s bringing, complacent generosity
shapeless shifting, use before it evaporates

In the Wordshed, dan raphael's 26th book, was published last december by Last Word Press. Most wednesdays dan writes and records a current events poem for The KBOO Evening News.

 
 

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