Portrait in Crayola
My outer edge is frozen steel,
A razor drawn in blue and gray,
A switchblade shining in the sun.
That wicked knife, that cold abyss
Uncaring as the distant stars,
Holds those at bay I will not tell
The spending of seventeen years
That makes them longer than an age.

Follow light dancing down the edge.
The metal's pale, blue tint grows rich,
And it becomes the royal hue
Of the people and birds and beasts
Capering on old china plates
In my grandmother's dining room
And curtains hanging dark and thick
From a hall's ceiling to the stage.
My memory is bound in threads
Of mystic azure; locked and bound,
There lie tales I may someday tell.

Walk along those threads of sky
All through the many days and nights.
Pass the shores of a distant lake.
See the haze of approaching heat,
The red of rage, of blood, of flame.
It is the red that drives me on,
Makes my disused tongue a lash.
The red of all-consuming flame,
Of love that, burning, will not die
Orders my days and set my course.
It drew a reader from her chair
And sent her on a strange crusade.

Know this, my nature in crayons,
My story on the color wheel,
And you know more of my nature
Than most I meet will ever learn.

Sonnet to Aria
Where all the days are long and gray, you shine,
My light in darkness, and you pierce the fog
Of hours that grind past wasted and the smog
Of years trying to make more mindless swine
Of intellects bright burning; you're the pine
Bough blazing on December nights, the log
Melting the snow, and, in the spring, the frog
Heralding the first summer night; your fine,
Polished brass sings the contours of my soul.
Golden companion, some would call such love
Of a tuba the stuff of old freak shows,
But your rich thunder, steadfast and whole
Inspires a fountain and a deluge of
Poetry to a muse that no one knows.

The American Vampire
There once was a vampire who ate
More girls than he needed to sate
His thirst; he grew fat.
The doctor says that
He'll have to start watching his weight.

Lunch in the School Courtyard
We laughed around the dusty table.
The food is stale; at least we ate.
These brick walls have us surrounded,
But, out here, in the courtyard,
We can see a pretty sky.
We talked about the stuff outside this,
Where the walls don't rise so tall,
Drifted into where things happen.
It's not much; it's all pretending:
Just aliens on TV,
But there won't be a quiz.
No one shutting down our voices,
Letting us know what we're supposed to think.
They don't care about our stories.
I guess that's how it should be.
A story's safe when they throw it away,
Call it stupid, leave it in the bin at the curb.
No one's gonna pull out its guts
Looking for symbols and themes.
But, before we got done,
A train whistle buried our words.
Then the bell rang like rusty chains
Dragging on ugly, tile floors.

Ballad of a Tuba Player
I'll tell you the tale of a man I once knew
Whose sad story still grieves me even to this day.
For years, he played tuba in so many bands
In a half-ruined school all those long miles away.

Where the brick turned to dust, he worked his hands raw.
In the sweltering band room he sweated, he swore.
Years of wear fell off every tuba he touched
As he labored over them on the grimy floor.

He was first to arrive at every concert,
Walking in the gloom of the still-empty house there,
Lifting weights it was thought that no other could move
Except for a woman with a gold mist of hair.

He didn't just play out his soul on the stage.
Every daily rehearsal, he thundered and roared.
Though the weeks ground like millstones, through sickness and floods,
Over dust, over heat, his song always soared.

He ruined his shoulders; he ruined his back,
But the love of it that burned in him never waned.
He had so much trust in his band directors,
And I hope that they know how their hands are now stained.

He was good at making new tuba players,
So they kept him in lower bands and made him teach.
His reward for showing the young ones how to play
Was to have all advancement kept out of his reach.

Each year they told him it would be the last time,
He'd stop being held back for this reason, they swore.
Each April, like clockwork, they said the same thing:
That they desperately needed him there one year more.

He loved the section leader in the top band,
And long the two yearned to work beside each other.
They were kept distant as the two poles; their chance
To play together they cannot recover.

They bounced him between lower bands as needed
Until a new teacher felt his ensembles could
Do without their steel spine; the tuba players
Were broken in the name of progress and the good.

When he was caught in nets of red tape, not one
Of those he served, body and soul, would stand by him.
No band director would defend their willing
Workhorse; to let their man hang was their heartless whim.

Now he finishes his diploma in dark,
Beneath a shopping mall, so far from all the friends
He had in better days, left with the fading
Hope of salvaging something from all the loose ends.

They left him with his sorrows and the haunting
Memories quick to goad him, slow to disappear
And the specter of a fierce, green-eyed woman
To whom he knows he will never again draw near.

On the Occasion of Breaking Up
The movie ends; the credits start to roll.
Thoughts I cannot express, words I can't say,
Collide in me like clashing thunderstorms.
The world we made, the things we love turn cold.
Someone made rousing speeches on progress.
We knew change sometimes takes her fees in blood,
But no one cared until your name went on
That list with many more we knew and loved.
Friends slipped away into their private tears,
And left us with no band, no hope, no home.
I know you'd tell me to leave you behind,
To journey past the bounds of this lost land
Where I'm just one more looser on the wrong
Side of the times; too old, too brave to bend.
You'd say to run so far, so fast, this flood,
These rising waters, cannot bury me,
But I can't bear those words, to hear you say
That I should live when what we dreamed has died
That I should flee alone, leave you behind.
I lie, and I tell you there was no choice
But to depart so that you cannot say
There's nothing to forgive; you understand
Why I came here tonight to break your heart.
The credits finish, and the lights go up.
Those sticky seats reluctantly release
The threadbare bottoms of our worn-out jeans.
We walk outside, and we say our goodbyes
Standing in the halo of the marquee
That glows above us like a cruel mirage.

Half-Dreamed
A boy sits on the floor dressed in strange livery
Of thick, plush cloth in crimson, gold.
Afraid and near to tears, he waits for me.
I wade through the cacophony, the storm,
Between the drops of madness coming down like rain,
The crowds that snatch up instruments and flow into the hall.
I kneel beside him; black and white
Are thrown against the red and gold.
His silver tuba flashes on my dark jacket.
I work; this is his first concert.
Within a quarter of an hour, within ten minutes,
Two; these mangled valves must move.
My white shirt shines, fresh-ironed yesterday,
Tucked into pressed slacks over studded boots
The hue of the abyss that I polished as the sun sank low.
My tie is straight.
My hands unbend, remake.
I am Order; I walk through the tempest, and, unharmed,
I carry on; the colors on my vest,
The band, the place the day,
Are all irrelevant; now, clear and cold,
I save the night, the show for him.
The dogs begin to how, and jeans are scattered on the floor.
I barely hear; a paper ball,
This morning's news flies past my ear.
Its path bends
Around our warded circle on the dusty tile.
I wind something in wire and pray.
They move; it fades away,
Another miracle well done.