the dance

i have been unable

to look you in the eyes

since he disappeared

in smoke and ash

since the phone call came

and i wept on the sidewalk

until morning

and now

you are here

your eyes

filled with the same

lackluster performance

and the heated effort

to push it back

drown out

the way he used to laugh

with a drink

drown out

the songs that he sang

with a dance

i would never say it

of course

that he is there

reflected in your pupils

like i know he is in mine

i only move in

holding you up

my hand against your back

you mistake my touch

for something closer

to the performance

a lie

a fake gesture

i only wanted

to say

it's okay

to break

so you can break

the dance continues

we fight the reflection

my hand never leaves your back.

EC © 2005

ariel

ariel is with me now

her laughter rattles my bones

her black stench stretches in my lungs

cellophane goddess of inspiration

languidly draped over my face

sticking to my mouth

her asphyxiation grip

her airtight embrace

stasis where i strain

she says she knew you

the woman with the pen

the fat pen held in your head hands

she says to tell you

you did not let her stay her welcome

she hauls me through air

red haired and clawing my nights

you had lady lazarus mistaken

they are both red in their intent

there is no white godiva

only lioness and cannibal

knocking on my mind's eye

i can see her through the keyhole

eyes afire and teeth stretched wide

i tremble in my cobweb corner

scratching the walls

and murmuring incantations

i have no calling

i still own my skin

but she is the beekeeper you know

she is both the honey and the hive

she will devour me

into the shadows,

the cauldron of mourning

her whisperings

made you bleed words

made you inhale your death

suffocating on the world

she helped you construct

out of paper and blood

and i can feel her diamond eyes

cutting my veins

bleeding me onto the page

tell her

i have no calling

tell her

i still own my skin

in memoriam

david died this week. his wide grin that stretched across his face whenever anyone entered the room. his clumsy yet calculated dance moves if you happened to pass him the hallway. the neck hugs he gave away freely and wholeheartedly. all gone. i sat next to the altar watching the technicians bring his friends in to the church. his mother sat on the front row slowly wiping away tears from her face. behind the altar played a slideshow featuring david as a boy and then as a young man--the disease that claimed his life a shadow that fell over his face in those later pictures. he was only 23.

True Story 4

i was a child and you were a child.  we used to hold hands in the hallway because it was what everyone did.  i thought i was a woman trapped in a girl's body so i would smoke cigarettes after school and kiss you in the woods on the weekends.  you were just my type--breaking all the rules and pretending to be someone who you were not.  my mother didn't approve and so i just held your hand tighter. i knew there was something else behind the baggy pants, drugs, and bravado--like the things you would whisper over the phone late at night. you told me about it once--finding your brother that day--gun on the floor and blood on the walls.  the house had been too silent, like death, and climbing the stairs was like wading through quicksand. there he was.  but it wasn't him at all, just a rag doll limp on the floor.  and then there was the waiting.  waiting for the proper people to come to take statements, to snap photos, to make it disappear.  and then there was the waiting.  waiting for the world to feel right again, to stop hurting, to stop crying, to make it disappear.  so i just held your hand tighter.

True Story 3

this is my first funeral.  i am nine and can't keep my shoes tied.  i can see the coffin from where we sit and it looks alien and sad.  someone speaks about your art and the words you bled onto paper.  someone else talks about your friend that burned out with you. i have seen the poems and the drawings--you knew you were going to die.  but, if we keep saying amen then we don't have to cry.  i stare at my feet wondering how we all continue to stand, to walk, to breathe.  it was so sudden and now here we are layered in black singing the songs you like, but cannot hear. i remember when your foot got run over by the car in the driveway.  who would have known that you were not invincible?

this is my second funeral.  i am 14 and waiting for someone to catch my breath.  there are pictures of you lined along the altar of the church, your heart-shaped face a dagger in my side.  a year ago we were in the backseat of the school bus eating pixie stixs.  a year ago we were giggling over hostile crushes and stolen kisses underneath the gym bleachers. now you are just pictures left undeveloped on my disposable camera or the cds i let you borrow but you never returned.  your blood is still on the street. we are all here instead of cleaning it up.  i won't dance the same anymore now that you are gone.  i won't laugh the same knowing that it will only continue to be stolen.  i refused to wear black eventhough i feel like i am blind stumbling through darkness.  i remember when you told me how excited you were about that dance.  why did you ever leave?

this is my third funeral.  i am 15 and figuring it out.  this time, i don't go.  when i was small you used to hold me in your lap and read stories. i have pictures to prove it.  i used to notice how our skin was the same color in the summer, like the color of coffee with a little cream.  i used to forget how you yelled.  i used to forget you could be mean.  after we left, i used to think that you did not have a heart, but in the end, your absent heart killed you.  i didn't cry when the phone call came.  i didn't want to seem a traitor.  i won't know where they buried you so i can't come leave flowers or all my inadequacies at your feet.  don't worry i'll learn to forgive along the way, but for now it is easier to be angry.  i remember when you sold all my things.  i wished that you would die.

Was

i always find it funny

having to use sentences in the past tense

when speaking of you

was...

is such an ugly word

with claws and teeth

that nip and gnash

some keep telling me 

that time is a line

but for now

it is broken and fragmented

the past cutting into the present

your voice echoing where your body

no longer stands

you are washing away

like chalk on pavement

but i keep drawing you back in

nudging the concrete reality

with my shaky fists

with my purple crayon

i can't stand in the house

my feet burning 

into the gray granite in the foyer

my ears screaming 

in protest against the clock in the kitchen

tick tick tick tick

this house 

smells like a life

this house

is lying to me 

as if you were still 

sitting in the leather chair 

with your feet propped up 

on the leather ottoman 

a finished crossword on your lap

this house

is lying 

so 

i won't speak of the prozac

in the cabinets

or the tissues in the trashcans

i wont speak of the wine

in the fridge left over from the funeral

i won't speak

but your books whisper secrets

from the shelves

there's the one you dedicated to us

the black ink set

by your own hands

i can still smell the printing machines now

like i was six 

and coloring under your desk

color is a language

and i am speaking in

blacks and greys

mottling the carpet in the den

dirtying the hardwood on the porch

sullying the sheets in the guest room

so i can avoid 

the shadows on the walls

the distortions in the mirrors

i can't look into the closet

knowing your coats and ties

swing silently on wooden hangers

i sleep with your army tags

underneath the pillow

a voodoo charm so that i might sleep

and dream painlessly

an obol for Charon

in case it becomes too hard to breathe

life has morphed into a static nightmare

like falling when waking up

or imagining that people's faces

are not their own

i'll keep speaking in the past tense

but i am not past 

this.

Te Extrano Mucho...

Mr. Francis Marion Aull, Sr., age 86, of Salisbury died Friday, March 21, 2008 at Rowan Regional Medical Center.He was born May 5, 1921 in Newberry County, SC, a son of the late Elbert Herman Aull and the late Mae Amick Aull. Mr. Aull was a graduate of Newberry High School and attended Newberry College and University of South Carolina. He was a veteran of the U.S. Army Air Corp serving during World War II, where he received the American Theater Ribbon, APT Service Medal and World War II Victory Medal. He started the Edisto Citizen, a newspaper in Springfield, SC in 1948. He worked for The Ridge Citizen in Johnson, SC, The Winnsboro News and Herald in Winnsboro, SC, and retired from the Salisbury Post after 36 years of service. After his retirement he established Aull Printing & Copy Plus Inc., where he worked until his death. As a faithful member of St. John's Lutheran Church, he served on the Church Council and various other boards and committees. He was also an active member of the Kiwanis Club of Salisbury. Preceding him in death were brothers Elbert Aull, Jr., Luther, and Julian. Survivors include his wife of 60 years, Mildred Baggett "Mickey" Aull, whom he married March 19, 1948; son, Francis Marion "Frank" Aull, Jr. of Fort Mill, SC; daughter, Elizabeth "Libby" Aull Clift and husband, Rev. David Clift of Chatham County, NC; brother, Philip Aull and wife, Haroldine of Charlotte; grandchildren, Francis Marion Aull, III, Phillip Taylor Aull, Elizabeth Aull Clift and Mark Spencer Clift.

Lost Elegy

a week after you died i wrote you into a poem
sitting in a room full of unfamiliar faces
choking on grief and words filling my head
i could hear you talking, smooth and sweet and heavy,
somewhere deep in mixed memories of warm nights
and loud music caged in hazardous caverns of back mind thought
yet you creeped up sounding loud from the small of my back,
lodging in the arch of my neck for a moment
and then rushing through along my cheekbones—
your sound lighting my face and then fading.
i wanted to shed my skin
to make the buzzing stop,
to run away

from the sound of you
from the child in your face that would never smile like that again
dying in that room as your sightsound possessed my veins
taking my oxygen, stealing my blood—red thick and hungry.
i had no other choice in the middle of a discussion
of the women of Juarez--older ghosts unlike you
i frantically ripped out a page and tattooed you on its lines
thinking maybe then i wouldn’t have to think
of those last moments filled with fire, loneliness, and the radio
fading out—tears and no goodbyes to anyone but the sky
maybe i wouldn’t have to remember
how your voice infused my body with light and sugar
when you whispered in my ear
thinking maybe i wouldn’t have to lie awake
at night wondering why existence is really only a fatal road trip.
sitting at that desk i wanted to cry,
baptize the pages with my own river of life
make up for the destruction of yours--empty riverbed.
my pen flamed across the page, darting and drawing you
in letters and pauses
i finished brow furrowed and tear strained tired
i shoved you in a notebook not wanting to look at you there on the page,
not wanting you to scar me any longer or deeper
a week later i went to look at you,
read the poem on some fatalistic therapeutic urge
and you were gone—more than forever this time
i tore through my notebook my room my clothes
thinking i could not survive without that piece of paper
and now you were gone, the only remnants i had left
lost on some ragged street,
thrown in some solitary garbage can,
found in the hands of a stranger
how easily you were lost,
i tried to rewrite you
struggling through teary sight and trembling hands,
but it was never as perfect as the first one
i couldn’t get your smile right
or the tone of your voice
or the way you walked
or the words you spoke
i tried so hard but you never came through that clear again,
despite the numerous attempts I have made
to write your face to face you
i hope some stranger found my lost poem
written in pure feeling and electric light
and it burns his palms as he reads it
for one moment he sees you there
in the words and the spaces and the light.
he sees you through my veins and wonders
where the beautiful boy has gone
as he tries to shake my sadness—EAC