Five Poems

by Dan Rafael

Catching Breath

today the atmosphere’s inhaling instead of exhaling

who can tell

who else sees the fricative shimmer where

wind and sunlight cross, more passing through

than merger, photons and dust molecules

reacting in their ways, a matter of choice and spin

various frequencies of momentum and coherence

light getting more access than wind these winter times

unlike summer when we prefer shade and a cooling breeze

when we have a choice, not stuck out in the open

when the wind is trying to escape, the sun unburdened

of shadows and responsibility

as people in summer are more likely to shed than blossom

in winter we forget that not all light is heat

that so little of the spectrum of molecular motion

is within our perceptions and plans

Duplex

the two sides of my brain don’t see eye to eye

as if I’m divided by a fluctuating mirror/lens

vision changed by everything I see through.

past experiences, similar patterns, what all’s looking back

many non-visual connections assume shape and frequencies

consuming geometry and exhaling a connect-the-dots cloud

that seems to be rumbling toward me, extending a tendril

or billboarding a wind of intense opinions

how complex additions always leave something out,

take something to a different team or chemistry

whether under pressure or released from it,

given a doorway when all I wanted was a window

From a Line to a Menu

*Originally published by 100 Subtexts

having a pizza delivered one slice at a time

always by bicycle, usually in the rain.

some things I can’t buy cause all I have is cash

but I can’t live a plastic free life cause of packaging

otherwise I’d have no garbage, & then there’s portion control

choosing the smallest squash, the one-legged chicken.

my stove has learned to smell my hunger

while my fridge has strict visiting hours.

I don’t have a dog but walk my phone 3 times a day

my phone transmits much more than it receives

and I can barely get a number in.

mostly I keep food in the dark and out of the wind.

sometimes the radio turns itself on and plays a rain set,

sometimes saxophone hubcaps, percussion without collision

how well-stretched air begins considering color

a wind that could move chalk on asphalt

a wind yearning to direct spray paint.

how sometimes an exhalation of smoke can cohere

in a heavy wind,  face-tightening wind,

a wind of migration from where hunger fronts collide

“I don’t know where you learned to dance,” she said,

“but I know it wasn’t here.”

when i dance     when i dream     when i’m cut

when the sun don’t fall down my throat in the middle of rush-hour

i stagger   i waltz   i throw my hat into heaven

and jump the broom of love in some stranger’s closet

what world have i woken into with my feet already in 3/4 time

when i look behind me the mirror opens like a credit card

that won’t be scanned--if i say the numbers they’ll change

like a combination lock inside my stomach is why i eat this way

i don’t do this for the planet

the planet bleeds     the planet rains     the planet finds less in its wallet everyday

shake my bacon     trim my fern     let my future benefits find their own place to sleep

freed by a starless sky i hear the sunrise  before i see it

my alarm clock sounds like police banging on the door,

smells like a candle beginning to singe the tablecloth beneath it,

if there’s no breakfast on my shirt i question my appetite

scrambled eggs with chicken    bread with seeds    cars that glow

like dormant volcanoes

i plant ivy and strangler fig in front of my door entering tantric hibernation

death erupts    death leaves a message    sex is on every billboard   

i forget where I put my ears, my feet searching for the password

to access the floor, find the music that puts me all here now

 but how can I have bass without traffic and the ability to intercut time

air is film     water is frozen light

i look up with my mouth open, two wrens fly in

a song breaks through my inertial cloud

& my spine can’t sit still

Boxcar Wind

“People get ready/ there’s a train a-coming”

                                                                        Chambers Brothers

the wind’s a train that’s been passing through for three days

a train that’s all engine, no wheels, no rails, just noise and motion

whether I’m being pushed by it or drawn along doesn’t matter,

nor which way I’m facing, there can’t be harmony as long as I

hold on to my body and clothes, onto the concept of inhale and ex-

not circular but one-way, for the engine will at some point reach the caboose

the relativity of a train passing itself, running along the border of day and night

winter and spring, the equator of momentum,, as the wind train

shows the folly of construction—tunnels, trestles, overpasses--all false gods

vain attempts to affect, impress or influence what’s been going

long before we got here, as even the here has changed from

ash to ice to floods to forests to city, a one-way train of its own

though the wind sometimes changes directions,

just when I think it’s going where I want to get

or that I can be a kite holding my own string

is rain just exhaust, clouds giving wind the right of way,

sunlight’s thousand available channels of distraction and hope

some say slowing the wind gets you music

some say it’s the written word not allowed to catch its

or anyone’s breath, scientists creating wind in a vacuum

then setting it on fire to see where it shopped, what it ate

while the churches and banks want us to think less of the free-blown wind

and to need what they’re offering, a one-track wind, or scented & flavored,

as if the wind was made in America or needed anyone to import it

this apolitical wind will eventually seek justice for all we’ve done to it

people less than pawns in the long struggle between

heat and earth, time and space, water and air, this game

of elemental risk, alliances and silences, one Age giving way to another

as if there’ll always be something to spawn the next change

unpredictable survivors wary of the seemingly open horizon

when the wind is still our only resistance is within

struggling to keep the rest of me from flowing into the absence

tentative meditative stillness amidst all my distractions and tattered thoughts,

sproutlings caught by a surprising change into drought or freeze,

seeking coherence and porosity, surface root hairs to glean from the wind,

dust and radiance waft through at any time

does it matter who’s moving, what planetary river my aorta tastes most like,

huck & jim on their white cell raft or a stone-age tribe

deep in the third level tributaries of pancreas or medulla,

as breaths are enslaved wind, hopper cars crawling slow through the cities

 of our bodies open to whatever falls or is thrown, rain and sweat bringing to life

what was waiting for this inevitable combination

as I am on track wherever I roam, not off schedule but un-

when the yes wind comes, when gravity takes a breather,

way back to a when of unanimous temperature, a temporary

flammable wind, fermenting inertia, the slightest imperfect lean

a carrot for motion, when I can’t stop and eat, when my thirst

guides me to rain, my walls let through just enough air for illusory freshness.

trickster spurts to knocks things over, turn pages, almost trip me

when the wind says stay home or dance, when the wind train slows

what do I do, what am I seeing

BIO: Dan Raphael’s chapbook How’d This Tree Get In? will be published this summer by Ravenna Press. More recent poems appear in Ink in Thirds, October Hill, Brief Wilderness, Disturb the Universe and Mad Swirl. Most Wednesdays dan writes and records a current events poem for The KBOO Evening News.