You Come and Stand in Every Door

for Jill Moon, 1951-2015

You come and stand

in every door

saying that

it is time to get going.

This is before the dew

evaporates from the slats of lawn chairs

baking in the sun all day.

Traffic, always cars,

gets thick as my tongue

at noon, u-hauls

and trailer homes

leaving for cooler towns up North.

Announcers in

 steam bath booths

loosen their ties, the grass of the

playing field is brown, balls are

felled in zones of death,

 announcers

are drunk and lose their tongues

as a lather of news, weather and sports

leaves a trail up I-5, alias North.

You stand in every door,

monotonous as

suburbs choking

the shrubs from

the canyons.

I lose my tongue

thinking how far

I would travel

over how many

state lines

in the grace and chase

after Manifest Destiny

to see you, just a glimpse

from the corner of the eye

that worries

the crow’s feet,

to see how

you come from a neighbor's house

clutching Tupperware

and a deck of cards

both to your breasts.

TV aerials

from the

eaves of patio living

claw the sky,

the feet

of a million dead crows,

winter settles

over the land

like a serving

of cold shoulder

on disrupted kitchen tables,

billboards

along the road

poking out from pine tree groves

promise hot meals

at family restaurants

bearing a sidekick’s first name.

Side kicks

always have

only one name,

one syllable whispers

on a road

that stretches

into architectures of high risk investment

where there are no products

any one mentions,

only the promise

of return, life in heaven.

You stand in all doors

and talk to me about the scratches

on record collections

as if the wear of years

had something to

do with the lyric sheets

whose italics express

something to do with feeding

the poor, ending war,

love lasting

until even corner stones

on ugly buildings

are worn away

by weather and wind.

Strangely, I am

in gymnasiums again,

dances, registered

desire, long hair,

wire glasses,

jeans tight as snake's skin,

hips and knees

triangulating new laws of form

and sex to drums and

guitar solos lost

in the rafters and rapture

of feeling, then,

that noise is power

 and we would be marching

to live a life

based on album lyric sheets

and scarred records

we play back wards

with a back hand,

the rooms you were already in

reeked of sweet smoke, and hope

for the world

were selling

subscriptions

of underground newspapers

that would sell

us what we believed.

You stand in

doors you choose

because the light of living

room windows

is your idea

of peace in a world

where anyone else

builds walls around the walls

it already has and

thus misses the impossible

things going on

while the audience awaits

more supermarket sales,

I am still thinking

of drinking up what's

left in hours when hands of

the clocks slow down

and kill the last hour

with kindness stolen
strangers who carry
songs and grave stones
to the same wicked altar.

I might ask you

to please move aside,

I think it is my turn

to play with the knob

Until you come and stand

in every door again

on the chance to get my attention,

there is smoke coming from

buildings on the TV set,

Manhattan is clouds and debris

as hand held cameras

show us the steel and

glass that flies endlessly into

the acres of empty air

and then down the street,

Every door is ours only by virtue

of our wanting to be here

when the days of obligation are over

and we live on hours

paid for in full,

I see the images of the sky falling

apart over New York,

you stand in the doorway

leaning against the frame,

only half way in the room

as if in a pose to leave, grab your shoes,

grab your bag,

get a cab at the curb, go home

and moan by yourself

for all the screams which are not heard

on a day when it seems every

lie I ever created and told,

every fiction I have ever constructed

and test drove in crowds

into microphones,

in front of rows of empty chairs

catch up with me,

knocks on the door,

Makes me forget you are there

even as you now stand in

front of the set,

I crane my neck to see

what is happening

but you move as well

and block the view,

I grab you around the waist

where you stand

and ask if you will love

me until the sky falls

and I can hear you breath deep,

my ear against your stomach,

your hand on my head,

forever, you say,

however long it takes.