Rough Crossing
By William Van Winkle
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2010 by William Van Winkle
Cover Image
The cover photograph for Rough Crossing was taken and edited by Gary Wilson of Gary Wilson Photo/Graphic. The view shows downtown Portland’s Steel Bridge as seen from the control room of the Broadway Bridge.
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Dedication
This poetry collection is dedicated to my grandfather, James Van Winkle, and was first released on November 30th, his birthday. Granddad’s love for the English language was a reflection of his passion for life. In so many ways, he helped to form who I am and aided me through the rough crossing to manhood.
Special Thanks
My greatest gratitude goes to Baron Schuyler, who was with me through it all (including the editing), and to my wife, Knico, who ended a turbulent journey only to begin a magnificent adventure.
PART ONE: DEPARTURE
River Chant
The River chants a
midnight verse
Which only the floating leaves
And darkest fish
understand
A haphazard melody encasing me
From all sides
Soft,
bulbous
Thundering in its subtlety
Like the sound of falling
planets
Sitting on a crumb of
granite
Clad in my ultimately primitive skin
One stone in a
series of damp random shadows
That defy the fluid wind
Shadows
that could by starlight
Be ebony cadavers
Droning phantasms
Or
pillows where the deities of permanence
Rest from their futile
labors
Caressing the River's
skin
Transparent rushing lyrics grasp my fingers
Pulling me
toward the tenebrous void
Where the chant dissolves
Down to
where time peels away
Like God's fallen skin
Exhumed by Gaia's
prying nails
Draw upon my
bones
These eyes have seen the sun's guiles
This mouth has
tasted the moon's false ecstasies
My skin longs for the fleeting
tremor
Of the chant's first syllable
Where the horizon meets
the abyss
And the only remaining reality
Becomes the silent
black infinity
Between stars
Relish
The blackberry is
sweeter
When its thorns have tasted
My blood
Your First Wall
I see you
Paint your
first wall.
Smooth, thick.
Better than my first try
at any
rate.
In a tight, 4-H T-shirt
And faded, straining Calvin Klein
jeans.
I bet I could hug you tighter.
You sweat with
grace.
My hair becomes primer-frosted
And you laugh,
pointing.
Reaching, touching.
Is there a place
That is not
your home?
Excuse me.
I'll try to focus on the work.
Light fades.
The
room is done.
Let’s take the truck's canopy
into the
shed.
Rain falls.
My white shoes turn
brown
As goose-bumps appear.
Jesus, who took all the tools?
We
wait.
Cold, drawn.
How often do people get
To caress their
dreams?
You're soaked, muddy,
Smiling, proud.
How can I ever
leave this?
Please...I know we’re both shivering.
Just one more moment.
Best Friends
Best friends, hoarse
whispers
Trading Poe by candlelight
Timeless trinity
Eve’s Legagy
Halved apple
White
likeness to
Your sweet spot
Beat
They introduced us to
rhythm in third grade
But I didn't embrace Beat
Feel its
pulse
Or heed its message
Until years later.
We found each other
through my father's bulky headphones
Rapturously bear hugging my
young skull
As I gyrated like a shameless maniac
across the
beer-stained basement floor.
Artists' names erode
away
Like the plush pile of that ancient rug.
Worn by flowing
ages of radio waves
But the Beat still echoes
in the hollows of
my body.
Beat tugs at me when a
child cradles his first album,
Moves me through twilight at a
balmy waterfront gig,
Lifts me when the knives of life sweep close
to my veins.
Considerate Roommate
Dingy apartment
One
stained mattress, rhythmic sounds
Hungry cockroach waits
Dark Envoys
Subtle summer shock
Dry
leaves whisper on pavement
Autumn’s dark envoys
Moon
Yes, you are the
sun
Formless
Held together only
By the weight of ambiguity
Yes, you are the
sun
Yet you are false
Banishing the stars
Which might
outshine you
Burning my chilled skin
Like a fever
I alone may withstand
you
A celestial madman
Both white faced and faceless
Naked,
cratered
I have been blind beyond memory
Once in an age
I
cross you
Pleading to show
The truth in darkness
I hide
you
Eclipse you
Your corona flares
And the world spins
For
a glimpse
Of eternal fire
Masked under stained glass
I have reached to
touch
Touched nothing
Have drawn back charred stumps
Until
now I am bodiless
A pale head
Seen only by your fickle
light
Shackled to an unseen ring
Until forever's end
When
you detonate
In the death dance
Of our parting kiss
The Garden
Illicit swamp love
Your
beauty draws mosquitoes
Tell-tale chaperones
Departing
footsteps
Moonlight cicada cadence
A pressed square of grass
Age-after
return
Our private pastoral lair
Briars block the path
Aberrations
Time once was
When
you could climb
To the forest's zenith
Feet ascending on
bark-clad century markers
And behold the land
Billowing away in
undulations
Of emerald splendor
To where the horizon curved
away
Like an upside-down smile
Time once was
When
the sight of concrete
In that breathing expanse
Was like an
ashen scab
Stopping the world's wound
Blotting out Gaia's shame
Now...
Now I look out
From
the pinnacle of
This cemented mountain
To where the horizon
gasps
In an asthmatic haze
A handrail suspends me over the
abyss
Someone taps me on the
shoulder
Points at a distant plot of trees
Says, "Jesus,
they stick out like...
Like…
A bunch of trees!"
He
laughs
Jesus was lucky
enough
Not to hear
Our luck has run out
Snowball Aftermath
Swiss hot
chocolate
Sweet, steaming mediator
Of all winter wars
Cycle
Solid touch
Of
passion lit
Your eyes embrace
My infinite
Liquid touch
With
passing ease
Smiles that journey
On tarmac seas
Vaporous touch
A
passive sway
My grasping after
Your turning away
Lost
Crushed pet in the
road
Ribs splayed out like failed kindling
I kneel to touch
once
Oiled ear…recognition
My best friend, gone five days,
found
Cold Wolf
Cold wolf
Cries to the dark white solstice
Finding unity
Sunset
Memories of
you:
Sinking gilded reflections
Off eastern windows
Sunset
crawling from my back
Your final touch, then darkness
Bonfire Eschatology
The uncarved block
A
fingertip of flame
Time . . .
This
universe
Metamorphosing toward absolute zero
Warms my
knees
Breathes the dancing shadow across my eyes
Displays the
phantasmic spectrum of existence
For what it is:
An illusion
The magma of a planet's
inception
Frozen in a skeletal fury
Continents shift,
fall
Crack the night with explosive evolution
Mountains built
from the strata of ignited deities
Vaporous deserts of vermillion
frenzy
Criss-crossed with worn paths
Of the undead and the
unborn
Sparks strewn before them like rose petals
A demonrealm
where coyotes scream
When their feet touch the ground
And
lovers twist once upon the plateau
Before sighing into molten
oblivion
Landscapes turn urban
and
Towers stretch skyward as
Myriad windows flicker and
wink
Jealous of their expiring secrets
Moonlight crushes the
skyline into submission
Steel girders collapse, soon exposing the
giant within
Arms of wild, flaking granite and
Legs of ancient,
dissolving redwood
Giant becomes man
Man becomes child
Hot
against his mother's searing nipple
Which flows with flammable
sap
And explodes --
The primal rejection
From these, the
Lovers
Scouring each other's face with tongues of flame
Burning
away the pain, the dreams
The memory of a body licked into
ashes
And scattered on the midnight wind
Against the
heavens
Dun stars
Food for tomorrow's fish
And when Time has
failed
And passion has devoured itself
Like an insensate
glutton
The specters have all crumbled to this:
A mound of
embers
A refractory cadence of spent vitality
A smattering of
pulsing tears
And here, at dawn, I gather together
A glowing
souvenir in my palm
Of fading memories, which even now
At the
end
Have the power to consume life
And prove the transitory
nature
Of my flesh
Campfire Evangelist
Marshmallow
Plunged
into Hell, rejoice
Salivation is near
Pump Rifle Assassin
Vile silencer
In
your civilized deafness
That you would fell the birds
Still the
chipmunks
Shatter the insects
All for the capital offense
Of
reciting Whitman
In their native tongues
Wiping Sand
Wiping sand from
toes
Into taut wind-whipped crabgrass
Youth’s sandpaper sting
Wheat
Father’s wheat
fields, gone
Swaying sea turned tarmac sprawl
The gods are
starving
Staggering
She can say thank
you
In every language
But mine
She laughs
Only
Through
her teeth
She inhales
To
consume
My air
Clearly
I can
survive
Without breathing
Watch
Watch me
Watch
me not fall
Dawn Breeze
Meadow grass slow
dance
Shy sway, holding memories of
Midnight mist kisses
A Note
To remember
When
love is soft and melodic
At your side
When your shivers are of
bliss
And the smell of lilacs
Rests like feathers in your
intermingling hair
Nature's redolent sigh
An echo of your own
To remember
The months of minutes
spent
When emptiness clawed inside your ribs
When the wine
rotting between your teeth
Was not an ecstatic aphrodisiac
But
an ascetic's scourge
Whipping the blood from your brain in a
froth
When the sight of another's tender shadows
Made your
nerves implode with wanton horror
When there was only you
To
study your eyes in the fickle mirror
When you could run
screaming
From the sink to the bed and back again
And there
would be absolutely no one
To hear
Or care
Or kiss your
tears
Or sing down the stars for warmth
No one
So remember
Dust
Brush
from the
mantle
where our photo seemed eternal
Hush
as the sun
shines
on countertops swept bare
Rain
washes my
boots
of the dark road to your doorstep
Stain
fades from
sheets
bleached in summer winds
The ten thousand
motes
Are swept from my eyes
My feet
My spirit
Leaving me
an infant
Blind
But so wonderfully new
PART TWO: ARRIVAL
Seeking
Seeking Buddha's
Word
From the mouths of other men
Lost among the lost
Forever
an apprentice
The heart heeds only itself
By and For the People: A Cacophony
Strike a pose
I love Kimberly
Eat your veggies!
Fuck you
I find it difficult to ignore graffiti
Help
because it is right there starring you in the face
Sex is fun – but if you’re gay
Congradulations,
It can be a pain in the ass
you have just sat on a toilet seat
Nuke America till they glow
contaminated
Then shoot them in the dark
with the AIDS virus!
What’s long and hard on a black man?
Third grade
This offends me
What’s long and hard on a white man?
Nothing
Why the hate?
Skinheads suck
Where does this come from within you?
If there’s no pie in the sky, then this is all there is
God save the Queen
If there’s no hair pie in the sky, then there’s no heaven
THE WAR ON DRUGS IS A WAR ON THE PEOPLE!
If the opposite of pro is con
I often wonder why people don’t seem creative
Is the opposite of Progress Congress?
Then I use this restroom
Who are the two most famous black women?
I love to be placed in bondage and disciplined by sexy women
1-Aunt Jamima
Die milk breath
2-Mother Fucker
Obey your mom!
Now boys!
Drunks agenst Mad Mothers
It’s the white race
New improved: stack ‘um breakfast links
that’s polluting and destroying Mother Earth
I am a gay man who believes in first amendment rights to free speech
I need cocks down my throat and up my ass
still
You queers go shove a hamster up your ass
I say that this statement and others like it
Go fuck Sicero, he’s already fucked you
represent the very worst in homophobia
You all mouth and I want to stick my cock in it
that our society has to offer.
YUK!
I will not erase it myself.
I fail to grasp this fettish with roosters
Will anyone else, I wonder?
You straits are unable to write clearly. Please respond in English.
I’m straight but who cares?
Fill my ass with your dick!
No thank you
God is dead (Nietche)
Let’s keep abortion safe and legal
Nietche is dead (God)
You misspelled my name
Is spelling a measure of a school system’s success?
God hates all vandals!
I LOVE TO KILL FAGGOTS!
Where do you think the word “faggot” came from?
Smile and be happy!
Did you know that when witches were burned during the Middle Ages
First they came for the Jews
and I was silent
the fires were kindled
Then the Blacks
and I was silent
by throwing convicted “homosexuals” onto the log piles?
Then the Catholics
and I was silent
Someone should seek
Now they have come for me
and destroy
This wall educates no one!
this freak of nature
Who will tell them no?
[Anonymous graffiti recorded in downtown Portland, OR, 1993. Arranged by William Van Winkle.]
Revenge
Rebuilding each night
I
am sure the spider dreams
Of crushing my home
Descent
Mother’s latest
bed
The fecal scent of near-death
A fighter no more
Ignorance and Bliss
Let us go then, you and
I
Where memory is fiction, and we might yet try
To blithely
hazard a brushing of souls
On roads swept by ghostly billows
Of
December storm
And yet laugh at the rainbows
Which play about
our feet
Yes, I would walk this street
For despite the chill I
am certainly warm;
The crinkling rhapsody of your shoulder butting
mine
In jest, in play
We dance in broken rhythm
To keep time at bay
Annual Migration
The steel streams
freeze
A duck family wades across
Tokyo’s concrete heart
Desk Life
Passing
butterfly
Outside Venetian prison bars
No wind touches me
Contented Isolation
A meadow apart
Two
crickets practice seduction
Spraying their staccato sky
chatter
Across the moon's blind eye
They see no need for
silence,
No need to seek the other
Glacier
Torpid blue Atlas
Diamond slowly ripping
Echo in my bones
The Potter’s Soul
Give me your essence
I
will lay it out
Upon a white sheet
To be seen
More clearly
It changes hue
With
the turning
Of the universe
Slowly expanding
On forbidden
winds
I will gently gather
Its frayed ends
The scent of your
essence
Charred tallow
On sagging attic cobwebs
A rich,
addictive, earthen musk
In which I long to paint myself
I thrust my hands down
Into your essence
There to touch
The primordial dust–
Which clings to me
Transforming
Creating anew
The clay
Reshaping
The potter
Becoming
Fear no final
death
Children, trees, friends, and tea…all
You are becoming
On the Fear of Death
If you want to
stay
Stay
If not, go quickly
True Night
Fluorescent-lit
sky
Only the yolks in my fridge
Understand true night
Inner City
Snowy dark
doorway
Parents rage, distant gunfire
Gateway to Hell -- home
Zoo Under First Autumn Rain
Lone orangutan
In a
cardboard toy shelter
Like urban outcast
Forced laughter as we
trade stares
But she knows I'll look away
Silver-eyed lion
The
last of his confined pride
Cries futile thunder
A helicopter
passing
The sound of life before death
Polar bear
floating
Resting on a pump-blown tide
Concrete glacier
cage
Rain beats on his patient gaze
Longing for the north star
Transition
Brisk winds of
autumn
Content, blind, so sure they still
Bear the summer’s
blaze
From Out My Window
The reek
Of
someone's late dinner
Creeps up this storm drain
The doddering
sputter
Of an air conditioner
Hanging just over there
So
close
That if I jump
I may get to strangle it
Before we both
shatter
On the pavement below
A cat
Three floors
down
Plays a staring match with me
Inside green paper
curtains
She eyes me not for supremacy
But mockery
A scream
That means
laughter
And laughter
That is weeping
I want to stuff my
ears
With these steaming light bulbs
Either to illuminate
myself
From this existence
Or burn the sounds
From my
echoing memory
Receding lines
Of
paned holding cells
Some light, some dark
All obscured
Like
a futile chess game
Where kings never fall
And queens at times
forget
Their soap-scrubbed silhouettes
A tic-tock
clapping
Ricochets up these
Twin brick planes
She is blond
in black
But even in the flat distance
She seems lumpy and
half-melted
A hidden figure waits
In the shadowed donut
hole
Under the lamp post
They meet in silence
And let the
darkness
Consume them
Phones tremble
Sirens
plead
The Chinese children bend to study
Behind gray, plastic
blinds
It is just shy of midnight
Occasional stone faces
Glance
up from these stone walls
And nightly rediscover
That there are
no stars
In the urban sky
Crickets
Everywhere
Soft
throbbing thunder
On rusty hinges
Shortcut
The dog rebukes me
As
if I were a traitor
And not a neighbor
Hunt
Ashen still sky
The
hawk casts no shadow
Until the end
Dawn Dilemma
Frosted outhouse seat
Who will be first kissed?
We draw straws
Yellowbottom
Crystal horizon
Trout play in mountain champagne
Gold dust ‘tween my toes
Binary
For Knico, on our first wedding anniversary
From dust to light
A
random encounter
A chance vibration
That broke across the
emptiness
Like God’s soft touch upon the darkness
your whisper upon my cheek
Matter coalesces; we
rise
Phoenix-like from the chaos
Ignited with
attraction
Flourishing, circling through time
Individuals
emergent yet bound inextricably
we dance as children about the cosmic axis
I offer my essence to
you, and you to me
Body of my body, irresistible
For alone, I
would wander the darkness
Adrift, self-consuming
Resentful of
every distant glimmer
stay with me always against the night
We die the many deaths
of life
Shedding each age with devastating ecstasy
Surrounded
by our selves, our pasts, a garden for life
Can these be our
children?
The bright blue Olympians of mortal dreams?
our smiles fade as their echoes recede
And at the frozen end
I
will still know you
Dark figure and diamond soul
We will spread
like sand across creation
Still mingling
yes, that is your hand in mine
I await the next whisper
Long for that fleeting touch
Perhaps
the first Word
That ignited we stars into being
Was “Love”
you can feel its echo, even now
About the Author:
Today, William Van Winkle lives in Hillsboro, OR, with his wife and two sons. Since 1998, he has been a full-time freelance writer focused on the computer industry. His work has appeared in PC Magazine, CPU, LAPTOP, Tom’s Hardware, Smart Computing, and many other outlets.
Look for other titles by William Van Winkle at Smashwords.com.
You can also follow William on Twitter (@williamvw) or his blog (williamvanwinkle.blogspot.com).
Tips Gratefully Accepted
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