Dietmar Trommeshauser

Dietmar (dtrommes@direct.ca) is a member of the HWA, WCSFA / BCSFA(?) and living in Maple Ridge, BC, Canada, with his guinea pig Koko. He has verse in Waves, Rictus, Rouge et Noir, Dark Planet, Recursive Angel, and forthcoming work in Transversions. His short stories have appeared in Twisted, Shiver, Deadtime Storeies, Dreamforge and is editor of Millennium Science Fiction and Fantasy Magazine (http://www.gnp1.com/magazine). He can be reached at dtrommes@direct.ca in Maple Ridge, BC, Canada (nice, huh?).

THE SINGING BONE

{a poetic journal}

SUNDAY

I use the first hour of waking to investigate myself in all directions

In the empty room, the smell of my child.

Thoughts that scalp one gently.

wasps asleep

under cool eaves

curled words

in gray paper nests

some days last for years

MONDAY

An old man on the corner looks like a bent tree,

on closer inspection discover it is a tree.

I write best in the early morning when nothing is in focus,

like passing a mirror with the corner of one eye.

a crest of razors

The fear of feeling that only through some form of pain

can my hand move the pen, that and the forced distance kept

between others.

the effort to smile at nothing or no one

night and

the sound of the furnace

TUESDAY

Burning wood all night; woke up with my skin peeling.

When the poet reads out loud for the first time

a sense of someone hugging the sky from the inside

her blue-veined hands shaking

angels in her eyes

Pass a darkened window behind which a man shakes a baby,

imagine his wife in bed masturbating.

a feeling of being made of wood

the blood singing through the bones

heart banging those Elton John piano keys

my brother is blind and dying in Spain

his name is Daniel

I have a fear of flying

and moving over large bodies of water

WEDNESDAY

in the fridge: old bread, hard edged cheese, a few slices of brittle salami (a list of things to be thrown out)

yesterday seen as a gingerbread house

Reading Borges The Dream Tigers; the desire to breathe everything in through the eyes.

I sit here naked in my awe,

the couch beside the window lies under the striped sunlight

a fat cat starving.

In the evening, dead cars outside the window and in the trees

above them maple leaves in the wind

blurred movement of bright butterflies, birds, or small fish.

By a river, after dark,

now the light is in the waves.

assignment: describe a tunnel

THURSDAY

An old man carrying a bag of groceries has been walking

up and down my street all week.

We circle each other like gulls.

a fear of beautiful women who wear reflective sunglasses--

to suddenly see yourself in their eyes

I wonder if it's the same bag of groceries,

contact made only with the eyes

anxiety: sucking in the sun through both nostrils

By dusk the old man's grocery bag finally breaks,

and when I bend down to help

he doesn't even look up,

just waves me off.

I leave him there

on the lawn,

picking up the oranges

as though they were pieces of a sweet

heart.

Behind a curtained window

the blue glow of a television and

under the street light

three hookers dancing.

FRIDAY

fingernails shinning on the rug: half-moons

morning: my child in bed seen as a beautiful line

When asked for the fourth time what his occupation was,

he answered, "I'm a poet."

Finally though, admitted he was a puppet. But this

only after intense questioning.

the walls here write their own graffiti

in childhood my love expressed itself as fear

SATURDAY

woke up with my face wet looked to the ceiling for holes

found instead her eyes

the memory of her sleeping beside me, curled,

the perfect poem

remember

while dreaming she always clenched her fist,

as if fighting back a pain

everything seems more beautiful during the night or

early morning

a cocoon unraveling

__A HOUSE ON A HILL, HOLLYWOOD, CAL. 1963__

the edge hits the sky drops

into the grass cuts off

the sun deep shadows

so tight the eye hurts

bleeds a little

The sky shot out

flat out

dead flowers.

__RUSSIAN MIDGET FRIENDS IN A LIVINGROOM ON 100TH ST. NYC 1963__

He is caught

showing a photograph to his sisters

but it is of a different country

a country where they remain children

where a tall blonde soldier

with scarred eyes

gathers them around his knees

like flowers

while in the background

three laughing soldiers

lean against a black transport

share cigarettes

and bullets

it is a clear day

the sun is high

there are patches of snow

on the wet ground

The children stand in mud

clutch for their father's hand

leave fingerprints in the air

long after he's taken away.

They remember

he smelled of tobacco and gunpowder

and that

his height blocked out the sun.

__I Fell__

I fell

in love with Meg Ryan, I

fell in love

it took the whole movie but in the end I fell

when

she wed a man who had a moustache and owned a little fieldstone cottage on

a vineyard in France

I hurt. The pain as bloody as Van Goh's missing ear. I fell

in love with her bright blue eyes my love lost in the theater's dim light

like a dolphin's tears in water. I fell

for her golden hair shining on the silver screen like stardust across a

prairie sky. I fell

in love with Meg Ryan's

smile, sweet as Halloween candy.

It took the whole movie but I fell

hard as rain on a cracked desert highway I fell

red as the blood from an open heart I fell

sweet as the wine from that vineyard purple

like my bruised soul I fell

into her secret embrace to dance the dream awake I fell

in love

with Meg Ryan but,

she left me standing

in the aisle.

Dietmar Trommeshauser