A Fall into Dreaming

I lay in the grass with a vision:

four trees in the corners of my space

their arms populating every periphery with foliage.

Gently swaying to drop beautiful dead gifts

for the ants running across my books and my arms.

I slept in the stillness and subtle motion of autumn

thinking of nothing but conversations that played

as though they had actually affected me.

Dry, locomotive words smearing my consciousness

like a rectangular eraser smears the artificial led.

A dream begins, but I’m unaware until it reaches

‘finis’:

To clean my dirty arms and soothe my swollen neck

I shower avec mon ami,

wiping and washing until she fears her skin

            will rupture and flee her.

She stands two heads above me on a step

the water blurring my visage

like my conversations do.

Entrenched in my muddied perception,

clarity arrives

from the shine off of her dripping calves and thighs.

I see clearly enough to scale these heighths

the legs shudder, clap, and feel thrilled;

there exists an impending fall.

I awoke to her reluctance of my advance

smiling with the luck I’ve had

in clear, conceptual dreaming.

The rain brings red foliage to my bed

with more haste than before:

A thunderstorm has awakened my love of color.

-Grant Durando 

10/2/12

Alvin and the Nightmares

Squirrels are madmen

crocheting a nest to start a fire

if only to have an edifice to throw

granite into.

Marbleized glares of thrill, delight;

time turns you three into criminals.

Screams are useless

for your ears are too small. 

-Grant Durando

~10/12/12

Excitement Curves Earthquake’s Architect of Mind

I am the architect of mind

tipping off structure, shaking.

Uncontrolled motion leads to profit.

I am the architect of mind.

Turtles can change from doves to sea monsters

swimming with gentle wings, flying with peace

or encroaching on the foamy curls of the sea

with blinding tail whips and silent strangulations.

Whose to say which I mean to signify

they’re all your monsters

            I’ve just introduced them.

I have my own demons and snakes that swim

sliding over my feet so I don’t feel them

until I’m snagged and trip over what seems to be

myself.

Snakes and turtles will send me to Hell.

-Grant Durando 

10/4/12

Blue Madness

Blue madness enveloped me all at once. My eyes grew out of my skull and into the foyer, burning Satan’s own velvet red.  Walls were at once perpendicular, yet parallel, and I felt nauseated. Blue oceans rose to drown me, but I was on a cruise ship. Not driving of course, but protesting, distracting, and playing. The games were mild but the consequences severe. However, genetic consequences are more so, I think. So I awoke blue and sweaty. No one was there, only a fly in the window, a spider on the wall, and me in my underwear laying on top of my sheets. 

Marbleized Ice Chips

Her ice cream and teddy bear

are my journal, my wine.

Leaning back, you hear a crack

we’ve both fallen out of a mountain.

Don’t envy the sculptor

for the curves of his profit,

the marbleized skin of his product.

Rather, induce crystallization

of art; art is everywhere.

How to freeze it

is the problem.

To the sculptor we vainly suffer false forms

idealized pieces of rock whom we vainly

contradict in our flesh

in our chips.

-Grant Durando

8/27/12

The Pill

Once he swallows

he is gone.

The capsule rolls down his tongue

crossing the digestive Styx and paying

a lucrative sum for it’s journey.

Rubbing down

a perforated pipe

he unknowingly massages

his gift down, down to the suburbs

of his soul, where acid burns

but living is relieved; only when

compared to the northern urban density.

Dissolving,

pointillism is more accurate,

falling into cracks and holes

built for blood diamonds

and muscular gasoline

dissolves and disappears

into an invisible warrior

yielding familiar friends.

Circumscribing limbs

torso anaesthetized

due to the solemn guardianship

of his capsule’s new home.

To the city, northward,

his chemicals run and meet

an acquaintance who doesn’t prefer

the stories that are told.

Once a pacifist,

now a warrior,

the acquaintance is gone

he becomes the larger capsule.

-Grant Durando

8/23/12

Split-End Weeds in the Garden

Gardens desire work,
time,
resources.
What happens to your garden
when you're lacking,
deficient,
dehydrated?

An Urban Affair

A daughter is born           

out of metal and urban fornication;

bred life into inanimate women,

children, and young men.

****

Bistros and cafés

wrap corners in the way

you’re swallowed by the signs

            concerning your consensual love.

Mutually developed

musings drive every step

running over the cobbled street

that hurt your feet

            and you love it

            and you love it.

                        In my city I’d let you

                        lean on me.

                        Take your shoes off,

                        clean your feet.

The subway wraps

sandcastles and tiger tails

around and around

‘till we all get dizzy.

(and you love it

as do I)

-Grant Durando

8/9/12

Wife

Short word

long last name

makes me fast asleep

and wakes my warmest parts.

Dying in life

relieves me of choosing

to be alone in my heart

alone in my bed.

I make the choice

to set sail

with a curtain-wrapped mast

perfect for crackling seas

that burn, like oils on the surface.

Catch my curtain

I’m drowning in you. 

-Grant Durando

7/12/12

Prospective Parisian December

I’d love to see the city

in the snow; mushroom micro-clouds

surround my foot's most recent impression

displayed by its aftermath

its consequence.

The chilly frozen vodka burn

in wintertime

is the air we’ll drink.

Blow it out in tufts of tissues

steam arises from the tent we tend.

How it would surround rosy cheeks of ours,

cherried with cooperation and comfort.

Holding each other for warmth,

and other reasons, too.

-Grant Durando

8/2/12

Parisian August

All the chairs face outward

for a reason

the show is outside

around

no porous scrubber reality

no,

no, diamond caverns

all encompassing

recess of space

concentrated.

Perfect planar figures

sit on perfect dusk at dawn

champagne and espresso linger

into the recessed crush of crowd.

So we’ll linger on, then

in a light, conversational way

because the tables face outward.

Ineffable sources of caverns:

diamond as they are,

still varietal and plentiful,

emerging from alleys and lingerers

drinking wine from a bottle

sat on a curb.

-Grant Durando

8/2/12

Display of Power from the Bottom of an Ocean

I want to take a bus to the coast

vodka tonic portable bottle in hand

take my clothes off, go swimming

and float, giving my all to ecology.

It would be a night bus, one A.M.

packed with Mexicans who cook Italian

going home to crying babies and tired wives

they don’t envy me and my energetic one.

She’s only tired when I’m around

we don’t even have our child, yet.

If we did it would be far away

naked, awake, and on display.

***

Nothing can see me but the sun

cracking my skin open after days of floating

on my back.

As the sun pries my pores, the seagulls march

with hungry eyes. The water

creeps into my wounds.

I start to sink.

Face down now my eyes are just new funnels

for death through salt water to creep

the marlins love the taste.

I took the bus 10 days ago, at one AM.

Elevators take me down now,

the crabs play drums.

I can hear

            on my descent.

No one to see me now

I’ve been consumed without any regard

to my asteroids I’ve embedded in hearts

forests I’ve planted in minds.

If only she wasn’t busy being seen

she could’ve watered down with me

our eyes, only each other’s, burning

blue and green.

-Grant Durando 7/31/12

She Tells Me Not To Worry

She tells me not to worry

            of tanned caramel men

            speaking Catalan

            running their minds as

                        mine races

around the curves of her thighs

as they transform into gluteals.

                        My mind: the gluteal.

She tells me not to worry

            I selected her bikini            

            before she booked her tickets

trying to simulate

a visual stimulation

I was wrong, those sequins shine for them.

                        The shine: mating flag.

She tells me not to worry

            her middle finger

spring-loaded

safety off

neither of us feel safe.

Believing no one

I believe images when they arrive.

                        Vision: clarity.

I’m telling myself not to worry

            of tanned men

            falling in love

            with my shine and vision

            my bikini and my mini-skirt

            my heels trudging along

her heels:

my weakness.

           

-Grant Durando

7/5/12

Something Beautiful (Fragment)

            “Would you like to hear something beautiful that happened to me today?”

            “Of course, darling.”

            “So I jaywalked halfway across Venice Boulevard during rush hour,”

            “And no ticket?! Beautiful!”

            “Yes, it was, but that’s not it. Standing on the median and breathing each strip of metal that brushed past me with the threat of rattling my bones to the point of reverberation and eventual explosion, I considered taking one…one and a half steps outward, for that’s all it would take. At this moment, my brain inferred that I had actually stepped out, and the breeze of metal turned into a plow to clean the traffic lanes of my superfluous skin and feeling…these things just don’t belong on the road. So I heard, first my elbow, then my ribs, all the way to my skull, shattering inaudibly (to the outside world, at least) like a florist’s collection of vases falling to the floor: heaviest last, lightest (least important) first, during an earthquake. I caught a breath of the metal again and was alleviated of suicide by suicide. The fracturing made me feel whole again, long enough to cross all the way to the other side.”

            “That is beautiful, darling.” 

Planked by Wistful Nothingness

The boy is planked on either side by sky

Neither clouds nor grounds to give specifics

No circumstances that bleed into actions

Only the boy in the sky with his airy sonnets.

As Twilight caresses the evening streets

With her stern darkness to steer interests and vices

One’s broken boots evade the puddles of shadows

Treading smoothly on the ground with no sky.

No circumstances, no actions

Smooth broken boots on the pavement.

Sinking and soaking his eyes into the beguiling

emptiness brought him here to be pinned

                                                            underneath

reality’s vision of reality:

the dreams of our wistfulness

wistful nothing is all he sees

the boy is planked by the sky.

Flying My Kite (Part I)

Awaiting whistling in the wind

as it swindles your kite tail

into the rest of the atmosphere

where it can swim and sway through the sky.

Sails catch thrusts off the ocean

pixilated by spicy salt and tactile moisture

the tail dances as it’s caressed and inserted.

Lighting strikes from cloud to kite

and our eyes are cloudless.

Rain comes to wash our kite, sails, and tail;

refresh the pale color to vibrancy

somatically expressing the thrill of salt:

a gift from nature to the artistic creation

of beauty, play, and pleasure.

My precious kite.

“String it up! Let’s fly again!”

Our eyes are cloudless and sated with

God in the captain’s hand

God in the kite’s extremity.

Reformed air.

Salt.

-Grant Durando 

My Highest Cliff

It was bright enough to melt the sand

to turn each grain into liquid glass.

My fingers sift through the gelatinous shards

and watching it fall into moldless dust

I find my inspiration for a backbone.

I undressed my upper half to show the world

that I’m an alien, my belly button curves in and out

just like the mountains and valleys of the beach

as seen by the humble sand crab

and the dominating seagull.

My browning freckles indentify my shard.

Away from mountains and valleys

of beaches and predators

my associations

fall between aliens and fowls;

we can all fly, but do I have proof of their wings?...

indications of their abilities to mold my sifted glass

to form a precious mountain?

With no proof, there will be no hiking today.

My mountain is solemnly surrounded:

tufts of mist to moisturize.

The skies will force an opening

and give entrance and serenity to

my highest cliff.

-Grant Durando

Optical Distance

I watch my life pass through a telescope

mirrors and mirrors playing with distance.

Serrated edges of formative hope

outside the bounds of detail resistance.

Passing away vision to microscopes

magnifying the miniscule gearworks

grand as sky, dust becoming isotopes.

What time could it be if time only lurks?

Firm beliefs and steady motion reveals

binoculars’ forays to the expanse.

I couldn’t explain the way seeing feels

other than the dust, the river by chance.

Optics support souls to see the obscure,

wide vision structures uphold the demure.

-Grant Durando 

Draft

There’s a draft in my inbox

its unsent emotion chilling me

like the open window that I can’t close.

It’s a letter best left unsent

as an electronic, there is no delay for stamp

only a click delay: one finger worth 43 cents.

To let it rest and rust there,

devolving would lessen its value to me

but avoid evaluation by its target.

To disallow reincarnation in the psyche

of its addressee, and ignore the communication

so brazenly inscribed;

to let if freeze as a draft does

no.

I will get up and shut the window

not apparel myself with an extra garment

to shroud my goose bumps and purple skin.

Invest my 43 knucklecents to give truth

touch myself to make proof

that she loves me

she wants my honesty.

-Grant Durando

Skin

She sits alone by the river in June

he sits alone at a café table.

Different cities, burned by the same sun

the same skin turning red as confetti

falling through the sky, for them.

White, blue, to red;

reflected clouds, sky, and the sea

of spectators:

watching them solely on their cherished day.

She sits alone by the mirror

he sits alone by his man

Different states, lured by the same cult

the same skin burning blue as cerebrum

considering the end, for them.

Moles, lines, to pores;

experienced sun, time, and space

for breathing:

marking them for murder on days apart.

Different cities touched by the same romance.

The same skin: raising hairs, burning hairs,

naked for someday soon.

Alone

they’ll sit in the same shade. 

The Lily and I Look Up To The Sky

I watch fissures in the pavement

every crack, a suitable microcosm:

life, death, and organic rubbish.  

My head down, I think of what my neck

is doing to my jaw. It’s hard to open now:

painful joint, one-sided tooth alignment

The perfect crack exists for me, somewhere

in this sidewalk: deep enough for shade,

shallow enough to convince the nutrient river

to flow over me:

                        sentience

                                    agency

destabilization.

I need to be washed over

fertilized.

I am no weed nor leaf nor seed,

but rather a fleck of soil willing

to serve. Given the condition:

I can split this sidewalk into a grand canyon

Turn a desert’s rain into new-Thymes

Let the seed to make a lily find me

Let us be carried to the canyon rims

where the runoff collects, and our family begins.

-Grant Durando

                                    

Dancing With The Queen

Deliberate dancing with a drunken prince

or many, the streets will call for a smile.

Sober, you may refrain; rain erased prints

of me, your handler: I’ll have to wait in file.

Grubby, location utility hands

race to your body like gamblers to cards.

I’ll wait, your patient, from five thousand lands,

unworthy bones move within too few yards.

I’ve lost my favorite impulse controls,

I am enough; now I’m simply not there

to cause and collect your joy. My mind rolls

over another, staring at your dorsal hair.

So fair are my love’s eyes in mine,

I’ll have to wait, for me how they’ll shine!

-Grant Durando

Desperate Donation

I can’t believe you, that I’m enough.

That adjective doesn’t even feel good.

I wouldn’t expect you to want that for me,

you won’t even send me your picture.

I know you’re too busy, I know you’re scared.

I won’t get too excited for a letter from London,

don’t worry. I rage at touching you on paper.

Opening the envelope I will feel your toungue

racing across the seam as to hurriedly heal.

It’s not bizarre to bring it in multiple mailbags,

more than one to keep me guessing.

I won’t be insecure in lust for you,

but I can’t resist if you force me.

I do love your soul, stop slapping your chest

to fend off animal invaders to your temple.

I’ll pay, I’ll pay, to kneel at your alter,

donate my debts and my life’s solitude

solace and splendor.

Donate. Donate to me. 

-Grant Durando

Spark Treaty

There’s no way

            he can enjamb his fingers in your back

like I do.

You are all

            my conflicts resolved in the spark treaty

of ember.

Give him luck

            in having freedom of his will because

you’ll want more.

Promise me

            I’ll get penultimate privelege to push                       

against walls.

One more chance

            to make your spark collapse into a vein.

Remember?

-Grant Durando

That's Not What Lovers Do

Suspicious eye contact on the tube

becomes a toast in a Waterloo pub;

a close walk through our streets

to your too-big for one twin bed.

Hollywood eye contact in the sun,

becomes a hostel hug and champagne:

a drunken misstep in the name of pain,

that’s not what lovers do.

He’ll name you things and pet you like

a piece of ornamentation, something

I could never pin you on the wall as.

So be it, be someone else’s pin-up.

I’ll be waiting for your fingers to slenderly

slip themselves into my ring: make you something

that’s mine. Poor fingers, never grasped

another’s back. You dig mine best, anyways.

While you’re away, tell me everything you do.

I know my eyes ought to be shut

but they’re glued against binoculars:

watching you.

What they see you do

they’ll know I agreed to.

That won’t keep them away

from my blue grey stormy eyes;

the torrents of vicious self-pitying floods

I’ll unleash if he gets to put you on his wall.

Just wait for me

instead

I’ll put you to bed.

-Grant Durando

Coy George

Years ago now, a teacher

became my teacher.

Took my fatherless friend and I

to the woods where an old train station

brazenly bore its scars and disuses:

remnants of a past too soon unused.

“The trenched, stone canals poured,” he’d said.

I saw them keep giving gravel to the river.

“The river is in the woods,” he wrote.

Stepping onto the stage of the globe in his mind,

high school students awkwardly stared while

I admired; he recited Hamlet from memory;

swung his arms like he used to in the boxing ring.

“The river is in the woods.”

“I can’t live like this.” My solipsism,

defined as suicidal social isolation.

“How do you manage?” I threw a lifeboat to myself.

“Everyone has to find a way,

we’re all here, aren’t we?”

“The river is in the woods.”

His boxing rings and stage presence

bled from Boston to my bones.

He slept alone, next to his dying

long-term girlfriend. He would barely meet mine.

His greatest story was self-imposed solitary.

“The river is in the woods.”

He gave without conscience

a willingness to write for a pittance.

Like the stoic canal, I will pour, pour, pour;

until my people turn me into stone

and void me of seafarers on their way to the river.

“The river is in the woods.”

Gates as Options, Failures in a Field

I laid my sword down,

explained that my war had ended.

I would be king of my castle square;

if only she’d be queen.

The square isn’t too closed,

there’s plenty of space to roam, explore.

But your hand will always be in mine

your word forever etched on every wall.

Easy for a king to claim monogamy to his kingdom:

for whence have kings built empires

around no bloody, capital centerpiece?

The vigorous heart; autonomic and too strong.  

The gates are closing on my square, darling.

If the fields were navigable I would send a courier

but they are vast and sparse.

Perhaps you’ve been ravaged already.

Not by pigs nor bears, no; by the notion

of option which holds no walls, nor queenship.

I can’t hold my gates open much longer;

for every minute spent holding them up

is one less spent on my love.

I can’t let my square suffer, solely

because you’ve lost your way.

If you’re looking for a throne

that seats you more comfortably:

I fear you will search fruitlessly and I,

die heirless.

I pray to thee: see God in my eyes.

Find peace in certainty,

or honesty in uncertainty.

Take your words off of my kingdom’s wall

or fill them with hymns to our reign.

I can’t hold these gates forever,

for my arms grow tired and cry

for relief of stress and tension.

They hold today to break tomorrow

the next I die lonely, or praise the lovely.

Oh please, let it be praise.

I can’t hold these gates forever.

No Rush

A weekend may be enough

for us to break off battered wings

sear them in a plutonic fire

freeze and reattach with utility staples.

Sew them extra maintenance, support.

There is no rush, no rusting wings on air,

like no rush for vodka over ice.

Just keep the bottle in the freezer.

Freedom arrives in a short time,

it will wait for us in a snowstorm.

I wait for springtime breezes

to blow snowballs below the fire.

At least we’ll see over them, then.

Tip the plowman. Drop your luggage

in the muddy puddles I keep

as pets by my front door.

Pour me frozen and take us to the sky.

Don’t pluck daisies until their stems are dry.

-Grant Durando

Stop It Surrealism

Wine pills dizzy

falling down

love long lost

idealized

fuzzy Monet

black.

Diamond long fractured

distributed among purer hands

purer than mine

my burning burns me

alone

I accelerate sparks

catalyze them into bonfires. 

If You Move In With Me

If You Move In With Me

Can I still keep my pseudo-Persian rug?

Can I still turn words into non-rational dreams,

conveying my cobwebs of self-derived narratives

gelatinized by globs of imagination?

Can I have friends to drink wine and have

dinner in our space;

would our super massive heads incapacitate

these minute details of other humans?

Can I ride my bike in wet weather?

I’d love to have you dry me in the radiance of your will.

In your honesty, I will be your towel, too.

Can we slow dance in too-small living rooms

for 15 minutes; Miles Davis; Kind of Blue?

I’m not looking forward to sleeping alone,

its all in the process of becoming in love.

Only, I’ve fallen in love alone

and I’m not looking forward to sleeping at all.

-Grant Durando

Reflections of the Falsely Presumed

Brushed metal and auburn wood outline

contented countenances and blushed cheeks; facing

foundations of finite tantrums of disbursement.

Medium-height carpet.

Phones buzzed and giraffes arched to peek;

the borders fell off the bedroom wall

favoring the shallow underpinnings of sleep.

Interlocution unfurled a bland flower on the side:

décor for a slipper. Memories of walking on walls,

idolized as to not be forgotten: the grayness.

Tulck...tulck…“Have you killed someone?”

There must be a telltale heart to be silenced

With each thrust the glass reflects a crack.

The splintered window was a priori opaque;

the characters thrived on a foggy ocean pier.

Invisible lies threw dagger-drops unclear.

Three nightmares that detriment sleep

from the ground up; recollection of mist

feathering a face. Drizzle-dry as a dream. 

The Labor of Letter-Writing

I wrote letters, or so I thought.

My mailbox wept for more than ads,

telling the world what it’s lacking;

divided between getting and spending.

No outgoing box for my letters tonight.

I can walk across lines of non-traffic,

as canoes navigate bubbles and overhead bridges.

Nothing overhead but the weight of rain.

Fatigued by curbs and signal lights

my dried eyes glaze over the box

now: a fact that no letters are coming.

My mailbox weeps for my lack of labor. 

Mineral Pick

I can’t guarantee that the sun

will shine in its arctic summer pose;

those clouds may come unexpectedly through

the pass that used to remain undiscovered.

Now we know a gaping valley exists

to draw cool air into us and exhale

warm, typhoon styling’s into our hairs

and halos, making us tropically embroidered.

Precious ores in the cliffs marking our door

resemble giant dogs for sale by the pound.

Which to select in a display case

muted by whistles and snorts of the sold.

Plucking harmonies with a mineral pick,

tonalities intertwine to play romance’s lick. 

Morning Walk

Drizzled down the melancholy morning streets:

gray, brisk, maintaining filthy runoff to the sea.

I stepped in puddles on my way.

I couldn’t wait for a walk sign

so I was brushed by four wheels and a tin can,

missing its century too: no blame.

Finally, my sopping, asphalt-muddied shoes

met with the sand stew, refuted the reservoir.

My eyes dotted, one each, with the morning drizzle. 

Low breezes played an Aeolian harp

between my ears and eyes: active temple.

Surely, the clouds can’t defeat the sun.

Mountains sizzling: cooled lava storms

erasing love’s flow by drowning.

“it’s not about killing myself.”  

The smoke billows inland: a warning

for the earthy ice cubes trapping moments

at superior altitudes: keep it cool.

I watch the circumventing sun

silhouette a brutish, war-torn storm;

dreams of invisible drainage set us apart.