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Poetry || SubmissionsCloud Boulevard & Other PoemsDoug TanourySleeperWhen you return, come unnoticed,Steal back silently late at night, and Let your entrance be mostly unseen, Without a trumpet voluntary To mark the moment And no grand polonaise, But return like a tired worker At the end of the midnight shift, Moving slowly in the darkness, Quiet, as not to awaken those who slumber And dream deeply in metered respiration. When you come back again, Let your footsteps fall in the hallway, pianissimo, Your shadow moving through the bedroom doorway Just a bit ahead of you. The nocturne of silhouetted movements as you undress And clothes fall to the floor With the muffled rustling of a bird taking flight, The half-step inversion of you Peeling back the bedspread and sheet And your weight shifting on the mattress. TenderAnd I saw today with some surpriseHow beauty is the cosmic currency, A universal tender, that will valet park me Near the main entrance of a higher consciousness, That swings open doors wide And buys Sunday brunch at 10:00 a.m. At outdoor cafés opposite the beach, Under a Catalina sky of blue silk, Draped like a canopy over the green sea. And I have come to know well That some lessons are best learned slow, The result of repeated study. I have worked long like a dullard, Drilled each detail into memory as an imbecile And trained my eye on each liquid movement, Graceful and poised, of bare arm and naked thigh, How the mere hint of a wiggle in the ass Is like a wad of cold hard cash. Trio I. Ode To April And I recalled the opening line Of Elliott's Wasteland: "April is the cruelest month" And I think that somehow the same Could be said of any month, May, June, July, August, September And not to forget November and December. Indeed things green and things yellow Are growing quite irrepressibly And soon a hint of color will crawl up The bare willows and upon the ash and maple New foliage will sprout, modest at first, But growing toward green crescendos. I remember my grandfather Was a modernist in his old age. He would slip into spells of incoherence, Utter words in odd tongues, not of European origin But more exotic. On summer afternoons, He would sit in the shade beneath a tree And rest his back upon its bark and trunk And sometimes in fragments, More often in the gibberish of delirium, Speak to me like Sybil. I believe that Spring is strong And April is not fragile but merely subtle. Sprouts peek most shyly from the earth, Green shafts against the black soil, Tendril roots twisting down. There is no cruelty in Of modest beginnings Or in the small starting of things. He has closed his eyes and Oh that I could awaken him, Just grab his arm and say: "Grandpa, wake up. You walked in the sun too long." He would open his eyes and look at me, And mumble something in Arabic That sounded slightly slurred And wave his arm for me to go way, To let him sleep. The days grow longer and the light Now streams in the big window Just after sunrise, and April is the month Of things sleeping and slow awakenings, Of fragments that grow Toward the fullness of meaning. II. At Lake St. Clair Fishing at Lake St. Clair today, Alone on a long pier, Just north of the power plant Where the line of steel smokestacks, The "Seven Sisters" dominate the sky, And I always think them The perfect classical form, Tall and slender as they are, Ionic columns left standing upright Amid the rubble of some ruins The water-tinted orange In the first light after sunrise, Its surface choppy and textured As if painted on a canvas, pasted on thick With the short pointed strokes of a palette knife, And I recalled a fragment from long ago: "White-caped waves sweep the lake-- My father's dreams" And me picking out with such care Painted spoons of speckled green, And a feathered jig with a chartreuse head. For you know my grandfather was a modernist, My father was a neo-romantic, but I, I am a fisherman. For the measure of a man I know Is in pike and pickerel and perch. III. Piano Sonata Things are most pure in their beginnings, As if time somehow tarnishes Innocence and stains The sweetest intentions. It is the April of things, rather than their August, That is most lovely, Tendrils of hope With roots that grip tenacious and deep, The watercolor that seeps across A sketch of charcoal landscape. In the rain today I found a faint trace of music, A fragment of melody That is the sound of a piano sonata, Notes that resonated softly And make me remember Black and white summers When I crossed the river on Macarthur Bridge, The sunlight On the surface of the water shining brightly, The waves gleaming Like schools of chrome minnows. It is raining and I hear my grandfather's footsteps On each wooden step as he walks up the front porch, I hear him stop to cough and then continue. Memory is a fragmentary thing. And I cannot simply decide And struggle a great deal And muse endlessly upon the troubling question: Is it the April within us that God loves? Or is the April within us God's love itself?
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