Night Rainbows

When Mother asks him where he’s been, he’ll tell her
he was busy stealing lightning from a lightning bug.

His fingers will fidget, fumbling anxiously, trying
to keep the light from escaping and she will tell him that
it’s not nice to steal. In turn, he will try to retract
his response or explain, while the colors refract
ff his palm and just lay waiting restless under glass,

anticipating the innocent removal of his hand,
the magician's great reveal that allows them to escape (although
no one expects it, colors can be quite clever and conniving, too).

With disappointment, Mom will look at him—no words
are necessary with that glare the way she does it—
and he’ll try and try to verbalize the sheer divine
splendor of the epic arc of pigment, spilling every shade
and every hue of every color ever known, that had sprung
up from the same creek where he had once held court. But
he knows she’ll never listen, so he’ll just let the colors go
before he even gets home and then tell her
he was busy stealing lightning from a lightning bug
and let it go.

The Company Bow

A sundial, sitting at the edge of a skirt, is feeding
on decay from proscenium walls. The crumble of
its majesty is Grecian in its tragedy, but hardly
as memorable as the long forgotten luster
of the golden laurel leaves that adorn the façade.

The space below is filled with rows
of wine-stained lips, each frozen in
a petrified reach to kiss the sky
and hide its eyes from the dying
desolation that they themselves
once wreaked upon the stage.

If only these mouths were open, they could taste
the stuffy air staled by every clapping palm,
every whistle, every pleading whisper, and every
last recited line whose echoes fill the space—
they are always trying desperately to escape
but only can reverberate off of
floorboards drenched with rain
and tears, cleverly constructed
arches that have failed to do their job,
and of course, the final curtain.

yellow

(that’s the whole point of no return) she said

picking pedals from a chartreuse pistil letting them
slip from her fingers without thought without
feeling as they fluttered to the floor to become some
thing or not that’s why we let them fly
or fade away
it’s like riding in a parking lot and leaving
training wheels on and on and on and never
standing on your own two
(wheels ways eyes feet) we
can/not keep waiting for the okay/go (why) yes/no
--broken glass and open windows—tethered safety
chords and time and rooms and lines and
(yours and mine)
waiting
waiting
waiting
waiting
waiting
waiting

STOP

(he loves me, he loves me not)

Hammer Into Anvil

Calloused fingers softly traced the cutlass curves of a spine-
"Are ye right t'go to port?" he squawked
as grassy feathers floated like a snowfall overhead,
rising from the noose around his neck.
Meanwhile, my parallel eyes just fell paralyzed
(cold as steel, but stained nonetheless)
towards the wasted metal shavings that laid
waiting on that hard and heavy breast
that once had nourished me and forged
a life but ever since turned stiff and numb.

I'd have told him, "I don't know," right then,
but a weapon is never meant for words.

Self-Titled Redux

“thom dunn: rock star. super hero. poet.”-Inscription on a stack of 500 business cards purchased for $5 online after consuming entirely too much whiskey.

I am a Sagittarius that interrupted dinner on Thanksgiving, like my cousin a year earlier.
I am the product of both Irish and English blood that hasn’t waged war upon itself.
I am a child whose heart was born incomplete. And while the metaphor seems striking, I was, in fact, incubated for two days to fill the hole before the doctors let me go.

I am the son of the firsts in their families to attend a college and get a degree.
I am the son of a registered Republican, whose vote in ’04 went to Nader instead.
I am the son of an overly sensitive inner-city schoolteacher whose extreme emotional reactions often cloud her logic, practicality, and grace. She means too well.

I am the brother of a teacher.tennis-player.princess.period. Just kidding. No, I’m serious.
I am the brother of an overachiever whose resume reads like dense instruction manuals.
I am the brother of the roommate of a New York City cop. In their borough, children don’t believe her when she tells them that she’s White, not Puerto Rican.
White people aren’t nice, they say.

I grew up looking over the head of a Sleeping Giant, in the shadow of the Civil War.
I grew up in a microcosm of American diversity, where borders still exist.
I am a resident of Boston, a refuge of the black hole of apathy and complacency that fills the void between the New and old Metropolis of the North. Also known as the Nutmeg State.

I am a survivor of Irish Catholic guilt; reluctantly, my parents both allowed me to escape.
I am the survivor of three broken limbs all collected in the year when I was two.
I am the survivor of more than one car accident by the fault of Asian female drivers; the irony is not lost on me. Neither is the back pain from which I still suffer.

I am likely the most Irish student to have ever been accepted to NYU’s Gallatin School because

I’m Black.

I am going to let that vague anecdote sit for a moment. Good? Okay.
I am immortalized on page 3 of the January 14, 2008 edition of the Boston Metro and I am very clearly not wearing pants. None of my friends were surprised at all.

I am the ex-boyfriend to a fascinating, captivating girl of questionable sanity.
I am the ex-boyfriend of a fascinating, captivating girl of questionable sanity. Again.
I am the ex-boyfriend of a beautiful, ambitious woman that I dismissed arbitrarily as boring, lacking in passion, simply because her stability was confounding to me.

(I am a hypocrite)

I am the proud owner of every issue of “X-Men” since July 2001; I store them in plastic.
I am paid quite handsomely to don a spandex suit and play Spider-Man for promotions.
I am a rabid believer that, while Peter Parker may be a modern-day tragic hero with an emotional complexity akin to Hamlet, Superman is a dreadfully uninteresting archetype lacking in all dramatic value as a character, unless deconstructed.

I’m little more than a little boy in a grown-up body with a Super Hero complex

I am an advocate for a more of a postmodern approach to the establishment of identity; a constant commentary and progressive re-evaluation of the concept, structure, and function of identity in a post-urban setting.
(I am completely kidding about the aforementioned statement; it reared its delightfully pretentious head in conservation fairly recently, and I simply could not resist the urge to include here, for your entertainment as well as my own. Enjoy!)

I am the Sergeant-at-Arms of a National, Professional Fraternity whose membership boasts more women than men; half of those men are bi- or homosexual.
I am the Assistant House Manager and Office Assistant at a multifunctional theater complex run by a reputable regional theatre company; it could pay better, though.
I am a First-Class Boy Scout; it’s really nothing to brag about it, it took me about a year to get there and then I got bored with the militant nature of my Troop but still remained a member with the sole purpose of attending summer camp. I collected all the Waterfront and Arts and Crafts Merit Badges. And Plumbing. Plumbing.

I am the boy with calloused leather fingertips and ringing in my ear. (“It goes to eleven!”)
I am a musician, learned from the Ramones and now playing Gershwin and Lennon.
I am a sell out, tearing punk rock stickers from the body of my beat-up black Stratocaster and rebuilding it from scratch as airbrushed rock art. I am the world’s forgotten boy

The one that searches and destroys.

I am a snob, asserting the authority of superior taste over arbitrary, unimportant forms.
I am typical a fan of malt-heavy beers, slightly caramel, with just a dash of aromatic hops
I am infatuated with New Haven style pizza and I will remind you frequently and with pride that the city is the birthplace of American pizza; I prefer bacon and onion as a topping, but I also recommend the white clam pie. You will then assert that New York City (as a whole) has the best pizza, or you will recall that I previously expressed a distinct distaste for my home state; this is an exception to the rule.

“I am still the optimist, though it is hard when all you want to be is in a dream.”

I am a real boy, struggling with ADHD that evaded diagnosis for twenty years.
I am asthmatic and flatfooted, with allergies to all forms of tree pollens and dust.
I am a fool that ignores the signs his body sends and tends to disregard his symptoms in hope that they will get bored and go away. This approach to self-medication has proven itself to be consistently ineffective, but I’m not giving up just yet.

rock star. super hero. poet.

I think that about covers it.

Atlantic Avenue

Shattered shards of sunlight
off the greyish noontime clouds:
"I am not tied down to the day."

Moisture still penetrates the air,
the day is right, and I lace up my shoes,
music in my hand; a one-strap
backpack with cloth patches of bands
I haven't listened to for years:

"Feet, don't fail me now."

The inches of green that flutter and wave
goodbye: I'm led somewhere alive.
It buzzes and honks,
creates and destroys,
pollutes me with noise
but it's alive.

My headphones drown
out the passing sounds,
suggesting the soundtrack
to the final scene of
another pretentious art house
film we should have never even written.

Still, content, I march
towards the harbor
towards the sunset
of cliches, of every beautiful metaphor
that she's already fallen for, but still
I'm stepping out:

"Feet, don't fail me now."

She offers me a penny for my thoughts.
"This is it," I say, as I smile, laugh,
and make a wish.

Sep. '05

Under an Oak Tree

Only an imperfect picture
Gives the sense of simpler symbols
A gallery of sculpture, and
of oil and ease.
The rudest draughts of a few
streams of tendency that educate
perceptions of an eye and heart:
Presently, we pass

A poem, or a romance
Under an oak tree-
it never quite repeats itself
It Never Quite Repeats Itself

It fills the eye-not less
Until we fire all the best
the world should give suggestion of
my ear and heart.
A sky full of eternal eyes
but always flowing, capped and based
by Heaven, Earth, and sea:
the stream of tendency, it paints a tune.

The aspiring portrait of fate within
exclude this element,
the indifferency in which
all the passions concentrate
on just this moment.

Oct. '05

high fives and bloodlines

Mommy had these buoyant lips of
pallid pink, thin but full of life--
just like me, she'd always say.

Somehow, the bones that showed of her
teeth were even darker than the off-white silk
that stretched across her frame. We shared
the same haircut, her and I, a faded sea
of midday sunlight blond. She said
I always had to make sure I was safe
out on the playground, or in games,
and when she did, my Dad would look on
gently, with a sadness in his eyes
that never went away.

He always said he loved us,
and I believed him-I still do-
but I wished that I could save
those eyes from the sunken black
bags beneath that threatened
to swallow them, deep into abyss.

When I'd ask Mommy why, she'd say
I had to find a grown-up
if I ever cut myself; she made me promise
not to touch anyone
if there was ever blood.
Just to be safe, she'd say.
She'd never really tell me why, but

she'd remind me that she loved me.

On the day she died, Lily was chasing me
through the schoolyard, trying desperately
to tag me and to pass her title on.
I quickly spun my head to gauge
the gap that shrank between us,
but I guess it wasn't quick enough.

I tripped on the curb and toppled
towards the sidewalk pavement
inches above my feet; my teeth clenched
tightly, anticipating impact. Time slowed down

-if only for a moment-

as my face approached the ground,
my chin and my knee scraped and gashed
in the vicious pursuit of the game. Lily cleared
the playground with her siren scream, even
before the first drop of blood turned
to crimson from blue.

And the nurse ran outside
just in time to see the sanguine flood
spill across the asphalt, like molten lava
tearing through a small and unsuspecting town.
In a panic, she snapped on rubber gloves
and I watched the powder dissipate.

I heard her yell to someone else to telephone my Dad;
I thought I was in trouble, and in a way, I guess I was.
When he finally arrived, Dad's eyes were sunken
deeper than before, glazed and glowing red,
and he exhaled with a stutter when he told me, "Mommy's dead."

Nov. '07

St. Elsewhere

at half past, work is over; time
to watch the changing guards
as they dance their canine cares
away, or hide the smoky veil of truth

from pairs of pale men, pockets
lined, to brown bags hiding
closing time's desires. There's a fight
on either side--one with claws, and

one with knives. Across the street
They hide beneath the shade and
gamble lives, but no one on the
other side will stop to bat an eye.

While some may wear a leash of chains,
the other side is held as fast by bars
and by the rain and by the promise of
a supper that He prays is not His last:

Patron Saint of Somewhere Else, please
bring Us greener pastures and better days,
otherwise entitled to those good enough
to pay. So We laugh it off like child's play,
endearing simple-minded pleasures--stay out
of the way, of the teeth They bare and call a game

beneath the watchful Eye of telephone lines.
There is a Man who stares across the street
in silence, and in envy, of another man's best friend:

They will not let You play, and They will not let You in.

Nov. '07

Scenes from a Reflecting Pool

I've prayed that I could find the kind of place
that separates the church and hate, but
stained glass symptoms tell the same
old stories that I've known since I was four--
Will he still bear this cross alone?

(Someone turned the fountain off;
the youth have all gone home)

I drink a draft of cleaner air than I have
tasted in two weeks, and you're not here
to share a sip with me. At least I've got
my pen and paper, drinking in the night with me;
At least I don't imbibe the air alone.

(Is this medicine,
or is this me?
Sometimes I
forget to breathe.)

Molecules meticulously marching in cohesion
as they slide across her marble curves
to do it all again; Sad to say, the water
can't escape; at least the crickets still sing me to sleep.

Cobblestones, she walks alone
Determined not to fall into the fountain;
Where's she been? Will I see her again?

July '07

(Manifest Destiny) Easter, 1988

I threw myself from churchyard steps
about eight hundred forty seven days
into my life; though I tried, I could
not hear my mother cry above the sound
of cracking bones colliding with the concrete.

I never meant to martyr, I just thought it was
my time, or I just thought that I could manifest
a set of feathered wings (its not a halo, its a sign)
but it turns out man was never meant to fly.

Now I'm starting a support group that I'm calling Killing
Darwin, because I think it's time that we evolved ourselves

Oct. '07

Viper

Winter's wicked claws tear across my
face; they draw no blood, but shred my skin
until I fall awake
inside a doorway, in a city,
under blankets torn and old
I am choked by dirt and worms
but still protected from the cold.

When the freezing rain is falling, I
am certain I have earned my discontent,
just as I deserve this green oak
park bench as my bed

I could use some conversation;
I could use a warmer heart.
But I sleep with ghosts and needles
in this dead, abandoned park,
mumbling between my failing breathes:

"Excuse me, mister,
can you spare some change?
This city's cold
and these shoes have holes."

I caught you in an eye-to-eye
and still you kept on walking bye,
naked but your three-piece suit
and tie around your neck just like a noose

Feb. '07

Roxie

I press my fingers delicately
against your auburn skin;
Oh, to taste the steel,
mahogany, and sweat:

Ivory and ebony inhabiting her ears,
where the stabbing sharps and numbing flats
are natural as far I can hear

and she is ever ringing
with a certain stunning dissonance
that fingers finer harmonies
than I could wish to breathe.

Hers hips that curve in brilliant reds
press hard against my thighs each night,
and her dog-eared lips always
scream at every wall like Seraphim.

My fingers feel the action
As they curl, and as I sweat;
I clench my eyelids tighter
and allow my hands to guide me home

But I only stroke your neck to hear you sing
and I only pull your strings to make you scream

March '07

Lovers' Walk

I've turned my back on the world
and now I'll try to keep you safe
from the tryant rain of Independence day;
We'll watch the sky explode above the hospital,
and I'll think of all the things that I can say
to you to make this moment perfect, make it
worth it, make it better than it is. But instead, I'll whisper
something dumb, like "I'm just happy here,"
or maybe "I could wrap my arms around you,
stay forever, and I think it'd be alright.

I'll quickly realize that I sound so lame,
so I'll just laugh and look at you as the sounds
sneak past my lips and through the rain. I'll try
to play it off, but then you'll smirk and shake
your head; I hope your windswept hair slides softer
than your planted septum kisses and your girlish
scent consumes the sulfur silhouettes tonight.
And then you'll turn your head to watch
the burning sky above us fall again
(I love the way it sparkles and it fades),
I'll shudder when I feel your olive neck
lean against my chest, and for maybe just a moment
I'll forget about the irony, drip-dripping from my shoulders.

If the sky will split again, then
I'll quick-nibble at your ear--
there's a word for that, I think;
I'm sure I've used it once before,
but you'd still let me repeat it, like
the Angels, Brits, and Willow trees
of which you never bore, or the sweetened
factories with temple guards and green
monkeys you seem to know so well.
At least we'll have your ceiling stars
to wish upon if nothing else goes right.

I know that you get scared of heights,
but baby, this is just how lovers walk.

July '07

An Ode to Alfred Packer

We always eat our young
We always eat our young
We've found a way to sharpen fangs
On our own flesh and blood

We always eat our love
We always eat our love
Swallow heads to (h)our glassy
stomaches when they come

We always eat our God
We always eat our God
We beg, deny, and crucify
and never get enough

We still eat our young
We still eat our young
We chew them up and grind them down
to something that we want

We still eat the ones we love
We still eat the ones we love
Food and sex are all we need,
Survival's all we want

We still eat all our Gods
We still eat all our Gods
Whose bloody chalice posthumously
tells us what we want

Oh, Packer, maybe you were right

June '07

(number nine)

Click. Armed. Or was it his arm? He isn't sure
but swears he feels the impact. Somehow,
he knows just how it feels to be the hammer,
with just one chance to pound the metal casing
and send a bullet to wherever bullets go.

He lightly sighs and feels the gun become
an extension of his arm: Fire-Arm.
The cold steel texture of what was
once a handle has gone numb,
warmed and smoothed by the flesh
and blood that is pumping through veins
and past the grip before it pours into
the chamber. His heart is swelling steadily,
screaming perseverance (or at least it tries);
but our blood is built to spill before its time.

Ideas are bulletproof, he reminds himself.
A single bullet starts a revolution. Forty-five
revolutions every minute sing a song in
seven inches. If one hundred bullets start
one hundred revolutions, doesn't every
bullet have a tune? He needs to find a harmony.

He counts the bullets in the chamber as
a single bead of sweat falls from where
his hand became the gun, landing on his toe
that he had shot an hour earlier; irony. Only he
could ever salt these wounds. He breathes
in deep, and checks his watch: it's 9:43.

Good time for a revolution.

Feb. '07

(quis cutodiet ipsos custod)

he softly watches her walk
away, her nimble toes and
stunted heels directing her
across the interstate.

she's headed north with no
delay, and he just waits and
watches as she walks away.

he knows at least a thousand
words, a thousand things to
say to keep to her near, but he
could not speak the syllables
that she had hoped to hear,

so he stumbles home, confident
and cool and well aware that
he will sleep alone, and he turns
around once more to watch her
walk away, but finds her gone.

May '07

Sibilance and Sustenance

Pressing plastic grips against my fingertips, I watch
my right hand twitch as thoughts and lines and
words and signs, like shrapnel, scatter through my skull
until this pulpy flesh is covered black and blue. I
twist the plosives, fuck the adjectives, and maim
the nouns until they come alive:

and then I have a beer.

May '07

Mal means 'Bad' (in the Latin)

How heavy, thine heart?
I'll weigh it on a grey scale
and then I guess we'll talk.

I still speak in tongues and lips and fingertips,
and I keep stuttering semantics, and I always
let you fall for it, making meaning out
of every fated kiss; and I hoped that it
would never come to this (but it always does).

As always, art is open
to the interpretation
of the patron, and while I may
have lost you in translation,
I was found sleeping soundly
in a sea of constellations where
I drowned beneath the comfortable
blankets of abyss, its never-ending
nothingness reminding me
of all that I had missed.

Though I'm hardly a scientist, it seems
to be my density, and not my mass,
that helps me stay afloat; I guess that I've
been lying to myself all along. My heart
has only half the hallowed substance of
the ocean that it swallows (albeit eloquently),
but like drinking too much water, you
can drown your cells and suffocate yourself
until you choke (metaphorically speaking).

My betrayal knows no tragedy, and so
my greatest stories have all spilled
from my own pen, and my authenticity
is never called to question, like the
greatest of the dead white men; it seems
I will not go down in history as the
soft romantic man that I believe myself
to be. Instead, I leave my Juliets' for
dead and carry on, never stopping
long enough to wonder if I'm wrong.

May '07

Dad's Diaries

Dad's diaries are waiting in the top drawer of
a bed stand in the places that we go when we
get lonely for an hour. The paper-thin parchment
crunches when I turn the page, like autumn leaves
that fell from burning trees too soon;
translucent and impermanent, the noises
keep me company in every bawdy tomb.

I read my favorite stories to a girl that I
won't Mary from the time when you were
thirty-two, and think of all the shit you carried
with you on your back (you never let it weigh
you down) and I am hoping to remember all
the things you taught me back when you were still around.

Dad, I see your diary was written down by
someone else's hand, but I still remember
everything you taught me about how to be
a man. You'll be glad to know your grand
daughter is working overseas where she is
farming in a fertile land and does it all for
free, and how I almost tied your grandson to
a fence the other day, but I just pelted him
with rocks until he bled out all the gay.

See, I'm trying hard to live my life
just the way you told me, or at least
the way I read it in this dusty little
story book where your friends had all
your best intentions written down.
But Father, I have got to ask how you
drank from that bloody glass and split
the fish while we were killing kingdoms
in your name, and how you loved the lonely
lepers and you knew your mother's whore,
when you told me that the wicked
would not be let in your doors. But you're
not around to give me all the answers
I might need, so I am forced to watch
as Mary takes my sixty bucks and leaves.

Feb. '07