watch rain turn to snow

watch rain turn to snow

as flakes fall they struggle for their

ephemeral dominance

as the temperature turns just so

they emerge in a slow fall of self-creation

quiet seeps from the ground

settles within our own cold atmospheres

clouds pause

c. 2012, Martin A. Bartels (working draft)

part of my new collection, "Unlanguage."

Digital Memory

I’m sorry now

I deleted the

photograph of you.

It wasn’t that good,

quite blurry, actually.

I needed the space.

c. 2012, Martin A. Bartels (working draft)

from my new collection, "Unlanguage"

Dream Strangers

Those strangers who sometimes populate

our dreams, those whom we have never met

yet in our somnolence, know well.

How is it they take such fleeting residence

in our dark night minds? Last night, this visitor:

the lovely, tall woman whose name is Lor,

short, I guess, for Laura. She prefers Lor for its

mythic quality, a conceit that may be true of all

dream strangers. We share a mutual but

cautious attraction, the beginning of a courtship.

I feel the irresistible lure into unexplored spaces

of the heart. She shares a ground-floor apartment

with a male roommate, Joe or Tom or Steve, a

monosyllabic who is trouble. Her sister is Pamela,

photos of her frame the hallway. Lor is thin, with

sandy skin and short-cropped blonde hair that

suggest California and sunlit beaches, ocean.

We sit outside her apartment now, afternoon,

plastic deck chairs on a concrete slab, while her

roommate throws a tantrum inside. Sawdust

from a construction project across the street

floats in the air: wooden snow. “Is it always like this?”

I ask, meaning him. “Pretty much,” she admits,

resigned to his behavior for some reason she

fails to elaborate. Later we are inside, her space

daylight in springtime, discretely floral. I have

never seen this place awake, yet the subtle

scent of lilac drifting from her bedroom lingers,

coats me in a kind of memory that folds around me

long after I have finished my first cup of coffee.

c. 2012, by Martin A. Bartels, working draft

(part of my new collection, “Unlanguage”)

Raise the Dust

If we breathe a little slower

we’ll last a little longer.

The poetry of life might beat

so that our heart-seams heal.

If we walk a little slower,

taste the pace instead of outrun it,

if we close the doors of all the

stress… well, easier said than done.

I’m not here any more. I gave up my

self for Lent and listened to the

Avett Brothers a little more.

Classical music, too. Mompou and

Barber are underrated for healing.

If you look closely at the brushstrokes of

Van Gogh, Monet, the dots of Suerat,

you will momentarily inhale the infinite.

There are no judgments here. Flakes of

relevance are the new snow.

In Mexico there is a rural church

outside Puerto Vallarta where a

velvet Jesus hangs in black light.

The doors open to their velvet

cathedral where the glow mimics the

northern lights. It’s okay to feel

sacred here. Children kick soccer balls and

tires on dusted streets. Mothers hang

laundry on tight lines strung between

scrawny trees. A tiny café serves fresh

fish caught off the coast. It’s dark enough

here that stars are thick as mist. For

some of us the mist is a transitory

residence. If we walk slowly through

this mist, hands held as loose tethers to

this earth, our footprints raise the dust

of future memories, surround us in the

final blanket of our comfort.

Martin A. Bartels, c2012, working draft.

Part of my new collection, “Unlanguage”