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”

Colorado Winter Landscape

At such altitudes

one is forced to consider

whether anywhere within a

thousand miles

is not surrounded by

ice and hard landscapes

so cold that breath hangs like

doubt against the hope-blue sky

(the backdrop against which

potential must be measured),

if only to arrive at the conclusion

that on blue days in such surroundings,

there is solace in the melting rivulets that

trickle to the horizon,

and the silence that

makes even our hearts attend.

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

Imagining Our Lives As a Jackson Pollock Painting

Looking back at us looking ahead, there was of course

no way to have predicted the pages we would turn and the

chaotic ways our particular dysfunctions would collide.

On the one hand, we say now, Look at the mess we’ve made of things,

the jumbled, tumbled detritus of everything we once called

hopes and dreams, this angry clutter and the

           

broken things we never bothered to repair.

Who could blame us for blaming one another,

noting in some detail the one thousand and fifty

transgressions dating back to 1996—an altogether remarkable

feat for two with otherwise unimpressive memories—

for thinking we might as well just start over, apart,

because you only have so many chances to get it right

and this most certainly is not. Then, I look at our little girls

sleeping, the way their eyes open and light up when they

look at the us that we now portray, and see there is no

lie in their hope for us, no judgment of our impenetrable

facades, that the fabric of our peculiar DNA is

woven less like burlap and more like a canvas, upon which

is the ghost of the painting that we might yet become.

--Martin A. Bartels, c2012, working draft

Ornaments

At night I sit by the holiday tree with a warm cup,

remove my glasses for the effect. Nearsighted,

each light simmers, distorted as if through tears.

From this vantage the packages below are simply

colors, the tinsel glass, candy canes and ornaments

merely shapes with the secret desire to become.

Begin at the sturdiest of branches: Grandmother

(long since passed) crafted the large Styrofoam balls

wrapped in golden ribbon, studded through with

green and silver foil sequins. Just above, the wooden

cutouts of sleighs, rocking horses, and stockings,

tenderly painted with my sister (now gone, too).

Higher now, the pendants of our journey, the

absurd tin boat from Nags Head, the horses from

Kentucky, our weekends in Door County, your

childhood treasures and the porcelain frames of

our girls as infants; each branch an ascendant

stanza of our lives. A map begins to form of our

travels and our histories, all fashioned by tight

twine. These rough threads braid us in this frail

journey. Around it all the parochial rosary of a

cranberry garland strung through by silver thread,

all this life bound sacred then, true. This tree of love

and dreams and memories that guide us, green as

the breath of spring, each blossom held in place

by a simple white angel perched atop, her grace the

quiet gravity that holds everything named Peace.

--c. 2011, by Martin A. Bartels (working draft)

Difficult River

Driving south, seams in the road bump out an arrhythmic heartbeat.

Signs punctuate the journey: Lexington 140 miles, Straw for Sale,

Jesus is Coming, Jesus is Here, Psychic Readings $20, Make an Offer—

Cars for Sale, the last being timely because at some point between

origin and destination we will surely break down. We believe we can

travel in straight lines knowing that nature won’t tolerate it.

Overheard (buyer to salesman):

I’d like to believe that you believe everything you’re saying.

I’m fallible that way (not to be confused with gullible), but this

verse that is life demands a certain poetic restraint.

More signs: Towns named Challenge, Minuet, and Strawberry,

they all meld together, each green sign might be the name of

someone you’ve met and moved beyond. And then the bridge over

Difficult River. I cross it in a moment of distraction, until the name

catches up with me and I’m forced to pull over, stunned. We brand

our places with hopeful or borrowed names but rarely with the

candor our lives demand. Difficult River, one needs no map to

know its path and history and every resident on its shores.

The tentative sunrises and the ways both light and darkness reflect.

Driving to Omaha during the floods, I stopped at the peak of

verdant bluffs and couldn’t help but stagger before the enormous

Midwest ocean that had once been farmland. Convincing evidence

that rivers must be the first gods. I walk to the edge of Difficult River 

considering prayer but opt for an impromptu picnic. We have rare 

moments of so-called clarity but then I’m not certain what all the 

other moments are. It’s easy enough to convince myself that I am the 

only person who has sat upon this rock and so some acknowledgment 

must be in order. I toss a coin into the water and ask that this river 

carry me past all the unrelenting dramas. That we might portage 

through this boundary water known as life, complaining of all we 
might have left behind for its extraneous weight, but in the end

let grace wash over us, that we were both here to carry it.

This is the one thing I don’t get about angels: their capacity to

forgive forever exceeds the baggage of our souls.

--c. 2011, Martin A. Bartels (working draft)