DAN RAPHAEL - POEMS

Dan Raphael's poetry collection Manything was published in September by Unlikely Boks. Recent poems appear in Caliban, Otoliths, Red Fez, S/Word and Rancid Oak. Most Wednesdays Dan writes and records a current events poems for The KBOO Evening News.

One Foot in Front of
​

My right foot breaks something
My left foot gets sticky

I don’t duck i hit my head
I duck and i don’t see something

I can sit at a T intersection for minutes
Unable to  keep going straight
Or get a coin out of my pocket to flip

When i don’t want to use either hand
Or both reach out and get in the way

Sometimes i think i’m standing in the middle
But take one step and find the edge

A time to be paralyzed through dispersion
A time to lash out uncontrollably
Months of several prescriptions

​

​After After

​Everything sun through
when nothing right is left
i look out what used to be a window
how am i standing on a third floor 
   with a tide of thick wind pouring under through
not lost, not wandering, numb & hungry
finding the 30 year old inside the 61 years of
   packaging, notes, pressure-gems, seeds 
   of which 1 per cent might sprout

The rain is my dibble, my confessor, my cookbook
the sun is an alarm clock, revealing shadows
my thermostat stays one step ahead
the difference between a paved field and very large intersection
dry surfing, dry silence
even when the windows open no one tries to get in
crows checking on squirrels, possum planning tomorrows menu,
songs it never gets quiet enough to hear

Someone Else’s Birthday
​

​
Pay what you want but you have to eat all of it
the server doesn’t know the ingredients, not even
the blindfolded chef opening the braille-labeled meal-packs
boiling on the inside, steam without water, light without glass

><><><><

The keys spending most of your time indoors alone
away from people not looking where they are
assuming physics doesn’t apply, momentum equals right of way
my clothes reveal a lack of legal counsel

><><><><

As if those who died in the womb chose to, as if most people have a choice 
about parenting, and genetic transfers not a time-space phenomenon
beyond our biologically limited perspective--
i didn’t know there was an elevator til the wall slid open;
i thought the only direction was up

><><><><

We’re all invisible sometimes
intuiting when not to look in a mirror
or to try and pick up a solid object
i can only get so far, a line my hands shouldn’t cross
if i screamed not even i would hear me

60 per cent Morning
​

Roots in the air
fog at my feet
cars still in bed
bare bulbs intimidated by the moment
breath slowly climbing my wind pipe
i fold my wings under the pillow

I smell coffee, which hasnt been invented yet
a dozen brown bags on the floor
the ceiling doesnt want me to see it ripple
my pants say im late
in my peripheral hearing is news from the capitol

So much changes the moment you crack an egg
what if the faucets not ready yet
is it strike a match monday, move your ass monday, mutation monday
between my teeth are clues to dinner
i dare the phone to ring, knowing it wont hear me

​

Other Times
​

The wind-driven rain at 4 am sounds like a brook
when all the long buried springs resurrect 
to lose their identities in  a river
as the Willamette loses itself in the Columbia
a typical one way marriage, not pulling out new names
marriage as conversion, where 1 plus 1 breeds fractions

Later the cars parade to school, delivering and departing
most kids unable to walk either way coz never have,
always driven the few blocks strapped in the back seat
mom/dad on the phone as kids go out one door and in another
removed from the temptation of windows 
to where the teacher is the sun—no breeze, no rain, no soil

The traffics heading south with hunger, heading north for better taxes, 
wanting to change the compass so it spells WHEN instead of NEWS, 
i keep looking at my phone to see if its now yet, to see if i have 
a destination, a motive—the key doesn’t fit but the doors not locked
the cat doesn’t care who lets it in, mewling to 
get out of the rain predicted but not yet here

Pressure can wake us, any time of day: bladder pressure, fiscal need, 
waves of bodies flicking back sheets and rising, water pressure, 
the heat of rising thermostats and boiling time, as one layer of clothes 
is stacked on another, as doors open and close, air thickening with 
emissions, drive-throughs, news unread and unheard
so many working to focus us—no, these are NOT my glasses


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