born: Ansbach, Germany email: njfrost@cisunix.unh.edu age: 18 school: University of New Hampshire major: English passions: writing, belts, fashion, photography, dance, art museums, music, movies, the sky, laughter, making collages, bike riding, discovering something new, capturing the moment, touch, James Dean, Salvador Dali, and Led Zeppelin also published in: Epitome influences: Allen Ginsberg, Pablo Neruda, e.e. cummings, Stanley Kunitz

Poetry

Fire MLK Poverty Skin The Anthill The Notebook The Second Sleep

Poverty

God - my name is Henry.
at fifty-two years old
you have left me with nothing.
forty-seven cents in my coat pocket, a pair of 
boots, a rain poncho for good luck
and a used turtleneck sweater
-but still nothing.
God i am convinced that you are not listening.
Am i a lesson for those that thrive on your affections?
to remind them of the fragility of 
the good life?
it has been fifteen days since my last shower,
one year for a haircut,
and eighteen years since love.
i do not remember the last time i was touched.
God my heart is numb and heavy from disuse.
i have no pity except for those
that are bleeding. my own crusty wounds 
are glueing my feet to this sidewalk.
God i believe you are nearsighted or blind.
my tin can is rusty, my cat ran screaming
into the night, and i am beginning to accept that i am 
no longer alive.
i am a face in the gutter, the ass on a bench, 
hollow footsteps on traintracks, the 2 am bus-rider.
i am the uneasy sting of urine in public restrooms.
i am gray hands.
God- as i chase the dove of peace at twilight
-wheelchaired and alone-
i see that it is only my shadow
that is afraid of dying.
God, the bread was never enough.
God- my name is Henry.

The Anthill

                       in the evening rain
                       the small boy beats
                       dead dandelions
                       with an angry stick.
                        
                             the sweat on his back
                          whispering to him  
                            all the while,                           
                           reminding him
                            that by dawn
                             fresh weeds 
                                 will already
                           have sprung.

The Notebook

   I was a baby when we met
and you, at eighteen,
spun me in circles through the sky
like a rocket with a diaper
just as, ten years later,
you cooed with my sister, your own flesh and blood,
in bed
on orange sunday mornings.
   
   The last time that i truly saw you
was in a jumble of scissors and ambulances
-your thick chest on the kitchen floor
hair follicles rising and falling
against the beating of the refrigerator gills
-your unshaven face leaking morning breath
as you moaned for the end.

   Weeks later the front door returned you.
calm, gentle, your voice drugged and broken-in
from your sessions with the psychiatrists and their 
golden canaries.
your white afternoon naps
on the living room sofa
could not cover up the fact
that you wanted out.

   I did not want to touch you
so i continued my childhood games
of kissing boys and girls in colored cardboard boxes
that smelled like damp cartwheels and rain.

   Before i had breasts of my own 
i watched the quiet nursing of my sister
as my mother stumbled for words and explanations.
at night she disappeared to the neighbors for hours, and
i lay awake, waiting for her,
wanting to hear every detail 
of the arguments that were kept from me. I was too
young to understand, yet old enough to watch
as you pushed my mother down 
next to cars 
in the parking lot
and slammed your head into the walls.

you stopped playing the guitar.
you gained weight.
   
   In the first heat wave of the summer
you reincarnated the boy that ran away from home
within your own lifetime
and left for good.

   For years i have had a blank notebook in my closet
that you forgot to fill.
hesitant sketches have been formulated on my arms
my hands
my feet
innocent doodles of what love
for a father should feel like.
but i have been too afraid to trace them on paper.
too fearful of my vision not matching
what my fingers are able to fatly smudge along.
the dense reality that i 
do not know where to begin
has cought me off guard at red lights
and in supermarkets.

at moments when i am thinking of nothing at all,
your thought slips in...

   in a box under the stairs
there are still pictures of you and i
under the christmas tree
that i will never understand.
photographs, not my own warm art,
will be the way i remember you.

MLK

 I found Martin Luther King Junior
sitting on a bench at the mall
waiting for a bus.

 at first
i mistook his wailings 
for the gusts of air 
that came when the great vehicle arrived.
(he had been waiting for his ride for forty years)
 
 those golden-eared tears 
came only
because he had missed the parade
that comes annually
to commemorate his earthly presence.

 after rolling his newspaper
(full of bloody dog eyeballs and falling skies)
he left me without an explanation,
peacefully awaiting the promised land
with a wet, dreary face.

after decades of solitude
his expression still carried the same resoluteness
as on that heavenly dawn of his gracious breaking.

The Second Sleep

by the corners of my bed 
are four black and white posters:
James Dean 
Bob Dylan
John Lennon
and two lovers.
each night as i jump onto 
the vined sheets
dust from the mattress 
rises to the air
and resettles weightlessly on my skin.
the minds of each legendary personality
have left secret messages in the particles
that only my dreams can understand.
the entwined duo provides enough warmth
for even the coldest of my toes
to find solace and peace.

but there have been moonless, aching nights
when my sleep was interrupted.
at times i have awoken
sweaty and alone, tangled in memories, 
to realize that with each male 
that slept in my bed with me
came an intense obsession 
with their lips.
as their faces resided 
in silent relaxation next to me
i would stay awake, parting my fingers, 
running them over the 
smooth demographics
of their mouths. 
my nails excavated each subtle curve
as my palm 
surrounded 
neatness.

and each of the faces 
would smile down at me from the walls.
they, too, were awake at 
those odd hours
still thinking the same thoughts, holding the same
perfect poses
as last night, and the night before
when they had watched me perform
the same mechanics.

They understood my love of lips.
For it is their lips that spoke,
their lips that sang,
that went beyond all ways of acting
and removed every cue card.
It is the lips that cry first
when the face begins
to prepare itself for tears.
It is our lips that grin daily at each other
in healthy doses of appreciation.
It is one lip
above another
and another
that steadily 
awaits
the kiss.

Yes, last but not least,
closest to where I sleep
is the framing of two joined profiles.
It is every intoxicating first kiss
and all lingering last kisses
and each cataclysmic kiss in between
combined in one image
that stretches for miles.

Quietly I touch my own mouth.
The recollections of such moments dance
on every capillary beneath my skin,
shaking in the rhythm of experience,
claiming their place in my uncharted biography.

I see the silhouettes of the eyes in the darkness.
intently they tell me to 
live for today
to imagine
to feel.
I arch my back to take one last breath, 
absorbing each pixel of wisdom,
holding onto every shimmering molecule 
until I can’t any longer.
I exhale the remnants, 
finally left with only the melody 
of my own steady heartbeat
to eat the silence.
each pulse of life
carrying me forever on into all of the sequels 
and hidden appendages
to where I am now.

slowly and gracefully
a new dawn 
begins to part my curtains
with its shy hand.
i have gone another night without sleep.
falling back,
I close my waiting lips for the night,
reaching at last the most sincere rest of my life.

Skin

you stood above me
and pulled down your underwear
in one quick swoop.
it was there, but i 
did not look.
seeing it that way,
from a side angle
in my bedroom
would have been much
too scientific.
like a diagram in a textbook
about what it means 
to be 
a man.

it was not until we 
had lost ourselves in the red glow
of my lights 
and the blanket
that was not big enough for four feet,
and i had rested on top of you for hours,
matching my breath to your heartbeat,
chests pressing
almost too tightly.
it was not until your kiss became my language
and each question brought with it 
deeper gardens of secrets now unearthed.

it was not until we listened.
there was nothing before we listened.
in the silence of our ears 
anxious flowers blossomed,
their stems erect and ready to 
take on new life.
you hung on every word
and gathered the fragrant petals,
delicately placing them
on my naked parts
until i was ready
to blow them away
with my own focused willingness
for such devotions.

it was not until my thighs rested on the mattress,
slack after holding you for so long,
that i fully felt the power
of a body,
whether it is my body
or your body
or their body.
of a body that is all together
consumed by motion,
unaware of it's own grace and rhythm.
innocent next to such electrifying thickness.

it was not until
an infinite horizon of horizontal smiles
soft and definite and reassuring and...
                                                    yes
had passed from me to you to me
that i allowed myself to touch 
that softest part of you.
seeing it not with my eyes
but my hands.
the way that i see
that own part
of myself.

Fire

 11:34 p.m.
the snow is set on fire
in the orange radiance
of the street light.
It is only a flurry, 
but enough fuel has been added
to the air
so that this blaze
can last
'til morning.
the flakes attract and retract each other
in revolutions
that show no signs of weakness.
this is the purest energy - rotation.
the endless cycles of the moon
have manifested themselves
on a night sidewalk
sticky with snow.

at our own structured bonfires
we play with the same force.
standing still we are mesmorized
by the way flame consumes cold.
we beat our fists against drums,
attempting to translate the grace of inferno
into more recognizable syllogisms.
we are really trying
to connect to it's glory;
to this force that can destroy, rebuild
and destroy again;
we want to know how to master creation.

small sparks with arms and legs and hands,
or snowflakes that congeal
into strawberry sized clumps,
we want to be of the fire.