Thirty

Thirty

Trinity and infinity walking off the page together

Unified field and the void finding each other home

Not prime but a perfectly adequate number binding

Together the many and the one, the diaspora and

The singularity, third time is the charm but the day

Always comes back down to zero dark thirty, why

Is not a word that leads anywhere in this dialogue

Of self and no self, received theology, existential

Evidence of nothingness, how we all start and we

Start again from the same place, rediscovering the

Same truth that only becomes true when each one

Reveals it fresh, pulsing in this created place, we

Watch and wait and then forget, believing it will

Keep on ticking, and now the sun has gone and

What was true rejoins the caravan of vanishing,

So in the morning if the light returns we will be

Faced with the choice again, do we put together

Three and nothing, or nothing and one, or do we

Make words of nothing and lift them to the sun?

How Is It That a Heart Still Opens

How Is it That a Heart Still Awakens

When every admonition of the tiny mind screams out

Bar the doors, when the possibilities of addiction and

Its misdirected quietudes are no farther away than the

Remote buttons or the convenient screw tops on wine

Bottles or the smaller and smaller slabs and boxes that

Lash us to the taskmaster we secretly worship before

Any other god, when the Goddess has appeared to us

In so many forms only to discover the shadow that she

Pulls along right behind her holds so many horrible

Errors of other childhoods that we wish we had not

Been born, when the rains fail and the neighboring

Tribes thunder in, when fire comes out of the sky at

Night without warning because someone in the house

Was marked on a secret list, when the illnesses borne

Of dopamine in its excesses or in its shortfalls or of a

Rogue virus no one heard of, or another toxic entity

We did not see coming wake us in the night pushing

Against the weight of the pharmaceutical industry for

The one thing that will permit both child and parents

To find sleep so long denied, when secret contracts we

Signed long before birth have bound us to patterns that

Others made, learning suddenly we were following the

Wrong god home, and all the gates swing shut in one

Last groping for survival, when even the one we were

Awaiting all this time finds no one home when they

Finally knock at the door, when by some grace the

Winds die down and a peace enters in, how then a

Heart so brutalized can still awaken, each must ask. 

Soapstone

Soapstone

I wipe the soapstone counter wet

Until the darkness reveals its deep

Veins, impurities and other stories.

Tales of the epochs spent far under

Ground, the ages of silent formation

Where everything about it was stone,

Then later, sliced into smooth wafers

To serve in my kitchen, pouring out

Its dark materials in the awaited light.

I wipe the soapstone counter wet

If only to find again that place where

Everything is smooth, nobody afraid,

No screaming or slamming of doors,

But the stone has its own memories

Does not use the practiced words to

Invoke deity, memory, the beloved,

Will not agree to prepare someone

Else’s meals on its back before me.

I wipe the soapstone counter wet

Every day, sometimes more, not sure

Why but every sponge, every paper

Towel becomes a call to purification,

A cleaning of the slate, much as my

Father’s cough in the morning never

Killed him but seemed to be hacking

Up the leavings of dreams he did not

Want to remember, could not forget.

I wipe the soapstone counter wet

But never clean, the round marks of

Glasses, the crumbs of the desires of

Others for whom purity is not the goal,

And ever more darkness is coiled and

Ready to come forth, as if this quarried

Face is only a portal for everything we

Keep underground, in the dark, muffle

In silence until someone stops to listen.

Radio Button

Radio Button

                      

Breaking my habit, I shut off the radio,

Recoiling from news: Australia burning,

Murderers roaming Damascus in tanks,

Pedophiles so photogenic in their denial.

And then I remember that other lifetime,

Listening to the stories at the fire circle,

About the rains failing year after year

And the camel riders burning the village.

I watch the boy seeing through my eyes

So limp in his grandmother’s embrace,

Him too weak from hunger to complain,

Me too lost in the disaster porn to weep.

But like a brown bear in the salmon run

I return to the kitchen again at noontime,

Avocados and mangos calling out to the

Insatiable soul. I tap the power button on.

Some Men Know

Some Men Know

Some men know to build a fire

When the center is hollowed out

The way the first grasslands knew

To burn overgrowth into blessing.

Sometimes a grandfather is needed

To remember to call in the seven

Directions as a grandmother would

Simply call in a circle of honoring.

Some men know to make a shelter

When summer fails and life is laid

Bare, rustling the plastic sheeting up

Close, over the river, in your house.

Some men, it could be any day now,

Are called to go down there, build a

Bridge across, help that man build

A new fire from your donated heart.

--In gratitude for my brothers

High Over Iran

High Over Iran

An hour out of Doha, the map on the screen

Said we were passing over Tabriz, but I’m

Sure that Shams was still not there, the one

Whose vanishing tipped Rumi into love’s

Fire blazing through the gate of no return.

You looked so unwell on Skype last night

I had a taste of the pain he must have felt,

The breaking open of the heart, watching

Every cherished hope tumbling down like

Baggage and bodies from a burst airplane.

Shades kept alive the illusion of darkness

In our steel tube intent on somewhere else

As we huddled to reckon the ransom due

For Shams’ return, for love to prevail, for

Day to become the night of remembering.

Pomegranate

Pomegranate

So full of violence that it gave its name

To a hand grenade, so full of the bloody

Seeds waiting to burst forth in mayhem

In the face of whatever innocent is near,

I hate this fruit you want in your salad.

But my love for you makes me want to

Obey, so I take up yesterday’s left half

And begin to unfold it from inside, the

Hemisphere of death beginning to yield

The secret sweetness I could not abide.

Slower and slower I invert the natural

Order, bringing forth what was meant

To be concealed, letting the blood red

Fragments fall on the kneeling lettuce,

Waiting with the olives to be sacrificed.

Squads and platoons of these soft rubies

Tumble out from behind the tidy white

Curtains fitted around their charges like

Cannon wadding, layer revealing layer,

Until the rind is empty and now we eat.

Key West

Key West

Steel toe aimed at the world of south

Hobnail hole in the point of the boot

Cursing the waves kicking the mouth

Sticks out more like a middle finger

Rounded stud of southern most point

Everything dark that seems to linger

Butterfly gardens Hemingway’s cats

Islanded theme park oversize ships

Old men at sea not slickers nor hats

One day my daughter’s daughter’s

Future attraction for scuba tourists

Fascinates no one to dive the waters

Swarming scooters conch train bus

Waiting for nothing the tourists pass

Beasts of the south coming to eat us

Stately processions immutable ways

White king in the north wobbly gone

Unravel in fickle unseasonable days

Everyone rushes western shore sunset

Pretending summer and party unending

Breakwater’s stoned we drink to forget

Mother Hanging the Laundry

Mother Hanging the Laundry

My brother tells me his stories, her

Sucking of the emotions, deep holes

Her illness must have left inside us.

Nothing was there that was not true;

But I remember how crisply the wet

Sheets snapped in the January wind,

She hauling the basket out from the

Basement, me tunneling and sledding

With unrehearsed joy, until she called

Me inside to hear the old poet blinking

In the shattered daylight, and then the

New President asking me what I can do

For my country, opening a hole I did not

See, which let in the new, terrible winds

Blasting my hopes right into this century,

Leaving me more alive and just as helpless.

Panini Sandwich Recipe

Panini Sandwich Recipe

Take 2.2 healthy young adults without regard to sexual orientation

Or inclination toward forethought of grief, add 1.9 adorable healthy

Children without regard to fetal personhood or depth of adoptive

Gene pool. Marinate 12.5-15.2 years in a whipped roux of soccer

Games, dance classes, wardrobe standoffs. Blend without warning

Into waterspouts of hormones, substance abuse, and mood disorders.

Stir frequently on medium heat until brain maturity, moveout, or self-

Destruction, whichever comes first. Store in the care of the universe

At 35.2 to 40.7 degrees Fahrenheit for 6.5 to 9.8 days of redemptive

Travel to Martinique celebrating 22.7 to 27.5 years of a marriage that

Has had water damage and mold growing under the floorboards for 8.1

To 9.8 years. (Note: removing lid from family cauldron is at own risk.)

Desperately rummage in the heart for a vat of 87-102 gallons capacity  

Or more; decant existing mixture into this container, while pretending

To ignore what’s coming: 1.2 to 3.9 aging parents, arbitrarily tossed

In the vat with 1.1 to 3.8 individually-flavored cups of dementia, 1.2

Gallons of elder indigence, keeping 2.3 cases of geriatric care in the

Basement because you know that shit’s going to hit the fan too. Chill

The full catastrophe to consistency of tomato aspic. Spread liberally

Or conservatively, it doesn’t matter, between two generational slices,

Season to taste with the death of lifelong friends, the longing for secure

Retirement, and random sentences of prostatectomy and hysterectomy.

Place in UL-approved nuclear-family heated press, apply force enough

To crack 1.7 egoic minds and 1.9 contracted hearts. Serve with gratitude.

How to Survive This Century

How to Survive This Century

Do not spend hours dickering with stones, persuading them

To come down from the mountain, after a year under the

Hydrangea, new moss grown over lichen, only four so far

Agreed to advance their journey to the sea, to the fire circle

I made. The others speak with their gravity against gloved

Entreaties, equanimous in their refusal to roll as I insisted.

Rather give in to the weight of opinion. For the next hour,

Do nothing but watch hummingbirds hover furious and rapt,

Transmuting light into color and feathers into song, deadly

Determined to be only and exactly what they are. In the

Andes, some don’t hover, rest between sips, gazing placid

From the branch. Watch all night as their body temperatures

Fall in half, hearts slow to five percent of the daily beat,

Wake next day to full sun their eye is focused on the pistil,

Beak focused on the fly. They ask nothing of the stone, ask

Nothing of the heliconia, male or female variety, accept the

Verdict of gravity, of weather, evolution’s tornado engulfing

Them, alighting in some new country, beaks gracefully bend

To fit the blossom, heartbeats calibrate the new temperature,

Are only fire and feather, fierce and focused on the nectar.

The Third Body

The Third Body

The golden child across the aisle is spirit and flesh in one, 360 degrees of innocence drawing a brilliant beam between us, even as the turbulence forces a separate stream of silent prayers down the rows looking for parachutes, our locked eyes magnifying the joy that came before and stays after the state of being we came in with. Later, looking back from the mirror, flesh and bone no longer sing as that madrigal choir all its parts mystically harmonized, one sound praising the many. Wattles appear where a glistening throat reflected buttercups, skin drapes off upper arms like curtain rods where cantilevered cranes effortlessly swung rackets and lifted hands in praise. Hard won folds and feet of crows extend the lines of eyes and mouth, adding sidelights of experience to the trafficked orifices. Where one body was, three now cohabit, one mottled and resigned to decay, one flighty and given to vanishing, and a third body resting in its radiance, gazing through.

Dusk

Dusk

If I sit on the right rock by the river

Some of water wanders over like a

Horse to green verge of the pasture.

The mailman arrives after sundown;

Milkman, town crier, lamplighter,

Another day he will come no more.

Parents draw their curtains against

The dark, doors click shut, even as

Girls giggle on all down the street.

A single bird hurtles or is hurtled to

The south into someone else’s fate.

Venus hangs above the silhouette

Of the leafless black walnut tree.

There is no defense for any of this.

The one I wanted goes back inside.

Giving Over

Giving Over

What is smaller gives over to what is greater

What’s worn out gives in to what comes later

This feeling of inner gives over to some other

Who is coming nearer turning into the familiar

This cold way of alienation swerves into living

Swings out singing through gates of sensation

We who felt our lives always waiting in some

Foreign place meet living beings in their grace

Presence meeting soul in gateways face to face

So much greater than when they lived apart

Handing us the key the gateway to the heart.

Ampersand

Ampersand

Has no sound except what a Canadian might tag on

To a sentence, yet stands there proud upon the page

As a standup base, an odalisque of another century,

Shapely and inviting, dark curvature drawing us in.

The two apertures may be portals to the two worlds

Nagual or tonal, which is upper and which is lower,

Yet the tails lead off in different directions, perhaps

The dualism we fought against will not die so easily,

Now we are left with nothing but the empty spaces

Within those erotic openings, no way to decide, so

We can only stand, reach behind the veil for some

Word forms, please tell us it is both and both and.

Tennis Anyone

Tennis Anyone

At eighty-five they regard me fondly, the old guy in the long

White flannels, the too-large panama hat, sweater vest in any

Weather, the comic old dog shuffling deaf to the service line.

They see the fool, they do not see the shoulder cuff the elbow

The knee inside being made and remade, metals and sinews

From the lives of others given so that I may keep on making

These ground strokes, keep binding crafty memory to these

Fuzzy yellow spheres, my muscles ropy and visible through

This papery skin, remembering everything about your game,

Remembering how you dive for the drop shots, and placing

My racket head down low, gee you are surprised by topspin

Kicking the ball past your lithe neck, didn’t see that coming.

What the Grandfather Said

What The Grandfather Said

To the People Lost to Us

White smoke rises, south side of winter lake

Where children died of fever they brought us.

The paths we took to Pennacook, Pegouakki

Blocked by stone walls, crossed by wheeled

Wagons, we cannot bring the ancient bones

To the sacred mounds at Ossipee in summer,

To the great gatherings, cannot sit by the fire

Cannot remember them chanting their songs

Making one again the hoop broken now twelve

Generations. Thousands of fathers and mothers

Wait in the mounds for our return, for their just

Remembering, but too many golf carts crossing.

To the People Lost to Themselves

You punk distracted eternal juveniles don’t care

About grandfathers unless you need a meal and

Grandmother is cooking, it’s all about hip and

Can’t be still not really being here at all, zipless

Fucks acting cool stoners and posers, some god

You ramble on about when you don’t have two

Dimes to rub together, shuffle instead of walk

Pants down your ass some kind of prisoner cool

You want to be a prisoner that’s your choice and

So is your wired up rattling empty box of a life.

Shut up sit here pay attention to the host of your

Relations gathering around begging to be seen.

Dave Mathews and Tim Reynolds Play Haiyan

Dave Mathews and Tim Reynolds Play Haiyan

The great storm took everything

boats

fishing gear

huts off stilts

twelve cousins four in-laws

They can’t find two of our children.

Across the sky rain armies coming

grey lines

hardened troops

don’t break ranks

implacable

Marching eyes down silent.

Everything depends on these

two men bent

over two guitars

fierce in black

working every

String bending every note

Into the one chord we remember.

The Lightness of Kafka

The Lightness of Kafka

After the hurtling days of spinning

This right speed feels like

standing still, no one

getting ahead, even the songbirds

alight to ponder,

streaking jet vapor markers of

what was too fast

what will not last,

all is gone down into the dark

all is listening as nothing is

distracting, in the darkness

we don’t even sit, don’t even wait,

the world rolls in waves,

puppies wriggling at our

feet, we don’t have to become insects

to feel the oddness and

the delight

bundling around us

the wind shifts the north leans down,

leaves askitter,

jets leave only

the slightest signs of vanishing

Green Fire in Love

Green Fire in Love

Though it rises from a dark silent web beyond measuring

The green fire surely must be in love with the light, why

Would it send up this oak, this hemlock, these fronded and

Tufted ones so eager for some brightness to turn their tiny

Tender leaves into sustenance for the world? And surely

The air must be in love with water, or why would it sound

So plangent across the ruffled planes of the lake, or ride up

The heaving backs of the ocean swells, sacrificing any ship

To its passion for one taste of what is true? Yesterday I

Went to the low end of the lake, accompanied only by music

Of wind playing on trees. Today I wake again before dawn

In the same fear, ancient webbing will not ease its grip, all

That I have not done, all that I ought not to have done, the

Habits of supplication still gnawing away from beneath like

Porcupines or molds or termites. O to sweep this dark web

Into light, give over to something else not yet revealed, but

All the same free of this arranged marriage with my small

Grim protector, even now slavishly polishing these chains.

Unseen and Seen

Unseen and Seen

My great great             grandfather                 turned up in the next county

Just last week             even though                that church closed years ago

And a tree fell             into that silence          living on inside the tiny brick

Box waiting                for a new voice           someone to remember to write

Down a new                story not caring          about details when did he leave

Why did he                 abandon his son          how did the chain stay unbroken

Someday a                  daughter of a               daughter or maybe a stranger

May find a                  poem or a book           of poems hear a voice see

Something                  feel a pulse                  a note before the downbeat

The lift                        of the baton                 from the same pulpit

Launching                   into being a                 new string ensemble in the

Same pews                  bringing him               and me and all who listen

Into voice                    in plain sight               never too late for the light

For Nancy

For Nancy

Your words at Heather’s memorial were sweet

As lake waters gathering in the dying hemlock,

But now when the latest cancer has assaulted

Your abdominal wall, rock climber from hell,

You are fierce as a mother plucking out death

Like leeches from the legs of a terrified child.

Fierceness rolls a silent tide around the heart

Sings a war chant at the sound of your name,

Unconquerable as hawk in black walnut tree.

I go down where creeper vines climb the oak,

Pluck them out, inrushing life crackling out

Through my arms, as if today is the final day.

The day may come when only women weep,

But it is not this day. We are as fierce as the

Rickshaw puller in Dhaka, a million others

Vying for his place, saying not now, not me.

--for my dear friend in her cancer journey

Return to Key West

Return to Key West

Sitting there in the terminal she could be the woman who was his wife, only four years ago the last time they vacationed together, the girls both over 21 coming with their puppy eyes saying we never go on family trips anymore. Watching her now any third party would agree she is lovely, why would any man leave such a woman, or why would such a woman no longer want such a man, or whichever version you want. Now the one inside gets up, and through the suddenly opening gate encounters the other also searching so long. A third universe takes the quantum leap into being around this same body, a place as vast and generous as a historic house kept open to the public, like Hemingway’s place from the thirties with the forty cats and the old urinal from Sloppy Joe’s he brought home one night that his vengeful wife turned into a fountain, and now sixty years after her and fifty after him we talk about their marriage like they live here.

Wheels

Wheels

Packing all she had in the van that carried her to

Softball games, massive coon cat riding on her lap,

Interstate and turnpike onto the Verrazano flying

Into Brooklyn pinned against roller coaster BQE,

Glancing in apartment windows and sideways into

Queens before the carney man let us out in Astoria.

It seemed like a nice neighborhood, so Greek with

Traces of Robert Moses in the park along the river,

And my daughter seemed so grown up, moving in

With a high school friend, by two I had unloaded

Her whole life into the arms of the city I was afraid

To inhabit myself, and with a single hug I was gone.

Left for the other appointment that day, generations

Changing places on wheels unseen, at four I was in

New Jersey with my stepbrother wheeling our parents’

Last things down the UHaul ramp, old secretary desk

That should have been my mother’s, those grievances

Let go of somewhere between Connecticut and God.

Assisted living they called it, not warehousing of the

Overstayed, dining hall tasteful if not tasty, my father

Gracious in his dry humor, nineteen months later he

Was dead, rolled out in a bag the day after I received

The blessing of holding him like a baby, unconscious

Lips rooting like those of a child lost in another city.

If Then

If then

If any more words of that perfect

Image I just lost from distraction

Sail off in rain curtains to the east

I will let go of ambition and wait

If this spectrum shatters further

All this world goes all colored

I will notice the gamma rays in

Passing through the next galaxy

If my ego goes all out reactive to

Every threat that rises from within

Paper lanterns of life, I will waken

In the darkness and burst into light.

If I find what it is to be a fractal 

I will take on the mind of mollusk

Effortless spinning perfection under

Calm rules eternal present geometry.

I will let go hold still start to notice

Break up then I’ll take on the mind

Then I would, I would, then I would

Subtend what’s left to something else.

The Following Day

The Following Day

Yesterday a great pileated alighted in the black walnut tree,

Inclined his sovereign crested head, flew off toward the river.

The candidates caravan came through, last governor, next

Governor, Congressman’s daughter, all hope and urgency.

Today the turkey buzzards wheel in the northerly wind,

Slow to the point of insolence, the holdout maples are lit

From within. No power comes near, no eye meets mine,

I lift the well cover and holler down for the boy I left.

A Dialogue of Ellipticist and Lyricist

A Dialogue of Elliptcist  and Lyricist

Never is not                           I never

Non sequitur                          Follow me please

Trailing off into                     I need a whole image

Rose petals aflutter                I don’t care about someone else’s roses

Less and less                         My heart bleeds

Abandoned pages                  Red over the paper

Sans subject                           I do not exist

Sans object                            Why should I care

Feeling nothing                      I have nothing to say

For Mark Rothko

For Mark Rothko

I saw red that night                 red of cigarette end

red of loon’s eye

Not in the painting                 more felt than seen

You demanded this                 to own what I am

                                                what I bring

Not the brush stroke               or the shared object

                                                nothing outside

This moment, nothing            that should be or

                                                should not be

No critic’s words                    no byproduct of

someone’s notion

Only beauty and terror           in this moment

                                                of nothing to hold

Only the floating shape          this form, this color

                                                no net or railing

No docent sign                        making it all clear

                                                naked responsibility

For pouring life                      into the space between

                                                Your canvas, my eye.

                                               

Rivanna Roaring

Rivanna Roaring

Walking near sunset along the river

On the paved path with the white line

Right down the middle, so many days

I hear him or see him across the water,

Ragged man, brown man, on the bank

Scattering something in the water.

Shouting, endocrines neurons pumping

Over and over the angry illusion stew,

Every third or fourth word is fucking,

He shouts what I mutter, TV, computer,

Tea Party vandalism, shameless climate

Deniers, slave owners and traffickers.

He utters the curses Jefferson stifled as

The horse threw him in the river at 80.

Autumn treetops ablaze in the failing

Light shimmer in the water between us.

I stand without a hand to reach across.

The water takes it in and moves along.

Reaching the rapids, the river finally

Roars, keeps roaring on into the night.

Chiaroscuro

Chiaroscuro

Squall line hangs in the north, verga or deluge

Unknown, but the dark weight presses down.

If there is only light, then there is no light,

Everything blind and everything the same.

Only when I looked down hyperventilating

Into the depths of boyhood lakes did I see

That the mud of the bottom was the place

Where lilies and lotus sank down their roots

And only by giving over to that blackness

Is it granted to float in the sun all summer.

Only when my father had a mass big as a

Baseball removed did I get the endoscopy

And in the boundless floating sedated mind

The luminosity of pink shown forth in glory.

And only because you held a place for your

Son’s demonic voices, drugged insomnias,

For five years through the long long nights

Are the clouds parting for him to shine again.