Category: Mind games

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More: 46th Post

                  MORE

                                              —War again
The F-16 cuts through air,
then more air, through clouds,
then more clouds, through whatever is
above clouds
above the round earth
with its prickles of cities,
its patchy fields and scratchy deserts
kept in by dented roads,
its pigs, wolverines,
& cats.
All that under it, &
more: perspective, view,
dreamy vision, memories of
front rooms, school rooms,
hospital rooms,
time striped, hatched,
notched on the face of it,
on the vast open face of it,
nothing subtracted, good
or ill. Nothing
taken away: not memories
of who one is supposed to hate
nor statues of who someone once
admired. Like when S said
emotions are only added,
added to themselves and to each
other, and that my reminder we needn’t
be lonely isn’t right, exactly.
The love is added in, she said:
added in like almonds or copper,
like copper to gold, injected
like insulin, inserted like
a grace note. She said,
the night bird will still call us to
wakefulness and we’ll be alone
before we’re together. Together,
I insisted. We are
alone and together,
and we’ll be wistful and satisfied,
and forgetful and reminded.
It’s the blessing in the red ridge
of a scar, she tells me.
The and of living more.

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I Wanted to Be Enormous: 45th Post

                                 NO SAVING

In the night a car plowed sideways through our front yard
and left a tall cedar pointing into our bedroom window,
like a prosecuting attorney asking who
did what, when, where.

“Did you put on gloves?” a friend asked about my being
first on the scene. God I forgot. I wanted
to save someone. But limber as gymnasts
the drunk driver and passenger stuck their landing.

There was that time when Chris came shouting
into my kitchen and I tended her cut scalp,
tried to get her to call the police, stuck my anger
behind my face and just cleaned

the red sink, red counters, red floor.
No gloves. No saving.

And the time a man who needed a bath and clean clothes
heckled us marchers at a Pride parade.
Most of the women said Have a nice day and kept walking but
he called me a name whose invisible weight

tilted a scale inside me. I didn’t aim
for his face and miss.
I aimed for his hat brim
and it took his head with it.

What were you thinking? my lover shouted
as the man walked away fast, muttering.
God I don’t know. I wanted
to stop him. I wanted

to get his attention.
To make him afraid.
I wanted to be enormous
to save someone.

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Not Angels: 44th Post

ADMITTANCE TO THE CITY OF ANGELS

Returning from Central America I made
the smallest jest at the passport station
and found myself in line C4. Three places
ahead stood a Latino—tall, late thirties
perhaps, crisp white clothes, Panama hat,
shepherding two large bags and a
rolled hammock.

He stood straight and still as they
emptied his bags mechanically,
two factory workers deconstructing, unfolding trousers,
uncoiling a belt, unrolling mated socks, tossing item after item
on the stilled conveyor belt.
He kept his hands in his pockets as they opened bottles and tubes
and poured and squeezed them empty into a bucket
that smelled at first like wheat fields.

He removed his hands from his pockets and hung them
as they opened every envelope and read each letter,
hefted, smelled, and felt the safety razor, hairbrush, and dental floss,
removed the back from a framed picture and separated the photo from
its backing, tapped the heels of tall black boots, unscrewed the barrel
of a gold fountain pen, dropping each item
onto the growing heap.

They spoke, and he removed his hat. They slit the hatband
neatly as surgeons. I saw him breathe in
when they cut the cord that held the large hammock,
pulling the ornate poles from the grip
of knotted white loops, leaving them stretched and dangling,
close-parentheses in a tight row.
They pried off the ends of the poles and peered inside,
tilting them like telescopes toward the fluorescent lights above.

The agents closed the line and went away with the man
for half an hour. The rest of us waited, assembling our faces into
nothing. He was buttoning his white shirt as they returned.

After the agents turned to the next person in line, the man labored
to assemble the hammock but gave up, wrapping the pieces
in the stretched body. He worked over his clothes, moving
his large hands through the wrinkled heap of shirts,
pants, envelopes, camera, underwear. Just before I was called
I saw him wrap a belt around his hand and jab it into the solar plexus
of his bathrobe. He stood a moment, hand buried, then went on,
folding a towel, blue with a white monogram.

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Some Give Up: 39th Post

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THE WOMAN WHO GAVE UP SPEAKING

has heard enough.

The enterprise is not loyalty.
Daggers.  Blood.  Mermaids.

She has seen
best intentions

fall like the snapped bodies
of cedar
waxwings beneath
unimpressed windows.

The enterprise is stolen words.
Death Before Dishonor.
Jesus.  Mother.  Semper Fi.

She has tried to pull the no-trick
ponies from their sunken
groove.

The enterprise is cold so
bitter the tears
crystallize
before they’ve left your eyes.

She is not
a symbol-dove
nor a
symbol-donkey.

Along twisted pathways
leaves reach for
the back of something
that ran by
centuries ago.

Her anger
hunches close,

a staring ape.

 

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Avian Mythologue: 38th Post

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ORPHEUS, EURYDICE, AND HERMES

I.

She remembers she was keen, vigilant, and efficient.

She remembers that the kill was quick,

that hushed bones cracked deep inside the body.

 

Hovering, she was All gliding, All diving,

All futures soon to shriek

kee-ahrrr     down     down,     kee-ahrrr!

 

She remembers a sting, and trying to focus

in this dark place.  She whose electric glance

could track the wild tracings

 

of a fly two worlds away,

dazed, injured, unfocused.

She is in the dark for many futures.

 

Then Who-is-larger comes beside her

and pulls on her feet,

makes her feet go to him.

 

Pulling air with her wings she tries to escape

but Who-is-larger holds fast,

murmuring like leaves in autumn.

 

Together, for her feet seem fastened

to Who-is-larger now,

they move through the darkness.

 

 

II.

The sun puts its rats through their mazes,

sucks the waves from the sea,

forces open the reluctant lilies.

 

Its grief a white light on all it can reach,

the sun can do nothing

without looking.

 

III.

Stepping from the darkness

Who-is-larger closes his eyes against the bright light.

The sun, ecstatic, covers everything instantly.

 

She, tilting her head, with one eye glares skyward

then turns away

blinded, focused on nothing.

 

Powerless, now, to reach her,

the sun, severed, floats on, grieving

blood-red at the last.

 

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Wishing for Harmony: 37th Post

Woman 3

How nice it would be if both one’s internal and external dialogues could be peaceful…

 

REHEARSAL FOR AN ARGUMENT

I am a square-shouldered
decision, a kite
snagged long ago,
my tedious semaphore
unrelieved.

It’s snowing, but
I cut the sound:
everyone’s already heard
bloodthirsty barking,
the scrape of claws

on tree bark.
Let them imagine
the tap
of each crystal flake
shattering on impact.

Placing my ear
to a rock,
I wait patiently
for the translation.
A thousand frosts later

the answer is
mine in a
mound
of sturdy flour.
I spit

and knead:
a lunge of knuckles
and there’s bread
and blood
all over.

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In a Strange Land: 36th Post

Cloister ladies

Along with many of my closest friends and friends I don’t know yet, I often feel like I’m living in a landscape made hostile by the decisions, sometimes mere whims, of others over whom I have no control and with whom I doubt I could have a conversation that would include any meaningful mutual understanding. I wrote this poem many years ago, and enjoyed the self-imposed task of inventing a language and grammar to make it work, while also expressing the humor, homesickness, fear, and isolation that so often pushes one to put pen to paper or finger to keyboard. It still feels true to me, so I share it today.

I’ve recited this poem at readings many times over the years, and it takes some rehearsal but is always fun to say aloud. To get you started, I’ll tell you that the speaker is a human writer living on another planet.

HIS LAND OF ROOMS

Please, come in.
Don’t be shy, take a seat.  Or,
I should say, extend your nemdops and lower your fleegrong’n.
—The candles?  Well, no, not for heat.  Does it bother you?  Sometimes,
for atmosphere,
—well, yes, they do use oxygen.  Never mind.
So, Pargffen, I hope this will be the first of many
—In English.  I plan to read in English.
(I cannot.  I will not.  I tried some lines:
fentonn reb fleedeep miss’rab soor
   nempebb, pebb nggit Pargffeen ho’or
The damned apostrophes are to be squeaked.
Insupportable.)  Shall we go on?
I’d like to begin with one of my early works that
—Yes, I understand your position on ownership.
I don’t own these words; I merely arrange them.
Shall I continue?  (This habit they have,
of putting reensamsam in their slomgrong’ni,
I should have expressly forbid it.)  All right.
This piece is called “Land of Rooms”
and I suppose I’d best explain a word or two:
Humans begin their lives as small, dependent creatures called children, who live in
“childhood.”
“Insomnia” is an inability to sleep.  It is usually frustrating.  Many things cause it,
believe me.
Let’s see, do you know what a “mistake” is?
—I thought not.  (Why did I pick this one to read?)
It means doing something wrong, unintentionally.
Sometimes you get to try again.
I think you’ll understand the rest.  Wait,
do you know “silence”?  (No,   no,   no,   no.)
Silence is the absence of sound.  As if your dapgrong’ni stopped working.
—But that’s possible to imagine, isn’t it?  Listen,
silence is sometimes very pleasant.  Humans find it restful,
which, as you know, we like.  Now, let’s proceed.
—Yes, Hjǽm?  —Ahh.
The idea is that I will read and you will listen
or rather, p’liff with your dapgrong’ni,
and at the end, if you enjoyed it,
you will applaud.  —Umm, you could wave your dapgrong’ni,
or push one rarpeen against the other until a sound comes out.  —Oh,
I had no idea.  Well,
how might you show approval then?  Perhaps you could just
nod your bogrong’n.  (Can we settle on it, please?)  Shall I just begin?
—Yes, I have, actually, tried to.  Describing this place
has been…challenging, shall we say.
—No, I’m not ready to read that piece; it’s not right yet.  (Never again.
I shall never do this again.)  —You must believe me when I say it’s a slow process.
No telling when I’ll be ready to share that one.  Please,
please can we go on?  (Oh no, it’s nearly ffenzod’nǿth time.
I should have chosen another day.)  I say,
would you prefer that we do this another time?
—Pardon me, I forgot.  (All time one ocean
and all that, god damn this place, even if it is,
by hell, all places.)  I’ll just read
while you zod’nǿthne, if that’s all right.
—No, no, I’m not unhappy; please don’t think that.
(I know what they do to unhappy aliens, by god.)  And neither is my poem.
Suppose we do this:
you’ll zod’nǿthne; I’ll read,
you’ll applaud—somehow; I’ll go back to my quarters and work,
and then sleep.
I shall sleep while you zod’nǿthne.  In the same time.

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Look. No, Really. Look: 35th Post

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Bird and Tree

There, again.  See?  A small darting thing
with sharp edges and a wide brim
went into the dark arms of the tall one that whispers
constantly, its mouths dangling from tiny handles.

The small one calls out, bragging—or
pleading—
its brim tucked away,
dagger mouth waving in the air.

It builds a little jail and stabs at it, then
goes in search of a prisoner.

The tall one waits.  Where are its eyes?

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The Good Girl: 33rd Post

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While the meaning of words can and often does shift over time, there is often an echo of the original meaning that lingers.

 

Urtext

The Good Girl sleeps quietly
with other women’s husbands.
Dimples cast in concrete,
she cleaves a breast of white meat;
a potato bursts in the oven.

At first, the word ‘win’ meant merely to struggle.

Homeostasis: maintaining a couch,
a fire, a coffee table behind your ribs,
fine art on your turbulent heart.

At first, ‘attack’ meant to stick a tack into.

The Good Girl has forgiven music
for the pain it has caused her.
Bathing herself in vanilla and almonds,
she gets a job and keeps it,
collecting her pay like rainwater
in clean pools and pockets.

Here are the morning, the noon, and the night,
her silent partners, investors
in waiting, their solar and lunar coins
strung out like a dazzling bracelet
shimmering a dance of lust.

 

 

 

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Good Writing Habits: 32nd Post

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Not About

Poems often are about
exactly what they are not about.
This poem, for instance,
is not about the person
all those other poems were about.
Good writing habits forbid my telling
what this poem is about, but I
assure you
it is not about
what it is not about. Here
you see no mention of smooth hands,
no sly references to sex disguised
as descriptions of long train trips,
rivers slamming into bridge pilings,
or autumn trees bursting into flame,
no metaphor comparing that person’s eyes
to whatever the next best thing was.
Not even anything like a simile.
Not in this poem that is not about that.