awkwordswords

2011-06-07T14:36:00.000-07:00

the talk

i will tell you this instead:
you're losing me

it is far, between glimpses of you
and in the long between
the trace of a laugh
the promise of a moon
and a kite to fly

i am racing after you
with splendid cities
and the seasons in my hair,

rain has come, once again,
i'll catch your filled footprint
i'm running

so hard i circle into myself
hello

yes there was the moon
and the kite
and the splendid cities

and yes there was the rain
and there was

me

2009-12-05T01:45:00.000-08:00

I’ve spent these last 40 days gathering what I have of my father. What did my dad give me?

Genetically I have the unmistakable profile. I also have a memory of moments that are just perfect.

My dad flew model planes. Not the kind that are gasoline powered and remote controlled. The kind you assembled from plans, piecing together frames and trusses from wood . Over the frame you stretch Japanese paper or some film so thin, air will tear it if you walk too fast. Then you carve and shave out the curves of a propeller, and hook it onto the frame with a rubber motor.

It’s a very involved process where you have to figure out how the power of the motor, the lightness of the frame, and the length and shape of the wing work together to determine how long and how high the plane will fly.

I remember Saturday night in his workshop – doing my own thing in the corner as my dad tweaked some plane that he would try out the following day. Next morning, my dad would ask: “Do you want to fly today?” Flying meant, plane held lightly in hand we would walk to the middle of a large field, count up the winds of the motor, set the propeller, aim the nose up into the air, release, and off the plane would spiral and climb into the sky.

Inside this memory I am paused, shoes damp from dew, morning air cool on my skin, standing loosely, my head bent toward the sky. The light, open, blue sky and there is the graceful floaty climbing of the plane. It’s flying! A perfect moment.

Stepping back from the memory today, I realize something. That thing flying up there was wood and paper and a rubber band. Fantastic! As themselves I wouldn’t recognize them as flying things. But given some thought and patience and crafting, there they go. Do you want to fly today? Why not?

That’s what my dad gave me. An inquiring why not? Why not anything at all, given some thought and patience and crafting. Imagine the fantastic and craft its realization. My dad gave me the realizable fantastic, and the light, open, blue sky.

2009-10-19T10:14:00.000-07:00

i am the beggar of this horizon
i have no wherewithal

except as it please you
only those things
small enough to be missed
in the transactions of a day

held in a pinch and dropped
in the quick passing
not even much
not even stay

let fall a smile
brush my hand with your hand
accidentally
meet my eye

in passing

2009-10-19T04:07:00.000-07:00

the bread last saturday was preceded. it was reputed the week before, and again the day before, and even earlier that day. saturday, bread would be made.

it was preceded by a foldable blue cart with a bread machine, in case. a diminutive scale of the ounces and thirds or sevenths in a satchel, and the white book of bread wisdom ruffled with yellow post-its denoting the road followed.

and, flour, and yeast, and sugar, and oil, and salt, and fresh herbs. and little bowls with larger ones, and measured spoons, and a long black granite table.

and a reading from the book, procedurally just so: two, one, one half, one third, one spoon, one hand. wet - water warm not hot - and then dry, and then together. and knead.

and the faith, it will rise. set aside in a quiet corner, if kept away from the draft. to twice its size in an hour whose every minute was remarked. and conscientiously occupied with talk and making chicken soup and side glances.

and lo, and yes, the larger dough - kneaded and patted into the pan. brushed with oil and salted. herbed and spiced to taste. popped in the oven, became bread. and was eaten.

2009-09-06T18:40:00.000-07:00

i am not allowed to absent my mind
from these certain things
that to everything there is a season
and time for every purpose under the sun

each of those verses resonant in turn
unmoved
i am the vessel into which each of these drops
marking what
the collection of things that come to pass
in enough time

perhaps i shall accrue the equanimity
in enough time

but for now each of these minutes
fill with your ebbing
i cannot scale them to impassive eons

i must ask you then to be on purpose

2009-09-01T07:06:00.000-07:00

these days i am full of prayer and haunting. i am a sitter in an evening full of shadows deep and quickened by candle light. how it is that the circle is drawn with the dancing edge of flickering and they are lively at bay as whispers. approaching receding. these days i am full of prayer and haunting.

the way that
figments are snide in their obtuse predation
this only light enough to make shadows disappears me in melting segments
in light in dark in light in dark
with its sputtering dance

nothing is full, only foreboding

2009-07-13T08:29:00.000-07:00

my mother told me i'm on my third life

i guess that there was that, what nowadays passes for the usual process. the rush to the hospital, the various attentions, the happy discharge. the loving ones who wait outside to see you and exclaim how wonderful you are alive.

for my third life i was born on the 7th of july. my mom wasn't there, i met her later. but there was the same wonder - about what life must have in store for this person. and i was born with four other people:

my cousin who will teach english,
my cousin who will be a doctor,
my cousin who will maybe make things that fly,
my uncle who will build beautiful houses with a lot of light.

this time around in a kind of full circle i was born in the town of my shadow forbears. the ones you never met but insist themselves in some imprint, maybe in the downturn of your eyes or the set of your shoulders - the ones you kin by recognition because you watch for reflections. i was born in an accident similar to how my grandfather died. which is what set this thread adrift. which drift i wanted to catch in returning to his hometown, to walk his streets, to see his sights, to feel his people.

i like to think he was there for this birth, easing our way, the five of us. softening the upending splintering of the car as it rolled after being hit. easing us from the wreck. i believe he was there in the watchful eyes of my uncle who averted the worst from happening, in my cousin's presence of mind, in the love and concern of my cousins. his people, my people.

there is this thread, (how similarly we are enamored of the moon, magicked by the ambling coded morse of fireflies), that i found, that will weave into the warp and weft of this life.

2009-07-06T20:16:00.000-07:00

five of us after dinner

you said it would be a beautiful night to go blueberry picking and see fireflies. i'd never even thought to put the three together, night, and berry picking, and fireflies. yes, why not. and out the front door, the short way to the car was the remarkable moon. a full moon. you said it would be a lovely night for stars.

five of us after dinner, that inertia of dododosomething that is made for the nightswish of a car. who'd think to tour a city in the dark? but the moon is full and there is a tower overlooking the city on the hill where the poets sat. of course through a forested road up a hill. climb that black scaffolding of steps and gaze through the arched windows at the resting of each flight. finally the sky, the deep sky of a city in a bowl of mountains. in the dark you said, what was fantastic is during the fall, the foliage. pinched your thumb and forefinger into an inch of circle saying i could never count the number of colors i could see through this in the fall.

and a ghost story of a railway accident under the bridge near the children crossing sign. all those children who died in the crash are trying to push your car to safety from the tracks. if you put your gears to neutral you'll feel them pushing you away. true enough, the car rolled uphill.

at the community college there was a sign that read labyrinth. you'd been looking for it four years and almost believed the sign was a practical joke. well we found it at last after wandering to the edge of the field, skirting the perimeter and looking for likely gaps in the trees. it was etched in the grass unobtrusive and resplendent.

after that we walked to the pond where the frogs were playing the monday night symphony glorious and noisy. and the ducks were swimming. five of us after dinner.

2009-07-01T22:58:00.000-07:00

dear lord
please bless the strong

keep them slightly askew and unpredictable
make them irrational and unaccepting
hold them to excellence

make them beloved
of those with laughing hearts

walk with them
talk with them
never leave them

keep them strong

amen.

2009-06-21T22:14:00.000-07:00

at some point the orderly derivations will stop in their tracks
the logical if-then progressions will uncouple
and if if if and then then then will disperse free ranging
unalloyed

the slow twirls of ifs like dandelion spores asunder
suddenly illogical
suddenly improbable
the uncoupled stately and unpreconditioned

then

anything really

2009-06-18T21:05:00.000-07:00

the way to walk is to hold their right hand in yours
stand behind them and hold your left hand on the belt line ready
it's actually dangerous if you let them hold onto your shoulders
for balance

i will have to be ready to pull my father up by his pants
in case he overbalances while he figures out
how his feet and ankles and knees and hips
work together in a walk

yesterday i watched him relearn his fingers and his grasp
and his arms in a room full of blocks and balls and bands
each inch moved a devotion

how slow, i can attend to every one of your hairs

2009-06-14T07:55:00.000-07:00

i am not audacious enough to call your name out
to the universe
i've heard that story of litanies
the mantra of your beloved's name chanted
until the universe resonates with that joining
it becomes inevitable

i am not audacious enough
to presume upon the universe
you are too lovely
and solitary

2009-06-14T07:40:00.000-07:00

i love you
there i've said it

what you will
if it is a line

i've crossed it or a thought
i've thought it

simply

enough

2009-06-14T05:30:00.000-07:00

today i sat with three children
yes i'm old enough to call out a child
feeling distinctly and qualitatively different

and they sat there full of dreaming
possible and probable both still amorphous
and pliable equally
reachable with the same hands

care, oh care
sharp and untempered
guard your veteran mind
unfetter what you know from trammelled paths

this is your dare

a child gazes at you with i dream

2009-06-09T04:30:00.000-07:00

last night we sat talking about our past together in a strange kind of reminisce
what was, what could have been, what is, what may be
also what may not be
all tenses conglomerated a snarled string no longer a line
you were sitting across from me
voice soft and reasonable recounting razing
behind your eyes and the certainty of burned bridges

(if you speak of possible in gradients of distance,
also speak of no longer possible as contracted horizons
folded and put away)

this kind of determining, the pruning of a strange tree
still drawing nourishment
braced and wired
still growing its strange way toward the sun

what of us
of all the candid inquisitions was the question never asked

i cooked dinner because i wanted to
and you let me harass your kitchen with bits and smells until it was ready
that''s how we inched toward not asking
everything a hostage subject the fixtures the placemat the magazine you kept

all this time

all this time

2009-06-05T19:36:00.000-07:00

by the roadside there are things for sale. under large yellow blue green red wedge umbrellas on a white stalk slipped in the joining of a plank box. hand lettered signs, quotation marks and apostrophes. sweet corn, and further down depending on the season starapples and indian mangoes in deep rush baskets or a red plastic basin. where there are sidewalks. and sidewalkers.

today i saw:
crab stacked and tied with blue straw
yellow diesel fuel in coke liter bottles
eggplant, okra, squash, and stringbeans chopped and packed in icebags
aquariums of cold drinks with varicolored squares of gelatin
little sweet breads
dark glasses and cellular phone casings
bobbing headed animals in a row

to amend your way from here to wherever. i wonder what decides the spread.

on the way to where would you stop for..., and also how far would one walk for one of these? and back?

do people here want these, or is it a you never know, the way cowboy hats and helicopters, mattresses and roses are snaked between cars at the stoplight. so much hope there, you never know.

2009-06-03T07:57:00.000-07:00

today was a rainy day. i like rain.
i like the way clothes begin to stick to the skin in the rain. and its sound like breathing makes me want to run, hips open, legs light and long, on the balls of my feet poised to fly. maybe i'm a bird that flies in the rain. a wet bird.

2009-05-27T08:31:00.000-07:00

i imagine we have one collective heart. where is the center of people who love each other? after all we are particularly dispersed. or do we take turns with this heart?

in the body, the vitality of breath travels circuitously to our parts. riding on one blood on its way from the center red and vital with air, on its way back delivered of its freight and blue. then away again robust. lifeblood. then back, depleted. the rhythmic lapping of vigor.

the heart is not breath. if breath is a message. it is an impetus of delivery, appropriately a beat, carried away to far parts - here is breathing, here is breathing. and back, where is breathing?

sometimes i fear for our heart. days that we need a lot of breath, or that we are just very far. and it is frayed with fibrillation.

some days the distances are bisected with elation.

or somebody will take up the heart and say come closer everyone. and easier, our heart beats a steady rhythm.

2009-05-23T07:18:00.000-07:00

i am tracing the crease under your eye with one finger. the skin is light and thin, the touch gaze light for tenderness. i did not see this while it was happening. the accumulation of days and nights and moments hollowed out the contours of your cheeks, creased in the lines. it is easier to come this close and feel your skin from this inch away. i cannot yet look into your eyes.

if you let my hands proceed with their inquiry. twenty seven bones in the hand, enough to bend and take around any of your parts and name them shapes. this curving slope a large curl in my hands my thumbs in a furrow, was this a hard day? the fan of a shoulderblade the muscle lines splayed fingers running from your arm what have they held together?

if you let, may i continue to ask your body questions? there are things i don't know how to ask with words. like where does it hurt? if time and people and events are a place. and what is happening with you?

can you tell i want to touch you? everything about you is so distant having to say words makes you even farther.

2009-05-20T09:51:00.000-07:00

on nights like this you receive gifts you ask for. storm the heavens with your deepest smallness, put it into the most irrevocable unabashed words. dig deep and jump off the high road. it is not a time to embrace loftiness.

feel small and cry. be brazenly bereft, ask what about me. remember.

i named my disrepair. i looked out the window, down to the night street. watched the pattern of movement in the fuzzy yellow light. i am pissed, i said and angry. i tendered my resignation. as the song goes i quit i give up nothing's good enough for anybody else it seems. on nights like this you receive gifts you ask for.

someone held me close tonight.

what is that like? a warm palm smoothing out the fist that is my heart. i breathe a prayer to the god that watches over me for the gentling of this storm i thank you. for the laugh that ridiculed this quandary with love i thank you. i thank you for the loss that made me ask to be remembered. i thank you for another's memory of me that calls me back to myself.

how small the workmanship that puts us back together. the way a needle is small. the way the hairline cracks are small. the way grandness is too big to do any good. i name my fissures. inconsequential. confused. forgotten. misguided. meaningless. the fine etchings of my heart's capillaries. everyday the heartbeat countdown continues, but tonight,

tonight i asked can i tell you something? can i tell you i feel like crap? okay you said that's tough. and you're not zen. and the line gets choppy everytime i say something true, or more than one sentence. you're so pissed you should go to the bathroom. my heart begins to mend and i tell you what pissed me off. beginning today and working backward. i am not zen.

and i am not imagining things. and that is alright.

2009-05-16T23:05:00.000-07:00

newly established as of this may day. sunday is steak day. everyone who came for this lunch is de facto invited. no confirmations necessary, just come with an appetite.

i like get togethers that seem to get magically spun like cotton candy. the sugar whisps floating out into the cylinder, caught up sweeping on a paper stick. wow, the thin threads gathered into a big fluffy ball you don't know how but somehow.

there are just those kinds of get togethers. the easy drift of conversations the loose schedule of arrivals the unexpectant tone. anything can happen but not in the fantastical improbable way. anything can happen in the sideroads off the highway kind of way.

from here one notices the conch pattern bench and the trestle table. the stillness of the air thickened with birdsong. long pass around the phone calls. something to say for everyone. these spun-together afternoons.

sunday is steak day, no confirmations necessary.

2009-05-12T23:30:00.000-07:00

someone told me
i was deeply in debt and barely covering the interest charges
and i prayed to god to help me out of this problem
because it was eating up the income of my entire family
every child would alternate paying the debt off and paying family expenses
from their salary
netting nothing
and having less than needed
so i prayed to god to deliver us

and you asked me to do something for you
this was probably an oblique answer
the way god perhaps answers
in my mind i already told myself to say it would cost you this much
and i had been rehearsing it from the house to our meeting
when you asked though
the correct answer came out
my mouth didn't say what was in my head
the way god perhaps answers

it would have been so easy

on the way home i told my son what i'd nearly done

and now i'm telling you

2009-05-10T07:46:00.000-07:00

is something for you?

what does it mean that something is for you? do you subscribe to the belief that there is some evolving path that is particularly yours? aside: this question popped into my mind. are you necessary? if you don't think so, what are you doing that makes you feel that way? or what are you not doing? which begs the question- are there things you should be doing that you are not?

there is this thing called perspective. in another modality called attention. in another modality called limitation. joe and harry have a more descriptive framework called a window http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johari_window

on the x axis the knowns and the unknowns applicable to the self knowing the self. on the y axis the knowns and the unknowns applicable of others knowing you. it describes lines of sight and blind sides. an interesting 360 degrees.

imagine yourself standing looking at a horizon spread out before you. and then recalling that there is everything behind you that you can't even see through your peripheral vision. you can assume it's there but you have no real objective idea what it looks like. it is behind your head after all.

the johari window forms a matrix of perspectives and that which is knowable. while assuming that perspectives are limited and the knowable is incomplete. there is a built in that which we, you looking at me, and i, cannot know.

interesting. in classifications there are: what only i know, what others and i know, what only others know, and what neither others nor i know. a startling blind spot.

in the intersections of all that we, neither you or i know, is something for you?

2009-05-06T05:50:00.000-07:00

there is this ritual that we have come gift-receiving time. you hold three dimensions of something in your hand, all wrapped up and you say thank you it's just what i've always wanted.

prophesy or faith?

do you know just what you've always wanted? i have an image of certainty, the sum total of a currently lived life carving out want shaped holes. are those wrapped things just the right shape lengthwidthheight to fill them? such precision of desire. or is it trial and error - do we cram these packages with prods and fluffings til they somewhat fit, an odd ear poking out, a corner not quite filled?

what is the shape of your want? open the package is it a book or a little glass horse or a cake? or a fingernail, a pond, a piece of paper? actually it's nothing you ever wanted. not in a bad way, just that you never really thought it. thank you it's just what i've always wanted quandary. what provokes a gift?

we are always receiving. a blue sky, a life altering event, a person, a grudge, a talent, an ambition, a place, a taste. i am curious about the alchemy that fulfills gifts into what we've always wanted.

aside:

Alchemy (Arabic: الخيمياء al-khimia) - "the art of transformation" is both a philosophy and a practice with an aim of achieving ultimate wisdom as well as immortality, involving the improvement of the alchemist as well as the making of several substances described as possessing unusual properties. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemy

ultimate wisdom, immortality, improvement of the alchemist, and making several substances possessing unusual qualities is achievable four basic changes of state brought about by 12 core processes

1. Decomposition

Decomposition through Calcination
Decomposition through Digestion
Decomposition through Fermentation/Putrefaction

2. Modification

Modification through Congelation/Coagulation
Modification through Fixation
Modification through Ceration

3. Separation

Separation through Distillation
Separation through Sublimation
Separation through Filtration

4. Union

Union through Solution
Union through Multiplication
Union through Projection

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alchemical_symbol#12_Core_Alchemical_processes

2009-05-05T16:28:00.000-07:00

yesterday by the roadside was a man cupping a nest in his hand.
11:30 in the morning having just come down from a jeepney. held his left hand pinky parallel to heart, thumb perpendicular to the road, a gentle table on which the nest perched.

i guess just because one day it'll occur to you with no reservations. or the situation will present itself. and you'll find yourself with a nest resting in your palm. or maybe you planned it.

2009-05-04T07:44:00.000-07:00

it's kind of desperate the way i am reaching for something to say. much like fishing for small beans in a pot of water. the last few of the boiling. the ones you decide are not there only yes they are, as you'll later discover.

so, i feel this nagging last few beans feeling of wanting to say something. encompassing.

some wisdoms must have accrued somewhere. oysters are irritated into spouting pearls. if that may happen perhaps it is not so much to ask.

if you say a word often enough for long enough it becomes alien and wonderful, alterations hinged on a single word. i only say this because my landscape is repetitious and i am looking for its meditation. i shall begin to note it with care.

today i begin as cartographer of the ordinary.

2008-06-07T19:16:00.000-07:00

it will approach as secret urgent messages
the way suddenly the
turning of a leaf
and the flight of a great black bird

how the heart cringes

an encryption
in flickering firelight

pieces of words
an eye, a cheek,
a cavern of words

doomdoomdoom

the domed echo bends the sky

2008-06-07T07:03:00.000-07:00

i breathe with the breath of breaking waves
solemnly god wash over
wash over me

with the breaking waves resound
calm

the pummeling ocean to shore
ocean to shore resolve
the seismic argument

softly as wiping i breathe

with the breath of breaking waves solemnly
god wash over
god wash over me

2008-03-12T04:14:00.000-07:00

incendiary
of things burning diary
the turning of eons enfolds
fresh things lush into
black veins
that bloom into ravenous flowers
when sparked

2007-08-16T02:04:00.000-07:00

i know there is something, it's in the way
everything feels. the arrangements, and you know the way
things that have been said, courses run and time served
bend people together a certain way

and there are signals attuned in the periphery
parts of the carpet unworn

there is a flower in the vase

you are looking outside the window
i am not looking

2007-05-27T05:57:00.000-07:00

at the bus stations the people are going everywhere
in their scattering laden trajectories
there is the burning smell of moving powerfully

stopping a while, legs that have been sat on overnight unfold
bags shouldering through aisles
feet strike the sudden rough pavement
to, from is all thrown together

rice cakes and biscuit tins
a pocket of mints and a bottle of water
the week in your bag

the rough weave of its handles bearing down
on my fingers
later the impressions tingle in the red weals

moment
as only leaving can define the shape of your head

i breathe a diesel flavored kiss into your ear
maybe it will stay

2007-05-19T08:55:00.000-07:00

awed odd audacious
beauty beauty beauty
peel my soft fruit heart

2007-04-07T01:44:00.000-07:00

margin of error

i know enough to say
hey that's probably not
such a great thing to do
euphimistically for

you'll probably die if you try
those things we know well enough

so many things that we know
and names of things
even how we error in our thinking

the calculation of the possibility
of a wrong because
and hence
you'll probably die if you try
and also point zero one you won't

if that's good enough for you

2007-04-05T09:53:00.000-07:00

thursday night

i imagine you
saying it could be different
yes
something else could come of it
and this time tomorrow
we'll be sitting at table
having a wonderful time
yes
it is possible
i imagine you
hugging me in relief
yes
it could

2007-04-05T09:22:00.000-07:00

passion

the candlesmoke singsong
sour salty smell
people on plastic chairs green
to match the dimming walls

myself pitched into resonance
with this ululating
relentless march into sorrow

oh for that misstep

instead of this destiny
of someone too beautiful to be
alive in this place

perhaps we were asking you
to fail just a little

because who would dare
have compassion for god?

we are not notorious for it
content to prophesy unsurprised

after all we know how to weep
and harvest regret

my god

2007-04-02T00:17:00.000-07:00

goodbye

the sun should dance just a little
and the seas part as we put this place behind us
i want to ask you
i am on a precipice
where will my foot fall
when i take that step having turned around?

from you

i know now how this world will fail
how the moments are broken
without you

my heart cleaves to the promise of resurrections
or how can this be beautiful?

may the road rise to meet you
may the wind be always at your back

i can bless you yet
and may God hold you in the palm of his hand

2007-03-23T02:28:00.000-07:00

break

i won't be able to say if it must be so
if you must break me
only it is, and i am full of letting

all my orchards cast colorless
and begin crumbling in a dusty kind of light
if you must break me

i won't hope i know how it ends

i'll be out in the meadows
gathering wildflowers to bring inside

2007-03-06T18:53:00.000-08:00

if you nevertheless me i don't know how much more i can bear
earlymorningrushesofhighpitchedvoice
whywhydon''t and thisandthat
and a multitude of slamming doors

and where here is a gradual wake up
the gradient sunrise brightening an opening body?
is what i ask

if you nevertheless me
for now i am still here
and there are still minerals to erode in my bones

there is such a thing as silence
and looking out a window for light and shapes
and nothing in particular

what must be found anyway?
if you could tell me more than not that
i could probably see it

2007-01-06T05:19:00.000-08:00

she would come back blinking her eyes a few times very fast
and her hands would move surely not that they stopped
but like they could see the plates again or the sheets to fold
i always wondered where she went when she came back and answered
nothing

2007-01-05T18:32:00.000-08:00

there are some places where mice are forcefed to a box with three doors
this humble box passes the smart ones
and regurgitates the stupid ones until they are smart
enough to remember that one door leads nowhere
one door leads to pain
one door leads to a corridor large enough
for a mouse to walk a straight line
it goes on
and again
there are enough corridors for all the smart ones
and enough lessons for the stupid ones until they die

2007-01-05T18:15:00.000-08:00

a brush with stiff metal bristles scraped on a stone
peels the flow of water down its sides
into slow dancing rhythmless rivulets

this is not an alchemy

2006-12-14T21:55:00.000-08:00

after

sometime they will be able to walk
across the black fields
without stepping on the faces of friends
without hands grabbing their ankles
sometime they will be able to
push their hands into the rich loam
push their seeds into the rich loam
sometime they will be able to hear
the rumble of a truck passing
just a truck
and the roads will be roads
not the shape of a greedy black river
full of spite and stones

the greedy black river wanted
babies, and mothers, and fathers
and wood and underwear and pots and spoons
and slippers and beds and chairs
and trinkets and books and signs
and roofs and cows and chickens
and it snatched them from arms from hiding places
from everywhere it took them and tossed them
and rolled them with stones

now there is the black mud
and the hands and faces in the mud
and maybe a spoon in the mud
that is everywhere

2006-11-16T01:14:00.000-08:00

i know a bird boy
translucent and blue like
the exhilarated sky
heart fit to burst
beating out rhythms of yes
of yes i know a bird boy
wings in his eyes
flight in his toes
i know a bird boy

2006-11-15T05:34:00.001-08:00

celebrate!

beautiful, wonderful
had a joint celebration of our november-born
our dare i say inevitable assortment? it certainly feels that way now
how it has happened that you are tempered into my landscapes

sunday rested our clenched selves
piled into the van to the day that was waiting to happen
the kids ran to the monkey cage
and went to look at the fish and find the ostrich

found ourselves welcomed by the abandoned
picked up off the streets, pieces of them missing,
memory or mind, wherewithal
offered us seats to join them in communion
a priest blessed us with his hands on our heads

we walked among children crying on the mats
god knows for what
forgotten grandfathers,
women left by the wayside were here
god knows for what
i came away with a cross thumbed on my mind's eye
and the vision of a smile breaking the surface of shuttered eyes
i close my own
there are wounds that are difficult to see

gathering these
we took our children to the mountain spring
abundant repast and the lush orchestra
of growing things, crickets and birds
and fruit on the tree

smooth the pressed lines and tightness bubbles out
in laughter we are simply in a line on a log
jumping up and down and riding broomsticks
to sketch across the sky

my heart said beauty beauty

we were invited to a secret garden
loved into paths and alcoves, bubbling streams
and scents of flowers and pungent spice
i was offered fruit from a kakao tree
they taught me that you suck the meat off the seeds and dry them

the priest of this worship painted on walls
and carved the signs
and grew this solace over time

all this while i held children in my arms
and felt their heartbeats under my palms
and wished please please for magic in their lives

all this, all this is given
i could not have asked
god knows for what

2006-11-09T07:35:00.000-08:00

may be
sureness or not
may of flowers and wildness permissive
may dangles yes
or

2006-11-09T07:16:00.000-08:00

this is the softness of face
warm breath smelling of breathing
the tingle of almost touch
one eye
one eye
the slope of nose beside nose
the delicate distance between
eyes that are closed

soft darkness

and the muted sounds of far
ticking and roar of engines
a horn sounds

2006-11-08T22:37:00.000-08:00

taking a walk with my dead
it is a beautiful evening, stars are out and there is something of a festive atmosphere in the air.
the sky is a crisp clear - a nice change from the previous variable sun-gloomy days
the constancy is nice.

flickering candle carpets mark out, here lies, here lies
and among them also the living,
are keeping vigil
a night for our dead

i talk to them one at a time, my patchwork grandmothers
the one who threw shoes at the judge
the one who sang opera
the one who was incarcerated during the war
the one with a new dress a month
the one with three
the one whose husband and child died under the piano
the one who hid jewels in her hair to trade for eggs
the one who slept with a revolver under her pillow
the one who learned chinese brush painting when she found out she was dying
the one whose father sat on her glasses
the one who sang autumn leaves

handed down to me in stories and silences
i am trying to stitch together into
someone who had breakfast everyday or sometimes not, depending
what would you think is funny? and how am i doing?

lately i sometimes understand a little how it happened
that you lined up the laborers and punched them
that you signed all receipts yourself, even the ones for the smallest amounts
that you smoked four packs a day
that you served all your meals hot

sneaks up on me one breakfast i am preparing
one fight i witness
one friend i make

and many more questions, what would you make of it?

2006-10-20T06:50:00.000-07:00

both sides now

who makes it through?
damnit
how many pieces can be taken
more
another little one

come on
come on
come on

2006-10-08T06:47:00.000-07:00

ache

she was sitting at table
and had been talking for some time
when she meandered
to the topic of her mother

who was a wonderful woman
she said and said this
she didn't know how to say this

only that her mother was a tiny little thing
and very refined
and knew shakespeare down to the footnotes

and her mother
had advised her to pray
always to pray
she was beginning to understand

sitting at table
she needed to say all this
her mother was a wonderful woman
who advised her
to always pray
she was beginning to understand

she couldn't say it enough

2006-10-08T02:03:00.000-07:00

i touched the lit match
to its tip and shortly
it was scattering brief stars

into the night
i was trying to write

your name
your name in stars

a longer line of ash
the spark starves

i cannot write your name
anymore

2006-10-07T20:15:00.000-07:00

older

an old man stands in the middle of the road
with a doll's head in his hands
earlier a shirtless boy was smashing bulbs on the street

this was on a drive that would open
to grand vistas of a mountain of myth
how many of the three hundred years have passed now?
some giant will come striding
through at the promised time

i have the complacence of those
enough has come to pass

appointments met
promises delivered also
things that fall through

enough to recall what has been done before
faith of things that come together
what is waiting around the bend

heart enough to gather what has shattered
head full enough to hold
between two lined hands

2006-09-24T09:00:00.000-07:00

howl

snap the fire flicker
night stark black red orange night
a still white circle
ink the hearths silent
glow these wakeful eyes open
pace these padded feet
pace this barred meter
soft footed snarling silence
pacing pouncing wait

2006-09-05T21:52:00.000-07:00

far

the full moon over two cities

notebook correspondence

windchimes

mountains can be seen from here

enough how are you's to last
each day that i may live

and i am fine
just fine

2006-08-30T06:52:00.000-07:00

dinner

was a fine affair that swung in the sidewise pendulums
balanced on a fulcrum

but we were all there
alcoves of talk
and stuff

somehow we wanted to keep the moment
or was it that we wanted moments to keep?
however
it happened that we gathered
taking pictures of our various faces
heads spiralling into each others'

the camera offered eighteen kinds of distortions

collisions, aliens, mumps
strange kindred were made of us

and we laughed
and we laughed

2006-08-24T09:18:00.000-07:00

grace

enough to let pleasantness descend

the smell of coffee in the air
sunlight waking the colors

even in the cramped breath
of six to a room, two by three

there is room enough
to snag a stranger with a cup

now there are seven of us
in one breath

2006-08-22T05:09:00.000-07:00

green

once, i was asked in a walk in a woods
how many shades of green do you see?
suddenly
more than my eyes can remember,
i have to hold them beside each other to confirm
but surely more than seven

no longer leaves

they were more green than they ever were

elswhere you told me
more than anything else you are green
i never asked you that question in the woods

but even there, i'd still see you

even if you are green

2006-08-22T02:24:00.001-07:00

how much?

three fourths of an inch
is how much
enough to not touch
to stay
three fourths an inch away

2006-08-21T19:55:00.000-07:00

said

fell like final
announcement, glass on carpet, not shattering
nothing broken

said

lump, in the throat, in the chest,
in the breast,

said

tendrils of weed insinuate
insinuate the tightest rock

said

not fragmenting, these pieces held
held, held

said

inspite, despite, to spite

nothing.

2006-08-02T22:44:00.000-07:00

abase abase abase myheart beats
seasonseasonseasons crackedwood grey
old as old as
oh
old

2006-06-09T20:03:00.000-07:00

not on camera

sister's wedding two weeks ago, no photographer was hired for the scenic occasion
sentimental too, by temperament - however documentation was not lacking:
about five cameras ready for every one picture waiting to be taken
i am learning to see photogenic moments

other things, other occasions:

while not camera ready i saw:
my mother and father dancing to you look wonderful tonight
on the edge of the empty floor, surrounded by mirrors
mother bent her head to my father's shoulder shyly
after 35 years
solace, comfort, awareness?
for a brief moment, and then stepped back
into my father's eyes - no need for mirrors to see

you look wonderful tonight