....From The Tree Of..................Pain Around Us
|
_______________________________________________________ Some Kind Of Movement Ground shifts: life does, too- an inperceptible lurch at first you think had been a trolley tremor underneath the feet, but the pavement knows. Things look different. Smell sharper; the nose grows used to daily whiffs of acrid burning. A day like today happens. The sun is there, big as ever, birds still po-tee-tweet but there are omens. Yesterday, a flock of a hundred doves fanned and swooped above my head -they awed and lifted. There are no flocks of doves I've ever seen before, yet there they were. I felt blessed in the midst of shifting ground. Light- was filled with hope, and even today before the car crashed, milliseconds before my right leg pushed, said 'NO' to what was being written by the moving finger, I heard Neil singing just before the crunch of the in evitable. It Is Consummated I shall not type another word from this cross, it is finished it is finished it is finished. The End Of Time How many days will I watch the men in rubber coats with yellow stripes dig and rake and pray the earth gives up her dead? How much salt do we need to bless that place- scatter the ground with salt mixed in with pieces of people, oblivioned out of a New York morning? We are all Lot's wives- as stopped as Hiroshima clocks. Late To Wisdom Some things shouldn't be said. I am convinced that this is true. And some dreams shouldn't be borne although while bearing them, you'd never think to put them down or they'd go scampering off like imps with dark, hairy palms and teeth all curved in sliver moons that if they are not biting you, they're casting eyes about for their next joyride. The only thing left, is a ticket torn in half shaped like a face. Another Grave I walked out farther to the cliffs and two stones fell before me. I knelt to pick them up again- they were my eyes. No wonder I was blind. I found your grave, so anxious to be hid, and planted jonquils- your favorite flower. I said a prayer for my own life, wrapped in a wind and slanted toward another hill. One Look Despite whatever ruse or rhyme you throw into the fire, remember this: the flames leapt up. I saw your face, clearly before it disappeared. There's only one sure glimpse a woman needs to know the dark of inspiration, or where that hum is from, and how sickened I've become of darker spaces; they're the bayou of the soul, where nothing floats. You have a boat there, I believe. Graveside Visit Monday, I'll be in Gettysburg; past and present will congeal as in no other time. Nightmares are real this time; I carry mine to you. Whose faces will be looking up through dirt?--the soldiers or the bankers, financiers- whose last heart's beat hear as softly as a birdwing flap of air? Ordinance and jet fuel are the same, percussive brothers, erasure is their purpose and my own will be to let the smoke blow through me, wrap the pictures in my head in flags and smoke and see a ragged thing still thrashing on a pile of twisted concrete, steel and carnage; a little Iwo Jima- like the banners of the units turned to shreddings at the wall. I want the all of it, the anguish and the meaning- want the dying to form cobblestones, a road I can go forward- I want the everlasting, under standing eyes of God to see through. Sniper Haven't caught him; another six hours of sleep, another version of the world and still he hunts, waiting motor running- fast as a cottonmouth, firing venom; deadly as carbon monoxide and as silent. Invisible when he strikes; the grass we live in has such snakes. Nothing to be done but walk on fear upright in the horrifying sun of easy pickins. This is the Most Dangerous Game for real and keeps for those whose lives will be short stories- not the novels he's unwriting one by one. Neverwere Went looking for you. Not the face, that's everywhere seen. Common as a garden weed and likely to pop through any crack, unfurl itself and shake its seeds in tracks you've rutted before; no, I looked for the one I knew. Wanted to properly say goodbye to a phase that raised you up -too high, I think (two years in a life is not too long in the course of things, not really) so I began to look inside, organ after organ: heart and brain---I was at first amazed and then dismayed, but finally satisfied that while I'm sitting here, writing this, you're nowhere I could find or perhaps ........................................neverwere. Overkill Everybody I suppose gets shit on in this life. Sometimes a whole damn megaload falls from the sky, and I am no exception, except the ones that really take the kneecaps, knock the teeth out of the mouth, are times when the one who said- 'oh baybee, I will never never fail you'- not only does but does it with a big brass band behind, heavy on the tubas, when all it really would have taken is a deaf ear turned: dead is dead- and what is worse is that my mother, had she known the story would have said today, "Girl, you fool- I could have told you so: old dog, new tricks? No way; you really are that gullible..." ............................ and I hate it .................... when she's right. On To Page 13 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
|