....From The Tree Of..................Pain Around Us
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_______________________________________________________ Me and Yoko Sometimes my heart just cracks in half, and I feel stupid, standing with folks who're talking about Nascar or the price of gas, or what's good on T.V.- and all I see is a buttercup out of the corner of my eye- growing from a shoe, worn at the heels, thrown next to a garbage can. It's full of dirt and one stray, yellow bloom; there's not enough room I think, for all the yearning. Or I'll pass a row of low income houses, driving home from work and above the flash and batter of flowing, newer cars spun into streaks of neon blue or candy apple red, I'll spy in a fourth floor grimy window, gray with pollution, a child's solution to urban decay: a May of flowers. Loopy, hand-drawn tulips, and my own lip quivers with the unexpected grace; there's not enough space, I think for hope. And the radio plays dead Beatles- and I wonder, what is Yoko thinking? Perhaps, about a house-husband and what bright thing will crack the pane of an otherwise, ordinary day; does she stand looking at Central Park, and see balloons rise, catch a hurdy-gurdy playing sounds for everybody young and is that the thing, ......does it for her too? Futile Eight pound concrete block smashed through the windshield. Wasn't an act of God, was a kid who stood on a bridge and just for the helluvit, dropped it- mashed a woman's face for fun. Saturday, we watched the news as seven of the best got blown apart and filtered down as debris. They'd given everything, I wonder though for what... Dirge Body parts are falling over Texas; there is blood in the yolk. We camp under a Death Star and I feel all alone but up in space in a pocket of air in airlessness, three men listen to the small and steady beatinG of their hearts. It is a long long way to go to be a child again- waiting in the dark. Unspeakable Used to know a woman had a son-in-law crushed on the job. I think it was a giant press -not sure if it was a door, but it was metal, massive machinery with solid plate that closed up flush. I read about it in the paper, stricken all the more because I knew her and it mentioned the number of tons, the force- I knew she had an only daughter and a son-in-law; their marriage wouldn't have ended in divorce. They both were happy. I could hear it in her voice, when she would speak of them she lilted in a way that painted pictures of their family. Carol -her daughter and the son-in-law whose name I cannot bring myself to say, to this day. His ending was horrific. She was just a voice on the phone in any business day- now she is the mother of all sorrow and I cannot keep my mind from roaming back to when it happened, in that moment when each cell was jellied, bursting into one another, invading every seam and atomic particle of steel, without room or even time for a final ripped and bloody scream- were there patches left? A knuckle recognizable; a map of scalp and hair- I cannot think of it I don't know how she ever blinks it gone. Crushing Realization All the wars we've ever fought the ones who dropped at Concord and at Gettysburg were for naught; we're done for, drowned in biggie-sized cars and SuperBowls and teenie boppers posing with their ass cheeks out for Target or Calvin Klein. We're greedy, unregenerate, we're not worth it, probably never were, and I can't tell you just how very sad that makes me. Fallen Stars 39 years ago today, in Dallas. This is the way the world ended, stunned to silence like cows before the electric prod, our mouths open to catch the flies of dead president while at the same time we put pennies on the eyes of God; entered the age of video, could rent the death of each. The exploding head- .......and the one with the eyes, that no matter how many times the cock crows, won't stay dead. Under A Lamp, The Future Like a small, sharp crescent moon, when I came down the stairs this morning, there it was on mom's old turntable stereo that's big as a coffin; kind you just don't see anymore. Beneath the lamp it lay as I reached, groggyheaded, turned the lamp switch on and saw the bloodied end; dried and brown with having lived in gum. Didn't know if it was claw or tooth. Two cats, but I knew which one lost it- my old tom- the one who's thirteen now, the first one, one I always fear I'll find curled up in customary neatness, having fastidiously died alone- at night and walls will fly away from me to make the house seem twice as big and empty. It was his tooth, I was sure but didn't check it, didn't want to know till after work when I could face it; face that he had probably tried to leap up on the stereo and old, stiff hips prevented it. I see him whack his upper jaw as he slides down; stunned and minus one proud fang. Licking at the tangy taste, slinking off to puzzle at the space where his youth, his edge used to be. I have a few teeth missing now as well; we both grow old. Perhaps I'll take the fang and have the dentist make of it an implant; there's a space where my incisor abcessed; losing him as well one day I'll have his little razor moon in my mouth- and when I smile, everyone will check their calendars to see if it's the phase -to see if I am changing, and of course, I will be both of us. Full Circle Stan Rice is dead. Poet star of blackhole burning bright, the shriek of skin flayed loss, the daughterless father, reaching across the webwork world of cannulas and doctors, walker of the cold tiled floors, corridors where loss is a bed of sweat-soaked sheets, the child who filled them, flown to prepare a place for him- sat bigheaded at the right hand of the God who ate His fill, but in His terrible hunger and His ravening, wanted Stan still. Anne O, Anne- they are in the wind if you are listening. No News Is Mother, four children die in Christmas fire. Pentagon mobilizes troops for war with Iraq, I reel; the news is never good. The bad stuff bubbles up like gases in a swamp - the green, gangrenous green of rotting, we are tumbling faster than I thought but Black Mack struts. The crow that harbingers flood and dangers from the sky who is my buddy, only I see- when he dances one foot up, one down, then it's a toss up what will be, que sera sera. He helps me keep my heart in. Mysterious Ways Black buggy plodding, horse's hooves clip clopping on the macadam, an Amish family riding through an alien time zone; nowhere in this century of instant everything does it seem possible there's someplace slow, taking time to breathe; to feel the separation of work and sleep. Every moment God's- even the one that brought the drunken English careening in his truck. He struck them hard. Mother and two little daughters, bonnets tied and bloody, flung from wooden buckboard seats. Another clump of bluebells, another blackened patch just like the lichen on the rocks; part of the goodness of God, not proud -but being where and what He wanted. The driver walked away without a scratch. Another Amish family in the mountains of Pennsylvania, had a six year old son struck down along Route 40; his family said no to the insurance money police ruled it an accident the father took his broken son into his arms and carried him home. Acceptance is the quietest, bravest ............saddest part of valor. On To Page 3 .............. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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