 |
different mass
i've missed your face
your bifurcated walk
the hope that lines your shoes
spills onto the pavement.
i'm following behind you.
you don't even notice the way
it leaks, leaving puddles
like isotopes melting snow.
depression is an abstract
kite hung
by a string, an anxious fluttering
atop birch branches
where your face mimics winter.
you've fooled everyone.
we thought you'd laugh when you saw
the way the tale went.
your Extraordinary Compendium of Mystical Magical Prayers
sara keeps trying to reach me,
she sends me letters
with my best wishes at heart,
with dire warnings, hopeful
messages
circumscribed by act now the window of time is short
only 29.95. time is short.
you tell me not to call you until i can accept
the fact
that’s it’s over. that’s why i’m writing you now,
sara says
i blew my chance at changing
my karma for the next seven years
but just as i reached my zenith
of despair, another message tells me
at least i can still find
love
and fortune because the next seven months
are full of opportunity
if i purchase
the magnetized
gold embossed lucky horseshoe to wear
around my neck
during these auspicious times.
the poem slips away koosh, it slips
away in the dance of the face
of the proton
thru the space god
provides for movement,
the dancehall cliche.
look at all the bright colors
...
the boys play outside my door.
you still go to tae kwon do? nickolas
the boy who got shot in the stomach
on accident-like
by his brother
asks my son. i answer
for him from behind
the computer screen
where i’ve been hiding, awaiting
my stars to move or the weather
to change. the soccer ball bounces
from their kicks
against the fingerpainted walls,
the childplastered hallways,
over the heads
of the haitan family’s bruised silence
below us.
i make them go outside.
it’s not right for a boy
to be so scared
of what’s out there.
...
the way
japanese writing
evolved verical like
the way internet
writing seems
to flow
most naturally,
the verticle
lips of
a wo
man
...
i can feel something
dangerous out there. sara says
she has mystical chants for me, magic
she can teach me a religion against
the vagaries of stolen cars , hijacked childhoods.
prayers to make someone love me again.
persistence
if the stars say
it's a mistake if the signs
say don't try, i say
you'd be a fool not to.
the sublimation of water into air--
rain falls and floods everywhere i go
i can't find the sun, even
when i go looking. like
thursday cindy and i took
our sons to ft. desoto
under protest--there's no video
games at the beach. only water and sun
and waves. well, at least
water and waves. big ones. we turned
north at the huge
flag that flaps on the ocean
wind,a postcard for america.
i wanted
to see all water
no land, no ships passing
through the channel
at the mouth of the bay.
north, even though we could plainly
see the black cloud
dissolving into the ocean. we passed it
and parked, walked the lagoon
toward the aquamarine
shining just off the barrier island,
a dream of the carribean.
it begins to sprinkle
as we step onto land again.
but the boys take the boogie
boards and surf in the rain that moves
over us like shadow. cindy and i
get wet without swimming, talk about
astrology, misunderstanding, human
behaviour, love. what it takes
what it gives what it means.
she tells me
"love is a dare
once you're in it, you can never
go back. write that down."
i go into the gulf to warm up, before
she comes in
cindy searches the surf
for sharks, a phobia. i figure
what are the chances?
really?
we look for sand dollars with toes.
find some, put them back. collect and discard
shells. the boys run
along the water like sandpipers, then disappear.
we smoke the weed, we drink the rum. the rain
stops and the sun weeps through the clouds.
the boys reappear look!!
c'mere!
c'mere!
we gotta show you!
so we get off our lazed out asses
and follow them to an algae
born slip n slide, a fixed skim board
on the lagoon from which the tide
has taken the water.
we slip skate scoot shoot across
the primordial mud
destruction and rebirth in our
slime covered feet.wwoooo hoooo!!!
the sun comes out
it feels like rain on my parched skin.
and i tell cindy aren't you glad we waited
out the storm?
i'm not defending kickin cats
my dad used to drown kittens, no metaphor.
we had a black female they
never fixed, kept havin litters under my dresser
and the kittens would mysteriously die
while we were at school. we'd come home
and no more little bundles of fur.
one day the momma was gone too. if you think
i'm enlightened you better think again.
i was raised in the deepest south
where niggers were something my dad made
a livin on, and eugenics was the only
science discussed. it's not like i'm proud of it.
it's not like i haven't spent my whole life trying
to wash off that stigmata. but blood runs
thick.
if i told you i had, in fact, more that once
kicked a cat, could you forgive me?
if i told you that sometimes the pressure
comes at you mean like a pregnant
thirteen year old down to the river
hunched over eating
the limestone chalk and beating
her belly, stickin driftwood up her cunt
cos her bones
need the calcium and her folks can't
even know she's with child, would you
maybe try to understand?
the world twists us all in the making
we pick on what's weaker
what won't strike back.
i've been reading the accursed share by bataille.
and i can understand this:
we can ignore or forget
the fact that the ground we live on
is little other than a field
of multiple destructions.
and i protest this, when i am not
beaten down by the petty things
that loneliness magnifies.
but sometimes the zen
comes from the left hand
and not the right.
birds)
jack wants to be remembered.
for wanting to be anonymously famous.
he already is,
or isn't--
depends on who opens the box.
it's summer again, air thick
with heat indices
and iowa corn sultry,
jorie's fingers on parenthesis
((over and over))
(sung hanging in air)
(clouds gambolling
on the drive home from work:
the afro-cuban man wades the sidewalk
his pepsi-co srtiped shirt, sideways hat,
back hunched against the heat
stride ( resigned to the walk)
a rosie!TM spring.
the 18 wheeler blocks traffic. it's cars and their
owners(you can't tell the ones who beat
their kids from the ones who don't) no room
for looking at the suntorn weeds that sprout
at the feet of the man standin
next to his broken down car. gotta move
foward an inch, so the the brunette
wiping thick mascara from her eyes
in the car behind can move foward an inch
and so on...
it's an old song, familiar in its out of tune
bongo way.
on the golf course are golfers.
sometimes at evening
when even the woman((wearing
a yellow shirt today))
who walks the perimeter daily,
looking for out-of-bounds
balls has collected them all
in her plastic egg carton or kmart
bag
(did it rain today? )
(which shall i need?)
has gone home,
a flock of flamingoes comes
to water. an incredibly pink
sight. but now traffic
trips and stutters through miss-timed traffic
wearing faces bipolared
in embarrassment or anger, depending on where
at the intersection they find them selves
when the light switches.
***
currently in shakey recovery from a cut n
chewed heart, listening to lauren hill &
radiohead, reading hayden carruth , silvia
curbello,salman rushdie, writing bad music and
hanging out in the trash,
throwing sand.
|
