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I want the
whole world
to dedicate just
one
day a year
or maybe
even just
one hour
to
gentleness to tenderness
that nothing
but calm
and sitting
down quietly
happen as a
universal gesture
for a given
period of time
between
faiths and dispositions
just a small
signal
or red flag
as they say
that we have
not forgotten
our original
unsinful purpose
when we left
our home so long ago
Like the
blank bedroom
of an abused
child
all the toys
broken
the earth
stands there
bracing for
the next blow
the stinging
necessary to it
the
requisite pain of learning
to despise
your own body
and having
no one believe you
and having
to spend your life
trying to
decide between hate
and fear and
love
having been
taken at the gate
having been ruined
from above
having to
fight for your life
We only want
out of a poem
what we want
out of a person
some wit a
structure a good heart
like a tall
stack of war books
trying to relax perched on
the rocking-chair we want love
to topple
into our arms
even as we
add more books
and gape out
the window
at two new
blooms a silky yellow
and an
apricot orgasm
quietly
expiring in the yard
for which I
would willingly
exchange my
soul
After a long
rain I love
to walk out
among our
green friends
they look
so
serene and satisfied
and their
patience
still
astonishes me when I notice
how they
keep
waiting and waiting
for us to shut up
because here
for a few
hours you can really
feel how
matter
works back
into spirit land
for a little
while the
door is left open
between them
and you can
pause on the threshold
loving both
as
everything evaporates
“I’m forever
blowing bubbles”
is a song
that is almost one hundred
years old
recorded by almost every
artist even up
to the era of punk rock
which is
interesting because
we’ve all
ended up in our own
bubbles and
that’s just the mickey
of it we
face going forward
in this new
century which doesn’t
have to be a
mirror image of
the last war’s
proof of
the futility
of all wars
which even
when they’re won
are guaranteed
to come undone
every day
the amount of love
in the world
somehow must
succeed in
being just enough
to hold it
all together
What is true
of all
must be true
of each one
and yet what
is true of one
is not true
for all
even though
there are only
a certain
number of moods
and a fixed
number of perspectives
which have
to be married together
slept with
for your life a night with
an attitude
at least as conscious as a gun
and then
each will graduate
through all
the schools of emotion
and the long
summers of reflection
without
being troubled even once
by the
illusion of loss or death
Always after
writing
I want to say
thank you
to be polite
and honest
about it I
am in receipt
of your
feast and I am
aware of how
much
you want
suffering
to mean
something
worthy of
its effort
how either
it does or
doesn’t
involve rising
from the
dead body
of oneself
into the
next
possible option but
may I please
have another
The waves
are the wind’s footprints
the spirit
is always walking on the water
I could feel
that in the underground
whirling
through the tunnels
we are so
fond and proud of
you Egypt
may have your pyramids
and you Rome
your Greek imitations
but we take
the subterranean route
though you
may also have noticed
those planes
flying out over the harbor
to join the
spirit who is always
walking on
the water
he is coming
out of an immense
longing
which looks like a fogbank
but you can
smell the land
and the
warmth of a million bodies
carried out
like treasure
over the
sparkling water
To the
extent that one can imagine
a coherent
spiritual world interwoven
with this
temporal physical one
in which an
equal and opposite
attraction
is being worked out
one
recognizes nothing is random
there are no
loose threads
when
suddenly there’s a man
in the sky
sorry to sneak
up on you
from the opposite roof
at first I
thought he was flying
or falling
but he just hung there
to show he
could be what seemed
neither of
heaven nor of earth
Between love
and memory
I chose love
because memory
is mostly about
me and what’s past
while love
is so about you
and the
future which is timeless
but that’s
like saying I prefer
the
inhalation to the exhalation
or the air
to the breathe
I remember I
love you
I love to
remember this
finally I
can breath
I can bring
the love in gently
and hold it
for a moment
then breath
it out
let it go
and be myself again
The great
upper gods
the gods of
summer who seek
to carry us
up with the sun over
the wide
beaches and rivers
into the
starry realms
of
bodhisattvas and saints
to receive
our attentive thoughts
and
heartfelt gratitude there
welcome
every year fewer
and fewer
student-devotees
there is a
silence in heaven
when the sun
rises to acknowledge
the empty
thoughts of half of humankind
while the
other half is still fast asleep
The heart of
any art is the heart simply
even science
was born there
though he
long ago moved to the city
but if you
have a heart
you have an
art you are an artist
and since
everyone has a pen
and a piece
of paper
but not
everyone
has a
trombone
or canvas
and oils
poems
proliferate
while
sonatas for the
trombone and
galleries
of
masterpieces languish
but the poem
dwells
in the
possibility of surprise
in the land
of everyone
known now as
heart
discarded
heart
writing
itself down
as if on
stone
The way she
creeps back
to her lover
and the ways
she finds to
wrap herself
around his
feet are ways
this stray
cat and I share
to succumb
to love
without
losing effect
what if
instead of love
we said
color I color you
and you
color me
or we said
instead of hate
I take my
color back
I erase from
you my color
you have
uncolored me
Who wants to
be an echo
of someone
else that chair
is taken sit
on your own
foundations
that much is clear
and yet to
forget
even for a
few seconds
how
outmastered you are
by
everything around you
brings you
into the greatest danger
any soul can
face
that it too
can die
and follow
the body
back to the
cave of beginning
and not go
on
and never
learn to fly
The
pearl city is on the other side
but we must
re-make the connection
how have we
lost the connection
becomes the surviving
question
obviously we
have and haven’t
argued for
it among flowers
and an
artificial creek
where do you
locate the spirit
in the 21st
century if not
where it has
always been
present if
unaccounted for
roaming the
streets of the world
observing
and nudging
harvesting
with its great heart
all that
tears us apart
I drink to
the full moon
my spoonful
of medicine
he too is
terminal
opalescent tumor
rising and
falling
how you rock
within me
moon-death
as if I was carrying
another life
inside me
to be carved
and molded
each
yearning appendage
given its
dosage of touch
its taste
for the bitter truth
but not too
much
With all my
love
I lost
everything
which was
nothing
compared to
losing you
would that
it could
sustain you
my loss
not just
include you
in the list
of household items
there was a
moment
as there is
always a moment
when it could
all
have been
contained
like a
little fire in a forest
abandoned to
its flames
by
morning nothing remained
It’s so hot
I think I must be
reprising a
few lifetimes ago
my years as
a stone hermit
out behind a
pyramid
in the
mirages of some desert
I do
remember and appreciate
many lives
spent as slave labor
which has
only changed its name
and moved to
a different neighborhood
but must we
all not recapitulate
every prior
learning in order
to step
rightly into the future
and working
over and over again
on the same
materials and forms
finally be
able to begin
On the
return journey
from the
land of the gods
and good
ideas he
the
beautiful swimmer
brought back
hidden
in his one
pocket
a few small
stones
he had
secretly
stashed
there
arguing
quietly to
himself it
can’t
be a crime
to steal
from heaven
as if they
didn’t know
and let him
pass
Any bird
with a brain
has already
blown this burg
when it get
to triple digits
but I sit
here and resist it
just to
watch the hollyhock expire
in a
denouement of poses
like someone
on fire
actually
five stalks like roses
who stare at
me kindly
like martyrs
on a pyre
I too am
fire
and repeat
myself
each flame a
flower
and send
forth my wail
in the
burning hour
Often very
deftly the good
thing is
brought forward
despite the
tyrannical out-pourings
though it
looks like death
blood
dripping from his head
OK someone
says I’ll die for that
and promptly
shows us how
the world’s
a traveling coliseum
with its
vast underground chambers
its silent
mechanisms lifting the lions
and the saints
at opposite ends
of a beautiful
Saturday afternoon
how many
times have I died already
just trying
to reassure you yes
in the end
the evil one dies
Until you
get to the sky
it’s all
edges flat or sharp
but that’s
only if it’s a clear
and spotless
deep blue day
such as
hardly occurs anymore
we long ago
lost the night stars
twinkling
down to a few shards
but I do
remember though I may be
the last to
blurt it out when the blue
of the sky
was so blinding
so
aquamarine so intelligent
and calming
so Greco-Roman
we could
only lie speechless
on roaring
phosphorescent beaches
while behind
us ancient cities whirled
How after
falling into deep shit
can you
still not understand
God or the
gods or your Aunt Tillie
or after
falling in love
I did not
say ‘comprehend’
but more
like passionate
compassion
for the position
all lives
aspire to cautionary status
even if only
to teach us a lesson
for example
a leaf hopped just now
from a
branch to the ground a flight
I thought
was a bird’s and felt
how it made
me feel
then seeing it
was really a leaf
and dead and
heard
not mine its
laugh
A little
incoherence
does not go
far enough
but it must
encounter
a little
luminescence
in the damp
nights
over the
riverbed and between
the two
maples’ concupiscence
where new
words coalesce
out of
sidewalk blood stains
washed away
by poison rains
which
multiply and spread
until living
becomes the new dead
and yet and
still you work on
letting the
slow tissue of love
stitch up
the wound of a new dawn
What if the
bones we excavate
and the
mummies we unravel
are really
us that day and night
on the river
remember the colors
and yet we
return to a pile
of stones
clever as a pyramid
once
bordering the Nile
now just a
desecrated tomb
smelling of
human excrement
we want to
dig them up
so we can
lock them in cabinets
put them on
display to say
how far
we’ve come
we hardly
recognize you
barely know
how far
from your
great heights
we’ve
slipped away
What the
moon does
is act as a
kind of shield
or collector
or shell
or cup whose
idea
is to hold
certain thoughts
sacred in
the overall
algorithm of
your face
which does
not so much compute
as aggregate
in the substance
of beauty
untried untested
what we see
in the moon
is our own
ripe innocence
one silver
drop at a time
like a
leaking faucet
falling into
the oceans
of the sun
selah
I will have
to get
down on my
hands and knees
to reach all
the dust
under the
old wardrobe
I will have
to get
up on a
ladder
to scrape the
grime
from the
high windows
I will have
to get
help to
rebuild
the
northwest corner
of the
crumbling foundation
of the
dim cottage of memory
out there on
the abandoned road
lilacs
coming up through the floor
In a few
seconds
we will die
and
in a few
more seconds
we will be
born again
at least it
will seem
that way
pre-consciously
at two an
alligator
will drag
our body
back to its
lair
at nine
leukemia
at fifteen
drowning
at
twenty-one drunk driving
at
thirty-five suicide
at forty-eight
illuminations
followed by
death by insomnia
it only
takes nineteen days
we have carefully
designed
an evolution
of suffering
cruelty and
fear
so in a few
more seconds
hypothetically
speaking
we could reverse
it all
Now the ruddy
face of the old woman
who lives in
the pomegranate tree
appears
every day sun permitting
at exactly 3:48
in the afternoon
she looks
like she’s dreaming
but when you
take her picture
she slides
in among the shadows
of branches
on the opposite wall
where a
window opens by itself
both to
receive and to release
her
now-floating face intently
building
this year’s pomegranates
which right
now look more like
green as Granny Smith baseballs
but maybe when
we’ve grown
and lost as
many lives as she has
we’ll know how
to float like her
how to conjure
from a stone a seed
It breaks
all our minds
and hearts
the terrible
suffering in
the world
and I think
most of life
is spent
trying to keep
that
awareness at bay
but not to
be instructed
by it and to
waste
every drop
of blood
in regret and
remorse
seems
infinitely worse
we are only
what we intend to do now
not what we
have or have not done
in memory we
see where we’ve come
useful if
you know where you’re going
or not if
not
Why is Frank
always exuberant
and Wallace
always triumphant
and Willie
always exultant
and Walt
always protuberant
the mood
delineates the personality
but why is
Sylvia always chthonic
and Marianne
always pre-colonic
and
Elizabeth always architectonic
and Emily
always a cosmic tonic
the mood
transcends the personality
but why is
Cal always intellectual
and Ashes
always ineffectual
and Wystan
always unconventional
and Jimmy
always supersensible
but William
is perpetual
Pursued by
cognitive arrows
I mean
hungry sparrows
darts thrown
at the target
of the heart
of the day
but missing
somehow
endlessly
thrown
and
relentlessly missing
but then one
gets through
right
through the heart of the day
sparkles can
a sparrow
be said to
sparkle
the day was
speechless
and
apparently
and not
without sorrow
I was the
only witness
Impertinent
inequities of the seigneur
ravished out
behind the plaintive dumpster
stink like
Martha said Lazarus would
though you
have hurried restless star
almost all
the way a mere two miles
to find him
wrapped in swaddling
clothes for
his re-birth among smiles
and tears of
his sisters clinging
but there’s
another mystery here
that breaks
my heart whenever I read
you wept hearing
he was dead
why would
you weep knowing his death
was something
you could easily end
except you
loved him and knew in dying
how alone and
frightened he had been
Here for us
sadly everything
is damped
down
by what
rises
from below
working on
what falls
from above
one is
trying
to overcome
the other
and we
result
wherever it
persists not
as opposition
but as trust
