Out of balance, balance pulse... again Balance, out of balance pulse... again
She alone can hear me
It’s my question… Brazen, in the night
Sea waves push gentle to the sand and pull you, tender their strength over anguish…to me
To touch, to yearn To touch
Menace in the night… Kisses in the night
Sea waves to sand…this balance, balance... to touch
Only she can hear me
Asking
-December 25, 2008-
If he never breaks bread alone
If hate never tears at his heart
If he never cries out in the midnight hours
then he doesn’t know you—
you indifferent, oblique, contemptible
heavenly powers
She came straight from that dream to tell me she’d always been a liar
He who knows he burns burns in a very small fire
At the start of the year I laugh, eat, drink and smoke I collapse on the living room floor like a corpse
“The marvelous things of this earth are divine” Why do we say that? “I never say that”
My everyday objects—distilled and in disarray Visceral compassion—listen, we want to be understood— Really listen
Economy is grace— like the certainties of another age The truly silent stay silent, uncertain, even when they have something to say True love (the unreachable) steeped in our flesh
Faint is the flame that words express
-November 27, 2008-
As leaves dry and die their colors get more passionate As we die too how great the depths of color fall upon our days savage, more brilliant, lavish, grave
Anger needs a place to go Like love, don’t expect it to stay It needs sound and swagger something grand to burn strong, bitter, mercurial flames
Stripped from the trees like memory wild gradations of color
Love dims, love dies love leaves this life
Here are my turtle days My feet, hands, face exposed But the rest of me seems safe
Without secrets nothing is possible— neither friendship, nor love
Placid on the surface below everything shatters Though this life is so perfectly normal all the core vessels break
-November 9, 2008-
They say the Gypsies know my future Maybe so—scars and demons own my past
I will yearn for you always My lover, my double, my friend
During the war, a fierce forest leader— After the war, he drives a cab
They lead them away, blindfolded, my brothers They shoot them in the back
So few miracles her So much agony
Why do my enemies always win? Why do they win?
Words of healing that don’t heal Optimistic visions that don’t gel
Everything I care about, taken From the most trivial to the most profound
Wistful for what was… My dear one, my double, my love
Agony sags, it pulls It has no neutral face
-October 9, 2008-
Fighters aren’t always pretty
White hot anger
White hot heat
shame, frustration, dread—
We fighters lose far more than we win
on a battlefield of wishful thinking, enemies,
humiliations, shadows, defeat
Each clock can only keep its own time
Even without the tests she knew the pain in her hip meant the cancer had spread
Despite all the brilliance, experience, knowledge, clout we lose
Some spiritual course, never written down
It’s the nature of grief to think your pain deeper, longer, more sustained
Who teaches us how to be alone
Where is the caring presence
Who recognizes the bleak terrors
the long, dark nights of despair that shadow
this life
Where is our rescue
Defiance hot as love
She reaches across the terrains of hell
to tell me her tale
brain cancer, surgery, how she learned
at last, once more to walk
She touched my cheek, gentle, this angel
smiled, so happy to see everyone again
-September 14, 2008-
Love has no beginning
knows no end
it’s subterranean
Everywhere I go
everywhere I’ve been—
at best, I’m a guest
Gentle wind flows the grey rain mists the great green tree sways gently in the rain
She loved me false— like the mosquito loves the arm of her host the way tapeworms might love my stomach
-September 1, 2008-
When a little over seven, he shouted into the intercom at the building where he lived They could barely hear him through all the distortion Something about a toothache and a friend who told him about a dentist and a purple essence that when applied to the mouth would cure him
These are secrets we keep even from ourselves
Jeanne used to say: “You know, I think I’ll keep my own counsel on that” until Alzheimer’s chewed her brain with all of its secrets away
Our names are written in water
An old cousin while taking a pill for some kind of chronic heartburn explained:
“You’re born with it you’ll die with it but not of it”
I could never bring anyone into this world but always try to take care of those I care for
I think I’ll keep my own counsel…
Through all of that shouting
through all that distortion
please tell me again—
What kind of cure?
-August 9, 2008-
Early sunny air a narrow little park no one else is there and I’m just passing through
Pink and orange flowers, birdsongs, insects gradations of green in the bushes and trees, a gray muscular squirrel stops, stares concrete tables, a few scavenger pigeons wooden park chairs painted green tufts of light green grass, brown dirt, grayish stones a soft little wind, swaying leaves
Don’t be afraid—
those playing cards scattered on the ground
are just the remnants of the game
Time moves on but nothing ever passes No one is touching me now
I am lost for the moment but then— I gave it everything I had
-July 27, 2008-
When I closed my eyes to rest and dream, a stark little narrative came to me:
pale eager naiveté
stale dry violets
specks of dust
a mercurial dull frenzy
brutish movements, nameless souls
hammer blow pity
sickly, useless
a muscled little sprite, vicious
her wrinkled olive skin and
dry butterscotch hair
happy, horrific birdsongs
humid morning air
So much of life’s pleasure followed, of course, by so much despair
When the master baker bakes his last how does he know and who does he ask?
-July 13, 2008-
We are encased in our own minds tightly wound, spun snug in a cloying cocoon
Fiery waters, wet stagnant air summer thunder There are no predecessors in love, no successors He stares at the rushing cascades rain, violence, greenery
Whenever I break through I know how to fly with the moon
This searing flight comes freely like a wild link from heaven In the coarsest of dreams, in all of that damage you kissed me
-June 29, 2008-