Multiple Regression

In my dream my analyst was listening to me describe a dream I said I'd had a week earlier. In my dream's dream  I broke a raw egg on the head of my dog to make him stop barking. Suddenly my analyst interrupted my story because he wanted to tell me something he'd been keeping from me.

"How is this possible?" I asked. "You're not listening, you're talking."

"Fascinating," said my analyst. "I wanted to tell you I know some things about myself."

"Is this still analysis?"  I wondered out loud.

"Where?" said my analyst.

"By the candle there," I said.

"I see."

I was afraid to go on, not knowing what to dream next. But the dream went on ahead anyway, having gathered the past in a weightless satchel. We like to say a "body" of knowledge. This was a "body" of impressions. The dream felt softly elongated, a long dark sleeveless coat, already buttoned.

from Vermeer

"Passing through walls hurts human beings, they get sick from
it,
but we have no choice.
It’s all one world. Now to the walls.
The walls are a part of you.
One either knows that, or one doesn’t; but it’s the same for
everyone
except for small children. There aren’t any walls for them.

The airy sky has taken its place leaning against the wall.
It is like a prayer to what is empty.
And what is empty turns its face to us
and whispers:
“I am not empty, I am open."
— Tomas Tranströmer, from “Vermeer”, translated by Robert Bly

I love Transtromer. Lifted from a blog http://growing-orbits.tumblr.com/ 

Now/Dwelling

Now there is a clock that tells time
but it is not the way time was told.
Now we use the word "system" to
describe the erotic.
Now the difference between waking
and sleeping is a political issue.
Now the Department of Oneirics
is open for business.
Now travel has been extinguished
like a cigarette.
Now I hold something in my hand
called Guidance. It notices every
thing I do or say. So I review...
Now I am waiting in the rain under
a Halo for transpo.
Now where I want to be comes to me.
Now I realize I have been holding my
eyes in a certain way to receive light.
Now earlier I noticed dark mountains
in the distance.
Now they cast a long shadow across
my backyard.
Now I smell pine here in the foothills.
Now no one has to remember the thoughts
they thought while reading a book.
Now memory is transported to places
along the way. Under stones, the sheen
on water, the hollow of a tree.
Now I pass these places, remembering
others' thoughts.
Now I don't remember.
I just dwell.

Ramble On

In a long and cogent editorial yesterday, George Will came out forcefully in agreement with Mitt Romney's campaign statement that jelly should be applied before the peanut butter in making the national sandwich. Although Will is a crunchy fan and Romney is creamy he said that the basis of Romney's philosophy is firmly in line with his.

Hearing Her Voice

We are descending now,
Gilbert chemistry in hand,

erector dysfunction shining,

all this squirreliness, all this calculus.

We will make it remind us of us.

The moment we see the other will be

the moment of helpless compression.

Alas, we cannot make it.

Nor can we catch a wind sample,

the one that would carry the note from Mother.

The transmission of sound has not landed.

If Mother had learned sign what would she tell us?

Would she smile and with a look of utmost compassion,

transmit, "welcome"?

Or would this emptiness signal a baffling,  gestures

that no logarithmic concern, no amount of sifting

would ever solve? Meanwhile the hopeful screen,

like the court artist, renders a quiet rebus of the unseen.

Noted but not accepted.

Revelation

It was just such a sensation that the president spoke of
on television.
It was not the feeling that comes from the blush of
a bruised finger.
It was not the empathy I felt for the president as he
paused and said "excuse me," like he had lost his
train of thought.

With a key I washed my face in a bright blue hydrant
and brushed my teeth in a park drinking fountain.
Maybe it is like forgetting the name of an actor, where
I will wait for a clue, a pantomime, a cue.

In the middle of the city there is an orchard of apple trees.
I began to pluck one when another fell. I was left motionless,
arm extended.  What I felt reminded me of what the president
was trying to say. I feel close to the president for his having
said that.

There is a curvature to language in just such a way
 as it may appear that we stand on flat land.
Just such a way as the immensity of thought continues
to roll towards us,  rising in such brightness.
Here comes the sun. Right?

Questions Regarding Lost and Found

All of this is ending, right here, now. We are seeing ourselves seeing ourselves in others.

In line at the lost and found people chatted with each other. It was a long line that didn't seem to be moving. In front three people took turns speaking to the woman in the window.The rest of us watched, as they took multiple turns expressing themselves. After a while it was clear to many of us that they had not been satisfied. Disappointment was followed by forgetfulness and a return to the window seeking what appeared to be lost. I saw myself finally at the window. Over my shoulder the line still reached the door. Now there were two people in front of me that I had gotten to know while we waited. We all agreed we would not hold up the line with endless returning, returns that seemed to bring fresh questions. Now I faced the woman in the window as the man who had just inquired stepped behind me.
"What are you looking for?" I asked.

Water Hazard

The view screen seems to supply the ground 

for a ball that hangs there much too long.

Somewhere in a fairway, collar up,

you look up, check the distance while

forgetting where you are standing.

There are no bridges over hazards,

only the determination to project

a vision that when acted out

will produce clearance.

Extraneous factors,

like the wind, 

a song in a tree, or

like the tree itself,

where the song softly

rains down on you,

can go unnoticed if you

keep your head down

and follow through.

You are in a moment

of your own making,

aren't you?

But once you strike,

once you set it in

motion, hands unimagined

come into play.

The flight will be

predictable, and

possibly not true.

There is a pause,

right there where

you are watching.

Ahead in the distance

lies the embedded

dark pool of water.

Do you remember?

You created it

for yourself.

In the Heart of the Country of Closed Palms

She decides to turn left.
The oncoming car never slows
It's that close.
What are we,  I wonder,
Guided by voices, wires,
Devices, maybe cunning,
Here in the age of forgiving/unforgiving?

They say a door of a Saturn is forgiving
While glass protects a Toltec bowl
From itself.

Buildings fall, statements flutter
And still
We are like two people riding
The back of an ass.
One of us has got to go.
Even as the spikey branches fall,
And people wave in recognition.
Even as we wave back,
One of us must go.

But it's not very far now
Why not pass the time
In idle conversation
Your head resting
Against my back,
Your heart beating
Behind mine.

Collider

I can't judge blueness or
a ring of air on a stone
finger.  Everything we
know is in the ring. Nothing
we know is in the ring.
I break open a walnut
with an ornate silver
cracker. Inside is a tree
that I can eat. Does the
creative occur upon breaking
or is it in joining?
Two tigers chase each other
around a palm tree until
they become butter. Still
I can eat this. The smallest
thing I know is a thought.
But then it sleeps and I
can't be certain. Where is
something I read? Principles
come together. Rain falls
into leaves and becomes
applause. I forget something
and push my way back
down the escalator. All the
while there is still rising.
Where is that first moment
for me? It is not anywhere
and yet I keep showing up
everywhere.

Noticing What is not There

You are driving somewhere,
you see the road moving toward you.
You look up, a small sighting shows
you the road moving away from you.
Under you it passes, unnoticed.
You sit still thinking of coffee and love,
the long past, the short, clipped now,
and how the future reaches out to the past,
the two hugging the now like a teddy bear, a lover.
Today it is like a clump, all of it.
Biographical speed is reflexive, an accelerant
in the kingdom of what I feel.

The word designation arises.
I could call it a current, that unnoticed feeling.
But now I am just guessing. I don't know.
Let's call it false truth.
I am designating again.
My elbow is on the open window.
I am at rest while the car moves.
Now I am thinking of a field,
green prairie grasses, still.
Something is moving the grasses.
There is nothing to see but movement.
There is nothing to hear but movement.
I notice wind.
It comes like apparel, like the emperor's new clothes.
Each thing stands up for the next thing.
Sort of like peeling an onion.
Only I will stop now, just short of the center.
It caresses soul, this letting.
It allows me to imagine the center.
Now soul pushes gently against this,
this bright nothing.

Along the side of the road
a hot mouthed grackle pleads.
I am just passing.

Young Crows Practice their Floating

Elicit wire against blue sky.
Below, empty orange pronged
parking spaces are not earth;
None of us were born in this.
Let the wire be unknown.
Then crows float without flutter.
Let the wire be common perception.
The mind settles.
Across, a woman wearing bread crust
colored legs, rounds a Honda.
Now four young crows snark, float.
The wire arises in here, creasing the sky.
People pass, dying in their bright-colored
chrome cars. Lonely tinted interiors,
unnecessary empty seats.
Further ahead when the wire is gone
there are no crows.
Every moment is like this.
Every moment is like this.
Call it standard, call it a function,
only a function of what you need.
Solicit sky behind wire.

The Conveyance of Light

It is stubborn, the light,
as it seeks to arise just
to the left of their dark ties.
There are things between them,
just as there are things between us.
Each thing is like a grocery-really.
It may be something we will take
to stay alive, but later it may
contribute to our demise.
Grapefruit, sugar smacks, asparagus.
a can of string beans, biaxin.
But for the two men, these things
of value sit behind the heart,
slightly out of view.
I long for one moment of understanding.
It would be a moment of complete silence,
a moment when the hearts would bow,
and there, coming into view, would be
the things themselves, unrepresented.
No opinions, nor analysis,
no sense of something following.
A seating.

A tall silver haired dark skinned man
would look out at us with this commentary:
"This is how we learn."

The Alteration

Self-regulation is widespread.

But there is no exemption for

what happens when we notice it.

Consciousness is a soft thumb,

the subtlest of pressures, that

alters everything; no thing is

not touched by this tiny bushwack.

Now the word on the street is

alteration.

In town a local deli is connected to a

small bar.  I remember the two spaces

as a tailor shop. One touch remains as

a reminder. Over the doorway that connects

the bar to the deli is a sign that reads:

"Alterations within."

In a local dream someone showed me

a photograph of the moment when

sleep finally connected to wakefulness.

As from a newsreel a voice said it was

the greatest achievement in our history.

The photo showed two pieces of half-eaten

fruit. "What's this?" I heard myself say.

"You just missed the two parrots," said the voice.

The devil is in the thought

I watch the L passing. It is late.

Faces roll by, streaming, back-lit.

It is early, someone is buttoning my shirt.

The L is passing through my mind.

Aspects of the body click and brighten,

dim and damper.

"My heart is thinking," I hear myself say.

Nearby a bee is settling, a thimble of radiance.

Across the street a brick building climbs,

carrying the sun to its crown.

The sun is in vantage, pouring down,

reciprocating the last moment.

In the distance, some time, some place,

deep in the green,

a small naked woman holds a blue plastic box.

She knows a tiny person dwells within.

She has heard his voice, his music.

I brush my teeth, unable to reach any of this.

This is all so tentative, full.

This is all so contingent, empty.

Walk with me awhile.

The Entourage

They moved through sepia

thoughtless, but thoughtful

enough to regard each other.

The brown world was like gravy,

a reminder of the taste

of something good.

Out ahead of them the

black and whiteness

moved toward them.

Overhead, sound moved

silently, encrypted.

They had begun to

receive the invisible.

The Entourage confessed to no one

in particular, they did not care

how this was happening.

Desire spread, inflamed by color.

Investigations were made.

They would get back to everyone.

Still it came on, looking more

and more like the surface of water,

the turbulence making sense.

I was washing the windows

when I noticed the tiniest of

dry insects caught in the screens.

Across the room was another screen.

The Entourage moved across it

In the lead she carried

a rhinestone briefcase.

The Contraceptive Bird

It was blue like a bunting

and it fit the pattern

of a dream.

Color let loose

looking a lot  like

a bird.

But this dream

switched things

I was used to.

The eggs were leaf green.

Not laid,

formed by the

space around them.

Pressure and a reliance

on color.

Small weather came up

around the eggs,

coaxing them open.

Inside, what I could not see

emerged and flew to

the sky's blue hand.

I remember

it looked

a lot like a bird.

ROMNEY TAKES THE OFFENSIVE AGAIN!

Republican Presidential hopelessful, Mitt Romney, today said that the Obama administration has hurt any chances the Chicago Cubs may have to reach the playoffs by not providing them with a portfolio of runs. "Times are tough", said Romney, "and I understand people's desire for insurance, for peace of mind." Romney failed to provide an answer as to just how this administration would provide insurance runs for a major league baseball team. "You'll have to take that up with Mr Obama," smiled the Republican's all but certain nominee.

Surrender

It will never be safe, the

coming out of this hole,

this body. Everything in

this world is this body. Smell

what we have made. The rest

seeks audience with us. The

hornet looks for love along my

arm. The sun smiles down on me.

But really the yellow jacket just

senses water and the Great

Orb has another appointment.

This body is not central-

light and water swirled into

a labeled labyrinth.

Check the seating chart.

Press the new foot.

The body begins as one

language reaching for its

bilingual nature, searching

for a translation, longing

for a translator.

The wonder of this body is:

when you clap one hand a

light goes on, two, it goes off.

The Launch

Prologue

The message told us to be still,
to wait and watch
like we never had before.
Each day was the last sun
we would see.
Many of us could not carry a story
the way birds do.
Many of us could not carry a sentence
the way the past did.

l

The bird is on the fence now.
I want to know the truth,
how we lost our ability to speak.
I wait and watch.

ll

I have listened.
Now I can fly.
Each flight begins with a jump.
This was helpful.

lll

The way we speak became twisted.
It broke into pieces, unspeakable now.
Only sign and expression remain.
Eyes and encounter.
Dance and embrace.
Handshake, kiss, wink.

lV

The tower rose like the beanstalk,
disappearing into the clouds.
Somewhere above,
a nest in a tree.

Epilogue

An act of kindness:

How could I tell her the sun
would melt the ice cream?
The shadow changed.
Only the cone was left.
In the shadow she
placed it on her head.
A party hat, a tiny dunce.

Mitten( German) in the Middle

I was borne and raised up in here.
My name comes from the shape of this great state.
I love being Michigan. What? I said I love being in Michigan.
Everyone seems alright here. I mean everything seems
right here in front of me.
You all know I am coming back to Michigan now
where trees are the best, no, the right height.
The grass is the right color right now.
I used to color it as a child.
It won't always be like that.
But I feel right.
I mean it just feels right about all sorts of things.
Some of the parts of Michigan have dots of lakes,
lots of lakes, like the great lake.
I love them all.
They are inland.
Sometimes I've been to Massachusetts
where I love the ocean.
I love all the oceans everywhere.
But lakes don't get salt on you after swimming,
and there's no seaweed on you,
and lakes do not let you worry about
things eating you in them.
Thank you. It's good to have a home.

Truancy

If I stepped out while you were

talking but remained on my perch-

If in the midst of making love

the color of a particular kind of jade

called me, urged me(to look away)-

If everyone who walked on their toes

or wore chartreuse while riding a bike

or took down the sanctity like a big tent

distracted me from this moment

that has passed-

If for every classroom where I sat in the rear

and thought about the next thing

and wrote about the desire to play

or just did that

and counted them by fives-

If I missed your dark eyes improvising

because I was watching your mouth bake words

but the words were lost or eaten before I could taste them

because your eyes flagged me down and there

at each still point in this oscillation

I found myself-

If he tried his best to tell me everything

he wanted me to know and then he passed

and I had not gotten what I wanted

but finally stopped looking somewhere else-

Melancholia and the Age of Varnish

The small car, the crash,

the back flip she did

on impact,

into the rear of a carraige

on a country road, where a

vague wave of red sadness

came over her

on that day in that year.

He pushed forward, more a follow through,

into water, dark, blue, without chill,

where he waited, shining, moonlit,

at the bottom of the lake.

He saw it as a problem to solve-

She saw nothing, just a feeling

of what happens.

Nothing in her life acted as a clue.

He lay in a deerbed of sea oats, hearing

the title of this poem in his head.

He walked along side her as she spoke

the words, "varnish a little coat of."

"Vanish was the new word," he thought,

at the bottom of the pond.  "Vanish

will be a wipe, an artificial moment

of doubt, the veneer on the next worry."

Down the path from the pond,

beyond the parked small car,

they lay together in a

small pine grove, listening

to trees trusting the wind.

In the distance great white

windmills articulated the

answer in sway that kept coming-

neither this way nor that-

just in arc.

The Imagination of the Body

Why would I carry a piece of dark,

red, cherry wood a long distance,

just to show someone it exists?

I washed up on shore, a calendar of tides,

pushing and rolling me, a message in a body.

No address, no phone, just a sunset sitting

warmly on my tongue. I couldn't quite say it.

Then it set. I slept. I turned. I went down.

Transits shifted. The moon birthed more stars.

The sun rose out of the earth.

The mother and her children scattered.

In the morning those that listened

began quietly dismantling their cars,

in search of life therein.

Now the passageways were just large

directions in the earth,leading to

small concentric circles, congregation.

Electricity stopped. Outlets went dry.

Dark cords of intercourse rested.

We were already moving.

Inventions no longer held necessity.

The history of our objects had no recall.

We discovered the growth and mystery of lawns.

We hesitated all over everything.

The earth turned over. Succulents appeared.

Through half open blinds I saw fruit trees:

Figs, peach, hands of bananas, along the devil strip.

The message got out of the body,

as I had hoped.

Interpretation was rampant,

as it should be.

But not one slant ruffled the earth.

In the late afternoon I peeled a banana.

Why would I carry a piece of dark,

red, cherry wood a long distance,

just to show someone it still exists?

Dark as Dark

Not really an alien landscape
but still a place where everyone's
heart floats outside their bodies,
shining in the sky overhead.
Even at night I can read
and sometimes write in the
courtyard under their glow.
There, it is not nearly as
dark as dark.

For all the lovely people at my gallery, Don Drumm Studios

Pontoon

I

We are crossing the wild Rappahannock.

"Hooves above water, a miracle!"

we shout.

"To what end,"

cries Colonel T-bone Lassiter.

"To engage the enemy. To get it on!"

screams General Beauregard Pickens.

"What does that mean?" General. "'Get it on'?"

"Nevermind, I was thinking ahead."

II

We are crossing the Atlantic, a small part.

We are armed. We wear dark green coconuts

on our heads. The Great door falls,

the beach appears, tiny hummings streak by.

"Vacation," someone shouts.

"Just the weather," says another.

Captain Pickens III looks back at us.

"My bad!" he shouts. "Wrong beach!"

"What does that mean Captain, 'my bad'?"

"Nevermind, I was just thinking ahead."

III

We are bobbing, yet standing on this great lake

Nothing visible below our feet. Just blue water.

North is the new world. South is gone.

There is no memory.

One vast person moves out across the water.

"Love!" shouts Pick.

"Yes!" choruses the Body.

IV

The smoke is rising from something I set fire to in my hand.

I don't remember much because I was busy. I only remember it

was blue and green, gray around the edges. I notice smoke

is slowly seeping from my nostrils, like small clouds in the sky.

Numinous

My arms are broken

but I can hold you

While I sleep shards come.

They do the best they can

to enter the soles of my feet.

But my feet are quiet, not

sleeping, just listening.

I recall the screen door wire

lodged for days in my side.

Deeper things, stuck, growing.

Every piece, tapping, a reminder

of what the soul wants.

Every movement is leading.

All signs witness.

The unseen cloud will rain.

The sheets are wet, the sweat,

the tears, the estuary, the delta.

Down the road is a street name

that looks familiar. A bird lands

just so. A woman looks at you

like a lost letter found.

The sun sets behind her shoulder.

Ungiven

Just a tilting of the already gives
way to color never seen before.
What if there is more choice beyond our
spectrum, dog colors of barking, sniffing?
Out there in the dropping moonlight the
white is hiding like a rabbit in the night sun.
That, embedded in the day is something
barely visible, only found in the misfires,
out there where the bright gaps lie,
just beyond our shutter speed.
Madness is such a color and the
moment just past death, another.
Where everything is one vast color,
full of sound, intent, gathering.

Aberration

Long ago we handled things differently. When our grandparents grew old and light

we cared them on our backs as they whispered their stories in our right ears.
After they died we shined their skulls and made a perch of our right shoulders.
Eventually they became impossible to handle what with the heads of
heads of heads in tow. So we stacked them and lashed them together
in fields of waving green grass. Now I know what you're thinking, and no, they
did not become our totem poles. Over the long haul the heads slowly broke down
entering each other , forming a lingham, a tor. This protrusion, an aberration
on the landscape, housed the upward thrust of the ancestors. Only a few cultures
still create the form and carry its deeper meaning. Coats of arms, shields, ledgers,
stories recorded or spoken, all were carried along mouth to mouth, hand to hand.
But it is the aroused stone that still represents the full power of accumulation, knowledge.

2
There still remains one mystery, vaguer, hidden, but seemingly ordinary.
What of the voice that appears at the door so early in childhood and then
carries on until our death? No one hears this voice except the sole listener.
Haunting at times, guiding, pestering, and then matter of fact. A voice that
could be whispering in your right ear, right there, just over your shoulder.

Endless

In summation:
1.Every second of every minute is the last.
2.The world is ending over and over, and it is.
3.All this finding and losing is just prayer.
4.The deadliest thing is beginning something.

The Pope announces he is praying for the children
with lemonade stands. He is praying for the loss of bees.
He is praying for the return of magic, yet he is unaware.

All energy is in flux. Everything is quietly blinking
The birds are falling like they need instruction and
I cannot stare that long. It is lost on me. Like my keys.

If the world is always meeting me and one of us dies,
then it is over. If the world is always speaking to me,
and it stops, then I have nothing more to say.

The clock has given us grief. It is the thing that notices
where we are going. And when something is gone it counts
with its eyes closed until we have hidden ourselves away.

The Aztecs invented the vacation as a practice for dying.
Something has died because something is starting.
Something has begun because something is gone.

Endlessly.

Myths are not in books

The tip of something need not be remotely like what is there below the surface. We will continue to go thru enormous change as to what we are like. But we seem not to notice the speed because we are in it. Or rather it has us. And we swim like fish in a new sea, always already the case, moment to moment. Until such time as we began to notice the weirdness. A lake will form in the middle of LA. No one came cap it. A small building in Japan cannot be stopped. Not ever. No one knows how. A river will change direction finding the path of least resistance. It contains us. And so it becomes so, very quickly. The mythic is no longer lofty. It is here in the swath of jumble left by an EF5 in Bama, the smooth takeaway of our stuff by the sudden near supersonic intrusion of seawater, the pulling back of the sheets in southern Spain to reveal the lost continent, the loss of Quaddafi's children to dread falling from the sky, launched upon blue waters. Behind a metal curtain an entire way of living vanishes overnight and we can't even remember it. Systems overtake systems until we are with the last one. The universe is folding things as it takes them from the dryer and then they are tossed. So it goes as we wear our clothes. In fashion.

The Outpost

A

There was wax all around us. We sweated
wax the way a horse laps trough water.
A deep flame. Earlier in the sun of shift
we had drunk rain from clear sky. Now we
doused the fire with long blue streams of piss.
And, there was the trick of who we are,
without a history, because we are ancestor.
Always.

B

We swing the hand-held devices in the air,
wood, bark, sap, old.
Above our heads we write a whirring song:
we were born in rotting logs, in windy praying
fields, at the bottom of looking glass lakes,
two skies above us.
Some hatched in a burst of light.
Others entered the world through stamens,
surrounded by bright yellow, magenta, milk.
And again, others cracked open the soft
domed smiles of woman. And peered out.

C

We slept beneath pussywillow, our heads
resting on the softly curled jaguarundi.
We had no way of tracking. We sat
at the center, only a sense of the
labyrinthine, that everything touched
everything else. Beyond the composition
of fence, of hut, house, room and window,
beyond the village of boundary, ownership,
the breakage, the loss, the very last thing,
were ones like us, living where a line grazes
the edge of the circle. We stand in clearings,
waiting for the shattered, the shortness of
breath, the skipping of hearts, the questioning.

D

I wear a black hat and I will take you back
to the beginning:
And there amidst the wax, the feathers,
the phosphorescence,
I will return from the shining world,
with an answer.

Containment

The water rushes over it, hard and dark,
surging past the wave of my warning words.
Now it is too hot to handle, like the tiniest
of stars, halving itself endlessly
until the draw becomes so great
that everything begins to fall into it.

A yellow raft of butter floats on a
warm grid, its sturdy shape slowly
morphing. It lowers itself gently
into the grid, spreading across the
brown landscape. What I want
will not happen without something
pouring down, covering all of this.
And then, beyond that,
over the edges.

I stand up in the night sky,
looking down on her.
Stars touch her perimeter
in familiar places.
"As above, so below," she whispers.
My blue fingertips trace her face.
There is no rush now.
It is already out there.
It is already in here.

Sweet Crude and the Ox-Moron

They say the great man always wears a parachute. And there is a story told, a desert legend, if you will, that Moammar Qaddafi supposedly said he would become like the sun when he had passed through the eye of a camel. This event would "seal his beauty and enshrine his deathless actions." But many Libyans realized he was confusing himself with a camel and the phrase from the Bible and Quaran concerning a camel passing through the eye of a needle. The kingdom. But the people had already been led to believe that the kingdom already existed in the mirror reflection of the great Gadhafi's aviator sunglasses. Quickly the camel story circulated through the country and oddly with that there was a sudden and extensive outbreak of eye infections amongst the camels. The great moist orbs began to dry up. The people saw this as a sign that Khadaffi had lost favor with the sun. Quickly Kadafi pitched billowing rose colored tents on the sands and held state. Moammar smiled. His teeth were not his. He looked off in profile. The country was in his lenses for all to see:
" I love it when you misspell my name."
"What is the correct spelling el-Khadafy?"
"It does not matter. I am a ox-moron!"
"My name is all names."
Then he turned toward us, his safari suit peeping through his purple robes.
"Listen. My death will not be of my own doing. Therefore I will become a martyr. "
"Even if it is in an auto accident, Colonel?"
"Yes!"
"An illness, Al Gathafi".
"Yes!"
A snake bite, Muamer?"
"Of course!"
His fate sealed, the great one mounted his kneeling, crusty-eyed animal and swayed off into the vanishing horizon.

Service

"Increasingly the homeless population is made up of children. Every day at the shelter, I interact with these homeless children. I share their joys and their sorrows. I am part of their lives. As I see them struggle, my children come to mind. Some balance is struck between these children and my children. When I see a homeless child crying because her mother is too busy looking for work to pay her attention, I remind myself to spend time with Chelsea. When a volunteer calls to say he cannot come today to take a homeless boy to a ball game, I promise myself that I will take Jeremy to one soon. When a homeless girl plays in the yard with broken toys, I rush home that day to play with Kristen."
"It is a strange gift. The plight of homeless children makes me more sensitive to my own family. Were it not that God knew exactly where I was needed, I doubt I would be much of a father. "
-Michael Elliott
in Partners in Grace

Never Mind

We were escaping into Egypt, like the god babies we are.
"Maybe never," I broke in on the transmission. Across the
border many brains jostled for position in the sunny square.
"Our bodies are like pikes!" the voice said.
"Then our brains are double cheeseburgers on trays
hustled to us by curb service youths!" said another.
"Always boys," someone shouted. "Forever."
As the sun found the two o'clock slot a premonition
went up a pole. But since it seemed to go down the
pole it was considered the best evidence for the fear.
The brain is leaving the mind. We knew it. The eyes knew it.
The eyes looked over their shoulders in panic.
Nothing could be righted. Not ever.
"Invert! Invert!" chanted the crowds of minds.
High above the square, on heated tiles, the
people-of-the-bloodied-foreheads knelt, dripping.
Stones and cement had fallen back into their faces.
Someone in a billowing lab coat, with a blue crescent roll
on the back, raced into the square with new results.
"Gravity is only in the brain. Without a brain we are lost
in the clouds, forever!" We would never know the answer
to the cyclonic mystery of cream pouring into coffee or
why apple trees don't always do their best. But we
would finally know where birds go when they die.
I put down the bright red hookah hose.
I was high above Cairo now, and I noticed two things:
One, politics are hidden away under the clothes, and
two, anger is very tiny.

Undergo

"Undergo," he said amidst the confusion,
pointing in the direction of the crop circle.
All hands let go at the same time.
Dams spoke for the first time, softening,
bowing, wet with tears for the heron, the salmon.
He stood on the street corner near the square.
Everything was built of people's thoughts.
Even the frames of his glasses nodded. Even
the big time piece there under the auburn sun.
The continuum, the continuum was undressing.
Colors grew bolder. His hand covered the sun.
His orange hand, that had made all this. His
blue face that knew the combinations, the clicking
sounds, the tumbling water behind the walls of protection.

Down by the station where the automobile was serviced
a cow stood as a cow stands, straddling the lift.
That slow, that careful.

How to get to town

The town was not that far, the
trail still warm, but misleading.
The directions seemed more like
instructions, no, agreements, that
pointed towards a destination.

The town was quiet as I drove in.
A voice pointed out the land marks.
Poles, piles, monuments, strategically
placed street lights, mistimed traffic signals.

I stopped and listened to the heavily armed
night air, the red neon intercepts.
"Where is this town?" I asked no one in particular.
On the seat were the the instructions.
Still just agreements, hand-written:

Take time to find a dark place
Here you can hear
Stopping everything will help you notice
There is no safe spot
The right map will help you see where you are
All maps exist as you need them, as the town begins to cooperate
When signals are in doubt, it is just you
All points will line up and pass through you single file
Follow them like the compass you are
Identify yourself when you arrive

Landing

I
Each face holds something true.
Each face, an idea of mind.
Each face is moving out beyond
its eyes, its cheeks, its mouth.
Like an earth, layers of atmosphere
growing ever denser, ever alive,
as you approach the surface.
There! Birds in flight.

II
When I have nothing to hold back,
when I am nothing but a keen,
I see a thin blue bonnet
surrounding your face,
then, outwardly another
thinner but darker one.
And finally, a darkly radiant
ionosphere tinged with magenta.
Beyond that your face mingles
with infinite numbers in the deeper
lens of a great camera obscura.

III
There are my hands now
pressing down through the clouds
always approximating the distance
cutting it in half, over and over,
infinitely closer now, but never quite.
But close enough to know I have landed.

Prayerful

Where I lean against a tree and form a lean-too
I hear my voice saying words that are wishful.
I want out of this because it is silly but then
this is preliminary to doubt, preliminary to
the beginning of a resonance I never fully
understand, a conversation that was never
taught me by anything other than wind and
rain, bird and shadow, light of day. Where
the bark touches my temple stray thoughts
settle as a small pressure, pulling ever upward,
crossing me off like the sacrifice I am. Meanwhile,
something is coming to take me down, to show me my
pressing is not necessary. Only the passing of time.

Whale Sounds

My thanks go out to Nic Sebastian of Whale Sounds for her wonderful reading of my poem, "A Wind Disorder". http://bit.ly/crA2cS. Please check out this site for the many recordings of other poems Nic has read. And to Kathleen Kirk for passing this poem along to Nic Sebastian. Thank you Nic and Kathleen!

The candy corn teeth

I opened a can of candy corn when I told Sarah Jane you could do this with the corn. She asked for a picture. I hope this gives you some direction Sarah.

Aloneness

"It is like the feelings you have when you are about to shed a tear. You feel somewhat wealthy because your eyes are full of tears. When you blink, tears begin to roll down your cheeks. There is also an element of loneliness, but again it is not based on deprivation, inadequacy, or rejection. Instead you feel that you alone can understand the truth of your own loneliness, which is quite dignified and self-contained. You have a full heart, you feel lonely, but you don't feel particularly bad about it. It is like an island in the middle of a lake. The island is self-contained; therefore it looks lonely in the middle of the water. Ferryboats occasionally carry commuters back and forth from the shores to the island, but that doesn't particularly help. In fact, it expresses the loneliness or the aloneness of the island even more."

Smile at Fear
-Chogyam Trungpa

Perhaps

Maybe not. So much of history
sinks into this telling.
Maybe so. Every fairy tale
goes a long way to forgetting.
Maybe at its most easeful
it looks to be a sure thing.

Where is the wind when
the kite is in your hands?
Four strands of knotted cloth
steadies the crucified paper.
700 feet of string shrink it.
There is the point of no return:
It has been out there so long
you're not sure you want it back.
All along the tension lies the past.

A neck brace and four robins low.
An ice cream sandwich, in
a notebook, intact.
No one's words matter
when we're sleeping.
A larger scale hears us
but doesn't need to know.
They are rained on, chilled,
sunny sided, grown for,
ranked in a mysterious way.
We are all a meal.

Escape into Life

Kathleen Kirk, has graciously decided to feature some of my poems together with an intriguing painting at an online arts journal where she is the poetry editor. Escape into Life™ | Online Arts Journal | Poetry, Essays, Reviews, Art.
Kathleen also has a wonderful blog at Wait! I Have a Blog?!

The Report

It was not a dossier, and
yet it was like a person.
Frowning and looking down.
So I turned it over, staring
at its desert backside.
Such is the meaningful case
with most reports, a reminder
of I thought so, and there on
page five, a reminder it is
time to launder myself.
Findings always bother me,
only because they remind me
we are lost. And conclusions
just bring me closer to death.
But I find hope when I return
To the pre-face at the beginning.
There on page iv I sit facing the sun.
Not finished.

Speed Trap

I ran over two cords on the road today.
One momentarily cut off the water supply
for the city, the other distributed my car's
desire into nearby households folded
back like night sheets inviting.
The current traveled along the argyle
walkways and warm devil strips leading
to snatched space dangling overhead.
Here my hands wanted to hold something
that would draw itself visible, something
that could be planted in the earth or
a desk drawer filled with top soil.
Would something grow there?
A cigar box, a platitude, a piece of fruit?
For just that tiny moment, the water
supply in doubt, my car's desire drained,
I felt like a confused angel, the
smell of television all around me, the
black nudge of my cat's bright head,
the bump-bump, bump-bump.

Barndoors and Ignoblemen

So I went into Barnes and Nobles today in search of a book of poems. Macy and Barrows, Rilke's Book of Hours. After much searching I ask for help in regards to the location of poetry. Not on the second floor with literature anymore. Downstairs in the back next to music/rock. And surprise, all contemporary folks strained out of the section. I asked why but no one could give me a heads up. $. I let both sales people know how silly that was. "Poetry is literature." No one cared. No Rilke except Letters. Sad...

Facing the Unknown

It is like the reason we
back into a parking space,
holding everyone up for
our future security.
It is like the reason I
back into a restroom,
wondering who is behind me.
It is like the reason we stick only
our heads around corners, avoiding
bodily harm and snipers.
It is like the reason we stand at
the edge of the ocean, hesitating,
since there is too many of it.
It is like the reason we count
things with the hope it adds up.
It is like the reason we take away
things with the hope there will be
an answer.

The Jambs

Into one another we go,
unable to know what has
become of us.
There is print and photograph,
past voice and memory.
But still the alterations-
say children, that silk shirt,
numbers on a scale-
bring us no closer
to the confluence.
Every doorway is a gate.
Every window, an eye.
Look and pass.
Then wait and touch.
We've already arrived.

Desire

Today reaching is all around me.
Like Shiva my first impulse is
To burn these ramps
And see just how serious
These reachers are.
A glance, my left hand.
It's done.
Flowers, bees, cuckoos, mangoes.

Today reaching is all around me.
Like Shiva I see the possibility
Of union, not annihilation.
An embrace, not a dispersion,
That will go on for
As long as it takes.

Noticing

I

In that moment it's just a matter of forgetting
her and you will be busy inside yourself, identity-
laden, the way you launch yourself into a moment
of fear, or embarrassment, even congratulations.
At the end of the street is a pause where you look
up and notice it's only a two way stop.
Be careful.

II

A small boat made of the heat and
far-off sounds carries us upriver.
There are villages amongst the green leaves
and docks stretching like hands beckoning.
I wish for oars and rudder, and the motion
of my arm throwing rope toward wet wood.
But my hand is cupped over my eyes. It seems
the sun doesn't want me to see the humor in all this,
the smile on your face, the color of your hair.

III

Now the rain passes over you, a curtain, light,
like a soft shadow. You hear her voice and
notice rain has its own color, not quite this or that.
She is singing then. You remember this moment.

meme o weis

Sarah Jane over at The Rain in my Purse tagged me to take on these memes. I thought hers were ridiculous, as they should be. I will shoulder on...

1) Is half a stone still a whole stone?
Laura Nyro liked to write about stones. Stone Soul Picnic and Stoney End. It is clear she believed stones have souls. So if the soul is just a hologram than it is clear the whole is contained in every part. Therefore, based on Laura Nyro's belief system, I would have to say yes to this question.

2) Do grains of sand get tired of being recycled into mountains?
Grains of sand are tired of a lot of things I think. Such as people trying to draw out some kind of competion between stars and the grains. Actually most grains of sand would like to position themselves into becoming mountains because there's a lot of rest inherent in that position. As opposed to all that slogging on the beach. Occasionally a bird's wing lightly grazes the mountain but that's just a so-called barometer for enlightenment.

3) If you crossed a bat with a mushroom would you get an umbrella?
No, this crossing is not a prescription for rainy weather. An umbrella is not needed.

4) Do the glasses one wears in a dream require a prescription?
Most glasses in dreams are cheap reading glasses off the spinner rack. Why? Most of us lack the navigation skills for lucid dreaming. Without lucidity we are prone to forgetting where our glasses are and sitting on them or stepping on them. This is costly. Drugstore glasses gives us one less thing to worry about. It 's hard enough not being able to see who's been chasing you for years.

5) What songs do they sing in a school without windows?
I only know of one song that is sung in these kinds of places. Gene Pitney's Town without Pity.

6) Do the daisies love us or not?
No they do not love us. Daises are sick to death of this so-called romantic amputation at their expense. Leveraging love by killing a flower is not funny.

7) Is there any reason to believe that we'll have working mouth parts in the next life?
No. I have believed for many years that ventriloquism is an evolutionary process and that eventually the binaural nose will come front and center as the new mouth.

8) What kind of cartilage connects us to the stars?
Most of us are already stars. Therefore cartilage is nothing more than congealed comet grease.

Ghost Deer

A little light was left,
enough for the ghost deer.
We stood by the fallow
corn field, she and I,
listening until they appeared,
blinking, two, four, then seven
or eight, then fewer, finally just
the color of evening, muted, stretched.

Now it's late afternoon, two hidden birds
screech across the head high corn.
I stand where we stood.
The finches drag yellow over the
soft open thistles at the back of the field.
I mosey through an alley of green thinking
of Cary Grant in North by Northwest. In the
thistles, I kneel, listening to the woodpeckers.
The ghost deer are still here.
Maybe we were asleep that cool night
Maybe we dreamed of the ghost deer.
But I remember them now as
I experienced them then.
As a memory, that quiet, moving out into
our presence-- As if I recognized them then
the way I still see them now.

Separation

Steam from a bowl of oatmeal rises,
dimming the party hat mountain.
The plunger falls in the dark waters,
settling on the murky grounds.
Something orange, something wrinkled,
something sprinkled, something soft.

I want to come around to your side,
kneel by your arm, offer myself.
This is my prayer, this is my sign
here at this table. Close by, the
apex of trees continues to climb,
The distance varies, the sun
crosses the room, searching.
The chunky bread is browning, there
Is a moist piece of sun on your lip,
butter is melting in the bowl,
and I hold your hair out
like a bolt of Egyptian cotton,
like a gift I can barely manage.

Everything is always rising and falling.
The temperature- not as steady
As one thinks: A cloud shadow, a
yellow wing, the wind, your breath, a fret.
Pauses.
Tiny separations that blink and blink
again, even as you finish that sentence,
that spoonful of raisins and oatmeal.

Approach

I come in low over the water.
There are no hydraulics.
Only a firmness and resolve.
I look down through the surface below.
Orange and blue fish swim.
Seaweed is apparent.
But this may not be what it seems.
I may have been a symbol.
No memory tells me this.
But the evidence is apparent:
in the cereal I eat, the way I comb my hair,
and a smile I wave about like a pistol.
My face carries a trajectory of hope,
indistinguishable from my hello.
Every handshake I conduct, every
embrace of another person,
grows like red trumpet vine, like the
weight of a long heavy dream
full of pewter and moss.
I change clothes quite a bit.
To be forgotten.
Even now as I drop closer to touchdown
I am pullng on fresh dark trousers, now
the ochre pullover covered with sleet.
Now my hands are again free to eat a donut.
Now I see it is powdered sugar,
not weather, covering my sweater.
The empty hangers bump against my temple.
My patience is running thin,
my hands look like small birds
about to launch themselves into the white sky.
There is a bump, my coffee spills onto my pants.
Maps and crosswords fly through the windows.
I repeat the names on the roster,
a litany streaming from my mouth:
Margo, James, Stengal, Patterson, Dion,
Diane, David, Davis, and more.
Is it less than thirty, more than one hundred?
No mattter. I am still a thief.
And I have taken things I cannot return.

Embraceable You

It's not like setting up a tripod, or
seeing windows in trees.
I haven't lost anything and
discovery came back there
on the beach where I slid in
with a soft silt slice.
There may be clouds about, weather afoot,
but I never looked over my shoulder or
even sidelong, as a matter of fact.
I know this is not a confession,
or a questionnaire,
but it is like you are a letter
I can't quite get out of the envelope.
And I can see by the folds in the note
it is an origami bird,
a parrot, I believe.
And the message is just the motion,
the head moving forward
as I pull the tail.

Enlightenment

As I sit in a restaurant drinking a cup of coffee
chairs and tables fall through me
piling up under my table.
I hold my coffee in hand
as my table
has become part of the pile.
I am tired of this job
of reassemblage
but I know it is
my only responsibility.

Later:
It is good that others
have surfaces
to eat from,
surfaces to drink coffee from,
in an on-going kind of way.

Car

I stepped out of the Scottish Inn into a light mist. "Car," I thought."Where was help?" I wondered. Broke down in Lake City. On Main Street I could look east and know this street deadended into a lake. The Movement of God would take me west to the Engine Room where the boys would pronounce the word serpentine slowly while looking at my belts. I had developed a mild case of tinnitus in the form of an inner voice saying "car" whenever conversation arose. This was not the Tennessee I had drawn. The one with horses and whiskey was balled up in the waste basket at the Scottish Inn. And there would be no drink at the counter with MacDuff to send me on my way. Ganesh said, "have a good day". Ultimately what would save me was the prayer offered by a woman who was moved to speak to God concerning my situation. "Lord, help him find the path out of this mess," she said, touching my shoulder there at the gas station. "Car," I responded, as she walked away. Later the boys at the Engine Room would give me some weak-ass coffee and say, "you're all set." "Car," I replied, smiling.

Big Friday

This is how it got away from us:
Many of us began to notice the
true cyclical nature of things and
became fed up with Wednesdays.
Oh, it was like pulling teeth, but
eventually we rounded that corner,
circumscribed that square.
Mondays were next, a day,
that for obvious reasons,
lacked zest and produce.
Tuesdays got caught in that cross
fire and Saturdays lost their novelty.
Sundays encroached on meaning
and Thursdays had nowhere to go.
That left Friday, Big Friday, as we
jokingly called everything left. The
next thing we knew past and future
spiraled out of control, and crashed.
Night air, sunlight, and a little rain
were our first choices for what
to gather around Big Friday. But
even those things were no longer
sitting in slots, waiting for a bell.
Nothing ever started again on Big
Friday. And nothing was ever finished
in the sun, the rain, or by the moon
looking in.

The Silent Speed of Starlight

How far has that light come?
People pass me on the interstate
as I putz along, looking up.
The time it takes for me to see
them is like starlight. Isn't it?
Approaching. Receding. Until we
meet at that exit light. Eventually
every star will meet me, entering
my little planetarium through the
wet, double doors over there. And
finally, the bear will lose a paw,
the dipper handle will fall in my lap.
But others are coming. Enough for
some kitchen utensils. I will find
the garlic press, the little creamer.
There, dangling above the southern
horizon, the apron and strings.
All in good time.

Forgetting the World

These are the days when
I could be doing anything,
but I am doing this now:
standing on the gray deck,
arms raised, pulling in signals
from the world. Everything is
bringing from the future. And
receiving the future takes work.
It could be in the mailbox or my
ear. The nuthatch at my door,
just blue and shadow. The wind
coming across, something is waving.
It says, "sustain this." I can't. It
lands on faded prayer flags tacked
to the rail. Dropping my arms I think
about these things, and for this moment
and the next, I forget the world.

Headwaters: A schematic of sorts

"We here at the Larnie Ketteridge Home have been assigned the task of renaming rivers. First we say welcome to the sun this morning and welcome to the laundry driver, Dirk. From the Department of Interiors I have received a packet of five rivers that I shall rename today. Thank you Mr President for providing this volunteer retiree program to make it easier for all of us to remember river names. Thank you interior people. I know you are busy on the inside and underneath, so it is up to us on the outsides to stay current, to be updating right now. The first river I have is the Moselle. Why in the hell I got this I do not know. It is over there somewhere. But I see by a map that the upper part of the Moselle wiggles like a cat cleaning itself. Felix is my name for this river. Next is a river in Ohio called the Muskingum. This is silly. I name this river Central Mosquito. Another river is right here down the road. The Cuyahoga or crooked river. It too wiggles like a cat cleaning itself. I name this river Krazy Kat. The fourth river I have is the Sawanee. The idea of "way down" does not appeal to me. I name this river Toot. What the hell. Why not. And finally today I have the Mississippi. I feel that i-double s, i-double s, i-double p is an unnecessary way to remember a river. I will name this river Sippy Cup. Now people may wonder if this program actually works. Well I have received many cards and e-mails from people all over the place who have reported great ease in remembering rivers I have previously re-named. Such as the Turbinado Sugar, the Lesser Leaf Rake, and the Piper Cub. No explanation was necessary as the names truly fit these rivers. Well I would like to thank Floyd, Archer, and Frownman for their help with research today. Good day."

Futurama

"Are we in for a surprise?

The future is like magic. It wears no robes or veils, but arrives naked, tossing its surprises to the right and the left. How does it arrive? It neither comes from ahead nor do we enter it running. This is because it and we can only approach what is always coming toward it and us. There is no possible action or sound that can be made without being received elsewhere, thereby describing and deciding the future which only wears the attributes of something recognized as past.

Is there such a thing as truth objectively speaking? This question curves around and demands that I ask myself why I am asking myself the question in the first place, what good an answer will do for me before I am annihilated. If I am convinced that the story of your life and thought reveals the truth about our condition on this planet, then will I be happier as I proceed? Why else am I asking it?"

-Excerpted from The Winter Sun: Notes on a Vocation, by Fanny Howe

The Real Man: Searching for the Marlboro Man

After the funeral I spoke with a close friend of the Man. Leland June had known the Man since the seventies. He invited me to visit with him in southern Tennessee near the Georgia border. Contrary to popular belief the Marlboro Man lived there near North Potato Creek in a tiny burg called Turtle Town. Leland showed me the man's horse, Toby. Toby is a miniature horse, probably four and a half feet tall. The Man suffered from sciatica in later life and could no longer mount his "prop" horses in the ads. Leland told me that the Man liked to ride around on Toby in the backyard roping goats. What came as a shock to me was Leland's disclosure that the Man's funeral contained an empty coffin. Apparently he had been cremated with the express idea that his friends would smoke him once or twice a year. The Man thought it would be a good reminder to all about what went wrong with America and smokes. I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to smoke the Man that afternoon with Leland June. June mixed some of the ash with some Bull Durham and rolled us a smoke. It was a powerful experience. As I stood there inhaling the Man I noticed that I could not get my head out of profile for a good fifteen minutes. "He was something," Leland said. "Not was, is," I corrected. For the rest of the day Leland walked around shaking his head, repeating the words "is" and "was", chuckling to himself.

Convergence

"Women watching children, Heidelberg, August 1954"

Let's back up a little bit to "The Catholic activist Dorothy
Day and children, 1950's." These are photographs. Black
and white. Earlier in the day I confuse Doris Day with
Dorothy in a conversation about service versus dogma.
Now I am in a books store where the Day photograph

trots toward me from a book I open, called Our World.

In a moment I hear the Beatles sing "hey bulldog." And I
am reminded of a blog a friend in Germany wrote with
that title. The pages flip and "Women watching children,
Heidelberg , August 1954" is staring at me. Who will
recognize the oddness, the tiny swirl of convergence,
the idea that something like this has landed on a flower,
hesitated in its own busyness, and then gone on?

Funeral for the Marlboro Man

There were 5 of us at the funeral for the Man. George Peppard was gone. So was the Duke. We had brought the Man’s horse, black, 1/4, 19 hands or so, name of Tar Baby. A beauty. There weren’t much to say. We brung our’n animals too. As a sign of respect our work gloves covered their ears. Numbers was everywhere there. How many packsaday, 2nd hand this, 3rd hand that. Goddam first hand nuthin’. Tar counts. Damn. Some folks with orchestra instruments was playin’ The Magnificent 7. So they lowered the Man and the band perked up the horse’s ears a bit. The tawny gloves wavin’. All 5 of us with zippos a-clickin, the light flashing off that silver. That was it. Shit.

I wrote this in response to SarahJane's story on her blog called Death of the Marlboro Man. If you haven't read it you should. It would make Donald Barthelme smile.

Hair loss

So I spontaneously decided to get my hair cut. I pulled in to a hair place not far from where I live. I did this because if I just ponder getting a cut, my hair will quickly shampoo itself and even start whistling. There is also this inversely proportional thing where the closer I get to the cutting chair the less I know what I want. But I can always tell if the stylist knows what I want even though I don't know. If he/she looks at me in the mirror while holding my hair I feel fine. But if she only looks at my hair, I am worried. It's a holistic thing.
Putting your hair in the hands of a complete stranger is either complete idiocy or pie in the sky oblivion. Factor in an occasional low flying hornet emerging from the duct work and a record for comb drops-6. You are headed for a white knuckle carnival ride. She did just fine with the scissors. But the clippers became an experiment in terror, as she dipped from side to side, chipping away from all angles. It reminded me of the way I eat a pie when left alone with it for a day. Small slivers dedicated to this idea or that desire. A christening, manifest destiny, or eminent domain. One by one they are necessary until the entire apple rhubarb pie is gone. In the end my head looked like the empty pie pan. Partly shiny through the crumbs.

Millard Fillmore, the Man.

Let us now turn to the life of Millard Fillmore, last of the Whigs, major player in the secretive, Know Nothing movement, and strongly aligned with the Anti-Masonic movement. H.L. Mencken spread the myth that Fillmore installed the first bath tub in the White House. This is false and a lie. Actually Fillmore installed the first dumb waiter in the White House by retro-fitting an existing clothes chute. As a member of the Whigs Fillmore enjoyed the spell and tutelage of the Whig's boss and power broker, Thurlow Weed. It would be a short life for me if I awoke to find this name assigned to me. Weed wielded enough power to bend the will of the Whigs to his whims. Way too much alliteration. The Whigs are remembered for very little. That was so long ago. On the other had, the Know Nothing movement has a legacy that flourishes to this day. This secretive Anti- Irish immigrant movement, invented slogans printed on clothing. The first slogan on a shirt was created in 1847, emblazoned on night shirts, primarily in the Buffalo, NY, area. It read on the front,"I know nothing but my Country, my whole Country, and nothing but my Country." On the back it read, "So help me God." But we digress. Fillmore's greatest accomplishment was his defusing of a major war with Peru. Fillmore smoothed over a disagreement with the Peruvians, and tucked in the sheets. This then is all we care to know of Millard Fillmore. Father, husband, Peruvian peacemaker, dumb waiter maker, Know Nothing, and member of a secret movement that opposed another secret movement. The 13th President of the United States to have never been elected President of the United States.

To be a Chinese Citizen

Last night I was eating at restaurant with my friend Doug. Our waitress was an young Asian woman. We tried to guess her nationality. Thai, Korean, Chinese, Japanese, Vietnamese? We settled on Korean after a lengthy process of elimination. So we asked. Hong Kong Chinese. She then launched into a long explanation of the traits and differences. Interesting. Indo versus mainland. We got on the subject of her citizenship and she described the test. Mulitple choice questions like "who was the 13th president of the United States," what was the color of the uniforms of the North and South in the Civil War," and "what do the fifty stars represent on the American flag." I had no idea who the 13th was. I started counting and naming. Not sure. To my surprise she said that in China all you needed was a background check. No test. Then she laughed and said, "imagine if you had to know 5000 years of history and dynasties to become a Chinese citizen." We decided the citizenship test was pretty lame. Probably dated back to the days when the American gov't considered most foreigners inferior. One of the side effects of jingoism.

Pattern Recognition

Discreet music rising from a toaster.
A large blue rubber band on a cold deck, unemployed.
The bending of folding chairs in the morning light.
The wet glass table drying in a crowd of trees, the
twenty inch fingerprint found in the glass.
Breath near my ear and the soft falling
of warm animals on the periphery.
A group of candles, relaxing between burnings,
idly chatting, looking toward the mountain.
The purr of the furnace, answering Fall's phone call.
Twin bamboo doing their little green yoga
just beyond my shutter speed.
Winesaps curled in a clear bag,
dreaming of becoming me.
Salt and pepper, always ready...
Buttering all this discreetness
with the knife of my ear.

A Parent Up Each Sleeve

We have a parent up each sleeve.
Maybe a mother up the right,
a father the left.
It wasn't always that way.
We chose. Dominate hand,
dominate parent, or
ambidextrous/counter-intuitive.
When my arms are crossed,
my mother rests under my left armpit,
my father, the right.
It feels like they are lying
across each other after
sex. It's a comfortable position
for me. When I point with
my finger it could be my mother's
instruction. Or my father's command.
I can feel the length of her, beckoning,
in that finger, while other times he is
bulky, emphatic. When I put my arm
around you it is my mother, like a
fish, curling, wavering softly. And
when the other arm is extended it
holds gunpowder. It can be discharged
if I hold it steady. When my hands come
together, they touch with the realization
that the two of them found time to be
together. When my mother hand is
holding my chin it soothes. My father
hand holds tightly the same chin, pulling
at my lip, directing my mouth. My face
can not smile with my father's hand.
When I shake hands with you my
mother is there. I hold her like a gift
for you. On the other hand my father
holds a small book of cautionary tales.

A Wind Disorder

My back is pressing against a
stone wall, low and crusted like
bread. Occasionally I rise up,
my hair moves about, I smell horses
off in the distance. They will ride
through me long before I will
ever mount them. But now I look
again. The tall grass is moving.
there were no horses, only this
pale wavering, the wind. There is
no saddle for the wind; if anything,
I am that saddle, gritting my
leathery teeth. I wait here for
the shifting weight of a rider:
As light as the weather, cotton,
as heavy as a thought seems, wool.
There I am now, moving across
the lumpy pasture, the wall
receding,
the light, noticeably clearer.

Hanuman Is

Note: This is the 5th of five interconnected tales of Hanuman. To read them from the beginning chronologically start with Hanuman In Love, Hanuman Loves, Hanuman Leaps, Hanuman Returns, & Hanuman Is. In that order.


The sun stood behind a soft gray door. I crouched in the dusty rocker, squinting. The leaves around me reminded me of the sunset. The brown ones had gone down. It was like night had come. Others had fallen, showing me such beauty, their light changing. I listened intently to them falling. Sighs and murmurs. Once in another time I commanded them to stop. "Please don't lose what you have shown me," I pleaded. I did not want the brittle brown stillness. But now the sky was coming once again. And the wind reminded me as it tugged at the colors. I held a piece of the tree in my hand, a tiny palette.I touched my finger to the leaf and streaked my face with the colors: orange, yellow, a burning red, some blue down my nose, some purple across my brow. "I will let this color remind me," I thought. Then I remembered Rama's hand on my shoulder. And his voice telling me that how you see is like a squirrel curled sleeping in a tree, waiting for you to look, to awaken it. "The world starts that way," he said. "What is this power that I have?" I remembered thinking. He smiled. "It is not yours. It is not something you can ever know." In Rama's face I saw the same colors I had on my face now. It was the same. This then was my lineage. Through this leaf into Rama's face and back into mine. Who was looking at this leaf? Maybe it was Rama in the temple. Maybe it is the wind now moving in me here in the rocking chair. Maybe it is the falling sense of the colors that are filling me. Maybe it is the rattling sound of the leaves above. I lean forward. I cannot find that sound. Through the trees the mountain is growing in me. It pops out through the top of my head, perched there like a cap. It too carries all the colors. And it warms me in the cool air...

Hanuman Returns

"Where am I?" I wonder. The rain is falling, landing softly on my cap, darkening the saffron to blood. The warmth comes out of me like smoke. The glass door shows me where I sit along the rail, the sharp mountain at my back. Like a ghost she moves silently through this picture. I sniff. I know the glass holds something that is not real. But what is real? I glance down into the wet pattering ravine. There was a crossing, I remember, but there was no far shore. When I reached shore I recognized my own footprints there in the sand. It did not confuse me, this immersion in her desire. Only a knowing was left. Distance was just the color of the water, darkwood. I hop down onto the slick deck floor and touch the glass. I let my fingers pass through the cold clear surface. I know it is an illusion and like all tricks it can not block me. I hesitate there, my knuckles through the door. Slowly the feeling comes over me like a warm wool shawl. She must come to me. I pull my hand back and hop onto the gray rail again. All around me is this space, her space. This is why I returned. This is what I brought back. In the darkness, I lean forward, looking down. Water drips like diamonds from my hat. "Her desire is my desire." My eyes are closing.

Hanuman Leaps

There was a chill in the air. The blue of the sky touched the crown of my head. I leaned in, the right angle of the frame supporting me. She sat in a chair across the room with her legs pulled up against her, a pillow. I watched her breathe fro a few minutes. It reminded me of the velvet ocean, purple in the dying sun, the waves rolling in quietly, long dark scrolls. I hopped down and crossed the room quietly. When I reached her form, so tightly bound, I gently undid her arms. They fell like the ends of a white sash. Her bent legs were like two pieces of firewood. I parted them and she looked into my face. I cocked my head and removed my cap. She leaned toward me but I turned my head to the side and touched her heart with my ear. She pulled back the violet veil. The song I heard had its own gentle face. Not a funeral dirge, but not yet a celebration. The two feelings rose together, death and awakening's smoke, rising from the same fire. I wanted to sing, to fall silent, to weep, yet laugh. I tipped my head back a bit and looked up into her face. I felt myself growing thin, no flat. Not flat either. I was half in her, the warmth and darkness on my right side, the room and sounds on my left. I felt a line, subtle but indelible, running down my forehead, from my crown, through my ajna, splitting my nose, my mouth, my chin, my throat, traveling down to my seat. But my heart was not split and I knew. I leaned back out of her and dropped to the floor. I placed my cap there. It began to glow, a burnt orange hue. I removed my ten silver rings from my toes and formed a circle with them around my cap. This is my form, I thought, from my crown to my toes. Now I was moving toward her again. I ate that proximity until I was resting on her shore. With one last exhalation, I dove into her, swimming out into her darkness, under the moon and the stars.

Hanuman Loves

I am smoking a cigarette from a small red package I found near the greening deck. The other so like her is smoking it with me. She taught me this wonderful thing, a way to let fire become part of me. I toss the purple balloon up. It bounces off my head. She leans forward and tickles my nose with a jay feather. I want to touch her hand but she leans back into the pussywillows, exhaling. I look at her intently. I know this one and yet I don't.
"I wrote these words." The pieces of paper rustle in her hands. I did not know that. I had reached for them in the wind. They felt like comfort. The deck is quiet. Over my shoulder the mountain sleeps. I feel the earthy brown cat nearby. She presses a leaf against her cheek.
"Why do you do this? I don't understand."
My little cap is curled in my hand. It reminds me of a banana. I still feel the bump on my head where the bar of eucalyptus soap struck me last night. Last night. This one knows. This one heard. I glance over at the deck, glowing like a diamond runway.
I remembered the blue cat's words. Unlike him, I was noticed. A torrent of questions and accusations ensued. I could only look down at my silver ringed toes. The same blue energy that was there when she fell from the horse, when she waded in after that one so like her, that same energy was there in the room with the dark couch. Were it not for the thrown soap, word sounds surely would have come stronger than ever. Instead I retreated to the dark corner by the tall furniture, hunkered down, my eyes glowing, blinking. I noticed my cap there on the floor by her foot. A sadness crossed me. But it was just a breeze, passing through. There was a coolness about it. It offered me relief and I took it. I slept there and in the morning she moved about with the coffee and the cats while I waited. Such a night. She cried my name there as I hopped through the sill.
I look up, the deck is in shadow. This one's face is turned toward the bluing mountain. I see her eastern side but it does not overwhelm me. It is bright , but like the moon and the stars. She is turning and now I see the fullness of her. My head cranes forward.
"She is doing to you what all infants do to their mothers--she wants to possess you and yet she will try to destroy you with her anger. Are you offering her another chance now? If she can stay there with you her anger will eventually turn to compassion, won't it?"
My head is still sore but my heart jumps with me to the top of the broken gray wall. I look down on her mother. And bow my head.

Hanuman in Love

I need a fix. I'm squatting in the sunlight eating a peach. Now I'm up on the table moving papers around. I've watched her always, today from atop a broken wall. One day she left some rain on her deck. It smelled of lilacs and sandalwood. I wore that rain until it no longer fit. Another time an apple core, a bit of rice cake that smelled of peanut butter. These I fashioned with a few sassafras leaves into a necklace. I'm fingering it now. In the early evening I can crouch undetected by her sill while she weeps. My head is cocked to the side, intent. Sorrow. Sorrow I know. Sorrow I can handle. And I'm fine with her western face looking out at the mountain. It's her eastern face that scares me. Once when she was a child and fell from a horse I came running. She lay upon her left side. And when I saw the sun, the beauty of her eastern face, I began to rise up onto two legs and I heard words tumbling from my mouth. "I love you so!" I quickly covered my mouth with my saffron cap and dropped to all fours. I stayed in her shadow that day, shaken. I had never uttered a word sound. Still later I would drop down between she and the others. When the others were there it was as if a tide was coming in and then going out because the moon said it must. I trusted the moon over my left shoulder and when the tide was going out I would stand behind her and raise her arm toward the mountain. Once, with an other so like her, she began to wade in as that tide went out. I could feel her being pulled out. I went in after her and lifted her arm, not to the mountain, but to that other so like her. Their hands touched and joined. That other did not go out with the tide. She is with her still, in a special place I made from leaves, a spider web, some pussywillow branches, a few bird feathers, blowing paper, two old books, a lost balloon, and her love.
She has a blue cat and another I have not seen. Yesterday I motioned the blue cat over to me:
"So?"
"She doesn't notice me when she's like this."
The blue cat discouraged me.
And so I dismissed the blue cat. It didn't matter. I knew where I could find her. The night was a long black couch. I sat on its arm looking down at her. She lay there murmuring, shifting. Oddly her body lay in a familiar pose. I saw the tip of something. There by her neck. I gently tugged. Out came a bright yellow bus, the wheels still spinning. A toy school bus. I moved it to the night stand where I could admire it. Shiny things always hold my attention. The details were wonderful. There was a photograph of her that leaned against the tiny steering wheel. Pictures of kids were propped here and there through the bus. But I redirected my attention to the task at hand. I slowly stepped down into the bus space, immersing myself in the dark water. I'm not much for baths but when you're in love you have no choice. Oh, I so long to see her. But I know I will compromise myself if I do. And compromise is like a wound that will not heal. High above me her clothes hang down, reminding me of the billowing drapes in the temple. Sandalwood again. And I remember:
I am Hanuman. I reside here in this gap between your self and other, satisfaction and fulfillment. I bring you safe passage inspite of my desire.
The little toy bus shines in the moonlight there on the night stand. I lower my head in repose...

Recipe for the Desire for Completion

Add two cups of water to a small sauce pan.
Bring to a boil. Continue to boil off water
Until pan is empty.
Serves two.