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.