Mangos By Telepathy

the king pulled in and out of the station

through tokyo

hours bicycling into the hot wind,
 
the trees technicolor green from the

spring/monsoon rain, 

like in the movies.

mom was embarrassed when I borrowed

sake from you.  “groundless” was the word she used,
 
along with “typical Japanese youth.”

extended family shame,
 
enlarged coda from a generations long concerto,

as everyone knows but no-one says.

i thought of Tokyo Story. extrapolating.

you sent your parents to onsen to die alone.
 
i chose to have a baby with no father.


falling asleep in the bogie during the sweltering heat of the monsoon.

that train with the the blue line on top, Kehintokyu,

took from the suburbs to Tokyo.

Samurai used to march on this very same  path,

now that little orange train, Chuo Line,  from my
 
apartment  in Tokyo to work

so many years have passed, 

my monthly pass.

for amber, powdered sugar, and bronze

punished

for nostalgic despair

sent into exile

for bouts of melancholia—-

trumped up charges

under stalin

what could zygmunt do

but avoid controversy

sublimation became the name of the game——

——-

up grovesner’s peak yesterday

in the high terrain

i noticed stripes painted across the blacktop

instead of those horizontal steel bars

the cattle won’t cross either

classical conditioning

——

this is how i celebrate solstice

with kleyzmer and yiddish

 ”fly my little bird, fly…

o! master of the universe, why

do you make a fool of out of  me…  

when the pear trees blossomed in spring time,

and the children played noisily….

once, once, once i had a home, ….”  

on the mountain in cleveland

i found you in heaven

when the sky turned red—

an ocean of sunflowers

planted against bugs

,  

goldstein wrote a song

describing his loss,

“one hundred one hundred oy, oy,

ninety nine, ninety eight, oy oy….”

he turns the secret dial  

from a radio once abandoned,

in a  sky that’s fully reddened,

a house with soft words and a nice good smoke,

“nokh a glezl vayn…”

“zol zayn

gelebt”

two or three children

fell through the

cracked ice,

and grandma visited the nobleman’s house with tomas and christina

for milk sweets and fruit sours,

through the larch wood i saw them

they come to her house

for fried dough on porcelain,

for amber, powdered sugar, and bronze.

go, rain go

once

when it rained over florida canyon for two straight days

until  the clouds split up

and the sun burst out onto texas street

unfurling one of those great flowery banners

that spreads itself from horizon to horizon

i heard you speak below your breath

nose pressed against the glass

saying “go, rain go!”

and you pulled us back

out into the wet

without our coats

just to catch those shimmering rays

before they turned back home.

manzanita’s red shadows

manzanita’s red shadows fall on me from the left, a sudden gash in the earth to the right, going, but is this really the way i came? 

—- dry air and the tender shoots of winter grass fill this valley’s bowl a riot of quail surges from under the scrub my path lit now by venus and a quarter moon if only there were fires and woodcutter’s songs

  —- i collected crushed granite  for the cactus mix and bundles of branches for my jasmine’s fence, but whose garden is it that can match this dark night’s essence?  

—- thinking of her and thinking of her again restless mind step after step the valley is wide, the valley is deep, dusk and the scent of sage swirls round my head the cool perfumed air rushes up from carrizo gorge, while a reassuring warmth radiates off the sand and boulders on close by south facing slopes. a few golden kites circle in the darkening blue above, and below my feet  kit fox and mule deer’s tracks cross  the sand.  back in the city where the sea meets land, how many hearts remain holding shattered dreams? —-  

that’s my family

desperate times require desperate measures. i was born in san rego, a district filled with boxers and prostitutes, thugs and street vendors. you know my childhood was not a success. dad gave me to a tutor, who lived in far away bellin, where the food was bland,  and the people kept no taste for feelings.   my tutor had gray stubble on his face; i was not treated particularly well. left chronically homesick,  the one thing that kept me going was music. in an abandoned barrack i found an old victrola, left by the teenaged daughter of a retired officer, i saw her once, with curly brown hair and a blue cotton shift. she had taped a penny to the tone arm, to keep it from skipping, the needle was so blunt, so i came in through the back door and played woody and cisco’s “buckskinner blues” over and over and over again. this was before i discovered tabu ley, oryema, or even makeba.   father was a rabbi who kept powerful secrets. he was feared and occasionally liked. you really had to make sure there wasn’t the slightest bit of misunderstanding with him. using your wits. but personally i was not too concerned, as i was his son, and it was my job to make him his breakfast on lazy day sundays. i had to clean up after the dog in the back yard too; like a man, with a shovel and  cardboard, not like people do these days, with those plastic bags full of doggy-do dangling from their belts like a treat from the green grocers.   some people said he was the form taken on earth of a dead ancestor, here to protect the living. maybe it was true.  his mother’s hazel green eyes, high forehead and receded gums gave the look of a thousand thousand years. she smelled like napthalene and fed you cold flounder with unsweetened lemonade. she could have been the kind to come back, to appear at festivals and rituals, in times of rain or times of drought. etheric voice. a singer. you did not touch her unless she touched you first.   mother was a woman of great air and fire. floating in her night gown, so soft and tender, she ate the scraps off the children’s plates, we kept no pets. in albany, where she spent her youth, other people cleaned and cooked for her, so it was ironic she became a cook and cleaner. music played a role in her life, too. grandfather listened to yiddish radio and drank soup from a huge tureen. when not at the office or playing cards he relaxed in a giant lazy boy in the living room, dozing off to the latest reports in medieval german peppered with bits of russian, polish, aramaic, and hebrew.  his wife, my mother’s mother, on the topic of giving gifts: “i always give cash, otherwise they’re never happy” pronouncing the money referent with a very short “a” followed by a “y”, caysh. “six million…how could god allow it…?” she was won’t to be heard saying, into the air, to no one in particular. sometimes she asked me the question, as if i, aged 11, could possibly give the answer. near the ocean they lived, next to the boardwalk, but it always rained, so what difference did it make?   “consume, digest, understand!” was my father’s advice on leaving home. travel was the priceless period. upright. home is home, but the road is open air and sun. yet everyone seeks the source at some point, if only to prove a point, and my tuition was paid in advance. that was the reason why in 1960 i came back to new jersey. the beeches were in bloom and the azaela’s aflame in a riot of creamy golden yellow. but i realized quickly it wouldn’t be easy. times had changed, tastes had changed. the old folk were gone, and the adults had gone grey. no more schnapps under the table at lunch. no more bitter tea drunk out of glasses with sugar cubes held between teeth. when yetta was dying she drank warm water from a tea pot’s spout. this made an impression. i was to be a lawyer and brother a doctor. we’re still supposed to be if bertha has her say. bertha schizer, look it up, the first woman pharmacist in new york city, 1915, dead now for 28 years and still holds an opinion. that’s my family.          

captain beefheart’s dead

captain b is dead

can’t we all be sad

flying saucers flying fish

flying squirrels and flying snakes

even birds can fly,

so why can’t we just try?

captain b is dead

oh, captain b is sad

why can’t we all just fly

fly into the sky

fly into the why…

you said

it was hot

when you put on

your brown woolen coat.

“the meaning of heat

is the coat you wear,”

you said in the manner of

obvious truth.

———————-

dawn—

and the last sliver of meaning

fell in a pastel crescent

beyond western palms

as the sky brightened in the east.

i remember, you said,

“its the rootless ones

who leave home their woolen hats!”

———————

you suggested i be

even more than i am

more pronounced, more blunt,

less jaded, more sensible.

but sometimes my jaw is just so very tight

and sometimes we can’t both really be right.

————————-

partially pale

on both sides

of your house

your mother

your father

your planet

your pet cat.

but, when you ate that imported

tangerine, was it  bio-flavanoids and dna

on which you waxed rhapsodic?

or was it your heart flowering from deep inside your mouth?

——————————————-

padua

was the name she used,

which made no more sense

than sandra’s calling her female cat

ali.

it was when she opened her book

to page 78

that i understood was sealed, my fate,

for there it was in black and white—

grandfather mordechai

said to be from hungary,

born and raised in italy,

in the medieval town

with the medical school

which had drawn my folk

from all over the pale

to study and learn

even by rote

in the stone walled town

surrounded by a moat,

the town named

padua

—————-

12 gemstone rings

12 directions on the compass

12 chaste virgins

12 gates to the golden walled city

and all so precious

and all so good,

how often it is

that everything reminds me of something?

in the time of light cutting

at the time of light cutting, 

  when the reddening sun slips away after

brightening the eastern sky

pain twists like a sharpened screw.

it is evening they say,

those deluded ones

whose only virtue is jasmine blooming.

but the darkening sky is of no great help—

for evening is a wild expanding dawn

when the sirens roar

and the smell of grilled meat rises from the taco shops

that line the mottled streets of this palm fringed town.

no.

the night that wounds your eyes is one long day

for the ones who have no one.

http://picasaweb.google.com/107100288484414405116

its so slow putting photos up on tumblr i just thought i would post a link to my photos on picasa’s web thingy.

hope you like some,