January 2011
1 post
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.
...
December 2010
5 posts
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...
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...
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...
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...
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…
November 2010
3 posts
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...
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...
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,
October 2010
1 post
July 2010
2 posts
if you close your face
If you close your face
like a winter’s night
where can we go?
We will get nowhere.
This love will remain useless.
Like a lamp that shines alone
in a closet.
——————————————-
From the Amharic
as sung by Mahmoud Ahmed
in the great CD by Ethiopiques entitled “Tezeta Ethiopian Blues”
would i think of you
Would I think of you if I were far?
The sun up there is far from the tree…
Hey! from a distance friendship is intense,
Don’t distant rivers always reach the sea?
To speak of wanting you is as good as having you.
Look! We made love…
Miracles do...
June 2010
3 posts
i don't begrude the marigold its scent
i don’t begrudge the marigold its scent,
nor do i hold against the birch its skin;
this end game
has no more complaints…
small as the throat of the neighbor's striped cat
our meeting,
small as the throat of the neighbor’s striped cat
who eats her grass blade by blade,
was wonderful to me.
-
have no fear,
your silver hair and
darkened skin
are just the signs that light’s
been passing through.
-
at 10 p.m. I expect nothing;
its the 7 a.m. flowering i want
from you.
Go tell the dawn
At dusk the road comes hard to see.
Go tell dawn not to count on me.
May 2010
1 post
1 tag
Night, It Is
Night it is, full and wet,
the earth has lost its face
the wind, pale as snow
rains down from the hills.
Night it is,
your body warm and smooth,
draped in air. Moist and swollen,
the air stands still, doing nothing.
Is this why the abandoned cannot see?
Its body still warm,
the desert stretches out
like a corpse that awaits
its empty tomb.
My heart, laid out
on this exhausted body
freezing with...
March 2010
3 posts
inside each fruit, a pit:
inside each fruit, a pit:
you stepped on the sand softly once
toe over heel, backwards
one step behind your own glowing shadow,
moses the good
turned in, as the consonant “mem” in hebrew is
you saw him and he saw you
and he turned you out, towards them
and we all gained:
outside each pit, a fruit.
was it your constance that made you brilliant,
or just your holy fruitness?
aleph
aleph
mother opened her mouth and spoke:
earth.
there was earth in them and they dug…
father opened his mouth and spilled
the names of things
to eat and use
hammer dog pail cow.
when the land was covered by sea mother opened her mouth
and the fish and crabs beheld trees and mountains
it was father who named the apple and the snake
it was mother who opened her mouth and...
a very durable war
a war
a very durable war
the crash of hollows dragged in by the rain
was it nostalgia?
memory?
sleep?
dream?
rhonda sniffles
and forces her tongue against her cheek
pointing her indecision outwards
her place has no graves
its just cold
she’s grown old.
December 2009
17 posts
the seams the storm ripped free
the seams the storm ripped free
as gleaners pulling fruit from trees in autumn do.
but i did not look at you with him
and want to die
there were no acts of senseless violence done.
you were not brought into this world
for making maps
or to give direction to blind snowmen in the breeze
or smiling at dull kinsmen on the plough.
yet days and weeks they seem to pass
while soaking in the...
flower: a blind man's word
Once,
when winter’s fog had dried itself to ash,
and summer’s wind had broken grain from chaff,
you woke me in the dark,
trembling.
And I lit a lamp upon our darkened room
and uttered words like “tulip” “birch,” and “rose”
one by one their pretty syllables blew off into the pitch.
O what folly!
Why couldn’t I have just held you like an oak,
softly and...
cluttered by weeds
What’s the use of longing
for your blue eyes
cool as rain
or smile
warm as salt
when they remain so muffled and muddy,
a shoreline in winter
cluttered by weeds.
are
These feet are tired
These eyes are tired
You are tired
I am tired
That we are strangers in this world
Is more clear now than all the stars in the
Dark open sky
Are.
let's just start with spring
you have no interest in doling out portions
and i no need of receiving them.
let’s just start with spring then,
when the sea whips up against the windows,
and the wind chases the air between the trees.
there is so much we didn’t know when we were young—
that a broken lock resists even a perfectly solid key;
that the distance between your old car and the dates hanging from...
castor bean
The city deep in its winter landscape. Hawthorne St. welcomes Carrizo Gorge. Terror in the hearts of palms. Sea creatures ambushed by thickened thallus. Fruit flys catching hell for the day-trip costs. Bighorn sheep grazing on milk-vetch, quartz, and tin. Portundo and I sit and talk and comb our way though all the finest branches.
My city dips her hair in a wash of salt and I love her again. The...
fragments
At an age when most people are firmly esconced in what they want to do or soundly distrubed by what they are doing, she, keenly aware of the big chunks of life in love for which she has given, comes out firmly on the side of progress.
Island kind of crying, with that hula hoop manioc thump thump. White heaps of plaster again and again and again, except that this time she leaps, head first,...
it was the iron black clouds
We hiked along elephant paths in mopane forests screaming with locusts. You tuned your guitar and sang to me from John Hurt’s Spike Driver Blues, “Baby, please fall asleep quickly…” I sang to you from the Laotian, “Once you fall asleep, Mama can go to work. I need to set the fire, cook and feed the pigs…” We talked about the mass extinction of languages. On top of...
mom was embarrassed
My mother was embarrassed when I had to borrow
even salt from you. “Groundless” was the word she used,
along with “typical American youth!”
Extended family shame caused by your and my enjoyment,
enlarged coda from a three generation long concerto,
as everyone knows but no-one says.
tadpoles in a spring
She is my patron saint of ethereal love—
She wears colored jewels around her neck,
while heavy silver earrings stretch the lobes of her ears.
Were I merchant, I would buy her more than I do,
And if I lived in the clouds I could even be alone.
But when it rains I want to sleep,
And all the thoughts that were once so dear
get muddy and vague,
neither this nor that,
tadpoles in a...
as the simple facts show
If I were an elephant or a peacock,
I would already be satisfied.
If I could live as a hermit in the Kataragama forest,
Or bicycle across the countryside in the month of August,
One half day ahead of the western monsoon,
I would have so many choices.
But, as the simple facts show,
Here I am.
a new york poem
This is the suitcase that’s carried wherever I go,
Inside a feast and outside ever widening circles
of coal and bread, cotton and zinc.
Clouds appear in the service of earth
bound to nothing
like the sun that sets over endless maples,
but beyond, smiling and sweet,
there she is!
that majestic river
we now call Hudson
don't tell me i have had enough
Don’t tell me I have had enough.
Don’t stop me from wanting more.
Do you remember handing me your favorite wine
And I dropped it to the floor
Even though I was thirsty?
Just because I want does not mean I am a slave
My longing exists on the inside and outside,
it is yours as well as mine.
The past and future are broken barriers
as far as I can tell.
You came back to me this morning
...
go find yourself
Go find a friend
Who can patiently tolerate you.
Go find a l tree
with large leafy limbs.
Test the finest incense
by dropping it on live coals.
Drink even bitter milk,
when taken from a hand that loves you.
Open your eyes at daybreak,
when tasks await
you don’t know how to do.
Step into fire,
like a hero.
Patience changes fire into gardens of
lotus, willow, and rose.
Spinning and spinning...
November 2009
1 post
isn't it true, too
Isn’t it true,
that flaxen haired Sandra
standing on the wooden steps
calling “Haydar!…Haydar!…”
is even better
than the plump gray cat
waddling her way back home?
August 2009
3 posts
you have no moon
You and I are desperately complicated,
more than the center of even the furthest star,
which is, after all, a simple enough mix of radiation and gas.
No, my darling,
you are an infinitely complex array of liquids, solids, and gas,
driven by electromagnetic charges and ion exchanges,
into a frenzy of continuous activity and self replication.
Most fantastically, this jumble of matter organizes...
Unanswerable Questions
The moon is back, and I saw a whole clan of white-tailed deer scoot through a finger in the clearing between the oaks and pines up by Granite Spring. Should I take this as some kind of speckled fecund sign? As an ornament on a dazzling crown of green prosperity? Or was it just a hungry family crossing from wood to wood? Come on now. Let’s go soak in the sulfurous water. Let us...
July 2009
7 posts
in the cool shade of blue moon time
the spring holiday was nearly upon us
new buds marked the azaela and beech
while on the porch, in the last rays of dusky sunlight,
you sat, crosslegged, hands in a frenzy
slipping little yellow beads onto thread
with a fine silver clasp at the end
a vintage necklace,
a gift for a dear friend.
swifter, far swifter,
than those hands working
are the synapses of nerves
found in the brain
...
isnt it true
isnt it true
that sandra imitating the bengal cat trotting
is even more adorable
than the trotting bengal cat
what she said, to her friend, walking home at...
…Why do you think the earth keeps turning ? For what reason do you think the moon falls every night into the sea? Isn’t it so he and I can see each other again?
O! Is that the warbler in the tree! But what can he tell me I don’t already know? Isn’t he just wasting his time?
in the crowns of pines
if only i could cover my head like a monk
and walk slowly, eyes to the ground.
but the little birds are so foolish:
they scatter in the crowns of palms and pines
and chirp and chirp
over and over
just because the air smells like rain,
just because the moon’s bright lover returns from his dreams again.
repetition is for donkeys
They say from repetition even donkeys can learn,
Who, it is claimed, lack the brains of cats or dogs or crows.
Then what about me, Lord?
When this heart that turns over and over
Can learn to remember
But not to forget,
Me, Lord?
What happens to me?
What happens to me?
what we are doing is not "smart"
You say what we are doing
“is not smart.”
I say
“Romeo and Juliet did not end up dead
from being smart!”
You say I have taught you
“a lot of things I could use in the future.”
I say “I can no longer remember the simple past.”
June 2009
1 post
dont they really have
Don’t they really have
in the land where she has gone
such things
as crows?
-
thick necked, shiny, the color of young charcoal,
rarely alone,
feeding on the ground and eating almost anything,
flapping methodically in a way that is rarely broken by glides,
and living with their fledglings
in the deep recesses of thickets and trees,
-
and miserable evenings,
-
and...
May 2009
4 posts
from the zen
Escaping myself, I became a priest:
my master prescribing total rain.
Thirty years in this sanctuary like a stolen gem,
my principle unchanged: only the deepest sense of loss; everything.
Meet me? Listen well before this rib closes.
*************
This month turning round like a pole
about to dissolve within. O the burdens.
Fragments and dice, yet where is the change?
No need to keep...