Today, I

I was so inspired, then
(I realized -); I read (a lot)
and spun stories with the ease
of a single turn in soft snow
(the way your tracks tell stories on mountain sides-
that is the kindest brush stroke,
I think, the kind that lasts barely a day,
and melts again each spring.)
You are a Titan, and the sun, the sun,
the sun rises.

----

Was it just the simple way
we unfolded into one another? -
the free-form uncurling of corners
(and shamelessly, we bare the lines in our skin
like birthmarks, like bookmarks,
like the road beneath the wheels' spin).

Not everyone can do this, you say.
You might be right.
      Not even me.
(no, let me lose myself in something else
with brighter blues and deeper greens
And rainbows too polite to end.)

When the moon went down
(yes, into the gap) and we went up
(went up, went up.),
I saw there, from the peak -
                                     The strangest moment,
                                              like gazing into your own blue eyes,
                                              like watching the empty sky fill with light,
                                              like knowing tomorrow will unravel the same.

I saw our faces fall away, saw our skin peel
back, I saw the fine lines of your finger pads
shifting like sand.

I knew you, then;
I knew you, then;
I knew you never could know me.

And I shook.
(like so many grains of sand).

Silent apology for silence

While Burning Man (and women)

it isn't just the way I sing
(I cry, you seem), but
this sharper vision runs wild in colour
(rather than wait the patient stream...)

Is it so true (or valid to ask)
whether dust or rain
      or time? I recover

some blade of grass
from this puzzle piece (past).

I see this. I know it's mine.

-------

When we bothered in another life to commit this thought to words,
I wondered then (as I do now) - These games are so absurd.

It's so loud on Saturday!  (we keep the earth awake,
tomorrow morning, even the sun will be groggy.)
Whether the sand means to house all this deep, dirty bass
(to put it away for The Great Quiet that comes when the stars are unhinged -
when the pieces of the moon grow tired of each other,
when the man in the tiger suit finally ceases to see
the humour, the humour
of the mouse.)....

then let the sands release these sounds as prayer, as a cry for some big house party
she never got to host,  for all the careless guests
she never got to greet,  for all the cheap drinks
that were never spilled on her perfect Persian rugs.

-----

If I knew how to write a prayer,
I'd write one for you.
Just a rhyme scheme or
same canon of words escapes me.
It's just, a prayer of this magnitude -
I'd write all day and never begin,
and the beginning would seem like the end,

But every time I start,
someone backs up into me
with glow in the dark pasties
proclaiming plastic nipple nonsense,
(and a tittering of glitter-wings)

So I start your prayer again.

(I've never hurt like I do with you:
This prayer shapes me empty,
like the big old desert wind.)

---

I wrap my stony fingers around
my tangled curls.

I turn to stone. I turn to stone.
I turn to stone in the sun.

wake up, look at the morning, find time
for teeth and hair,
And cover that shifting skin of yours:
get fresh!
get to the office
put people in boxes!
admire the containers.
admire the contained.

---

December 12. 2012.

That sound you hear while we sleep?
That is only
the subtle opening and closing
of the gills on the fish
that ate my heart
(and sits in my ribcage,
pretending, pretending,
pretending.)

It wasn't only me -

sputtering at the hands of a journal that's taken too long to fill
(surprising, considering all the broken promises I've made).

And if I could find it in myself
to form some dream girl
from this cakey-play-dough,
then don't.
Don't. Dough.

It was just a wandering
of feet between streets,
(and the loneliness of hawks
or vultures, black/white wings,
circling
in the sky).

It wasn't me, I'm telling you.
It was only my shadow.
(and that bad dream
of the empty book
with all her lonely scribbled pages.)

----

This sun, orange, sinks,
heavy with the day
into that coastal cloud cover (that)
we love so completely.

This orange sun,
pregnant with the way you saw mee
and laughed, and spoke and touched -
(like we were half our age),
gives birth to an evening
of strange whispers,
while we tell our truths to ghosts.

This red sun
so full of things we shared
while she shone behind our backs
and overheard your words
(you want. I want.)
must surrender to This red night.

and this coastal cloud cover heaves
like the ocean.
like the sailboat.
like the sun.

----------

we are falling apart with such grace.,
hopeless and aimless
and completely in love with this pretty game.

-----



My Things appeared politely in your place:
sea shells sprouting in the bathroom like
the crocuses in spring;
small rocks gathered on counters,
the corners of coffee tables;
little jars, unlabeled, full
of far-away-smells seemed to
shuffle into the spice drawer,
full of pardons and excuse-me's.

I was never so polite as my Things.
Storming in like hot-July in the African desert,
demanding you turn up the heat, talk louder,
ask more questions -
and then an unexpected cold front would arrive
 --- our lightening was never as loud as the bar below --
but there's really nothing like the smell of rain,
and me,
wet on your apartment floor.  

From Some Time Ago

We arrange to meet in some cafe to work
on our writing, bring
perfect blank notebooks brimming
with smooth thick sheets
and brand new pens, virile
with ink.

You say - a gray-hair woman, wispy
and sunglasses, long scarf -
elegant, her favorite acronyms
line up, they would die for her.

Or the sunlight turning the trees' silhouettes -
keeping us half blind by the beauty
of an ending day,
the chill wind speaks the language
of knit mittens, / Green, Green, the city / is a jungle
of...

some guy sitting near us, with a
growing bald spot
and an empty notebook,
rubbing the pages against each other,
the corners ever-so-gracing
Seduced --
(by the dog in the front seat of the SUV -
learning to drive.)

I'm not a blank notebook, though,
I've been rewritten so many times
and my pages thin, torn in parts -
so this writing is a fallacy
and may it never be read!
(I'm working on my novel).

-----------------

I had a vision of you,
bright orange and jaws like a tree
waiting in the water
(for me to count the stones).

you swallowed sea shells
to get closer to the sun,
to spin records late at night.

I hope you do not feel your life
so long. I hope its moments
are brief and eternal
like this sunset and the memory
of rain.
(of rain, of rain. of rain.)

---------------

There, carrying keg on broad shoulders, dark tan below
your eyes. There carrying plastic grocery bags, caught up in
your shoes. There carrying a phone and two books, breathing quick
in your breast. There carrying your whole life, house piled on house,
an SUV, two kids, a dog, your husband, and a briefcase with
some stranger's initial, your footsteps sink into the pavement,
You are a Titan, the sun rises from your ass, and when the
day comes, I will take my orchids to your grave, place stones
there, all caught up in letting go of
all I watched you carry.



-------

you live such ordinary moments
in a house I can't keep clean,
profound like oceans trapped
in sea shells, too heavy
to be braided into hair.
Cat hunts bugs; dog stares.
How did this ever get
so important, enchanted as we are
by cinnamon, by rose.
(but skip, if you will, the fennel.)

Rain falls from the sky and right into me -
my open mouth, gushing and
bubbles from my nose.
The poetry of silence is
deafening as a car passing
and the obliging water moved out of the way.

They say we're moving towards chaos.
I disagree.
Order will be the end of us,
when, finally, everything is exactly in the right place,
the universe will end.

October sixth

Whether through giant, pre-historic trees that dwarf

The big strip-mall-people

Or great rolling deserts,

sleeping in parking lots

or in hammocks by the sea..

You can take sweet California

and these strange metal boxes that

sweep us in high-speeds across vast places:

The greatest leaps occur in our strange hearts.

Swallow some madness,

let smiles invade those stony cheeks

softening the curve in your back

until you melt, brain first, into

the sea of rolling trees and stunt-man-madness.

Wait until we are curled up, purring at

the feet of some Sea-God

feeding us the golden grapes of Eden…

murmuring stories of the Ancient East…

Let the elves run over our naked bodies

Let us lie to the dawn, draw straws,

Take turns turning back the sun.

Jerusalem

It's true, Jerusalem. I said those things
when I thought you couldn't hear.

And now that I sit in your streets
(wrapped in purple poncho)
drinking dark coffee (it's ok,
but not great),
praying to the gods of yogurt and honey,
doing my best to ignore your stubborn winter chill
which has occupied space in my fingers
since I stepped off the plane,
I am not embarrassed; I do not take them back.

I drink some sun and listen
to this old man in a white hat
strum Bob Dylan songs in French
and wonder politely about your madness,
and my own...

We always hurt the ones who love us,
Jerusalem,
we are too chilly and
nonchalant,
and you don't even have a good scarf.

I don't mind the cute way
your people, confused, disembark
from the train just as they do everything else:
The system is "there is no system."
Push, shove, ignore, throw
garbage on the streets

because you've got bigger fish to fry.

But what happens, Jerusalem, when the day comes
you're tired of frying fish?
You'll just sit here in silence
with the white-hat-man and his covers
of songs from the sixties
smoking stolen cigarettes
from Palestine.

I am not your prophet, Jerusalem.
i will not hold vigil, smudge your walls with sage
or hummus, pour coffee grinds in your gutters,
unlike you, Jerusalem,
I will just go.

The streets line up
with empty cars, with that exquisitely blank
stare,

blinking, I try to gaze into the heart
of that grey and concrete path.

I ask the painted yellow lines for directions,
am faced with awkward silence;
pine cones roll across tarmac,
hoping for some more fertile
landing pad.

the path is not so straight, nor so fraught
with
blinking red and yellow lights.

Open your eyes and drink in the sweetness
of making your own map,
of being your own great compass.