GOODNIGHT MOON

aside from your grandmother's cotton blanket checkered
in a sanguine and scarlet plaid pattern and the faint
taste of copper on the tongue, the damp impressionable
Fall grass on top of which we sit,

a corn field is necessary and all the crickets that
hide in the tall cut stalks, too, and the black scarf
covering your neck, keeping away the cut and bite of
howling winds, that's another important thing

if we want to enjoy this meteor shower tonight, what's
most required is a consistently cold temperature, one
which makes visible the invisible heat of inner breaths
and the quick pace of it

there's a certain beauty in the not knowing whether we
shake with impatience awaiting the event, this momentary
transcending by reminder of our insignificance among the
billions of stars and galaxies

or whether it's simply from the frigid breeze and light
sweaters, and the loss of gloves for hand holding

at any rate, it's absolutely necessary for both of us to be cold in this moment

so we have a reason to hold each other;

for the opportunity to practice hugs

to reveal how warm it is inside of us

for a moment to express love simply in one innocent act

BLUE PERIOD

she implores me to go West
leave the fickle Eastern air behind
leave the ponds caked over with ice
ponds made mirrors that line the sides of highways and shimmer in the indecisive night
in the dark lit by lighter light
inside a phone booth
beside a 24 hour diner
under a holy astronomic sky

she begs me to love her fully
to hold her with red knuckles
to warm her cool midnight fingers with
the scent of my heat

she asks me to remember the wind how it reveals
invisible spirits on playgrounds midsummer as
they swing on the swings and to think upon
the chirp in her laugh
the red wine split on that one sunflower party dress
the scent of lilacs
the way it mixes and stirs the blood
the phenomenal sharing of love

i think to myself that i want to go
but i don't want to go no
i don't want to
i don't want to

MIDSUMMER NIGHTS DREAM

in this particular dream we are two pigeons carrying important messages all
across the land and across the channel,
over all the men with ears muffled by fiery blast, over the pastures made sacred with cold lifeless flesh,
perched sometimes to rest on a branch to catch a breath overhearing words such as i love you and i miss you and i need you and oh how i am sorry

and as we fly together we wonder why we don't care
why we think, "they're not even pitiful"

for a moment i realize that you're the one who, in the night, sleeps still while i kick my legs and shift my head

but we still sleep comfortably

then all of a sudden in the dream we find stray bullets piercing our wings and we fall into the earth, into a motherly embrace

and in that moment we are falling together, melting
together, fading into a distant sun

dissolving into one other:

becoming one

LION'S MANE

the painting of that proud african lion which graced the north wall of your blue tiled kitchen, it was the last possession i wanted returned to me;

it became something of an obsession.

so i walked to your house defiantly and we talked then shouted and moments later wood and paper shards were strewn all about the bedroom.

i gathered the pieces and left for the door unwillingly, understanding that every step meant i moved farther away from you,

the real real you -

your hair, your skin,

your ass.



i took what i could and threw them in the yard:

a mane, a foot, an eye, the fur of the tail,

and left them to rot.

a misty rain on on a thursday on the second to last day in may washed the paint away from each jagged shape,

its stuff spread across the grass and spilled into the pavement, running into the street becoming a mess of a thing.



on your step, i smoke a cigarette and, moments later, i've trapped a beetle under an empty whiskey glass while a stranger passed by and didn't ask me how my day was;

didn't ask me why i thought i was the center of the universe;

never once begged me to tell her that i loved her.

and i was grateful for that favor, she must have been a sage to have had the foresight to know that we wouldn't last,

that everything passes,

that all the joys we could share would, too.



a lingering smell of lilacs entered my senses while i walked through the park not needing anything,

i sat under a maple tree and watched the trail of an airplane far up in the distance spell some unfamiliar name and every moment that passed was filled with something -

the bark of a german shepherd,

the bell of a tandem bike,

the crackle of a cigarette smoked

the splashes of water colliding into itself in the fountain -

and all of it became boxed in a memory, instantly.



the memories of us, whatever meaning was left, it went with the paint,

like it, it faded away,

was immediate in its end, and went on and became nothing.



what can i call all this feeling i have that refuses to be translated or even told in the first place

the feeling of losing something constantly that couldn't be lost in the first place,

something which was nothing at all,

in the first place;



with what names, what words;

what profound statements or conjectures?

what else is there to call it, but love?

WOULDN'T IT BE NICE

i'll meet him someday when he's old with silver hair
he walks with a cane and puffs a pipe and it's a day
when he coughs softly into worn and wrinkled hands

on that day perhaps i will, in that moment, wrap my arms
around him or trace the lines of his aged face with my
right index finger to find myself in the edges and curves

but i may also just think of the children with sesame street
umbrellas, yellow duck rain boots fixed on their small
feet, bidding ado to their mothers on front yards cut neat

or i'll take him back home on an icy night in the fall
to the lawn of the schoolyard where i made my breath
stink of cigarettes and beer and spit and love

and we'll lay on our backs and look backwards upside
down so that the earth is the sky and the sky is the
land and the stars point us to the cosmopolitan

we will talk of what it felt like for him, the
holding of her shaky hands while standing in an
ivy covered church when bells and cheers rang

the lighting of sparklers at the apple festival
and the dipping of hot legs in cool river water
with a straw hat on top of full black hair

i'll make him answer all the infinite questions like
why it is so hard to love even oneself? and what are
we to make of all this stuff of life?

i'll make him answer

there is no doubt that

i'll make him

ALWAYS WATCH THE CLOCK

there is not much better than midnight drives in the country among abandoned sheds and coyotes and fields of wheat with windows down and the air swirling around, the cigarette smoke and heat dancing in a waltz, with one arm poking out wide from the side of the car like a toothpick in the twilight breezes, or on a walk on the first day of spring noticing all the life in the burgeoning scene, on a perfectly sunny day, when the lyrics god must have carved the clouds into animal shapes is tested and proved to be tried and true, and to lay on an afternoon grass, later, seeping its steamy air out into the immediate atmosphere, where a woman whose eyes are of such exquisite and perplexing beauty one just simply cannot stop looking into them, as she talks about the stars and outer-space, how the sun is made out of the same stuff as we are and you should think that and believe it and know it is true.

there is not much better than writing down a passing thought. a passing thought which is written when my body is in the exact right physical position, and the words are written without knowing how it was written, and each moment is given meaning which somehow, makes sense: hands in a comfortable hover over the keys, legs crossed, like the look a bald professor with a handlebar mustache smoking a pipe in the middle of the sixty-eighth iteration of an impassioned lecture on the meaning of tragedy, tragedy like the loss of his wife due to a seatbelt malfunction, or tragedy like the day he received a call from the school's principal notifying him that his son was harassed and beaten up at school for being gay, or tragedy like the time he lost his hamster and found it dead in the air vent when he was eight, and his parents didn't buy him a new one -- like that image of a wise old man speaking in a calm and docile manner would give, i sit and type and write and i am awakened.

nothing better than knowing that every moment that passes by instantaneously is full of meaning, splendid meaning ... and so much of it. that here we are, stuck in a body on a planet in this universe already enlightened with the knowledge that everything exists when it exists, and is what it is, and just is. but the crazy thing, the 'nothing better' part of it all, that we can write and make the meaning, make what we want of this crazy, hysterically genius life.

SO HARD TO TAKE IT EASY

its nice to listen to current favorite song at the earliest point in time one can say ah what a beautiful morning without being wrong, when a spring sky bleeds pink and orange all over the horizon, and trails of planes at various heights in that painted canvas don't dissipate, and just stay hanging in the air, and the sound of construction hums and bums mining dumpsters for aluminum cans and scraps for snacks startles a lone cardinal perched at the tip of a branch on a magnolia tree in the middle of the university oval--to just contemplate life through puffs and drags of a cigarette without any intention of resolving the infinite contradictions life presents, as a warm breeze executes its serenity all over me.

it's very easy to stay up throughout a night, to stay up all through it until sunrise, to find yourself on a porch smoking a cigarette frantically, when something is missed, or someone, for that matter.

it's also easy to forget who you are, where you are, what you are, when you are, how you are, during the listening of an amazing song. easy to become absent, or nothing, in the reading of an epic poem, or in the certain recognition that some man or woman has been able to express with near perfect language all the thoughts and feelings which inhabit your own mind and soul and spirit. also, easy to become nothing when watching the sunrise, smoking a cigarette.

but, on the other hand, it's hard to listen to an amazing song and forget who you are when staying up late at night missing something, or especially, someone.

but change is constant and happens instantaneously. so it makes it hard to focus less on the past and less on the future, to get to the stuffs which really matters: that immediate present when hard or easy isn't a question yet, life is just lived.

because all these atoms which are directly in front of us and around us are atoms of the rolling thundering waves of a distant waterfall in South America, of the sprawling desert sands in Africa, of stars exploding in the heavens, light years away, atoms which never stay still, are never the same, are always changing, transforming, becoming something more beautiful, hopefully.

we need to remember that is why life is so complicated, because all the things we think are solid and structured and stay the same (especially the people we love), absolutely do not do that. absolutely nothing stays the same; haven't we learned that already?

look at me, now. already, i'm different, i've changed.

go on ... be different; change, too.