THE VANISHING MAN
I am friends with all my ex-wives
and ex-lovers.
They are legion.
I specialize
in the short, intense relationship,
and frequently
the short, intense woman.
If all my lovers were laid
end to end
(spare me the jokes, please)
they would be uncomfortable
but would stretch across
several acres of arable land
owned by a rather astonished farmer
Not for me the lasting partnership.
My lovers and I
burn brightly
and flame out
like twin comets
fleeing across the summer sky
If these women all stood together
arms linked in feminist unity
their breasts gleaming like shields
in the morning sun,
they might discuss me seriously:
“Yes, I remember him
faintly:
he had one foot on the earth
but the other
was never firmly planted
in rich psychological soil.”
I oscillate too rapidly
for the female eye to perceive
longer than a wink
I pulsate in radiating waves
like a neon sign
with important letters missing
I love all women
but none for very long.
Likewise, I love myself
at intervals too rapid
to sustain:
now you see me
and now I’m gone
leaving only a smudge of smoke
in the evening air
I am the magician of my existence,
the rabbit in my own hat
appearing
and disappearing
before my very eyes
Meanwhile, O Womankind,
I suck on your toes, delicious candies,
and make them vanish
one by one
into my mouth
to reappear later in my feverish psyche.
I plunge into your creamy caramel center
stealing your precious hard-earned secrets
to chart my path
to heaven
Hello hello
dear child of God
mother of man
and
good
good
bye
MEDITATION ON A CIGARETTE
See the old weed
with the recently bad reputation
resting comfortably between my fingers…
I raise it to my lips
and drink deeply:
Ah, life; ah, pleasure.
I drift slightly into space
as the soft smoke
squeezes air from my brain.
This wispy dream of satisfaction
the Surgeon General has declared
unfit for human consumption
He’s probably severely stressed
sitting high atop his bureaucracy
meditating on illness and disease,
infecting innocent mice with cancer.
The mice have declared
that he may be dangerous to their health:
Never nibble on a Surgeon General, they say.
He is a carrier
of inhumane choices
LOOKING FOR A FRIEND
I had a thought today
that built a universe
of endless oceans,
of tall stalks of wheat
waving so gracefully,
and a rich harvest of sunrises
whose beams of light
ricochet through high clouds
as yet unnamed.
And there were no people.
And I gazed upon it
hand in hand with God,
and it was good.
Then
I lifted a finger
and a man appeared
in the distance.
He walked toward me,
lips curving in a smile.
I waited breathlessly,
anticipating his historic first words.
“Mindree hala cunya poopshen,” he said,
laughing with delight.
Oh, shit, I thought.
A foreigner.
His eyes glazed over,
and he disappeared
into God’s melancholy mind.
FATHERS/DAUGHTERS
Tear-stained women
cry on my pillow
night after soggy night
bemoaning the loss
of Daddy.
“I’ll be your Daddy,” I offer;
“I’ll take care of you”
She replies “But I hate him”
I backpedal quickly:
“Tell him you hate him,
express that feeling”
“I don’t need no therapist,
muthafucka”
“But why are you crying?”
“I miss my Daddy”
“Well…
shall we get together again
in 1999?”
HOW TO FIND GOD (Part I)
The poet fashions his existence
chiefly from dreams,
his psyche connected
only tenuously
to the earth
He lives on intuition
on nerve
on glimpses of
his guiding Muse
and
when the Muse laughs
on glimpses of God
DOWNTOWN IN AMERICA
It is the noon hour.
People tumble from their offices
(luckily at ground level)
like a hundred thousand pair of dice
thrown by a manic Vegas croupier
The croupier
(known to some as God)
boasts a legendary talent for diversity.
He creates all shades, sizes, and heights,
using Brooks Brothers and Givenchy,
hardhats and jeans and macho stubble
and threadbare soiled ragtime people
mumbling in tongues
unfamiliar to suits and ties,
miniskirts and high heels
(though the croupier smiles upon them;
he speaks their language)
And while we race about, pell-mell,
talking deals and gossip and on-TV-last-night,
Eastern Europe and Russia lurch fitfully
toward freedom;
South Africa sees the rigid chains
of apartheid begin to snap
like stale sourdough biscuits;
and other old pockets of resistance
to planetary harmony
(that old improbable dream)
launch themselves into the air
like fragile arrows,
destination unknown.
Meanwhile,
the old croupier, a master metaphysician,
rolls the dice yet again
setting fire to oily water
in the madcap Middle East;
and then
watches us tumble back inside
our comfortable homey hives
like busy blind gregarious bees
MONEY, MORE MONEY
I dream of money
lusting after my fingers.
My pockets seek it out daily
that they may empty themselves
into other larger pockets of need.
I pour coins into my gas tank;
it merrily melts them into energy
propelling me to the store
where I give money
to a smiling child in a silly smock
who gives me food in return
As I eat
I dream of money:
Stuffing it into my mouth
picking my teeth with golden toothpicks
after eating a sandwich
of twenty-dollar bills.
But then,
I dream of women, too,
of souls filled with light
and of a universe where money
is no longer God
while God, that crafty land baron
wealthy beyond dreams,
smiles indulgently
as He counts His change
and closes the register,
trapping my outstretched fingers
in the till
THE SECRETS OF WOMEN
Girls are women
and children
and huge powerful creatures
all growing in my mind
powerful and silly
loving and threatening
their breasts suspended
from heaven
their lustrous thighs
dreaming of other children
males like myself
screaming for affection
What vital knowledge is nestled
soft and warm
in their shadowed, winking
folds of flesh?
Tell me, tell me your secrets.
I want to know, too.
TELL ME, GOD
Again, once again,
I lift the pen
and begin to write:
Do my fingers know the words?
Is it the brain
or the soul
that writes of love and death,
of bodies slick with sweat,
of the secret politics of power
that rides so tenderly
between men and women?
Or is there, somewhere,
a larger, laughing entity
(of which I am only a fragment)
instructing my hand
to move across the page?
Reveal yourself, large laugher.
Is your name Bill, also?
Am I only a dream
in your rambunctious reverie?
I shout these questions
into the trembling air
and listen impatiently.
And in the answering silence
I hear only
the whirring window fan
and a bird’s distant chirping:
a bird named Bill
and a window fan named God
Or, perhaps, vice-versa
RUNNING
Breath pumping in and out
feet pounding the earth
with a steady rhythm
I run
toward the edge
of the universe
It is a miracle.
Unencumbered, I run upward,
the trees joyously
urging me forward,
birds and plants and rocks
whispering a song of
the vast universal web
we all share
but too often forget
as we lock ourselves
into time and space,
lock ourselves
into our minds
Running free
with atoms of air
blowing cleanly through my body
I become air
I become light
I become holy
I become Buddha’s eye
As I run
As I run
and run
STEPHEN KING’S HOME APPLIANCES
Here’s to you
O whirring Maytag
and your toaster-oven companion
which dings to announce
the readiness of my meal.
The microwave dings also
but I know their dings
intimately
for they nuke the food
at varying intensities
The proud stately osterizer
thrashes the fruit
within an inch of its
liquid life.
The dishwasher
(O churning beast)
shakes the house
with its sudsing spraying rotation.
And at night
when their tiny red eyes
are closed
I watch them carefully
distracted from my reading;
and as I sleep, I dream of
blood-red eyes
popping open
in the darkness
and their mechanical jaws
gaping open,
dripping, dripping…
THE SEDUCTIVENESS OF KITCHENS
The poet’s nose
detects food cooking
up at Jeanne’s, and
inhales the heady aroma of
a succulent woman at the stove.
Her bright dancing eyes
watch a lettuce leaf
tossed into space….
It drifts down
a column of light
buoyed up by
imagination only,
then is nestled among
several tomatoes
which look at each other
anxiously,
wondering which will be chosen
first
and which left
bereft
to drink up the cooling oil.
And the poet, meanwhile,
watches the cook’s lithe form
dance among the salad bowls
and imagines the moment
when dessert might be
a tender slender slice
oh yes dear God
of the cook’s moist affection
LADYBUG
A firefly lit my mind
calling my attention to
a ladybug
flying in the dusky light
of a winter evening
Her amber wings made
a sweet chirring sound
whose rhythms matched
exactly
the humming resonance
of my secret need
I stood high on my toes
flapping my arms
an earthbound mammal
chained by gravity
She smiled patiently
and lifted me
by the soft time-worn strands
of my desire
TEXTURES
The pen is smooth
under my fingertips,
my hand lined:
no longer the hand
of the boy I sometimes feel
inside myself
He is there still
wrapped in the wandering organs
under the flesh you see
before you
He is in awe of
being alive
He feels intensely
your affection
and rejection
(sometimes, I admit,
he imagines
these things)
He wonders frequently
what his fate will be
While I know
but keep his secret
from him –
not meanly,
but so I will not deprive him
of the delight, the raw discovery
that joy and pain
are our own elegant constructions
DIMENSIONS OF REALITY
We sleepwalk in time and space
playing and resting here
until called to other duties
Dozing idly
through grocery stores
as though food can
feed the spirit;
arguing with friends
as though being right
will elevate us into
magical realms;
making love
as though that
tenuous connection
will purge the soul
of loneliness;
and working our jobs
as though our lives
depend on it.
And in dreams and reverie
we contact our other selves
old friends
on other planes
minds touching
linking their vagrant souls
with ours
for an instant
in a time which is timeless
where physicality
is meaningless
carrying on a multitude of
simultaneous conversations
and then we awaken,
startled:
“God, what was I thinking of?
I’m late for work!”
And apart from time
God laughs hugely at the cosmic joke,
rattling the windows:
We humans
call it thunder
RELAXATION DAY
We are given Christmas
and Easter
and so forth:
Where is Relaxation Day,
a single state-mandated holiday
on which relaxation
is mandatory?
No work, certainly;
no reading or television
(for these activities
inspire excitation)
no exercise
no shopping
eating is okay
Walking about – no way.
All stores shuttered.
No driving.
No talking, apart from
simple requests:
“Help me up,” or
“Find my pants.”
The mind founders on the notion.
Imagine the meals gorged until
the belly groans.
Imagine the jaws of terrible tension
closing in on millions of people
deprived of the right to
stimulate the nerve of regular activity.
Conceive of mass psychosis
in your hometown.
Ah, well.
Forget it.
APRIL 21, 1990
I celebrated 50 years of living
yesterday
now firm in the knowledge
that years are as moments:
time is transitory as
the drop of rain
that strikes the rose
and splatters to
the earth;
that our centuries are
as seconds to
those spirits that observe us
as we measure the
ticking of clocks
believing that by hoarding time
like misers
we will gain some brief advantage
over the advancing twilight.
We only save up the gifts
of life and laughter
for that later moment
when no one is there
to share it
but God
and He
went to bed early
FATHER AND SON
My father,
I learned today,
has cancer.
He is 77.
His doctor
(specializing in diseases
of the head and throat
one of life’s more enviable
specialties)
tells me that cobalt radiation therapy
gives him a 65% chance
of recovery.
But who can calculate
the damage of daily dosages
of radiation
to the spirit.
Who can calculate
the percentage of havoc
inflicted on the cells
by fear of imminent death.
And who can calculate
the paltry coins of love
he and I have denied
one another?
We have not been close
since I was seven
sitting beside his piano
seeing waterfalls of sound
pour from his fingers
into the air around me
filling the room with liquid rainbows
suffusing me with music and light.
Somewhere in time
(or perhaps outside of it)
a small boy listens intently
to his father’s melodies
charging the air with electricity
as each one prepares
in his future life
to make different choices
MINUET
Tiny steps toward each other
and tiny steps back.
Jeanne and I teach each other
through our nerve endings
slowly
like glaciers taking on new ice
moving imperceptibly
across Arctic waters
toward warmer regions
What are you about?
And me, what of me?
Is there a middle where
we may happily meet
to dance forever as partners?
And for how long?
(there are too many
goddam questions
in this poem)
Or will it be only for
this moment
suspended in time
when our eyes meet
and then, distracted,
look away
into the unwritten future?
POET’S BLOCK
For awhile there
I was cookin’:
a poem every day,
sometimes two,
flooding the page
with images,
filling my mind
with similes and smiles
My Muse
gripped me firmly
between her thighs,
lashed me with her hair,
lavished me with kisses
And then she split
(that fickle hussy)
I don’t know
where she went.
Is she resting on
another poet’s eyebrow?
Is she coasting
through the ether
seeking another home?
Or is she only
hiding
behind a synapse in a
corner of my mind
taunting me
to come out
and play again?
KILL ME IF YOU MUST, BUT DON’T TAKE AWAY MY CIGARETTES
I smoke, therefore I am.
The smoke curls gracefully
above my fingertips,
a painting in the air,
haiku in motion.
I pull at it hopefully,
as though straining at eternity
for that last hard ounce
of meaning
The mind seems animated by
the hot gassed nicotine
drawn across its neurons
like a harpist seeking the ultimate arpeggio
which will bend God’s ear to her music
But then,
there is the matter of health.
The body craves fitness
even as the psyche craves smoke:
I run through the iridescent sunshine
lungs pumping joyfully
excommunicating the smokey toxins
into the raw welcoming air.
Later, I dwell on that pleasure
with the reward of
a solid cigarette displacing
the happy tired oxygen.
The paradox is evident.
Let us look to our holy mother
of pain and poetry:
Anne Sexton wrote of
the awful rowing toward God
as though her Deity was on some distant shore,
as though He did not exist already
in every twitch of her muscles;
as though God weren’t
riding boldly on her pen
as the poem flowed through it
Sexton stained her poems
with blood
as though pain and pleasure
were not a unity
forming widening circles
like a ring of smoke
drifting outward to
enclose the evening air
in tender parentheses of love
THE VANISHING TEAR DROP
Swept up in old memories
you cried last night
and, sharing your soft tears,
loved so well, so completely
we touched hearts for the first time
And the next morning,
the armor returned:
you were brisk, efficient,
the feeling banished
from your face
as though nothing special
had happened.
See how the fabric of life
knits itself into completion
when we are not watching
when we are dreaming
of old misplaced affection
The only seams
in that raveling fabric
are those we create
from whole cloth
as we weave tough knots
into the thread
WAR OF WORDS
As the poet reads
in the hushed gallery,
the earth blossoms
somewhere
with shrapnel
fire
blood….
As the poet reads,
a hungry child suckles uselessly
at a wasted breast….
As the poet reads,
men joke of women
in harsh tones,
and then, remembering Mother
genuflect and sigh,
“God rest her soul.”
As the poet reads,
the gallery blossoms with images,
each listener conjuring a picture
very unlike the poet’s own.
As the poet reads,
blood beats in his arteries
and a host of symbolic children
slide down his veins
with high-pitched squeals
into the widening pool of his heart.
These children are mine,
now yours.
HOW TO FIND GOD (PART II)
Every morning
I get up at 5:30
and write
God is easier to locate
at that hour.
Later
in the hubbub
pell-mell
hurry-scurry
peopletalk
tensiontime
of the daylight,
He is more elusive.
Sometimes
I glimpse him
behind the piano
Sometimes
He flits briefly
through the glinting highlights
caught by Jeanne’s
newly tinted hair
(which is very chic;
He thinks so, too, no doubt)
Sometimes
He checks in
through the tone of wonder
in the voice of a neighbor
exclaiming over the grandeur
of the morning sun
scrubbing the day with light
And sometimes
I apprehend him
only by His absence
reminding me
that He is everywhere else
but by my side
FRESH NEW MORNING
Just about every poet
in the universe
has written about
the freshness of the morning;
the clean-washed quality of the air;
the birds, those idiot birds
singing their goddam heads off
as though there was something
worth singing about
Not me.
Our feathered friends
can sing till they drop.
I’m sleeping in today.
OUT OF TOUCH
I may be….
I think I am…
falling in love
And my sense of God
(oh God)
that interior universal wonder
is lately available
only
on my lover’s smooth skin
which is, unfortunately,
not a part of my body
but of hers.
(Now she’s taken God away
to the library,
but He’ll be back in a minute:
But where the hell am I
when God steps out?)
This infernal ego of mine,
so attached to physical form and surface,
floats like a spaceman,
its umbilicus detached
from the mother ship.
(Mother? Did I say “Mother”?)
Don’t make too much of that:
it’s only a poet’s word
written in a
small
marching
line
of
letters,
trooping after God, single-file,
lusting after the ultimate connection
between Jeanne’s heated skin
and my cooling ego,
turning happy cartwheels
in the bed we
(occasionally)
share
THE MOTION OF MOLECULES
They move in random patterns
through my wayward ego,
bumping heads like blind cats
in a tilted room,
forming, somehow,
a whole consciousness:
mine.
I cling to
this fragile consciousness
wondering if it is
guiding me correctly
It seems to be something
separate from myself:
a bag of marbles
to be doled out
one by one
thought by thought
deed by deed
in exchange for
whatever the universe has to offer
It offers up the sunrise;
it offers up the smile of a friend;
it offers up a poem
And miracle of miracles:
the marbles multiply
as these molecules of ego
fly into space,
landing like windblown blossoms
in the lap of God
OPTIONS
There are always
options:
Should I….
or perhaps….
Well.
What is the correct moral choice?
(or)
What would be more fun?
(or)
What will benefit me most?
Worry, worry.
The mind wraps itself
in razors
splitting hairs
as it shreds information,
a computer gone berserk.
Listen to the heart.
It speaks in tones
honed by centuries
of moral dilemma,
of former souls
confounded by similar
questions.
The heart fears nothing.
The heart knows.
It has no questions.
BALLERINA
Arching sweetly
in the midnight moonlight
poised above me
your face bathed in pleasure,
you twirl slowly like an angel
dancing
dancing
to a distant melody
Who needs a thousand angels
when only one brings more joy
than I can bear?
Arms linked above your head,
you hum the soft song
rhythmic, so rhythmic
to which you dance,
the soulful agent
of my mute delight
For that eternal blessed moment
I am hard-wired into
God’s cosmic wonderland
past and future blending,
time locked into space
as you dance so delicately
and sing your sighing siren song
of midnight madness
WRITER VERSUS TYPEWRITER
I circle the desk warily
like a boxer approaching
an unknown opponent
The typewriter glares at me
baring rows of white teeth
and a black gaping maw of an eye:
“Just try me,” it says
I jab, bob and weave
moving in aggressively,
coffecup in hand.
I give a head-fake
and suddenly
I grasp the chair and sit!
Aha! The first point scored!
Still
the machine is inert
silence flowing
from its accusing mouth
I smoke, sip coffee, and watch the beast
with my fingers poised above the keys,
my mind floating just outside
eternity’s doorway
The machine is taunting me
awaiting my first punch
And then
seizing the moment,
I write:
“The writer circles the desk warily
watching for explo ding clichés….”
(Jesus)
It may be a 10-round brawl
today.
BACKSTAGE AT THE THEATER
Nervouschatterlaughter
amid bursts of
sudden silence.
Actors acting
reacting
anticipating
that magical moment
of performance
when their audience is
utterly attentive
stoned into silence
by the ritual rules of drama
Unlike real life
where each audience
is an actor
improvising interruption
to one’s self-expression
where life is fluid
and out of control
No wonder
that acting is such a
magnet to the human ego:
Ah, to act!
To express oneself
without inhibition!
Ah, art!
Ah, life!
Ah, shut up!!
HAND IN GLOVE
Things fit into
other things:
keys into locks,
tupperware into other
tupperware
(but where’s the damn lid?)
and me
with shocking surprise
each time
into you
Imagine a planet where
things don’t fit:
Everything disassembled
lying apart
uselessly unconnected
Imagine a planet
on which
God didn’t smile
FLYING
My fellow humans and I
are sealed in a tube
scooting above the clouds
at six miles per minute
as in a dream
Cut adrift from ordinary time
we glide motionless,
only the low rumble of
jet engines reminding us
that we are awake
that is is real.
Feverishly
the stewards pamper us,
smother us with smiles,
food, drink, care.
Nestled in our narrow cribs
we drift toward
secret destinies
enjoying
this temporary rendezvous
with heaven
108 POUNDS OF TROUBLE
Nervouschatterlaughter
amid bursts of
sudden silence.
Actors acting
reacting
anticipating
that magical moment
of performance
when their audience is
utterly attentive
stoned into silence
by the ritual rules of drama
Unlike real life
where each audience
is an actor
improvising interruption
to one’s self-expression
where life is fluid
and out of control
No wonder
that acting is such a
magnet to the human ego:
Ah, to act!
To express oneself
without inhibition!
Ah, art!
Ah, life!
Ah, shut up!!
OUTSIDE THE WORD SYSTEM
Things fit into
other things:
keys into locks,
tupperware into other
tupperware
(but where’s the damn lid?)
and me
with shocking surprise
each time
into you
Imagine a planet where
things don’t fit:
Everything disassembled
lying apart
uselessly unconnected
Imagine a planet
on which
God didn’t smile
OF A SAN FRANCISCO MORNING
My fellow humans and I
are sealed in a tube
scooting above the clouds
at six miles per minute
as in a dream
Cut adrift from ordinary time
we glide motionless,
only the low rumble of
jet engines reminding us
that we are awake
that is is real.
Feverishly
the stewards pamper us,
smother us with smiles,
food, drink, care.
Nestled in our narrow cribs
we drift toward
secret destinies
enjoying
this temporary rendezvous
with heaven
COMPLEX MAN
I am
a complex man
Often I yearn
to be simple:
a farmer in 1891
marching behind his plow,
not a thought in his mind
but for his crops;
a simple man
with simple wife and
three simple children
doing simple things
Instead
I march steadfastly
behind my convoluted psyche
meditating on the vagaries
of the 1990s.
We know too much
now
to be simple;
it is a luxury
lost to us.
Fueled by technology,
our imagination
(and our fear)
know no limits.
They have revealed
all the psychological cobwebs
draped in profusion
in the corners of our minds
We can no longer keep secrets
from ourselves —
no place to hide
in blessed ignorance.
The race of mankind
is growing up,
responsible for ourselves
and the earth’s inhabitants
responsible for
every bomb that falls
every wrong committed
every atrocity wrought.
We are not
our brother’s keeper;
we are our brother,
connected to him by
subtle strands of light and sound
whispering around the planet
That elegant childlike simplicity of
isolation
is gone forever,
replaced by
the complexity of
ecological balance,
the complexity of
four billion psyches
acting as a
single-celled organism
The mind reels at the thought
Let’s have a beer
and shoot some pool
ONCE AGAIN, YOU’RE GONE
You are gone again
and I am alone.
Much as I might like
I cannot hold you to me.
I repeat the lesson:
In this realm, God’s firmament,
nothing is firm.
If I could possess you always,
with sticky clinging flypaper love,
our hearts would become gummy
our words saccharin
our uniqueness gone
our independence on its deathbed:
boredom.
Let tedium blow away like ashes.
Let us be together
separately
sparkling
living with the constant danger
of being so soon apart
and growing
AND ONCE AGAIN YOU’RE HERE (sequel)
You have returned
(God knows for how long)
and there is teasing and touching
soft laughter
and good love
Finally
legs and dreams intertwined
we sleep
Tripping through galaxies
we capture light
and chuckle at self-important meteors
on their busy way
to visit other dreamers
people like ourselves
who sleep companionably
as the earth makes up its face
(a cloud here, a dab of rain there)
for another perfectly formed morning
AT THE WALL
Life is full of walls
and passages:
all metaphor and magic
all self-created and
self-sustaining;
all
(finally)
imaginary
You, dear Jeanne,
are my wall
and my passage
I create your love
by magic
as you create mine:
a passage to
another plane of
acceptance
We ricochet off our walls
trying to locate each new passage
With luck
(kissed by grace)
the walls will vanish
and a deeper passage
will reveal itself
to us both
God, I do love
a good metaphor,
a synonym for skin
for fear
and joy
TO GOD, ON A SPRING MORNING
I smoke a cigarette
and turn my mind
to you
Lately
I’ve been so busy
that you’ve not been
omnipresent
as the Bible says
you are
But of course
too many other things
are omni
these days:
omni-television
omni-automobiles
omni-activity
omni-demands by
omni-life
What’s that?
You say you are
in all these things?
I’ll be damned
(just kidding, please)
God is happening and
I didn’t even know it.
No wonder the morning
is dawning
so brilliantly
blinding my
downcast eyes
SMOKE MORE, WRITE MORE
The publisher said
“You need more cigarette poems
and fewer poems
about lovemaking”
But the source of poetry
is mysterious:
a poem squeezed out
on demand
lies stillborn
on the dry page
But I said I’d try.
So:
A cigarette is like a woman’s…
I stroked the moist, fevered flesh as…
As my lips touched the upthrust…
Oh, the hell with it.
Let’s fuck;
I’ll write more
later
HELLO? ANYONE THERE?
Something in your posture,
in the quality of your stillness,
tells me
that you are not staying:
That on this rainy night
we shall not
trail fingertips
on the other’s skin
clasp tightly
supercharged
straining toward
the gates of God’s
most pervasive vision:
Union
of body and spirit.
Your posture advises me
of your decision, already made.
Back at your home
your soul is propped up in bed
thumbing a quiet book
now flipping off the light
and now beginning to snore.
And here with me
your body sits, relaxed,
as you talk amiably
of literature and vacations
of the ordinary things
that inhabit your life.
In my silent mind
I say goodnight
To that soft soul
now dozing
and continue
our makeshift
meaningless
conversation
HELLO, EARTHLING
I am a stranger to your planet.
A hard wind blows through my mind
As I walk your roads.
With each step I travel miles.
Far below,
your people move about
in small metallic boxes,
their faces terribly grim.
Why do they drive so fast?
They cannot wait to arrive and
begin doing what they will do.
Sometimes they smile
causing concentric rainbows
to flow outward from their souls.
Your planet is well-lit at night.
Are you afraid of darkness?
The dark, like the unconscious,
is healing to body and spirit.
You should welcome it.
You distribute your people very strangely.
They bunch up in cities, then
travel many miles to visit other people
for short periods.
Is there something wrong with
the local city people?
Or do you already know them all?
Your air is pulsing powerfully
with electromagnetism, yet
you claim you can converse with
only one person at a time.
Have you not discovered telepathy?
Or perhaps no one has advised you
that you already use it.
Your spoken language rides on
telepathic signals.
The ear and brain alone
cannot decipher meaningful symbols.
Telepathy is inherent in your abilities.
You’re welcome.
Now you won’t need to talk so much
using meaningless weather chatter.
Goodbye.
CALLING IN SICK
Today I have a cold
and sore throat
and feel off-center
as though part of my Self
is on vacation,
AWOL from my body
I sleep and
dream fitful dreams
of a maverick soul gliding
through other universes
riding horses shaped like
vast mountain ranges
over seas as still as
the barren salt flats
of Nevada.
It is otherworldly,
this dream I share
with my bed-bound self
I wonder:
Perhaps we sometimes
choose to fall ill
so we may depart our bodies
in a feverish lust
to visit other terrains –
those magical vistas
we knew so well
before our birth
and to which we will return
riding in the crook
of God’s elbow
when this brisk busy moment
of physical life
has passed
HELLO? ANYONE THERE?
(Part II)
The clock is ticking on
our re-
la-
tion-
ship
(a 20-pound word
fraught with consequences)
((any word of more than
3 syllables should be
strangled to death by
Pentagon bureaucrats))
(((but I digress)))
We know each other
slowly
by inches
by seconds
by the idle curve
of a smile
or
by the weight
of a glance
pungent with emotion
At other times,
we know each other
by a day of separation
which makes the heart
grow fonder
or sometimes
uh….
what’s your name again?
MIND PROPOSES/BODY DISPOSES
My mind is on fire.
Thoughts run through it as
water rushes pell-mell
down a rain-drenched hill
uncontrolled
seeking desperately
the sanctity of a
quiet lake
If thoughts are electrons,
mine are doing a Shiva’s dance
buzzing
like a thousand bees
in a frantic courtship ritual
But
I appear so calm
in possession of every lucid sense
impressing my friends with
cool detachment
impressing my friends
with bullshit
A POEM TO YOU, MY LOVE, MY WOMAN OF THE ‘90’s
You’re boring me silly.
Define your terms:
If you love me,
if you like me,
let me know.
If you need me,
show it.
Where is your goddam feeling?
Do you care
whether I’m involved with
another woman?
With five other women?
With six women, four men
and a dead giraffe?
You act like the straight man
in a two-man comedy act.
The audience is yawning,
drifting toward the exit.
The scent of apathy
is powerful;
I am underwhelmed.
The universe turns on passion
on expression of feeling
The universe that straddles our lives
yours and mine
is grinding to a halt.
Do you care?
Are you in there?
Anybody hoooommmme?
MAN-IN-WAITING
I wonder
what has become of
your heart
Though we live
only steps apart
I feel the distance
acutely
To a hardy snail
it would be
a journey across
continents:
Forests and flat arid plains,
vertical mountains
formed of upheavals by
man’s mechanistic hand.
On nearing the top
where your hilltop home nestles
behind its imposing door,
our brave snail might pause
and speculate:
Is the heart that beats
behind this door
sending its vital rhythm
toward me?
Or does it beat on,
relentless in its drumming,
conscious only of the need
to chart its solitary path
to other souls
in distant places
ANOTHER DAY IN PARADISE
The poet lives in Paradise.
The sun shines always.
Nights are clear and cool.
People smile at the poet
as though entreating God
for additional blessings,
and sure enough
God comes through
every time.
Thanks, God.
I’m okay,
you’re okay.
(untitled)
And so, my love, a final poem
for you:
it has no title,
no clever hook from which to hang
but is suspended in space
unadorned by delight
solemn, joyless
The music we played
sometimes so faintly
has died.
Bad timing, as you say,
that we should have met now
when your heart was mending
and mine bursting with
anticipated pleasure
like the soul of a new child
toddling through
a spill of happy flowers
for the very first time
Let us play no sad songs
but instead
salute that tough dream
we both carry inside:
to touch the sky
with both feet firmly
rooted
to the earth
Play on, dear Muse,
in other fields
in other times
We may have touched the sky together
But did not always
know its name
MIRROR/MIRROR, IMAGE/IMAGE
If I were black
Mr. T would be my role model:
surly, mocking, bedecked with gold
and an unusual haircut
But of course blacks know
in their unconscious black-red blood
that survival is the first imperative.
They have felt on their jangling nerve ends
the unspoken envy of
white America.
Emotions flow through them
like water
as they act out
the repressed fears and fantasies
of whites
who sip mineral water
in chrome gymnasia,
pale woolen sweaters draped on
their shoulders,
talking in careful measured tones
of the shame of it all:
Life is a bitch
but we’re got ours.
While Mr. T buys more gold
laughing up his muscular sleeve
at us honkies
who see him as a comic figure
And in our whitewashed minds
the jungle drums pound
as we strain for control
visions of ulcers
boiling in the flaming kettle
of our bellies
Offer up a prayer of thanks
for the ghetto-blasted blacks tonight:
without them
us pearly-white literate
rational upscale
motherfuckers
would be much crazier
than we are
I LEFT MY FATHER THIS MORNING
I left my father this morning,
he weeping, scattered, lost,
uncertain of his next moment
on earth
I could not help him.
Never a Christian,
he gave me a gold cross
on a chain
I have him kindness, love,
as best I could
His joy is gone
replaced by a creeping panic,
only a small white cat
Mindy
to ease his passage
It is not death
that frightens us;
it is the loss of power
the loss of control,
the loss of force,
when there is
no one left to impress
to amuse
to dominate
but an indomitable God
CHOICES
My father is drifting:
measuring a deepening path
away
from the nervy, sanguine life
of flesh and hearty laughter
of treasures and terrors.
Each day
cobalt rays are poured invisibly
into his throat.
His mouth is dry,
appetite diminishing,
his catalogue of complaints
an appeal to heaven:
Enough!
He is yearning
for that ethereal location
where body is but a remembered dream
and spirit is
everywhere at once
everywhere at once
patiently watching
as we calculate our days
and
catalogue our dreams
as though
nothing else matters
FATHER, FATHER, BURNING BRIGHT
“I’m not going to die from
this cancer,” he says;
and a moment later:
“I don’t think I can go on
this way much longer.”
The message is clear
and contradictory.
His body is
fighting a losing battle
with his spirit
As do all of ours
raging against the soil
into which we’re born
as unseen strings
draw us closer
second by second
toward that eternity
we live in daily
but do not comprehend
we are spirit first
body briefly
spirit always
INSIDE OUT
….there is no outside….
We were never externalized.
We manipulate in the physical world
as though it is outside us
as though we are one thing
and it is another, separate thing.
And we cry when it hurts us
and we rage when it does not
meet our needs;
and smile
when it blesses us:
this strange shifting world of events
outside our skin
which is as transparent
as our psyche.
Waves of color and sound flow through us
as through a porous membrane
of molecules
We select from these events
those that best match our beliefs
about what is real.
This we call reality.
Feed your reality daily
and it will treat you well.
AN EXCITING NEW WAR
I’ve been reading lately
about Star Wars;
not the movie,
the proposed war.
Of course they don’t really mean
“proposed war.”
They only mean
STRATEGIC DEFENSE INITIATIVES
from which evolve those dramatic
MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION
scenarios.
It’s all very sophisticated,
much more than the old
GI-Joe-slogging-through-the-jungle
with-fixed-bayonet war.
That was too personal,
too real.
Star Wars is abstract
like a Dali painting:
computers floating in space
Laser beams bouncing off
enormous mirrors aimed
to detonate
87% of enemy missiles
leaving only 13% to cause
widespread destruction of America.
The bombs are no longer bombs;
they’re “physics packages.”
Oh, what a lovely euphemism.
This is a war
devised by technocratic poets
large-scale dreamers
whose bodies are riddled
with the malignant cells
of world political fear,
their visions shared by
their counterparts in Moscow
These men
hunch over their tiny screens
glassy-eyed
calculating the odds against
their own annihilation
I see them coming home from work:
“How was your day, dear?”
“Excellent. I devised a scenario
that would destroy
most of Russia and
would save most of Kentucky”
“That’s nice. Should we
move there when Jimmy
finishes the 5th grade?”
(while she is thinking:
“…my husband is a lunatic
but he does look nice
in a three-piece suit”
Meanwhile
we buy our vegetables and
watch our television
as the Pentagon toy-makers
with brains wired Mattel
and souls dry as dust
cheerlessly conceive
STAR WARS II: THE SEQUEL
In which computers
destroy
other computers
and there is no one left
to give a good
God
damn
NO, SHE SAID
How blithely
I accept your refusal
when I yearn for you
Yet
when summer leaves have not yet turned
or when snow is unmelted
when you prefer solitude
(for whatever reason;
the bed unmade,
the psyche unready)
that is your truth
Nor will winter be rushed into
spring’s awakening truth
Wait, wait:
The fragile icicle knows itself,
its time measured
in melting seconds
splashing on a new leaf below
Likewise
the poet measures his words
in frothy syllables striking the page
But goddamn, woman!
The surface of things is
only the surface:
manifestation of illusion.
The inside of surface
is truth’s real home.
Set the surface free!
See it float upward
in a mist of molecules
dissolving, dissolving,
releasing the engine
of my pumping heart,
oozing love (ye gods!)
from every pore
Your refusal
cauterizes my heart’s blood
Medic! Over here!
Quickly!
ON DINING WITH FRIENDS
Old friends, new friends
dining at my house —
an occasion!
Myself and old spirits
set the table:
A southern meal
hosted by an exuberant
black woman in my
spiritual family tree,
named, very likely,
Emmaline
Sassy, brassy,
lover of blues guitar
bad to the bone,
she graces my psyche
with her prodding presence
causing me to talk some trash
in the presence of white folks
Ham hocks and black-eyed peas
and cornbread, indeed!
Shee-it, boy,
don’t you know no better?
Where’s the grits?
I didn’t raise you black
for nuthin’!
GOING FOR THE GOLD
To reach our goals
we push images before us
like toddlers taking
a first unassisted step
into the unknown
These images are
projections of our
Selves
sent forward into the world,
shapes, forms,
atoms, molecules,
which carry our intentions
buzzing in their
rare invisible air
We learn by doing, yes,
but well before we actually
do
anything
Of course
the reverse is true also:
When we project
a negative belief
the action confounds us
and we are defeated
and then
we wonder why
Music
- Mean Mary
- Home Body
- A-Six-Pack and Two Brown Bags To Go
- Till Your Daddy Come
- Suburban White Boy Blues
- Scatalaboom