So, I’ll make a cup of white pine tea
With the fresh green needles,
But first I’ll ask permission
And forgiveness for her unintentionally enclosed
And intertwined life with me-
She says it’s okay,
She’ll live many generations beyond me-
And with hope, she might be a two hundred foot tall
Giant awing the puny lives of men.
I hope they don’t cut her down
But there are so many people with saws
And fewer and fewer humans who know
And love the tree people.
Ah, my white pine tea is done,
Migwetch, many thank yous, amen.
In a deserted field, I write this song,
A hymn to melancholy man,
That neither beast, bird, nor tree can e’er bring
This simple man to understand;
For city bred I am with ore
And wheel and lock the grinding gears of song,
From whence my family ne’er could feel
Any loss except to belong,
But now I sing with joy in voice,
A belonging they’ll never understand,
A voice of bees and starry skies,
Now twice to sing a melancholy man.
Dig, dig, dig like a mournful clicking clock;
Lay waste grim face, such a weedy forsaken spot;
Tear it down to build again, then mock
Your towers once more, and like as not
You’ll try again, your mind begin to plot,
Nevermore in naturalness ever to rock
In the sweet depths of your Earth Mother’s arms.
City Autumn
Leaves rustle then scrape city stairs,
Gear upon gear they bluster down,
‘til rift and flutter they alight
the air, lifting my soul to fall.
City Park In Autumn
The park, which leaves her rustling garb
Deposited on a bedroom yard,
Releases a juicy fullness
In exchange for barren wholeness:
A harlot’s wrinkled line of houses
Between cakes of cracked make-up douses.
If neither age, nor name, nor date were known,
And these the only lines that e’er were writ,
Not thy smile, thine eyes nor thy wit would show
Though the wide wondering world might think it fit;
Nor would the love I hold for thee be shown,
Nor indeed thy love for me, though limitless,
And though fain would I have of all thy loves writ
(A lifetime of making and two lifetimes grown),
I’ve not time and still thy love would not be met,
For thou hast greater love e’er left unknown:
A love of the divine encircling time,
A life without lines, a joining, all things combined.
What is love? Can those who love freest
Love best? While others pine for love untrue
Do merry soulmates hop from bed to bed,
Pleasure begetting pleasure instead of dread:
Dread that all pretty words are petty lies,
That use and abuse, self esteem denied,
Makes the puritans’ possessive demands-
A failure to let himself expand.
Liquor is the fixer
Which keeps thee from me;
One syllable’s distance is too far,
Though comfortable it be.
Sled dogs hanging tongues, lolling, lagging
Over rubbery lips,
Wetness over cold,
A gliding skimming sailing of ships.
Part Six
The Pain Will Out
Weak tonight
The side aches dull,
The body knowing
What the mind’s forgot
Or withheld.
The pain will be known,
It will out
One time or another,
One way or another –
Dull knowing is no substitute
Razor jagged edges
Will out
And if not let out
Will sacrifice
The very beast it rides
So that in agony
On death’s cement stoop
We’ll scrape our chest
And bloody our knees
Scrambling for death
To let us in
Till quick and bright
We see the pain,
Who led the way,
Too late
And cry out to the darkness
“if only I’d known”
but this too
you’ll know
you knew
too late
for the pain is there
was always there –
the pain will out.
A finny slipped further reaching thought
Life and death has always been as easy
as casting a line,
the slow reel,
quick hook- as they bite
ravenous,
or maybe just curious,
and some unlucky ones
getting hooked by just passing by
till knowing widens their eyes
and this hoped for savory
is bitter as gall and they sprawl rigid
as if that spread eagle stony grip
clawed and water breaking
gasp could stop the slow reel
and guttural praises as the net hauls
the last of your flopping back
and forth on board.
They’ll roast you over a campfire
and tell half truthed stories of the
breakers of lines -
no one knows what happened to these;
in the stories, some live from generation
to generation breaking lines perennially,
and maybe here and there
there’s a scaly ascension
or a finny resurrection to liven the time
as the son of the great dog fish
rises again to break another line,
but the fishers of fish
and the fishers of men
know what everyone knows:
every fish has an end
and feeds the eaters of death,
there’s no such thing
as dying
of old age.
The wind
stalks her back,
just out of
sight,
a whispering
here,
a nudging
there,
an escalating
tingling up
then down
her spine,
until, like an unholy thing
it reaches
under her skirt
and tightens her walk;
she scurries fast,
and like a mouse
to a shadowed corner,
she retreats
inside her door,
and sits trembling,
still tingling,
in the dark with the unknown
of this groping,
following
dread.
I remember the night you
Tossed the red, mangled mass
Of your tampon to the cat
And said, “Here kitty, kitty,
Get the mouse”.
And it did.
Your gleeful smile, wide
Vacant eyes,
Were you possessed?
The constant tap, tap, tap
Of shuffling feet
In an unheard dance,
A song continually playing
For you alone, reverberating
For days now, behind that silent,
Somewhere else glaze.
“God,” you said,
you were in religious ecsta
sy.
Who was I to stop you,
Even if I was your husband
And we glanced off each other
With force fields of different beings –
I guess the loss of the house,
Your clothes, our pets, anything
Like the normal life we’d come to expect,
Made me depressed
But you, you left,
And a stranger screamed at me,
Calling me strange names
In a biblical tongue
And I was running out the screen door
With shame and a razor blade
Coming after me.
Then the cops picked you up,
Don’t you remember,
We rode together
In the back of the police car;
You didn’t remember the incident,
You were gleeful for a vacation –
A ride with your huge bible
In your upturned hands;
I sobbed quietly like a child
While you babbled in tongues pointing
Out bible passages,
Until the cop in the front seat
Turned around and said,
“Hey, you don’t have to worry.
She’ll be all right.
We do this all the time”.
Thirteen Ways Of Looking At A Checkbook
I
Amid blue, green, purple and pink,
Myriads of innumerable packaged things,
All that stood between his
And desire
Was the checkbook.
II
I do not know which to prefer,
Making the kill,
Or stalking the prey,
Writing the check,
Or just before.
III
I was of one mind,
Like the man without his checkbook,
Who waits in line
With a cart full of groceries.
IV
In all that cluttered apartment,
The only negative
That could be less than zero
Was the placid looking,
Peacefully consuming
Checkbook.
V
Who made thee checkbook?
How differently alike are its answers
To a lifelong executive
And a homeless thrall.
VI
The checkbook is a symbol
Of the symbol of money;
Is it in the bank,
Ecuador,
Poisoning a river,
Planting a field?
Who knows,
And who cares?
VII
What separates
US
From
THEM
Is the checkbook.
VIII
In the third world,
One or none have the checkbook;
In the first world ,
A few more do.
IX
Glassed pine boughs,
Freezing drizzle,
Bitten fingers and toes,
The only thing between
Cold and death
Was the fragile flame
Of the checkbook.
X
With this one check
And a flick of the wrist,
I have neatly sliced
The neck of a pig
And splattered its blood
With a wriggling squeal.
XI
The man without a checkbook
Finds it much more difficult
To hold a pig down
While killing it.
XII
In all the world,
There was only they
And the checkbook,
And one wasn’t Real.
XIII
A blackbird looks down and
The river is flowing;
One does not need a checkbook
To live.
Please Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London, Consumer Activists Urge Or On a refusal to cry out while having bamboo splinters shoved underneath fingernails
Never since the clichéd hanging slap yelp
Of the red slimed newborn,
Step on a rock indentation,
Blood dripping prick of a pasture rose,
Never since the first child’s first ever lack of need,
Never since,
“it don’t make no reason to cry,
you ain’t special,
get down on your knees and pray”;
I am oblivious to pain,
Your pain,
The rigid, horse tongued dead
Of mustard gas,
The quick incineration of the atom
Lightening flash
(what shadow feels pain, that’s all that’s left you know),
lying for days under machine gunned
concentration camp prisoners,
afraid to breath
but more afraid to die,
“pain has no meaning for such a person,
it is a condition lived through and with
for the rest of their lives”;
never since the first heard
agonizing death cries,
“it’s only bodily pain,
and pain can be transcended”,
even someone else’s pain,
“we are not our bodies alone,
the greatest worship we can give
is our unacknowledged pain”,
or was that accepted and released
pain, is there any difference
when you’re tied down,
a razor blade cleaving you a forked tongue.
When the Chinese overran Tibet,
The monks were in ecstasy
Because they were trained
To transcend the pain,
Tortuous deaths
Were the ultimate claim
On a life well lived,
Or died;
You know, they would have had to transcend
In more mundane deaths,
fires are as unforgiving as
Trained assassins,
So quit making a big deal
Out of everything;
Yeah, right, like after the first cut there is no other.
Part Seven
God damn cat! After that first taste
it was cake on a rake
my childhood in that little house
balanced above me – dropping
away, always falling
you with that stupid grin
and me on my knees, hands
reaching, grasping
my world collapsing, crumpled in a corner
just like you knew it would.
I never told and I don’t think Sis did –
we hardly ever spoke after that -
thing 1s and thing 2s,
could'ves and would'ves,
all of our dreams in pieces,
everything scattered -
everything swept away
so fast.
Tell me what would you say,
what would you do,
tell me what if that cat
and his stupid hat
had come to your house,
what if he had come looking
for you?
I lie
in luxury
my illness forgotten
warm heating pad snuggled tight in
the bed.
The bed
is, oh, too cold,
please, lay down, no - no clothes
inconsolable, just awful
I lie.
Black shoes
like frayed feathers
blown under the dresser
by your visit – the flight of some
stray bird.
Stray bird
eyes like onyx
searching, circling under
windows, ruffling covers for lost
black shoes.
Angelfish being acclimated to an aquarium
Angelfish floats,
An anchored sliver of a galleon,
Prouder than eight pinta’s as it surveys,
Or swims,
A furrowing sailboat through liquid air
Til bow lips and stern tail meet the plastic
Globe harbor and press for open sea.
At the end of day,
The sunflower droops
His head with the fullness of seed;
The cricket chirps her evening
Song and listens
For a distant reply;
And I, I feel the fullness of the moment,
My mind still,
Silent in a savoring
Of this symphony of all being,
My vision soars
And all that I long to be
I am.
My breathing, the ocean,
They come and they go,
My hands, a sun speckled salmon,
I release it … slow.
Aid’s Dance Therapy
Johnnie’s going home to die;
He wants to be with his mother and father and brother
The house he grew up in to slowly give way in.
It’s not going to be long now;
Tonight is his last night at dance therapy
And we know it, we know it all too well.
Johnnie could be Barbara, is Tom, maybe Robert
Maybe me when my time comes
But now is Johnnie’s
And tonight’s dance therapy
Is a dance of support and of upholding;
Some of us are weak, some are strong
Ancient rhythms guide the knowing motion-
Drums beat in an ancient healing
In a moving guided
Empathetic sharing knowing;
With my arms at his shoulders,
We walk together, circling the room.
I am legs to support
Others are walking, others are leaning
Soon we are chanting, then dancing
Faster and faster, carrying the weak waist high,
Embracing holding head high
Uplifting over head sky high
And glorious release to know another
Cares, I care – I support you- hold you
Till the dance slows- and I must lessen
We lower you- gentle you - to the earth,
To the ground and chant, “Home, Home,”
“Home, home peace at last”
“Home, home peace at last”.
My death sits on my head and shoulders
like a leaden veil;
it stands before me and behind me
like a second skin;
it waits to the right and to the left of me
like a brother and a friend.
FAT
Fat
isn't soft;
it's hard
hard as constriction,
your belly, a bloated boa,
writhing as you bend,