Two of my Zen friends
who, at the time,
I thought were some kind
of Zen enemies,
seemed to condemn me
to a soap opera
of eternal cookies
and the sound of lawnmowers,
and it took me
forty-some years
to understand this koan,
and the suburban heaven
that I was condemned to,
where instead of a life
in the forest
with snakes and mosquitos,
or a life in the city
with rats and roaches,
I was given
a life in this quiet, rich suburb
with an air-conditioned summer
and a toasty warm winter,
so that surrealistic understanding
of cookie and lawnmower hell,
turned into everyday Nirvana.

Cellphones and swimming pools.
ne'er the twain should meet.
The result can only be bad,
same for lawnmowers and feet.

A drive-by piercing with a lemon going haywire
Some day-old sushi seen floating in a milk shake
Biplanes soaring on a river made of goldfish
Hamsters running like a maggot being stepped on
T-Birds flying on a highway made of spike strips
A sleeper hold keeping pleasure from the culprit
High-speed boats with Bond at the Olympics
A Cheshire cat that is famous for his slow wit
A hands-free call using carrots as a pitchfork
Motel 6 giving buckets full of sunshine
A loser shakes when he’s calling for a train wreck
Two horned-toad dogs seek pleasure from a princess
Pineapples dance on a table made of tall grass
Swimming pools run like the nostrils of a cokehead
Lawnmowers chase televisions made of chocolate
A headrest pops like a package full of mayonnaise
Full moon falling like a stock that’s made of pennies
Some ring-toss games using members as a target
Horse-drawn buggies have turtles for a driver
Captain Crunch cracks three teeth with his product
Unicorn strippers charge nothing for a snow cone
A fig tree shoots his rifle like a marksman
Time-lapse photos lend credence to a journey
A night jog leading to the starting of a win streak
Cotton ***** fighting like the heart of a palm tree
Rabbit holes filled with a rocket made of red glare
Alien red giants just as sure as I am breathing
A high-speed rail system travels without leaving
Lamborghinis resting on a bed of melting ice cream
Then there’s a cuckoo clock riding on a white mink
I saw a cowboy yesterday atop a pile of hay
Leaches lurking everywhere really like to play
Red newspaper taxis burn at the pole in June
Hearts of gold at harvest time, hear my drum in tune
Playing in the band was my only decent goal
Rake, a shovel, and a pick dig working with a ***        
Prince without a pauper will rise from down below
Hot tamales drop like hail the radar never showed
Squids sign a new record deal using their own ink
Octomom wants it all; such ***** I’ve never seen

My darling, I have begun to dream
Of tractors, crossing
The river Jordan
From my mind spun a chronicle of death, foretold
I began to think that in 100 years, solitude
Will be afforded, there will be
No more tractors, Or
Lawnmowers, Or
V8 engines, Just
Silence, Love, So
I shall not wake you in choleric times, I shall return
To the memories of another; of melancholic insomnia
That *****, that unwritten
Love letter to the colonel,
and think, You know,
Earplugs may not be so bad.

I come from the green winters,
the beady drops of sweat
running like lawnmowers
down the side of a face.

The bugs, bugs, bugs
and freakish hailstorms
of the way-down-south.

I come from the trash-can lid
that I made a sled and took flight on
soaring over the inch-thick ice.

I am from howdy-land and yeehaw-city,
but the thing is,
they really weren't.

I come from a fascination with rocks,
the round ones with the white stripes
and the white ones with the round stripes.

I am from bee-stings and wasp-nests,
and the kind ointments that were
whispered into my battle wounds.

Down the side of a cliff,
running like lawmowers,
the beady drops of sweat
come from green winters.

And thus we bid you
welcome to our home,
Finzi-Continis
of the new Century.
Oh, we play jeu de paume all day
behind our walled gardens
Deuce! Love! Set!
you can hear the birds,
the lawnmowers humming diligently
in the yards
the automobiles
Sense a world out there
so vulnerable
Those we think
we care not about
or would prefer
not to know about
ever, really.
Best leave us alone,
spending our sated evenings
arguing politics in candlelight
intense debates,
places unseen
"Not much else there
could have been done,
was there?"

Come back, carefree!
Happy-go-lucky
Deuce! Love!
For every once in a while,
I wake up,  for a moment
back in the Garden,
not alone
"A soap bubble!"
"There! ~ another!"
Amid childish laughter
we watch them float away,
their colors winking back.
And we play
merrily,
a blanket of sunshine ~
'...and there's another!'

It was just one of those days
when the haze of summer had just started to lull the suburbs
into a sticky heat
of grills and lawn mowers
of air conditioning
(everyone pretended not to use it; windows! barked the mothers, windows!)

and the sweat stuck to the brows
of the life guards
napping in the sun
above an empty pool
the Dawson pool.

No one ever swam there
and the lifeguards knew it
those teenagers, sunning themselves lazily on hot days like this
(and the mothers! They complained about the tans. Cancer! the said.
In a way they were right,
but really.)

The waters were clear but the fences were rusted
the diving boards were falling
throwing themselves off the deep end

Katydids
lawnmowers
those lazy days
and the mothers! the constant nagging of soccer moms
lulled around the pool
on the day
Cassandra
took her
last
swim

Her face was like shoe leather
tanned by no fewer than 98 summers spent on porch swings
plodded slowly,
like  her feet were considering
every
last
step
this woman presented her 5 dollars to the girl at the gate
(some surprised lifeguard, because, you see, no one ever swam in Dawson pool)
and pushed inside.

Cassandra never left her porch.
and the mothers! how they scolded their children for teasing her
(even though they had done the same thing at that age.
That's how old Cassandra was).
Decades of the suburbs
and push mowers
and world wars
stayed like photograph around her face.

The lifeguards stared.
Cassandra kicked off her flip flops and shrugged off her mumu.
In a pink bathing suit she sank into the water.

The age melted off of her as she danced through the water
graceful
strong
the strokes were slow and deliberate
and the lifeguards watched as she pulled herself from one end of the pool to another and back.
She made 16 rings
remembering her childhood
23 more
for her marriage
and then 60
60 rings!
before she stopped.
60 years old, the year her husband died.
The year she had stopped talking
aside from the hushed prayers in church
but she was talking to him; that didn't count.
60 rings.

And Cassandra just disappeared.

No one found the body
no one found anything
aside from flip flops and a mumu.
The lifeguards were nearly scandalized
for letting Cassandra drown
but soon she went from a news story to a ghost
and the mothers! sniped at their children
for whispering
"Did you here about old Ms. Cassandra?
They say she found God."

Here
I made a video right here to help you understand
Well i mean, you technically made the video...
I just uh...
Borrowed it?
I can see that you're...mad
But you know now right?
Please
Sit back down, you can wag your finger after
This is important

This is a video your child took of you mowing the lawn in 1994
Her big strong  parent, fumbling with this heavy-as-hell-is contraption
That sputters, and whirs, and kicks back
But like some superhero you...start to shove it along, and conquer the beast
And it sprays curiously alluring smog, that like a well behaved child, she knows not to breathe in,
Knows not to touch because she's not old enough
Or strong enough to pull that chord to trigger the bells and whistles
That she, nor i, nor probably you understands.

But i digress...

So here you are, with your child on the stoop, taking might i add some
Fine, stable footage you should really enroll her in some classes,
And you traveling around your suburban front yard, chasing away a squirrel with the lawnmower, harmlessly of course
And laughing with your daughter
Talking to your neighbors over the roaring engine,
Emptying the bag of fresh cut grass into the bin...

And that's where the battery died
No! Don't leave yet
I want you to watch again, listen again
Here...
Listen closely...








Did you hear the grass screaming of their judgement day, beneath the lovers kissing each other goodbye, wrapped around each other, as we hold hands, still entangled in  the mass graves you made for them

Beneath the ants cowering in their homes, begging their laborers to come back inside before they are noticed, before they are eviscerated and the foreman is forced to pay settlements

Beneath the subtle sound of your daughter breathing deeply of the sweet smelling gas that you told her to stay away from, that we learned to be repulsed by, that she has been told to be repulsed by

Beneath the...
Here, i'll rewind again
Here
You see the label on the lawnmower?
That manufacturer? That bar code? That order number? That factory? That steel purchase? That mine?
Did you hear the songs of the forced laborers there, the modern slaves that bear striking resemblance to the songs you learned in high school history class, except softer, pushed under the magazines

Beneath the squirrel complaining to the squirrel police about dangerous and disrespectful conduct it's neighbors have been performing when he comes to say hello and finally meet someone in the neighborhood, that he's lived so long in, just to be told it's not "Illegal,"

Beneath the slightly offensive joke you made towards your black neighbor, who missed the punchline over the roar of the engine, when you asked him why he was so light skinned, and whether that was a "slavery thing,"

Beneath your child hearing everything

You didn't yet...
You made that happen, didn't you?
This isn't me judging your character
I don't blame you "O' causer of destruction"

You were not given the tools i was given
And similarly i... was not given the tools you were given

You were given a lawnmower, and a camera
A beautiful daughter, a home, a job
Gas! The ability to live where you want!

I...well...
i was given the opportunity to talk to the grass...

And well...

In 1994, that same year, in Rwanda an atrocity was committed, a genocide.

And the characteristic machetes used to massacre the Tutsi people
Contained the same steel blend, from the same producer
As the blades in many lawnmowers at the time.

This isn't a conviction
I did this because i wanted you to know and be okay with being complicit because you exist a certain way
Innocent because you never knew, and couldn't have known

Because we love you
Because we need you
Because we need you to know now

Heart ****** to death
“Do you need the paramedics?”
Life and Death is three quick breaths
And 15 pumps
Or was it 11, or 22?
Where are they?
One deep rale
Where are they?
"Anung nung yari qui daddy?"
Eyes rolled up to GodDid you see a light?
Fatal heart won’t live through night,
Weekend, two weeks, re-evaluate
“Dey dun’t know daddy.  He’s a fighter.”
Alone in CCU committed act of faith
with laid hands on experience.
Comatose body wholly heaving with Holy contact
Then silence, stillness
Transfers, therapy, rehabilitation
Sent home by HMO
Came home first night to check on you:
Blotted brow and utterance
“Just try to go to sleep”
Came home one day to check on us
Then entered Jacob’s sleep
Headstone scarred by lawnmowers
Grass envelopes me
Gives me hug…you never did
Yet tears are all I see
Heart knows utterance by heart
“Fin, take care of mama.”
Heart de-virged through pain and loss
Salamat po Pops

Start now knowing joy,
that’s an order,
overcome a deepening solitude.

Like a bee at a bugle
or me at the deli
on Third Avenue.

I said to Joe when do you think this weather will break?
He jokes, April.
That’s no joke. Weak creatures die and the strong barely survive.

Half a year goes by
another cancer checkup.
Cheer up. Any weather’s

better than no weather at all.
There’s always governance
even when there is no government.

My candidate drops out
after Iowa. Why do I always lose
at politics and poker?

Peace at last!
No lawnmowers, no leafblowers.
Big comfy couch.

Meditate on this: Do what has to be done.
Find your lover gazing at the moon
and take your garbage to the dump.

Your web site evaporates
and your possessions are thrown in the dumpster
except your trumpet which finds its way to a future trumpeter.

According to the minister, we’re lucky to have found you, although I think you’d have liked it better up there, where the grass isn’t golf course green and the mourners are nonexistent. I wanted to scream when he said that but momma was leaning hard against me and her breath was coming in harsh against my ear and I stood there with making fists until I couldn’t feel the cold. Dad was holding on to her hard and his mouth was a straight colorless line and his breath came out his nostrils in big measured puffs like the steam train in the railroad museum back in Lincoln. I didn’t cry at all, just stood there feeling sick to my stomach and bracing myself against momma’s leaning. In the back of the group of mourners I saw David and his eyes were down and he avoided my gaze.
The minister was the young one from Partridge who you once told me gave you eyes, back when you came to church. He looked sad like an actor looks sad on one of those TV commercials for antidepressants. He paused too much. When he spoke, he fumbled over the words and sounded them out like a third grader—sa-salvay-salvashin-salvation. It was like Aunt Stu’s funeral, with the same fake-looking flowers and the same ugly black pinafores, only hers was open casket and yours wasn’t.
The tables were loaded with wedding-style lilies even though your obit said in lieu of flowers, donations can be made to the River’s Edge Animal Rescue Center. Each tablecloth had a neat stack of Thomas Mortuary Services’ business cards in a holder and they served bland finger sandwiches with diluted instant coffee afterward. It was the kind of thing that youd’ve laughed at and blamed the church for.
I think the hardest part is that all the dozens of versions of you I created in my head died, too. I made an Amy who went to college and got her degree in veterinary sciences and started an ASPCA. I imagined an Amy who grew her hair out and cut the blue tips off and wore flowery loose blouses and played guitar. There was the Amy who trained service dogs for wounded veterans and the Amy who fell in love with a kind young man who picked her up on the I-5 and drove her to Vancouver. There was an Amy who lived recklessly and pierced her ears with safety pins in truck stop bathrooms on the way to see Less Than Jake in San Fran. I made up Amys with tanned arms and Amys with tattoos and Amys living in Carmel as an accountant. Every one of those versions died when we found you.
I haven’t been up there yet. They say you were up there for three months until that guy found you. They say it was painless. They say that they’re looking for the driver that did it. I don’t think they’ll find him, and I’m almost glad. I don’t know what I think about that.
I wish we could have gotten you in across the street. The stones there are all soft from rain and there’s no lawnmowers or fluorescent turf. The only disturbances are when the horticulturists plant new roses. After it rains the clay soil sticks to your boots. Plots up there are hard to dig in to because of all the old growth trees, and I imagine the old coffins have roots wrapped around them, like the pictures of veins going around the heart in that Biology book I returned to the textbook room a month after you slipped out our window the last time.

I remember when I flew.

The freshly cut grass glued its self to my bare feet, the blades wanted to fly too.
I took off.

A powerful start, rocketed off the damp visage of Mother Earth.
She had great power, gravity, is what they called it.
They said more than kryptonite was needed to stop it.
Gravity, only defeated by breaking the laws of Newton.
I didn't want to break any laws (jail would not be fitting for this hero who needed to be back in time for lunch).

But I kept going, if birds can fly ( and knowing they have much smaller brains ) then I could figure out how too.
I kept going, until my toes kissed the leaves of the oak tree.
Each time I touched the tree time would freeze.
In that moment I watched the wisps of hair flow back and the shadows cross my face.

Soon I was over the trees, doing backflips and summersaults in the air.
I was floating on my back.
The sun warming my face.
The harmonic hum of far off lawnmowers singing in the distance.
I arched my back further and further ready for another backflip.

On my back looking up.
What happened?
I blinked.
A permanent scar on the hero's back.
Sit up.
WHAM
It hit me, the loss of flight, the loss of that reality
and the reintroduction of the other.
It was all gone Mother Nature won again.
A life long battle.
But I'll try to never forget,
I flew

The sun exits, ever so slowly,
down behind the heights of bursting-into-leaf beeches
as gym-shoe-running children
are called in to supper and to bed.

Voices sound from balconies and neighbours' gardens
while blackbirds bid, contentedly, the day farewell.
Lawnmowers cease their whirring sounds
and clippers, rakes and hoes clank in wooden or plastic sheds.

Fragrances roam the evening air,
invading every square metre with terrestial joy,
and cigarettes are passed around
as the face next door has ceased
being a removed nod and smile.

Eventually, the curtains are drawn on a happy ending
while tentative talk succeeds in silencing
any riotous upheavals that might occur
in the night's discourses and dreams.

I talked with you on the phone the other day.
You were telling me how you visited the zoo;
spent an afternoon watching the zebra graze
and the lions lazily roar at civilians with digital cameras.

I talked with you on the phone the other day.
You were visiting the zoo, crying on the phone—
How can they keep them in cages
Locked away as if they don't feel like we do
You forget
there are people in cages without keyholes
there are blistered eyeballs scanning a lightless horizon for a lock pick or a clothespin
that may allow them to puzzle their way into the gears
There are people who die searching

I talked with you on the phone the other day.
We chit-chatted about sunbeams and lawnmowers.
We were happy, careless.
There are no cages here.

Only keys.

the audacity of him, to think he created you.

they take the credit for billions of women, and we let them.


observe, the kind of girl who puts perfume on the backs of her knees-

she’ll be down on them soon, might as well decorate

the debauched air with lavender, coriander, her disgraced musk-

she is the model for a woman’s paradox.

“cross your legs at the ankles, say please and thank you, remember your place-

*****.”

see? how ladylike, that gorgeous face. a photo-finish face.

try to finish on her face.

a photo-finish face, take a photo when you finish on her face.

take a photo while she tries to blink you out of her eyes.

admire how tightly her lips are pressed together, she will not speak until spoken to.

unzip her teeth, open her mouth-

she will remain silent. all you were doing was opening another hole.


these girls are foldable, flexible, fuckable

they are stored inside suit pockets of

businessmen in the business of selling madonnas and Magdalenes

trading our innocence like stock options

each curve and soft voice, dumbed-down giggles and blank eyes as selling points

put together each little girl, she will be a new share in his corporation.


why do you let yourself believe that you should smile pretty

when auctioned off,

why should you be sold?

we allow men to rent us, borrow,

they shower us with trinkets,

things that are not truly ours. they feed us glitter until we become

as insubstantial as sparkles,

they tell you we are beautiful when we are owned.


stop having *** only in the dark

because you are worried that, like him,

the light will not touch you with love,

and you avoid fluorescent bulbs- do not risk cheapening the look of your skin.

chemical glows can be unflattering, you will wash out, the lines of your body will be harsh

you are reminded that your skin is full of chemicals too,

you worry that you will taste like acid and that he will spit you out.

you worry that he will see your naked body glow, and that he will not love you for it

so you close curtains. stack blankets. hide from scrutiny.

pull up your skirt-

“do what you came for and leave, please.”

apologize as soon as you say it.


it is out of line for you to make requests.

knowing that, step out of line.

refract, be prismatic

allow yourself to be illuminated,

reflect, do not feel guilty if you bleach his sight

if you are too much for him, do not reduce your brilliance

reflect.


what makes you think that you could possibly be

deflowered? who put this vicious vocabulary around your virginity?

boys are not lawnmowers, boys are not shears

you’re floral with or without them.

you do not have to grow in someone else’s garden

you can stretch your roots through miles of earth

you do not have to offer up your entirety to his touch.

you do not have to twist toward his artificial sunlight to flourish

you do not have to sit alone and anxiously polish your petals

you do not have to cry because your stem is blotched

remember your power- the ones who do not handle with care

are not your concern anymore- allow them

to be speared and suspended on your thorns.

display them like trophies

like they tried to display you

remember the venus flytrap is named for the goddess of love

and it eats its victims alive.

Old women with their
electric lawnmowers,
waiting to die, thinking

they're going to
meet their husbands again
somewhere up in the sky.

Lawnmowers mowing
The familiar smell of grass
Leaves my nose sniffing

If I could pen a poem from
all my regrets, I would fill up
ten dozen notebooks.
And

if I could take back all the
things I wished I hadn’t said,
I could start my own
branch of the U.S. public
library.

And if I could wrap it all
up with one big gift-bow
and present it to you,
I would speak of the fragmented
memories of all the times I
spent with
you.

Because…

Five years ago, in January,
Hours turned into
Minutes and
Minutes slowed into
Seconds. And then suddenly,
all the time elapsed between us without
warning. And your ticking
time-piece turned out to be
a homemade explosive you
marked as ‘flammable’.

And if I could have just one
more minute to
tell you that I love you,
Just one more moment,
to say that I’m sorry.
Just…just one last second
to say goodbye
and to make sure you knew for
sure what I always knew that you knew;
Before the hours turn into minutes
and trickle down into seconds
Before all the time elapses in-
between us…

I would use those moments to tell
you that I love you more than Mercury
loves the sun, and that I long to see you
once again just as Pluto longs to
make one full rotation.
And I would tell you I will always
“see you later, alligator” and that in my
dreams, you will always be my
"crocodile-lover."

And how I’ll always go back to Summers of
how your fuzzy mustache tickled my
innocence during our special eskimo
kisses.

And that I’ll forever remember how you
pushed me on the swings singing
‘Take Me Out to the Ballgame,"

And how you whispered to me sweet nothings
of how I always was your favorite.

And I’ll always remember that you loved
candied orange slices, gummy bears, sugar smacks
and your “top secret” chocolate stash
almost as much as you loved
your precious cigarettes,
almost as much as you
loved me.

And I’d tell you that I’m still
scared of lawnmowers,
Grandpa,
And that I’m scared that there’s
no man who will
love me like you did,
And that I’m scared that growing
up will make me forget.

Because it’s six years
and six million
tears later.
And I wish I could tell you
how many things have changed.
But the most important things
will always remain the same.
Because,
Everyday the hours turn into
Sixty Minutes and the
Sixty Minutes turn into
Sixty Seconds
and the time still
elapses between all of us as you
sing me softly to sleep
Even from below
Six feet.

Remembrance Day / Veterans' Day - 2

Would You Like a Downgrade?

I.  
“Everything I own I’m carrying on my back,”
A shipmate said wonderingly that last day
In the recruit barracks.  And it was so:
Two sets of dungarees, one pair of shoes,
Two sets of Undress Blue and then one set
Of Dress Blue B, one pair of sneaks, one pair
Of this, more sets of that, a ditty bag
Of Personal Hygiene Articles,
Officially and carefully approved,
All in a new seabag.
                                       It was enough.
How much does a man need in order to die?

II.
And now we carry mortgages, jobs, books,
Televisions, cars, hunting rifles, clocks,
Lawnmowers, bills, Sunday suits, Monday shoes,
Plastic boxes that light up and make noise,
Fences that need repair, cats to the vet,
Air conditioners, chainsaws, queen-sized beds,
Closets that need sorting out, chests of drawers
Of things we never needed anyway,
Cameras, clawhammers, pens, reading lamps,
Scissors, and writing paper.
                                                   It is too much.
How much does a man need in order to live?

Oh ye men of Greece and Rome,
Too long have ye laboured,
Feel you not what is to come,
the grass by the wall of the ruin?  

Leave ye down your tools, ancient peoples,
know you not what is to come?  
See you not the pass of many years,
the grass through pavements old?

Great enterprise never sprung from a fertile land,
Go ye into the desert, and there build your temples,
Amongst the sands and beneath the sun,
where grass can never grow.  

Here the  lines and here the verse,
Here the vaults and chimneys,
Hark the turning of the days,
eek the tall and terrible days.  

Lo, the falling of a chimney,
Lo, the crack of stones to splinter,
Lo, the old oak tree stands yawning.
better to build from bushes and thorn.  

Have at your lawnmowers, ye council men,
And see what good it does you,
Think ye can halt the rise and fall,
of strong towers left to ruin?

Have at your anoraks, and have at your coats,
Clouds gather above and rankle the parapet,
Here stood a roof, here a joist, here a beam,
blackened in the soot and flames –  here falls the rain.  

Have at your sickles, and have at your hammers,
Go back to steppe and sod from whence ye came,
And never more disturb the sepulchral vaults,
where lie long dead men of Greece and Rome.

The droning of lawnmowers
is almost a constant this time of year
Strange creature... Man

In the emptiness of existence
There is a prison
That requires persistent presence
If you wish to ever escape
We shake off our shadows
And fly like the sparrows
For it's definitely safer down below
We remove headstones
And drown in the echos
Of lawnmowers and buffalo
We walk into the woods
Sweet mistletoe growing
Sore as my hands and my back
We are born
Drawing breath
Forming stories each a little softer
For once we admit that we are lost
We can begin to really wander
Sandals soft on pavement hard
We break bread and find ourselves
Reluctant to ever dine alone