A bicycle splashes
over a puddle
and its aura
reflects down
the streetlights
praying halos
on the umbrellas
of the pedestrians
that pass under.

Down the block
two stop signs
on opposite streets
both signal WALK,
letting the crisscross
of the quotidian begin.

This moment it’s
a blue umbrella
******* around
a red one.

Earlier a chihuahua
in a poncho sniffs
and wants to nip
at the English bulldog
wearing a Mac
in the pouring rain.
(Is it so strange.)

Hours later a woman
in a white dress
and black high heels
will struggle with
the designer handbag
slung on her left shoulder
and the Bergdof’s bag
grasped tight in her right.

The crossing mother
with the black stroller
sings a shushing lullaby,
hardly noticing
the little stumble.

Oh how,
The city releases
its spectacle of life
when it rains.

If kites are nothing
but a cross on a sail
they can only rise.

Yet, the child running
with all his joy
in the brown field

on a cloudless day will
hold the string taut,
thinking it’s up to him

to keep the kite in the air
and never let its line
cross the path of birds.

Today, he will learn that
earth and sky do cross
and the wind is a shear.

The boy will cry for
the stranded kite
that heaven will adore.

I try on my death suit regularly,
and even after my cancer surgery,
it’s still too long in the arms and legs..

This year I did manage to find a
comfy pair of shoes in a size 9 1/2
that don’t make my toes numb.

in a few years I will come into a
nice inheritance and will be able to
afford a tailor that will get it right.

The fog
covers the bridge
all around.
Above
the day blurs night.
Below
ships prowl slow
and uneasy lines.
Those
driving or walking
through
will remember
the cry
of the sky,
the sobs of
those tiny sirens
below
warning away,
warning away,
those who
come too close
to touching them
in this blindness-
long
after the light
has returned
and
their souls
have safely
reached the
other side.

His horse whinny’s while waiting outside
the church with the blue cross and tin roof.

The loyal herding dog panting on the corner,
listens to the lulling cows in the pasture,
heels for the hand signal to start the gather.

In the center of the town square,
a marble angel atop a high stone column,
inches below a cross of electrical lines,
offers benediction for the gathered congregants.

Beyond, gray rumbles over  stretches of white clouds.
The ranch house below is abuzz with the sounds of pans
hitting a wood burning stove, the chant of prepping cuisine
and trail cooks praying loud long remembered recipes.
In the lake, just beyond, a black figure paddles a row boat.

The blue door of the church swings open and  
a congregant passes through holding a purse full of oats,
an offering for the horse to follow closely behind.
Two sharp finger snaps and the dog falls in beside.
The cows herd against the pasture’s barbed wire fence.

A pine coffin emerges with a white  cowboy hat on its lid.    
The hat’s old dusty brown band has been replaced with a  
synthetic new one, steam cleaned and pressed for today.
The lulling, whinnying, barking all the giddy-ups commence.  
The first drop falls from the sky, the start of a thousand tears. The last drive of so many last drives has finally begun.

Lallo assembles the town in his head
all in shades of green, white and gray—
grass, walks and streets  scarring  stories
on the old sacred hills
of high steel huts
with Bianco Carrara walls and long halls
filled with plains of  baize tables, silver machines
and nightmares of blue cavalry.



Lallo is a Native American Kiowa name meaning “little boy.”

Bianco Carrara is considered, both in Italy and abroad, the Italian marble par excellence. This whiteish-gray stone is extracted from the Apuan Alps in Carrara where there are the most known millenary tradition quarries in the world.

Baize— a coarse, typically green woolen material resembling felt, used for covering billiard and card and gaming tables.

Blue Calvary refers to the color of the uniforms of the  U.S. army soldiers from 1830-1890. Many Indian massacres and force relocations to reservations were carried out by these blue U.S. Army regiments

The eye feels the light,
the lens knows the truth:

The children silent
under a blue tarp
amongst the rubble—

their little backpacks
still on their backs
offering the hope they
still might stand up

then, the beat—
and the realization
that will never happen.

You want
to look away
yet you can’t.

You must
look closer.

You must
look for longer.

Again and again you
must be the essential,
indisputable witness

to things no human
being wishes to see—

The line of strollers
left at Przemyśl station by
fleeing mothers carrying
their infants in their arms,

a less brutal
more hopeful image
connecting in solidarity

mothers divided  
by geography
and circumstance.

And yet, there
is the uncovered
mother and child

who died face up
in the square amidst
the brightest sun,

the ****** pregnant
mother being evacuated
on a stretcher

who stop you
in first gaze
and mid-breath,

who demand
you to act, demand
you to respond,

when you see the mass
graves of Mariupol

and know you can
only think of
those of Babi Yar.

Oceans are formed from
the dropping of our tears.
and in it we must all drown,
knowing only the cold
and the slow drifting
away of our flesh.

We watch our fathers  
live extraordinary lives
but die ordinary deaths.

It sinks our hearts down
in the gush of a thousand
memories past and
memories to be named,

into expectations
of what was and
was suppose to be,
all the “if onlys…”
of our sadness

until we hate him for it,
creating new deserts
with every gasp
until we are alone
and stranded
on our own oasis—

with our tears streaming
down our faces and
in puddles at our feet,
shouting in pretense
that our feet are bone dry,
warm and comfortable—

kicking and dancing in
that holiest of puddles
until each droplet
raises off the ground
and touches our skin,
moves across our bodies—
and we are oh so so
grateful for its touch

and the life lesson that
father was teaching
us how to die all along.

Stardust,  
the hardest thing to hold on to,
forms our guardian  angels,
the ones that sway us
to our favorite tree,
settling each branch
in a sugary light.

We scamper
towards it,  all the dust
of sun and star reflecting
golden in our faces,
adorned in the
red and white regal robes
of our younger self.

God particles
surround us,
their soft collisions
cooling on our skin,
filling us with dreams
of things we may
never know again.

For now,
we fly on our
given golden wings
into our angel’s sway,
for they called us little birds
and we believe their very word.

We soared
with them in their heaven,
pausing only briefly
on a branch of sky
to sit and cuddle together,
whispering how they
value us in our ears,
their gift to us held tight.

From
the farm shed
our parents call us
and we settle on
the vernal, yellow
nimbus of earth for
one last celestial dance—

waiting
and knowing the empty pair
of red and white dance shoes
they gifted us, that are sitting
on the floor like a callus,  
will someday be given a
reason to move once more.

Soon, all I know will die,
                be buried or burnt
                in the bonfire,
        lost to senses and thought,
                      become un-
                          known.

            I will fall to my knees
            and become a turtle
                carrying my home
                    on my back.

                    If I cry out,
              who will hear me?  
            Who will
                          know
                            me,
                    when everything
                          known
                          is gone?

After, the awe returns with less shock.
A father lives in a quiet unannounced moment.
At his celebration of life
service all the children wear black leather.
They refuse to die, be strangers,
vow to know their names, remember their world.
The sound of traffic on the way back home leads them
to a smelly bar open this cold night.
The sirens fade pass for the party inside.
The balcony holds and holds.
Whatever war there is
it will not arrive this night.
They will likely never forget
all this dancing through vintage songs,
dancing again and again.
—And there it is. There it is—
Everything they’ve given up
to stay here and find more.

They pass the plate between them

mother to daughter, father to son,
a communion stretching to forever

until the plates are full
and father and son retire to
the living room to watch the game.

The mother advises on the adornment’s
of the daughter, the father pats the son
for his stratagems of the future.

They have always been this way and the
singing cold coming from the window

only makes them closer to one another,
that thing they do to get through
this meal and the next and life.

How many solitary meals they had
together they can’t remember.

They know not what they have
given up, if they gave up anything,

only that the meal was solid and filling.

Sixty degrees and clear.
She dies -morning hospice shift
while I’m getting ready
to visit her.
Waxen in her white bed,
arms bruised and quiet now,
mouth wide in a gasp
as if in scream, as if saying
ah, no!  Both eyes closed,
turned down for my visit,
denied all further light,
sky or even ceiling.
I touch her hand. It is
cold.  It’s only been
two hours. At the threshold
I see the elevator.
I’m not ready
to drop down that tunnel.
I go back and kiss her forehead.  
Outside, the clear light types her life.

I treat the future as past,
a bright yellow house I inhabited,
filled with broken furniture
needing repair, replacement, to be
quickly put to the match or just all thrown out.
There is a kitchen with pots and pans
everywhere and much flour dusting everything—
and bread, bread, bread, so so so much bread.  
Maybe I will keep that aqua sofa with
the broken frame and pop-out spring
or that oil portrait of my dead father
with the eye gouge that makes it look that his
ghost is still watching over me.
My mother (God rest her soul) was
my door and she took the door with her.

I wish I could claw out
a space for her in the
partial darkness beyond
but she  refuses
to move from her space in my
soul’s basement in a way I
can not hammer through at all.
Only the heartbeat and
breath we clearly share moves forward.
She was a great dancer
but I could never learn the right steps.
Oh mother, mother dance for me again,
in the distant, distant horizon.

The tongue
     remembers
all the death
     it has tasted.
It teaches us the
     name and memory
of things.
     The aquae of
the  womb’s ocean
     as it dries in the
first gasp of air.
     The vitae  
coughing out  
     so the lungs
can start its
     invisible cycles
of dying
     and renewing.
The taunt
     of the nose  
denying forever  
     the tongue’s
right to taste
     the light of light,
claiming
     the invisible
for itself,
     the visible
for the eyes
     and the mortal
for the body’s
     flapping corpus.
The sal of flesh
     as it tastes the  
lechum of breast.
     The tongue knows
the Unami of vowels
     before the first words
spoken and heard.
     The sweetness of
the first thought
     before it dries in the
sourness of memory.
     That the first honeyed  
almond greeting is refined  
     from bitter goodbyes.
That leaving home
     tastes like oranges.
That love tastes like chocolate
     and the newborn like rice.
The tongue knows
     from its time with the ocean
that the smell of death
      usurps the silence
of a mother’s caress,
     the waves of all her
sobs and tears
     until the sweet salt
is the last everything
     it only always knew.

Soon, all I know will die,
                be buried or burnt
                in the bonfire,
        lost to senses and thought,
                      become un-
                           known.

            I will fall to my knees
             and become a turtle
                carrying my home
                     on my back.

                    If I cry out,
              who will hear me?  
             Who will
                           know
                            me,
                     when everything
                           known
                           is gone?

I listen to his wheeze
and watch the machine ascend
for a full breathe then
fall back down again
and know I must trek
to the mountain once again.

Like my mother, heedless of  
self and for my  sake,  
will he snap twig after        
twig to point my safe return?

She died clutching a small cross,
a loblolly branch,
her bones resting on
Appalachian
soil, open to the sky and
animals delight
like her ancestors.

She was a feather.
He is a boulder.  
I can’t lift him on my back.
He will roll down the mountain.
I can only drag him
and watch the pebbles and dirt
cascade down to their beginnings.
Pull him to last breath.  

I hear a twig snap
and his hand falls to his side.
I release him to the dirt
and the mountain cradles him
as I stumble home.

“I will pick you up after
chemo,” my wife says
the next day, as I watch her  
drive down the mountain
road, listening to
branches snapping in the fog.

Bury  them with their Motanka,
doll tight in their hands.

Dress them in that  yellow
fleece wanted and put back on the shelf,

two wreaths of  roses and gerberas
adjacent their crypt,

filled with their birth smells,
the sandalwood,  jasmine of the crib,

a towel and a bowl of water
near to wipe their tears.

Flood the nave lightly  dark
so they may chase the path of birds.

Recite the names they gave
the fowl, flowers, everything.

Only you must remain ignorant
of the sun and the dark.

Only you would pray to re-turn
amniotic time to have them again,

nine months to split the seeding moment,
to be be flesh renewed, a new word within you.

Only you will thirst to
return drop by by red drop

the blood spilled from them
to the wanting womb.

Only you will drag their sled
from church to cemetery.

You will feast with others
on the third, ninth, the fortieth

day of their passing, feast again
on the sixth month and the annum,

for each one day past Easter
for another forty Provodies.




Notes on the Ukrainian funeral rites and rituals mentioned in the poem:

On the days of Ukrainian funerals, a bowl of drinking water and a towel are left for the dead as a spiritual offering. This is done because it is believed that the soul of the deceased drinks the water and uses the towel in order to wash away the tears along the way.

Moreover, Ukrainians abstain from drinking water in the presence of the body of the deceased.

Another Ukrainian traditions is to use a sled to move the body of the deceased from the funeral service to the burial site.

They have a feasting ritual in which members of the community join to feast on the third, ninth and fortieth days after a death has occurred. These feasts are also repeated on the six month and one year anniversaries of the death of a person. Ukrainians also commemorate the lives of their ancestors on the days following Easter. It is believe that this puts the spirits of their ancestors at ease so they can continue to rest in peace. This Ukrainian remembrance festivity is referred to as “Provody”.

The mainly faceless Motanka dolls can be found in every region of the Ukraine.  They are a symbol of women’s wisdom and family bounds.  In Orthodox Catholic regions of the Ukraine the face of a Motanka is made of a cross— a symbol of not only their faith but also sun and light, not only a good luck charm but also a symbol of well-being.

The Holy Ghost is freely
pinned as sin is from the Devil
amongst  the broken back pews of a somnambulant congregation
dreaming of the post church *** luck buffet.

Release it to the wild,
it flies to heaven,
anointing a stained-glass angel peeled
from the wall as second.

The angel says,
”You must wrestle me,”
I dream of catching the uncatchable,
holding that one untouchable thing.

The angel breaks its shoulder to
be free
of my material hunger
to devour the wrong blood, flesh— to the bone

It ascends unsatisfied
as an altared Christ
cursing the church to contain his blessings in a stone idol and
those who all pray open-eyed.

All life mother kneaded him
from her ma’s-g’ma’s  pain and joy,
from the bodies who all knew her
into the one  she knew well,
collected from all the raw bits
lost, found, saved from breads baked-unbaked,
while the yeast swelled her stomach  
and pocked her skin. She said, “Eat, child,”
and he fed ‘till her flesh broke.  

In the dark oven she lifted him,
chest filled with his sweet-sour breath,
his body spread out in the cool
table light of day, fingers uncurled
in the dun brioche of her lap,
her hand cradling his in this new time
far from the mute silence of his
once buttered existence, trying
to suckle on a tongue empty  world
knowing only his Kaddish.

Is it so terrible to mourn a mother on  Mother’s Day,
to cry for the ones that shut the door and never returned,
those never equipped to nurture a newborn from birth to death,
the ones who desperately wanted to be mothers but couldn’t be,
those who lost a child or never wanted to be mothers but are—
should this be a day for the successes and joys and not the tragedies,
for just the good mothers and not the bad ones?

Both get their fare share of good and bad poetry,
memories full of exultations and recriminations,
letters that get sent across the miles and get burned.
It’s by luck that each child gets a lifelong angel or Devil.

Just s ay their name  because they gave you life,
whether it be a shout or a whisper
depends on  the weight  of your joy and pain.

I should have broken my back by now
with my lupine spine,
feet screaming as if in a wolf trap.
My outrage prowls the low valley
searching the arid land for water
to slack the thirst,
the howl inside.
Once there was real silence
but no answer.
Now, rage is my lone truth.
The lamb has been eaten.
Nothing stays in my broken jaw.
What is caught just slips away.
The times are always lean
for those who howl alone.

Brother, I await you outside the window
amongst the night traffic zoom and scent of pine,

story sitting on the throat’s knife edge,
the truth unable to roll out from blood fear.

Mother, I feel your harsh breath outside my soul.
Father, your praise is hidden in the hot stones.

Brother, the moon slices you,
tripling fear across the unforgettable,

a memory haunting a thousand of my nights.
How can I love the ghosts of those beings I hate

or hate the shadows of things I truly love in light?
Brother, I know what I can only imagine.

In the night, I know your hand is there, all in mine.
I imagine the cold breath of stones.

Super Nova

I destroy the gold house
inside my soul—

the nova of light on
gold archway, gold mantle,
gold walls.  The last bits of

real places that once shined.
l thought, forever

in the aura of sun-
shine on once
gold rooftop, gold windows,

gold doors. Look in,
search and see, find: black gold

steeped in the dark
burned down to ash of
gold wood, gold grass

the once gold streets, gold hills
all around my dead sun.


This dead sun will never rise, rise
and shine its light
to my gold soul.

It appears  just weeks after the last tear,
my mother’s sky blue dress on her life ghost:
same walk, dove shape, soft voice, brown hair cut short-
at least from behind, in the same love light
that moved from donation bin, rack, to her
in the way that the poor are ****** to wear  
the dead’s clothes, hand me downs echoes worn thin
enough to be bleach clouds or ghosts of ghosts,
the seams just barely holding together,
hem taken up from low earth to sky,
the orphan leftovers recut and sewn
to match the little girl holding her hand
tight enough to be a matching heaven,
memory of a bright and special life.

When I roam the real forest
grumpy apple trees spit their spoiled rotten children on
my shoulders knowing I will collect them
and mash their cores into cider.

Their leaves refuse to form shadows nor shade me, letting
the sun scorch my monk’s crown deep cardinal red.

The weeping willows shed snickers not tears.

The oaks refuse their goodness  
and discernment, all their wisdom.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out “***** coming!”

Yet, I shade the thing I love
even as they shout out, “Go away, away.
Go home. Go home now.”

Still, my little Pomchi girl knowing forest from the trees
bows down to ***, bends backwards to ****
in full glory of all the angry, angry leaves.  

Note:
The Mary Oliver poem mimicked here can be read at:

https://www.brainpickings.org/2019/09/23/amanda-palmer-mary-oliver-when-i-am-among-the-trees/

As I exit
the world of green dinosaurs
fused from abandoned rusty automobiles      
and steaming in  the sun,
a child offered me a giant peach
harvested from a Palisade tree
grown in the valley’s katabatic winds.
  
It tasted of harsh-sweet stolen pleasures,
lust and greed and love and dried fruit,
full of Ute tears and diverted waters,
memories between prayers and laments  
buried deep, sprouting new
on rolling plains laced with spice
breezes and Buffalo.

It had evolved flesh pregnant with two hemispheres  
to be split midway
by thumbs meant to be coated with pulp
juice pooling to palm lifelines.

I knew it fed me its sweetness
in cupped hands, not a gift
but a sacrifice to be sniffed
and tasted like an old vintage
barreled decades for a loving tongue.

Its red blush collapsed into
a  tawny mass that matched the day’s light,
remaining fuzzy flesh a gold skull—
the ancient colors full of guilt and redemption
and red shame and love and twilight,
a thing existing slightly
out of season, fully sweet
yet almost taboo, almost cursed,
the lustful last bite of life.

I bought a half dozen more peaches from the parent
standing slightly just behind the child
busy cradling them into a paper craft bag
rolling them into darkness far from light
and the frozen extinction crushed
by the din of overpass traffic from above.

I noticed the sun fade from the earth,
a scorned lover removing her gaze,
until there exists a tattoo
memory of love and ripening peaches.

I took the small change
aware that the peaches would rot to
mold, uneaten, unwanted, the pit unplanted.

Notes:

A katabatic wind  is a drainage wind, a wind that carries high-density air from a higher elevation down a ***** under the force of gravity.

1
After Adam died Eve
designed a house of wooden ribs.
2
She created it to never burn down.
3
It was full of happy walls and
bright colors that never faded.
(The next owner painted them gray.)
4
The rainbow colors would daub off
on every guest’s fingerprint,
an intended souvenir.
5
Nautilus shells placed near all windows
breathed the gentlest light everywhere
6
A stone pyramid staircase
snaked up to the second floor.
7
Doves could be heard cooing
peacefully from above.
8
There was a room with a writing desk that
everyone thought was a guest bedroom
but was really her office.
9
Abel’s name was carved
into all the door mantles.
10
On Sundays, after church, she invited
the children to slide through all the
crannies they could find
11
Outside, oaks and weeping willows
formed the boundary line.
12
When she died
they grew closer
to the house,
their limbs outstretched
as if in mourning.
13
When the government cataloged the house,
forgetting that she was a businesswoman,
they noted it officially as Adam’s property.
14
The next homeowner remodeled it poorly and
it burned down two days after they moved in.

As when his son, a pensive animal lover,
on his first hunt,
had to face the doe in his scope,
his first **** lined up for the taking,
breath held firmly before trigger plunge,
the forest circling, fear trembling his lips,
doe moving from view, gaze,
his father behind, a looming granite mountain
crushing him
like an avalanche of scold that he could not,
despite his determination,
could really climb from,
his finger unwilling to pull the trigger,
even with his father
tugging his arm in death’s directions
as the miss hit sap and freed doe
from their sight.

so facing his death
the father gripped the old bedsheets,
trigger fingers cocked
and son did not dare
slap his hands
away.

If lucky I will die in a room
of non-hospital green, on plump pillows,
good linens, with good family and good friends,
the ghosts of loves, the odorama
of nitrate seas, forests or mountains on
walls.
Room where well-cast dreams lived and died.

Will my death be the end of a long love,
mystery, tragedy or comedy,
flashback to life or final nightmare?

Will your face be the  last frame or just
the quieter, dustier bed
out there in the sun— the rain?

Blow the dust of history off our bones.
In the excavated ribs of ancient sailing ships
find the burial chambers of kings.

Blow the dust of history off our bones.
In the dig just below them,  but just over
the rubble of the blitz are the
cracks in the golden cathedral’s dome.

Blow the dust of history off our bones.
Hear the cough of the newborn that
ends unknown years later to the last ahem.

Blow the dust off history off our bones.
In the oil that bubbles up see the
trilobites, dinosaurs layered in the sludge.

Blow the dust of history of our bones.
Place the femur of all  misery neatly
on the museum shelf for all to see.

Every year I knowingly cross the unknown
date that will complete my tombstone,
the day last fires will turn  ice and
my deafness will make the silence
my true and final friend- and I will cradle
the earth that cuddles my mother.

Maybe I will share that anniversary
with her or some dear friend but
undoubtedly with other millions passed.
The shadows know the date but are quiet
and are shameless in keeping it private.
Today there are poems to write and
quiet and noisy, loud and silent times to
live until the last song of my nightingale.

they took the body out
but the blood/bloodstain
stayed there.

the investigation begins.
that’s the police’s job.

but after the death
the cleaner cleans.

he cleans up blood,
pieces of bone,
skin,
maggots, flies
everything that
a corpse/body
leaves behind.
the smell
of decomposition/death  
will be gone
by the time
he finishes his work.

he has a very close
relationship to blood.
it’s something
that he respects.
he always tries
to keep in mind
that these remains
left on the floor,
this blood/bloodstain
belonged to someone.

what were they like
doesn’t interest him.
who were they
he’ll never really know.
he just owes them respect.

(every time he leaves
the atmosphere changes.
it changes
because nothing
reminds
them anymore
that there,
in that place,
someone
lost their life.

things will change
and the way they see
these objects
is sure to change as well.

of course they
still have that loss,
that pain,
but the way
they are
going to face it
is different.

his work is done
and theirs begins.)

he has a recurring dream
about his work.
he is driving at night.
the street is dark.
there are people
but he can’t see their faces.
he doesn’t know if
they are saying
hello
or
goodbye.

it is something
he would like to know
but he doesn’t have
enough time.
he thinks
that these
shadows/silhouettes
could be people
who have died.

at the end of his dream
he’s in the sea.
he’s trying
to get
to the surface,
but never
gets there.

it’s a cold,
dark
place.
he tries to move.
he tries to struggle.

suddenly,
he wakes up.
instead of being uneasy
he feels happy.
all around
is the shadows
of tombstones
leaving so many stains
on the grass
so much work
for him to do.

“I am but mad North North west; when the wind is Southerly, I know a hawk, from a hand saw.”
(Hamlet, Act 2, Scene 2)

Only God sees and knows dove from spoon,
can feign the smoothness of heaven,
let the mind see hawk and handsaw
open in the wide shed behind the house,
not the falconer’s falling glove
and the hand severed from the bird’s wings.  

For thoughts are to the manner born
and God knows the risk of our reach.
He feeds both dove and hawk
while the saw is being oiled.  
The cut finger howls His name
and cannot fly or make wings.

Line 7 references:
Hamlet, Act 1, scene 4: "But to my mind, though I am native here / And to the manner born, it is a custom / More honour'd in the breach than the observance."

I did want to do it with dead flowers
the pressings of leaving here—
flowers made of truths held openly in front
from a  fallow field  left to nettles,
the broken pebbles hammered by a vengeful sun.
I plucked it up, plucked the good root
of all our great hopes and best dreams  
and watched my life parch, shrivel and die in my hands
and heard her cry out
as if this left her incomplete,
clutching nightmares in her small arms.

he knows the earth beyond all
seeds

the earth
that is untroubled

in the scorch of afternoon
light

the petals
of the angry sun

On the white dry limbs of the sycamore, disrobing
bark etiolated in spring flash, three doves roost.  

“Peace,” they coo to the desire of my heart
to calm the violent world so like
the Lord’s small ship in the tempest ere
the rebuke of wind, sea, the faithless in their fear.

I will be kind.  Spread soothing balm
over the skin once pierced by thorns and
the white scars opened in bath water, on sheets-
the unknowns, red under the sycamores.

The ark doves cast the waters, one roosts the cross,
becoming a miracle if watched too closely
until fluttering wings burst it beyond symbols.
The world exists neither parched nor flooded, only
benefiting when sun and rain fall in good time.

The message flies everywhere further than what
I gave, circling calm and slow in every breeze.
I watch the three doves return to the
hallow ease that prods them to make their nest
on the white dry limbs of the sycamore.

The clocks leap forward and I fall back
looking for you to return from dust
blessedly
at the stroke of two this night.
¡Despiértate!  (Wake up!)
Es muy muy tarde Madre Mia. (It’s very very late My Mother.)
Gather yourself.
School is over and it is time,
not too too late for you
to teach that old song
and stay forever.

She knows the winds in the circles of all that’s around her.
The funnel is as twisted as the screaming man on the wall
                 hanging in the serenity of white space,
                          crosses and orbs flying up like
                             zephyr elms.  Her face
                              breaching its anvil.
                           Her little brick house
                             pirouetting behind,
                                until her town,
                               she is totally lost,
                                until it’s her
                       and the circle is her
                 and the flood, the storm.
            She breathes its screech over
      everything it rushes and destroys.
Can we live in the force of one wind for the whole of a life?
Does the sun gaze down and hunger for the grounded light?

When I die fill
                       my memory jug with things my mother loved.
Leave out her tears, the shivering in the rain.
                            That heart on the silver cross,
keep it,
the scrap she wrote my future name on,
                                     the ink footprints on my
baptismal certificate. But not the bandage
                     from my first stand and step and fall,
her blowing whispers in my ear to see if I
                                     can hear after the fever,
for those are tears  
and this jug has no room for
                                    oceans of such sadnesses
and grief.  
Make room for the things I’ve seen
                                                 clearly in the dark:
a frame of Mifune with sword,
                          E.T. phoning home with a gold
finger
and a happy heart light that beats right here,
                                           Dances With Wolves,
Gone
in 60 Seconds,
    tickets to hand shadow play and future love.
Line the jug with lead to keep
                                    X-rays revealing  true dark. Stash an LSD tattoo
                                            lest I desire a bad trip
far far away from heaven.
                                                 Place the draft card
torn up
on a broken hearing aid.
Put no cancer recovery card, test strips inside.
                                    I am not just my diseases
and will not cling to their memories.
                                              Be glad I am gone
if that is how you’re  bent.
               Remove that one small thing you think
I stole,
replace with a pinch of dirt or ash
   from the graves or urns of those I loved dear,
a wax
seal for this little jug for you of me
                                                            pr­oclaiming a
Thank You
                 God, Mother, Father for creating me.

The eagle
brushstroked black
talons to beak
broke red blue  
in the white sky
tiny scarlet prey
fought and died
in once soft grasp
matron touch
a child freely
loved plumped fed and feathered
in aerie
tall safe high from
screech and whoop
the drop to the
loops of barbed wire below

Put two copper artifacts
next to each other,
and in time,
they will turn green
from the attraction.

Bronze Disease is what
the conservators call it.
For them,
corrosion is the enemy.

But that is not true,
as poets and most others know:

Corrosion is life,
Rust is love.

Never summon the evil whales forth
lest they hunger for a salt’s ******
or seek to ravage their ship.

They cry out havoc, scream tempest
to the ocean and sky
so the illhveli hear not their name.

Their harpooned blubber
boils neither to heaven nor hell
but vanishes only inside the soul.

They fear only the steypireydurs
the Great Blue Behemoths,
the protectors of sailors and crafts.

The salts’ wives smell the devil in their remnants
and to keep the fury at bay they call
their men honeyed names clothed in peace.

The mates consign this sweetness
to the void, a sea of faceless women
to be left alone in their slumbers.  

At dawn, they  return
to the great wide green ocean
that hungers for their flesh.

They chum cowshed, yarrows, ash,
throw plowshares, axes and pots creating
a sacred din outside the incarnadine circles.

Cat Whales would come forth
with their devil-angel flukes
half in sun and watery dark.

They mewl alongside,
resting in the craft’s wake,
diving when the waters darkened  

And the roar of Bull Whales spouting loudly  
through their blowholes would scare
the distant  cattle to stampede the waters.

The Ox Whales, swimming
faster than hand and mind,
would devour the calves

Leaving only nibbles
for the belugas that trailed
behind in white silence.  

Bottlenose Dolphins after herding
the Ox Whales beyond the spray
would jump straight high

out of the water
exposing the sun and mountains
appearing underneath them.  

In the rest between breaths
a Taumur awaited beneath their crafts
for the opportunity to break them apart.

On the glint of the horizon a Ling Whale
drifting like a mirage of barnacles
waited to maroon them on her hide.

Today, the Great Blue Behemoth
heard their anguish and would gently
guide them back to their sandy, rocky home.  

In their unsteady slumbers
they would hitch a ride
on the back of a Heatherback

And dive with it
to the ocean’s floor until
their last bubbles floated up.

Around them all the dorsal waves
of the Sword Whale splashed them
while she sliced them in two.

Far away, the Narwhale sniffed
their blood in the water and
waited her turn to eat.

I walk from there to there
to paint myself into black pixels,
my shadow following obediently
part of the hobbled sketch.

I draw myself
as a wobbly line,
ill aligned and always
misplaced near the horizon

Above are scrawled illegible words
written in a shaky handwriting,
below exists the gurgle of my bowels
that my imperfect ears can only hear.

I ponder my broken perfection
and hear Jesus whisper his love,
knowing not the direction
from which he speaks to me.

I search Google Sky
and there is a night picture.
Yellow dots top and bottom
in fluttering butterfly waves:
too many to count,
small red and white dots:
20 per square inch,
medium red and blue orbs:
10 per quadrant,
red orbs with devil’s tail:
10 falling down
red, purple, blue orbs with halos:
20 (mainly clustered in the center),
purple orbs with blurry wings, flying up:
5

I search Google Earth
and there is my red brick house
(refresh)
blown down to a u,
a guard rail, metal flashing
in the only green branches
of the sole oak that survived the wind,
(refresh)
the remains of the septic tank
in a crater of weeds
(refresh and expand focus)
a field cleared
(click next)
foundation poured
(scroll down)
frame erected
(scroll down)
roof, shingles attached
(click, open folder: blue prints)
(picture)
construction plan: Oxford
(picture)
Heritage Park Phase I


I google my name.
Six Images of a Costa Rican soccer player:
good looking, but not me,
Linked In Owner Profile
with no pic,
Home/Facebook/Profile (no pic)
(click)
Poet—All Poetry (no pic):
(click)
289 poems, two  books listed-
(The Nacre of Cancer)
(Like No Movie I Have Ever Seen)
259 followers, 11 following,
nice pic but old and I’m fat,
(tap back arrow, scroll down, click more results)
(Not me) Costa Rican soccer player Stats/Profile,
(Not me) Instagram Profile
(Me) Wordpress blog site listing,
(Me and many others)
We found (me)— search public records online
(click)
fill out form,
(click search)
results found:
1 (me), 88 (not me)
(click x, close page, leave browser)

Things not found on Google:
my cancer,
my marriage(s),
my dog(s)

Real me found on Google
2%
real not me found on Google:
98%,
Me never listed:
98%.

Everything
louder

than the
earth

spinning under
you

will make you
doubt

you are
alive.

A daughter dies, and she is found,
in the cerulean movements of birds.
Not a hawk. Mother Sky
says those are for boy’s souls.

The father sees mockingbirds
building a nest of pine twigs
in the corner frieze of the portico
and imagines a flash of her smile
in there frequent swoops to his shoulders
as he dares to fetch the mail.

This is not a defensive attack, he thinks,
not really harpies.
Maybe a hello?  
Maybe her just checking in?
It made sense.  
She was always hiding in high places.

She once was found sleeping in a crag
of Old Wauhatchie Pike on one joint climb.
She often danced on the roof,
sketch pad in hand, until she found
the perfect angle to stencil
either the setting or rising sun.

The mockingbirds screeches
waking him in the morning
were an act of love, maybe,
turning a casual belief
into a hopeful faith.

It was silly for him to think
that the mockingbirds were
his daughter’s soul.

But then the father
thought of Icarus
every time the mockingbirds
would rise and soar high in the drafts
until there glint vanished into the sun.
He rebelled at the thought that Mother Sky
would reserve waxen wings for a foolish boy.

His daughter had made herself silken wings.
He knew that, had harnessed them  to her back,
leaving this butterfly in the babysitter’s care
while they went to attend the opera.

After the tuck in she scrambled onto the roof
determined to sketch the rise of the moon,
and knowing that anything was possible,
she closed her eyes and leapt.

He remembered the babysitter’s
frantic call to come home, NOW!
Then, there  was just the echo
of his daughter’s laughter. Maybe?

He could see her flying high in the day sky
even though the night, the real night,
had queened her kingdom to the existence
of her swaying silently between pine and earth,
her feet never touching the ground.

He wanted to tell her to come down.
TO COME DOWN NOW.  
But he could not.
She was too high up,
lost in the promise of flight.
And he was too small.

He let her go.
Let her fly away from him
on silken wings
that never melted.  
Proud to see her fly
so high, even in his dark.

The not not bird
listens to its not not song
in the not not tree
near my not not door.

And in its song it hears
something not not grand
compared to all the other
not not birds
in all the other not not lands.

The not not bird
doesn’t know
all the not not things
it’s suppose not to know.

It sees not the not not leaves
written in this poetry.
Smells not the not not flowers
swaying not in the not not breeze.
Hears not the buzzing of not not wings
of all the yellow not not bees
supping on all this wondrous not not majesty.

For this not not door of mine
is neither not not open
nor not not close.
For that is not the not not providence
of this not not poem to define.

I choose wether or not
all this not not nonsense
shall be or not not be
in some future not not prosody.

For those who beg to decline
I privy thee to write
your own **** not not rhyme!

I.
All through elementary school
blonde beautiful lip reading teachers
would try to correct my “th”s by snaking
their tongues between their teeth and
holding it there, ripe cherries
tempting me to bite into them.

This was the one thing my withdrawn self
throbbing with the first thrusts of male
enthusiasm couldn’t stop thinking about—
all those thin throats with patchouli scents
wildly, willingly, whispering interdental fricatives
like a throng of French kisses to my thirsty lips.
I thoroughly desired the apples of their necks—
to chew them, **** them, swallow them,
eat them all -all of them- all of it,
every one so meaty-sweet and
erupting with wet dreams.

They would undress themselves,
my harem besides me on the river bank,
their white stomachs dewy and shivering,
the ribbiting Croquis behind the marsh
chanting to me to instruct these chicas
in the ch’s— chas,  cha-chas, chochas
of the Puerto Rican mating call
with no use for this, that, these, thems,
just the rich vowels of legs parting
telling them each where
ella es hermosa como la luna.
(She is beautiful as the moon.)

Once Senorita Lujuria brought to class
a persimmon plucked from her garden
ripe with the musky  smell
of what the girls thought was chocha
and the boys imagined was ***
that she sliced into two equal suns.  

Knowing that it wasn’t ripe or sweet
I refused the first bite she offered.
I watched the  others spit it out,
their palms full of bitter disappointment.


II.
When I got home my mother was cutting
off the crown of a pomegranate, scooping
out the core without disturbing the berries,
scoring just through the outer rind, until
it quartered and could be gently pulled apart.
I stuck out my hand and she inverted the skin
until the berries fell warmly filling my palm
and then into a red plate

Her body was a bruise, especially her hands
I gently rolled her wheelchair
to her cluttered room
where she sang an old Spanish song
asking for the ghosts to take her away.
Her song swelled and she cried it out of her
heavy with sadness and sweet with love.

After she had passed I stumbled upon
three scrolls tied with purple velvet string
folded under a down blanket in the basement.

I unrolled three paintings done by my mother
in the Frida Kahlo style.
  
The first was a self- portrait of her holding
a quartered pomegranate in one hand,
a sliced persimmon in the other.
The second was of her staring out at the ocean,
her body bulging with the idea
of my joyous conception.
The last, was an ****** tableau
of her and Senorita Lujuria
in a forbidden embrace, signed and
dated two years before I was born.

The first two painting had the deftness
of a thousand skilled repetitions,
the taboo one sprawled with arthritic loops
but still hathe talent of muscle memory.
My eyes teared with the knowledge that
my mother never lost the things she loved,
her son, the colors, scents and textures
of all the persimmons and pomegranates
so neatly sliced and lustily devoured.

The sentinels stand silently
guarding the monuments
from rioting against their shadows.
One guard
counts the sunshine,
the other the dark.
The **** and ****,
the broken glass
can never be really
cleaned up.
The stench
just follows the tour
through the
purple velvet queue.
The glass bleeds
the feet of those
who sold their shoes
for nothing.