The Little Bessy  molts its white chipped,
dull letters out to waves it cannot use.

Capsized on the rocky Maine beach, where  
it once fished for lobster in richer anchors,
the peapod displays its tattered nets on its hull
while the Man O War, filled with a haul of tourists,
bruises the gentle waves of Penobscot Bay.

Its oars are mounted on the lobster shack wall,
its sails framed in the nautical museum.
Abandoned are the days it was pulled
from its moorings on the wharf and sailed
through Penobscot air or spilled weighted circles,

days that were longer than any of its old parts,
times when old hands  hoped for better ways
never knowing they’ve come and gone.

Its broken, rusty anchor once met the spent waves,
the hands holding and releasing it down
to mate firmly with the mount, the moment
when the old lobsterer father firmly grounds
The Little Bessy’s wanton desire to push out to sea.  

Betrayed and exposed every day, run by no one,
Bessy drifts into beauty she never desired:
the pretty postcard in the wharf gift shop,
photos  taken by others rushing by in other boats.
when she was always meant to be the secret  
memory of the lobsterer hauling up his lonely pots.

Mr. Rogers grace exists
in miniature cities of kindness,

the tranquil tones of forgiveness,
level to the eye of a single frighten child.

For him, and in that moment,
that child is the  most precious
thing in the world.

He blesses them with positive ways
of dealing with their feelings;

the benediction of accepting them
for exactly who they are;

even when everything doesn’t
go exactly the way they hoped,

shows them how to smooth the
dissonance into a beautiful inner music;

store up the blessings
of an ordinary day;

love the ratty, special toy,
even as it grows old;

to know with absolute firmness,
as parents, that anything

mentionable is manageable
and to be human-

and that’s ok.

The rear view mirror showed the car on fire.
Metal no protection for burning flesh—
burning down to the color of the night—
a bright reversal reflected in white.
Maybe charred bone? Not hell. Neither heaven.
Police, EMTs too late to save the
tissues smelling like pan steak, fatty pork—
blood emitting its metallic compounds—
the burnt liver of organs— spinal gel    
a musky, sweet perfume less offensive
than wires, plastic, alloys, the circuitry
melting down every(all)things to its base.
He (it) never saw, tasted, felt the crash
coming from the back/front/side. But I did.

Each launch begins with a prayer
until I have a puncture, a rip, a tear.
Mayday!  Mayday!  Mayday!

I am always falling
either to the earth or to the stars,
falling forward to God the Father
or father to son.
  
To survive I move in the vacuum
between calm heartbeat
and silent in-breath,

hurling to my final mission
to repair a disconnection
of a mind that can
***** life with a thought
or by sniffling
a remembered tear,

knowing not whether to
****** the monstrous soul
or to hug the last, lost dead part.

I swim through
the waterfalls of mars
knowing I never really knew you
nor am I you.

“Stay where you are.
Do not proceed any further,”
you hiss in loving defiance.

In the space in between
I see that madness is
never once thinking of home,
being free of all moral doubt.

Tethered to the umbilical
I cut the insanity to the vacuum,
suffocate the space between
with love,

until I can no longer see
what is not there,
until I miss what
is right in front of me.

In the after-burn from Saturn
I am looking forward
to the day of my self return.

I will rely on what is closest to me.
I will live and love.

Pick a day.
The random date generator chose:
January 13, 1835
There are still generations formed
from those that fell in
love, married,
birthed sons and daughters
on that day.
Each an unrepeatable existence.

Family lore and crests
enshrine the first kiss,
the birds that soared the sky,
the color of flowers in his/her hand,
words spoken and written in the heart,
the dress she wore,
the beard he had
and discarded or kept,
the Fahrenheit/Celsius of
the exact hour, minute second
of their first heat,
the time that their fingers
stopped accidentally
brushing against each other,
the number of teeth
shown in the first smile.

Count the time
from first hello to last goodbye.
Enshrine that number
of seconds, minutes, hours,
days, weeks, months, years,
in the tales told about them
by their children.
Knit together
all the overlapping
welcomes and farewells
into the colorful threads
of all the houses born and fallen.

I look at that history
and I love you
solidly in the echoes
of all the past.
You fill my time,
even my sadness.
I have gazed too long
Into the light of you.
I only see
the burnt-in after glow
of all the whiteness.

In Vatican City a cardinal walks
resolutely forward, his red train
flowing behind longer than a bride’s.

It’s silhouette passes by the open
windows of the atelier reflecting
crosses over the bodices of the
tailor’s latest scarlet creations.

Another black smoke day rises from
the chimney of the Sistine Chapel.

Blood shadows slowly abandon
St. Peter’s square for the trek home.

The sun’s golden trail will soon yield
to the purple plush of a Roman night.

its spectral color will caress the shoulders
of the woman with the straw hat and
black dress wanting to dance in the Trevi;

the black suit businessman ignoring
his even blacker shadow cast on
the terra cotta wall of his dextral side;

the young mother nursing her infant in
the safe T between ***** and clavicle,
praying to the priest behind the screen.

Bury me not in a high tomb of gloom
on days sacred to all your lonely heart
nor scatter my ashes in the pale moon
on June’s or September’s early-late start.

Mix me in with all my good beastlies‘ dust,
one third reserved for Elsi’s sweet embrace,
two parts crushed into diamonds that not rust
worn near heart or hurled to a far star trace.

If thy can’t bear part with my ash and bones
plant me in a petunia ***, blond bloom
monitored by your sweet echoing tones  
growing forever in our living room.

Either way I was loved, I cried, I sighed,
I aspired and created all under your tide.

Oh, when the sun yields child
to the soft caress of the night

After the sun has gone.
After the sun has gone.

That lifts the wind
after the sun has gone.

The last  of wonder and awe
That turns life
from a beach shell echo

to  a cornucopia
after the sun has gone.

Life without a shell must
shake out the shadows

live full to overflowing
less it dry after the sun has gone

leaving the child still, beautiful silent
in the beach tide after the sun has gone.  

After the sun has gone.

No bad guy talks alone
to a Bible in a hotel room
with a gun in his hand.

“If a man commits adultery
with the wife of his neighbor both
the adulterer and the adulteress
shall surely be put to death…”

the good book says or
he thinks in a cold sweat.

That’s how he met Cynthia.
She was fearless.
That’s how she became his whole life.

He’s not humbling himself.
He’s not learning.
He’s not even listening.

It offers him words of love.
“YOU ARE NOT ENOUGH!”

“God loves you
with his whole heart.
He loves you.”

He looks up to the ceiling
and lifts the gun up.
“Can you save me?”

The seed planted with our small help
becomes a crop.
The flame carefully kindled by us
ignites  civilization.
Now we must
**** our blighted hearts
to feed the moral fire
of our hungry minds.

Only my grandmother came home to die.
Her centuries old home was built
with a birthing and dying room,
two small bedrooms, a library
and as was custom, no parlor

She went through the process of life
in private but away from the spaces
entirely reserved for birth and death.

Home was a place where she ate,
sat still, stared and meditated
day after day at the place where she
came from and would finally end up.
That was the way it was suppose to be.

On that day, she sat in her old mahogany
birthing chair and closed her eyes
until they no longer fluttered.
Her hand fell on what was my mother’s
old crib, rocking it three times.  
She was moved to the smaller room
long prepared for her body.
Her dying room had no light,
just a small bed with fluffy pillows.

My mother was a living woman.
When she bought her Miami house
near the beach and the bay
she made certain there were
no birthing and dying spaces,
just lots and lots of living areas:
four bedrooms, a sunken living room
that took more than half the space,
a well-breathed kitchen, a good size
open Florida room and beyond that
a screened-in clear blue pool
equal to the size of the living room.
This was the way she knew it was
suppose to be for her and for us.

She died on a flesh covered La-Z-Boy
in the TV-room of a much smaller house,
the arm rest worn through by constant
gripping, the foot rest half kicked off from
the convulsion prior to the hear attack.
I had just returned from seeing
Fatal Attraction at the mall Megaplex.
Thirty-five years later I’ve yet to rewatch it.

My father must have been thinking of his death
when he built his open house atop the charred ruins
of a post Civil War estate with servant quarters and
stables that overlooked Frenchman’s Cove in Maine.
The house was a wing cut from the air and
nailed to the rocky shore. The gentle waters of the bay
ached daily to caress the sighing foundation beneath
as if the water and air always knew and was now
retelling the story of every birth and death in the
front and back spaces  of  their proper time.
My father  found peace there and  called it Tranquility.
But the soil and tide knew from the soft screech
of the sky that he would be denied his wish to die there.  

My father, a doctor, specialized in obstetric anesthesia,
and started his.practice just on the fringe when
birthing rooms were yielding to maternity wards.
On a bright day in his study overlooking the bay,
when he stared looking like he might be
turning the corner on a recent malady,
he turned pale and gray and short of breath.
He was passed from smaller hospital
to bigger hospital until he finally landed
in the University hospital where he taught
for many years, in a private room amidst
the throbbing and beeping of machines
he was intimately comfortable with.

On his second day in hospice, the machines
where disconnected and under the lightest
of anesthetic drugs he took his last sleep.
The interns said it was an honor
to treat him until his last dying breath.

I don’t know if I will pass in a dying room
of my choosing.  it will certainly be far
removed from the room I was born.
Most likely I will die in the wrong place,
like most everyone else. As you have
read, the odds are less than one in three.
that nature or fate or God will get it right.  

Time is too much about different
arrangements of proximity to be relied on.
So much depends on who goes in front of me.
Who is besides me and/or behind me.
Or just elsewhere, missing, soon to come.
it all depends on how attenuated I am
to the living and dying spaces around me.
How undoubtedly some one else
or no one will write or even remember
my ending and beginning

My mother was always a better singer
                                than she was a cook.

She may have burnt a lot of things but
                              never missed a note,
         especially when Harry Belafonte
came on the transistor kitchen radio-
a voice so pure it made her cry with joy.

“There’s a hole in the bucket dear Liza,
                                                     dear Liza,”
                         he sang echoing her past,
                                                 the divorce,
                         her humbling present life.

The duet had the reply she wanted to say
to everything and sing it like Odetta--
                             “Well fix it, dear Henry
                                                 dear Henry,
                                                          fix it.”

It was her kitchen cooking song and
           and we would sing it together
            when Harry wasn’t on the air.

We sang it so often,
                                  switching voices.
                                      that I believed
                         she could fix anything
                                     and I could too.    

When we got to the fortieth line
                the meatloaf was burnt
                                              on top.

I ate it all with a lot of ketchup.
She just cut off the burnt part
                and fed it to the dog.

My sister,
                             two brothers
                              and stepdad
                             ate it quietly,
                        building up a lot
                                         of bad
                 meatloaf memories.

All the other kids had
                          their own songs
                that she sang to them
                                but she sang
                                               only
                         Belafonte to me.  

“Daylight come and me wan' go home,”
                    she sang to me in a whisper
                   before kissing me goodnight.

Calypso more than Salsa echoed
                            her Boricua pride,
                 the youngest of thirteen,
            yet never born to the island.

“Midnight come  and she wan’ go home,”
I sang to her open casket 22 years later,
                              kissing her on the head,
                      taking the hole in the bucket,
                                     along with Belafonte
                                                   to the future.

For a week
a blue fly
buzzed around our apartment
subsisting on our Pomchi’s water,
kibble
and kitchen counter crumbs
and dodging attempts
by my wife to swat it.

I used to catch flies
quite easily in my palm
and release them back
to their natural estates
but since my colon surgery
the bugs are always winning.

Today,
there was a grey spider,
maybe a brown recluse,
silently gazing
at the bathtub drain.
I could not find a container
to capture it,
so I turned on the faucet
to the lowest cold
and highest flow
and watched the creepy crawly
circle the drain three times
before it vanished
into the mercies
of the Chattanooga sewers.

I was convinced  
that it could survive
by rafting itself  
onto to the nearest ****,
both a source
of refuge and sustenance,
that my Puerto Rican
family of Marine Tigers
living in Miami
(at the time
when Castro refugees
all mythically made
the 330 mile trip
on ten fallen coconut palms
thatched together,
and audaciously declared
eight street,” Calle Ocho”
and their new land,” Little Havana”)
contemptuously called,
back in my racist youth,
a “floating Cuban.”

When I came into the bedroom
my wife was waving around
her big brand-new blue fly swatter,
the one she bought at Dollar Tree.

Our Pomchi, also on the bed,
resting on her back
with her legs up in the air
and stomach joyfully exposed
was barking for a good hard belly rub.

Whack, whack, whack
went the fly swatter,
squarely hitting our little girl
in her sweet spot,
generating ******* squeals.

The blue fly,  
affectionately    
called Mike Pence
for its habit of landing
unnoticed on
any old white thing for
two minute and three seconds,
and now, a visiting family member
that had overextended its stay
more days than
were humanely bearable,
was buzzing around my wife’s head.

Its movement was noticeably slower
and when it landed on the faux leather arm
of my multi position reclining chair,
I was almost able to snag it in my palm.
Too tired to buzz afar,
it rested again on the arm,
weakly regurgitating its own spittle.

I called my wife over,  
a former professional chef
and therefore an expert
in the art of
preparing, cooking and eating
dead things,
knowing she be eager to try out
her new instrument of death.

A sure aim sent the Blue
to the skin colored **** carpet,
and in its last struggle
I started to sing inside the only
song that would be
a proper elegy:

La cu-ca- | ra-cha, la cu-ca-ra-cha
| ya no pue-de ca-mi-nar
por-que no | tie-ne, por-que le fal-tan
| las dos pa- titas "de" a-trás. —

("The cockroach, the cockroach /
can no longer walk /
because she doesn't have, because she lacks / the two hind legs to walk.”)

I imagined it
crying out
“Help me! Help me!”
like the half human,
half insect creature
caught in the spider web
at the end of that
old Vincent Price
creature feature
were death by big rock
was a mercy
compared to
arachnoid decapitation.

Whack
and the Blue’s head
was severed
from its thorax.
Whack
and its wings
flew East and West.
Whack
and its abdomen
closely followed.
Whack
and its legs
buckled under it.
Whack
a final time
to make sure
it was dead.  

My wife had
over-killed,
and the worst
cardinal sin,
had over-cooked
something that
was meant
to be tartare.

Still our Pomchi
sniffed, licked
and eventually ate
the Blue,
her smile
declaring it
the best thing
she swallowed
all week.  

For a half hour
my wife rewarded her
with the swat, swat, swat
of blue belly rubs.  

Note:
Marine Tiger was the ship that carried people from Puerto Rico, and so the white people in New York started calling all the Puerto Rican people ‘Marine Tigers.’

Death, I notice, often comes
with a smile and a kiss,
a tender tuck of blanket into legs,

a pull to the shoulders
making shroud complete,
a tender whispered secret.  

“Good bye” or “Good life”,
it might be saying.
But so does love.  

2

The  light of the cancer center
is so clean, clear and bright
that it makes me squint

pondering whether the jovial trucker
with the Tennessee drawl
and the St Nicholas beard and physique,

on his fifth dance with the Big C,
that started in his eye
and remission to his liver,

is a harbinger or heavenly host,
a glint from the gaze of God
or the last secret whisper of love.

3

When he is awol the next week
I assign him to the casualty list
knowing that I am the lucky survivor.

I am the thick among the thins
and he is the blessing angel
destined to return to the Lord.

I live with the ambivalence,
the hope and the guilt,
looking for dancers among the blasted.

4

I refuse to name my cancer
not granting it control
or even the idea of breath.

The drugs, however, that’s different.
Oxaliplatin is oxygen.
Leucovorin is lungs.

They pour into my port
and in the liquid air
I learn to breathe again.

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.

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.

Man


I don’t know if I am a practical person.

I don’t obsess over the uses of a watch.
It’s enough that it tick and the hands
move forward, even if I don’t.

When my dog paces in front of the door
I know I must walk him.  When he paws
my lap, I must feed him. He knows himself.

Today, I took him to the beach and
let him romp the shore, content like him,
to not know why the tides moves forward.

The tides are tireless and they go up and down
endlessly with a purpose  I’m not privy to.
My winding down bones know to let things be.

Today, the current matters. Tomorrow it won’t.
All that matters, this moment, is that my dog
returns the stick I’ve thrown and not run away.

Yet, nothing we accomplished in that time,
in all its impracticability, will matter
to all this ceaseless renewal all around.

Tomorrow the future will pull me from
my past even if my feet  don’t move,
even if my ashes are urned

With the sound of sirens screaming outside,
ten knocks on the door, the shout of authority
flooding in from the red steel,
would Joe American give up Anne Frank
hiding in the attic among his dusty relics,
the crawl space shared with a family of rats,
living under the loose floorboards among
the stacks of hidden zombie apocalypse cash?

What if Jane American found Anna Franco
shuddering with her dos hermanos, madre, padre,
in the dark corners of her garage?

Would she give them 2 vests, 3 pair of pants,
two pair of stockings, a dress skirt,
jacket, shorts, lace up shoes,
wool cap, and scarf?

What if her daughter Sarah saw a black hijab Anah
patiently hidden in the foliage of their old oak tree?
Would she gift her her favorite blue fountain pen?

Would she embrace her, or if ordered,
break the neck of her rabbit?

What is the land
but dust
but mountains
but forrest
but mud
but lost sorrow

What is sorrow
but torn soul
but wounded skin
but a trail of tears.

This day
the Chickasaw
Choctaw
Creek
Seminole
Cherokee

wipe the
white mans dirt
off their right foot
with their left foot

wipe the buffalo’s blood
off their right hand
with their left hand

walk ******
bare right foot
to wounded left foot  
on the dust
of their ancestors
their sacred hills

walk away from
The Great Spirit
to the not greater
white man’s God
slow sad right foot
to slower left foot.

Walk dragging their
dead still right foot
to still left foot
far away from the sun
of their monumental land

to this country
of bullets and blood
marching, running
blue right foot
towards gray left foot
in a frenzy to *****
bronze monuments
to all their dead

And when they cry it’s
the prayer of the white man
buried in Indian pain

May the wind
that is blowing
now and always
the dust of our memory
blow beyond your
fear of us
and all different
colored spirits

May the wind
turn from you
and only return
until you love not
the scars you
put on our backs

May you open your
eyes to unbuilt land
and see finally
The Great Spirit
calling every one
to share the
sacred hills
even the dust
with all that
have always walked
right foot to left foot

The steel bar that holds the torso up
gives it a spine and makes it art
and not some headless, armless, genital-less
mutilation pushed from a machine
going faster than the white signs allowed.
I see it only on my iPhone,
backlit with its perfect abs and ***-gutters
not unlike the headless *******
penetrating endless **** on pornhub,
the unsolicited **** pic galleries popping up
whenever I try to click away.
Everything  breakable and tearable in me
has been torn and broken
and yet I envy this immortal stone
suspended here in cyber space
that can be smashed to white pebbles,
pulverized to dust
and still never bleed
or feel pain.
It exists,
a twist of idolized flesh
to be touched
and wondered over,
polished to a high sheen
by centuries of passing hands
until the fetish leaves me
admiring and detesting,
the remnant echo
of the true and beautiful,
a once true and beautiful God.

He lacked the skill to make it true, the crib,
so he  assembled it from a wordless diagram,
an ark of 5 panels, 32 screws and bolts, 3 tools-
tightening it just enough, until the memory
of its creation fixed solid in his soul, well past
the 1000 days of the child dreaming in it,  
the 30 years of lying unassembled in attic dust,
its existence cradled, tightened and retightened,
in lullaby and bedtime rhyme- until the child
reached his Jesus year, and needing a
second-hand cradle for his soon to be first born,
noticed it in the growing dawn and dust and
thought “Dad, I know I have the screws for that.”

I am a lousy gardener
that only offends
the soil on top and below.
 
No Petunias or Marigolds bloom,
only crab grass struggling with
Tennessee moss, and a small patch
of Kentucky Bluegrass the
survivor of almost fifty years
and two previous owners:
 
a general practitioner who
layered the inner sod of
the old colonial with
trip wires, alarms, sirens
and intercoms still being
discovered
 
and a Methodist preacher
who cultivated a lawn
of thin earth carpet over
the cheap yellow vinyl
and parquet in the basement—
adding two bedrooms and a shower
for any charitable cases
or needy parishioners.
 
My lawn is left to hell,
the house, gifted to heaven
and the loving attention
of my wife who fills
this abode with the aromas
of her favorite foods
cooking in the oven.
 
The inside is built
on good bones and wood—
a sturdy brick foundation
and oak floors with
a comforting squeak,
sanded and polished
to their original shine.
 
My chihuahua takes great
delight in slipping on them
when she plays fetch.
 
Outside nature riots
in unmolested happiness.
 
Twenty oaks and a few evergreens
defend the spaces of my half acre.
The most majestic one
leans like a hunchback
crying over the stump
of its dead brother below.
 
My trees are allowed to be real trees,
uncultivated, untrimmed, undominated
plus one-hundred-year-old sovereigns.
I respect my vegetable elders.
 
During the spring and summer
the lawn is mowed every other week
to keep my neighbors happy.
 
Five Chipmunk dens burrowed in the clay
provide rooting and hunting
opportunities for my chi,
as the two good boys before,
now scampering
around the rainbow bridge.
 
A black and white stray tabby
has taken up residence on my porch—
sunning in the afternoon,
snoozing in the corner column at night.
He scatters at light and first witness,
his existence a blur captured
on the Ring.
 
Just above is the nest
of our perennial swallows,
real snowbirds I have
no fondness to evict.
The Ring also captures
their welcome and farewell.
 
This dear green acre
has lasted longer
than my happiness.
 
It has the patience
to wait beyond
my grief, disease
and eventual death,
beyond the lease
of all its human tenants
to reclaim its proper heritage.
 
I am so small
to such big things.
We are so small
to such big things.
 
This verdant kingdom
will not shrink back,
wither or expurgate.
 
It will insist on being loved
and watch mine and your colors rust,
for it is beyond discrimination,
consciousness and self-reproach.
 
It will mock you and me
as our fingers dig
down hard into the clay
and grow nothing
that hasn’t existed eons before.
 
It will live alongside
mine and our
happiness and misery,
dropping seeds,
rooting, always blossoming
beyond the violent light.

Your death must mean just enough

not to curse the day you were born,
to stand by the water’s edge

and not want to swim with stones

until the first dark wave takes
me under in a fetal pose,

sinks me down in the last breath,

the clear waters almost your ghost
pushing me back, allowing

me to walk away.

Of course, I will push your toes, even
the missing small one, back into your shoes.

I will cast your coffin that was my


crib on the soft tide telling
you have nothing to be sad about.

The heat is a pendejo querida
a street full of melda de vaca, mi amor
steaming, stinking, like a hungry puta
who takes mi dinero and gives me *****.
Sleep with me chica. Cool me down
in el rio d su chocha.  Por favor.  Por favor.
Mariposa de su womb. Pajaro en mi boca.
Do not steal my crumbs and fly away.
Tu coolo is una ballena.  Lo adoro.
It’s as hot as the clouds that stampede
like los cascos de los caballos salvaje.
Your centavo feminino blends with
the eibas y el calor making me want to
comer naranjas amargas contigo en la cama
or a picnic with you a orillas del rio del Paraiso
watching the lotus bloom.

Translation of Spanish:

pendejo querida- male ***** hair, my love
melda de vaca,  mi amor- cow ****, my love
puta- *****
mi dinero- my money
chica- girl/woman
el rio de su chocha.  Por favor- the river of
your *****. Please.
Mariposa de- butterfly of
pajaro en mi boca- bird in my mouth
Tu coolo- your ***
una ballena- a whale
Lo adoro- I love it
los cascos de los caballos salvaje- the hooves of
wild horses
centavo feminino- womanly scent
ceibas- kapok tree found in Puerto Rico
el calor- the heat
comer naranjas amargas contigo en la cama- eat bitter oranges with you in bed
a  orillas del rio del Paraiso- by the shores of the river of Paradise.

Outside of town a man died
naked beneath a nice tree.

Some said  he was old
and that the tree was an elm.
Some said he was young
and that it was an oak.
Others, that he was a child
and that it was a magnolia.

The only thing they agreed on:
that he was naked, dead, under a tree
and they felt sorry for him.

So, the Widow Smith secretly
dressed him in her husband’s best shirt
because she was still mourning
the loss of Tom’s chest.

Mr. Aglet, who owned the shoe store,
privately donated the old Nike’s
Timmy abandoned when he went to Harvard
because Aglet missed Timmy putting them on.

Haberdasher Scye donated his swankiest cufflinks-
the one’s left behind when a newlywed customer
learned that his wife was in labor—
because Scye hated the look of an unadorned shirt.

He then gave his favorite top hat
for no man should be buried with bad hair,
his finest knee-high dress socks
because that’s what funeral’s demand.

He than gifted his finest silk tie,
a nice leather belt of the man’s waist size,
and just to finish the look

a properly somber black jacket and pants.

Optometrist Eyear noticing the man
was squinting rather oddly
crafted a fine pair of designer spectacles
that fitted perfectly on the dead man’s nose.

Everyone in town felt good about their gifts
and the funeral was well-attended.
It wasn’t until he was deep under
did they notice that they forgot the underwear.

They found them, the next day,
the one thing that knew him best,
hanging high in the branches of the tree.

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.

She didn’t want this wedding dress
to be a widow,
alone,
encased in plastic
in the unused dark
of the closet,
moved after spring cleaning
to the basement
near the leaky window,
after five years
moth-balled to the
old unopened hope chest
of her mother’s closet,
weeping, weeping, weeping
for the man she lost,
subsisting on hope angels,
decaying, yellowing
a luminescent ghost,
a ******,
never to be worn,
never to be adored,
never to be passionately wanted,
just praying, praying, praying
and attracting only moths.

Wait, wait, wait,
after all these years,
it’s the granddaughter
touching it,
measuring it,
sizing it up
and seeing it
doesn’t fit her dreams.
will never
fit her dreams
and putting it back
without a second thought.

The grandmother
touches it yellow lace
and realizes it’s not
good enough,
worthy enough
to donate to
the local goodwill.

She doesn’t have the
heart to put it in the trash
and the scavenging fury
of the gulls and crows at the dump,
or cut it into cleaning rags.

It’s too old to go back
to the closet.
and the hope chest
is overstuffed already.

She takes it outside
in the bright clear light
and places it on the concrete pad,
douses it with gasoline
of the highest octane
and throws,
the last cigarette
she will ever smoke
defiantly, sadly on it.

She watches it return to the sky
in  candolescent congratulations.

It wasn’t a river  
just a pool,
more of a hotub,
set off from the sanctuary—
and when I was eased
into  the water
I didn’t see God
in the streams above.

And I didn’t see her
lost in the thunder
of the racetrack
just beyond the church.

She was beyond
my line of sight,
soaking up congratulations
from the congregation.

The pastor gave me
a gentle pat on my back,
shook my hand, three times,
handed me a towel
and welcomed me to the flock.

I was just another sinner saved
and left to go his own way,
certain in the faith
that God will provide.

She said she would meet
me back at her place
after the potluck.

I wrang the towel
of every last drop
and  handed it
back to her.

I walked back to
my old white Civic,
turned it over
and felt the
cool Jesus breeze
of the A/C hit my face.

The voice inside
told me to do the
first thing I heard
on the radio.

I heard Ray Charles
in his blindness
croon to me:

“Hit the road Jack
and don't you come back
No more, no more, no more, no more.

Hit the road Jack
and don't you come back
No more.”

Winter  
The rain sheds  precious jewels this winter night,
the oaks untangle their branches in clarity,
musky solidarity, and affirmation of their place,
an unlearned wisdom  of existence  that
allows them to bear the staggered light of
unhurried clouds spreading their endless
laughter to all those fixed below.

Fall
The cold, crisp wind of change kisses
and abandons all the oaks of the field.
They shiver off their acorns knowing
they must be naked for the dark days ahead.
The clouds dark smiles are just beginning
to bear their light for winter’s derision.

Summer
The sunshine dances with the wind
and the oaks of the forest sway
in the merriment of unfiltered days.
They embrace a child’s shadow,
generously mixing it with their own,
bearing a tempered light for those
who breathe beneath their branches.

Spring
Diamonds of rain embellish the thirsty oaks
and they drink it in in tangled unity,
not scornful of the others judgement.
Fickle clouds grudgingly bear the light
until the sun forces them to share
its unending generosity with everything below.

Before it was lowered over
the broken city grid and
became my second house
it was a meadow where
the grasses grew tall.

I watched the top shell of earth
being moved and hauled away,
saw everything leveled to sand,
except a thick, distant  forest with a
thin stream that bled to the city park—

and did not shed a single tear.
All I knew that this was  my reward
for surviving sickness and storms,    
my final place to rest and settle my bones,
a place without a history of battles.

After the house’s first shudder and mud
had splashed my face did I know that the
soil always tasted of the slow dying of birds
who lived a long time in the air and bequeathed
their bones to the sky- flesh, blood to the dirt.
.

When a cloud dies
doves and eagles
dip their wings
in mournful ‘memberance.

When the sky dies
it rots black
in despairing soot
of ash and pain.

When the moon dies
it’s mourned
by the elliptical kisses
of the planets beyond.

When a planet dies
the universe gently cradles it
and lullaby’s it to the sun
until it falls to sleep.

When the universe dies
the lonely sad earth knows
that all the trees will go dark
when the world dies.

Being black in Japan
means you have more white spaces
on the day-night trains.

The darkness of U.S.
allows yellow jaundice to
shine its rising sun.

Empty seats allow
black thoughts to make room for small
breezes of knowledge.

That Ainu minstrels
shouldn’t be doing Doo-***
on Nippon TV.

That the jet blackness
of Naomi Osaka
not be a shade light.

That the Shogun kept
no black slaves be an excuse
for all other ones.

That racist white face
teaching black black face hatred
is not a shoeshine.

That racism is a
presumption and is not a
a very good gene.

Strange fruit lives in the
bones of black mothers,

the blood of their sons,
marrow of their daughters.

Blue winds drift by
full of poplar scents,

aromas that never leave
the maternal soul.

They exhort their sons
to be careful,

be safe,  
make it back home.
  
They know they can die
for the smallest things,
for absolutely nothing.

Yet, they also know the American Dream
through the body of their sons
they hold closely in their arms.

They watch them leave,
hoping they experience

just ordinary prejudice and
not a blue knee on their neck,

that sculpts
them both
into a black pieta

Note:  

Strange Fruit refers to the song about lynching made popular by both Nina Simone and Billie Holiday.  Here are the lyrics:

Southern trees bear a strange fruit
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root
Black bodies swingin' in the Southern breeze
Strange fruit hangin' from the poplar trees
Pastoral scene of the gallant South
The bulgin' eyes and the twisted mouth
Scent of magnolias sweet and fresh
Then the sudden smell of burnin' flesh
Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather
For the wind to ****
For the sun to rot
For the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop

Bless the blessings.
Bless the moon
for bestowing dreams
that illuminate the soul.
Bless its beams.
Bless the way it reveals
revelations in the dark,
black letters inked on white vellum
daring to be read
that release the heaviness of the mind
in the lightness of eternity.
Bless the idea
that frees, not oppresses.
Bless words that shed
their flesh for the revolution.  
Bless the protest sign
that replaces the trigger.
Bless the chalk mark that teaches
and not outlines a body.
Bless the creative mind
that marches with determined feet.
Bless the gravestones never needed,
those living bodies never
requiring  homicide reports.
Bless all the never used bullets,
the limbs that remain whole.
Bless all those who die
in their right time,
their memories properly recorded.  
Bless their smiles.
Bless your laugh.
Bless the eye
that sees, believes,
that still has vision and faith.
Bless all the prophets
who were right.
Bless the heart
filled with good emotions.
Bless the choir of our tongues,
the hymn that uplifts.
Bless all the times
that God has granted us
the chance to do the right thing.

God,
           do not send the sunshine
           down in thoughtless
           torrents.
Please
            do not obsess on light
            falling on all of your making,
            graciously falling
            everything on earth.
For  we
            are things of the shade,
            and the light falls too
            ******* eyes
Blind
            to all your light.

The blue shoe on the side of the road
had me wondering who it belonged to.

Yes, shoes are made for journeying,
poised for leaping not yet taken.

They shine with this potential
right off the factory line.

Yet, this orphan
once so stiff when young,

once a tender, warming
friend with each footfall

who got him through  every season,
every pacing bit of worries,

was flung aside
soles exposed,
no restitch present.

No one leaves behind a shoe
not finished with wandering

unless too loose
it falls off easily,

until the foot tiring of the shoe
seeing a light it can only imagine,

of only knowing its darkness
of foot sweats and foot smells,

each step a jolt
and shattering underfoot,

the rising and falling
of the shoe so far ahead

that the foot becomes a ghost limb
in the wings of dust lifting around it

until the errant shoe is left behind
in all the backward movement.

There is no sky or earth
in the white van that crosses me over,
nor in the drywall coop painted red
where white men with tattooed arms
stood up and sit down, up and down,
unleashed erections pivoting
and searching for the best angle
to penetrate my forever painful ***.

I am called “pollo”, chicken,
“nuevo carne”, new meat
by the coyote who drove me
and the gringos who maul me,
their millet dollars tossed into hands
waiting unsmiling at the ajar door,
passage paid with my legs,
eggs for pollos not eaten.

Across the hall I hear the cackling
of men orgasming into torn sheets,
a softer clucking than the maras gangs
of Tegucigalpa roosting the food market
and the barrios for ****** violators.
In Honduras anyone can ******
a woman and nothing will happen.  
At least, in Texas they bury you.

They promise half of half of half of profits,
less than 50 pesos, dollars on a $50 John.
They dress me in corpse rags that
stink of gasoline and last *******;
feed me grain, maize, rain barrel water.  
My nakedness kills fleeing for freedom.
Nobody will risk saving a puta, *****
from a charcoal window stash house.

I dreamed once I could wear silk dresses
or richly sew them together for a small,
life with a good man and brown-eye kids.
The Chinese girl smuggled in from Fuzhou
can aspire to own a nail salon, or work
a massage parlor run by Sister Ping’s heirs.
Biloxi runaways can traffic on NY dreams.
I have only violation and suicide.

I traveled the border crossing between
Tegucigalpa and the American Dream,
enough  to forget why I crossed over,
times enough until I wasn’t me anymore,
to pace back and forth, scratch at
and settle in the straw of forgetfulness,
American in I have a  heavy debt
that only heaven can release.

How can I call myself a Boricua when I
barely know the Spanish for earth and sky,    
have no roots in the soil of Moroves,
no sense of San Juan’s flavors,
the warm Atlantic blowing Arecibo  beach,    
Ponce dancing in the Caribbean’s laughter—  
all memories stolen from postcards hastily
bought at the airport along with a  
tin of Florecitas by my mother returning home.

Those little flowers exploded suns on my tongue
and created colors, formed postcard dreams  
of forts, conquistadors, Taino villages burning
in flames rather than submitting to Spain’s sway.
I craved to be an archeologist reverently
dusting off the bones of my ancestors.
I wanted to be an artist, like my uncle Bob,
splashing faceless heads among yellow flares
devoid of black, red, no tint of sad back story.
I settled for being a poet, a painter of words,
a discoverer of the history of hopes.

There is a memory of the Rambler hitting a cow
on the dirt mountain road leading to Moroves.
The bovine sliding down the embankment,
nonchalantly getting up and going his way.
The Rambler’s front end forever stuck with the
impression of an angry bull welded in the grill.
Another of a drive to a carnival, sitting
in the cab of another station wagon,
stargazing the white half moons rising
from under the red halter of my cousin Anna.
A final one of my grandmother praying
the rosary while I stumbled to the outhouse,
spending the night on the swing under the porch
because I didn’t want to break her silence.

Cows, moons, prayers are my Boricua heritage.
I can’t translate the decimas of a jibaro song,
nor dance a merengue, a bomba,  plena.
I have no desire to eat sugarcane from the  stalk,
nor split the soursop for it sweetness.
I am lost in the winds every Boricua knows.
My memories are blown away in the hurricane.
I seek the solace of the first flight out
after the storm, sad knowing  that
I was not born, like every Boricua,  
from the roots up, to study the light of stars.

The black stallion runs onto the tracks
headlong into the train’s cycloptic  light
attempting to break its horsepower.

He refuses to yield to gravity
touching his feet and grounding him
into mammal again:  

sweat, hair, lungfuls of air,
refuses to slip his nose
through another hard halter.

His head and hind legs draw up.
He kicks the landscape
and the landscape flies away

in the blur of speed and motion,
the fight with the steel air
steering towards him.

The trees turn black
and all green goes away.
The ground is cut to wrinkles.

The stallion drops his long neck
and fumbles with his thick tongue.
He stumbles into shadow.

Once, a long time ago,
he was named Never.
Today, he tosses off that.

The clouds from the train’s smokestack
pummel the nimbus of the dark sky
and its wheels stampede flesh and bone.

Its cars are loaded with cattle
headed for the stockyards
far away in the west.

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.

I gawked at her nine mind years
hooked three heart weeks later btw
f’ed a year before the day btw
three dogs, no kids
but she can really cook
so we lived happy btw
friends, church, family, dogs, house,
night, day, time all slipped away btw
yes, we aged, grew old-er btw
fell into cancer,
bad weather, lost it all, but well insured btw
no perfect couple, marriage but still around btw
until our slow last gasp,
last glance in the sun’s cast btw
on our old back porch with no one

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.

He knows how to observe the heron
in the twilight’s lonely inclusion-
this blue dream that could vanish
in flight if drawn too near—
head, eyes, ears pulled forward
following the flow of fish ahead
until it vanishes from his sight
behind a screen of slender reeds.

The cairns are mothered
by murders of crows—

four stones as black as raven eggs,
others sky blue with specks of black,

pointing this way to heaven,
pointing this way to hell,

or is it to Tecumseh’s grave,
the bones of all buffaloes?

But then crows are great tricksters,
erecting spoof vortexes, medicine wheels.

They see everything at ground level,
the new landscape under their feet,
the old air lifting their wings.

They revel in the unbalancing
of everyday things

the sun, the moon,
the earth, the sky.

They will flip flop when all are asleep
and flop right back in the waking dream.  

Crows know the cairn formed
where Cain and David’s stone’s fell,
where Jesus dare not cast the first one.

They know what happened to those
who stole the middle stone
causing the soldier to come,

the ones who rose when
their gravestones were removed,

the ones that mark where
the things of life are buried,

even the feather cairns that line
to the final game jump.

It’s a fizgig, a gadding
of damp powder
hinting to explode,
assuming your surname
without any legal ceremony.

It flip flops you with trust
burrowing into the one
perfect position,
sleeping ahead of you,
waking you when you fall behind.

Not at all heavy, yet the
heaviest thing you’ll ever have.
Every breath heavy with airy death
that stunts your budding
wings from taking flight.

You measure the weight of
every thought until it always
pulls you down and your soul
takes flight jut to live…

…and you don’t t bother to chase it.

Notes:
a fizgig is both a flirting woman and a
firework of damp powder that fizzes or hisses when it explodes.

gadding is to go around from one place to another, in the pursuit of pleasure or entertainment.

1.

If there is wild moving water
there is a trout in it
waiting for the cast,

the whip of line in air
splashing a weigthless fly
on the mirror surface

luring the rainbow fish
to break the heavy air
for the angler’s fantasia.

                    2.

The Rogue is flowing
with trophy size cutthroats,
chars and steelheads,

yet the angler only feels
the stillness, the endless  casting,
the motionless standing in place

until time is forgotten,
his scheduled life forgotten,
what needs to be done next forgotten

only the emotion is left,
the heart of spirit ferrules,
the casting, the rod

with its wheel seats
made of rosewood,
inscribe calligraphy

in golden ink, shiny agate
guides in bamboo,
its garnet threads and

extra fine brass wire
in a five weight
ideal for trout fishing,

the anglers long boots
planted firmly in the stream,
getting lost in the ineffable moment

until the closing
orange hues of autumn
are reeled in and stowed away.

Catacombs are full of bones
snuggling in the disgrace of others.
Hipbones piled on top of skulls,
the absence of lower jaws
denying the departed a smile,
the eternal existential joke
of insulting the living
with the knowledge
of their ultimate end.

Femur, skull, femur skull
is the monotonous pattern
of the Paris catacombs.
Two hundred six reduced
to two, an afterthought,
ossein denied an ossuary,
even the unity of skeleton.

The Capuchin Crypts at least
grant a molecular dignity.  
The entrance mummies
are part of a gruesome holy décor
draped in the faux pas of passé styles,
yielding room after nauseating room
to the essential two of Paris,
femurs/skulls clustered
in paisley amoeba patterns
projecting snaking vertebrae
of dendrites, of life replicated
with the cross on the wall as
the ultimate center and end.

Did their former owners
know that death would
be the end of ****** control?
That for a ghastly and sacred art
they could be united forever
in indiscriminate unity
with their enemy or lover?
Would they have opted
for the grave knowing
that their ashes could
easily be blown into
the breeze that survives them?

The hot night rain drenches me in sleep
opening a bow to prayer
amidst the lunatic birds swarming
in the dark heat.
Magnolias are split in dreams
heavy with bolts and tears,
flowing in the cascade
of cracked mirrors.
All is unmoored from my memory,
surviving on communion.
Dear Jesus am I not more profound
than thy mad swirl?

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.

Aye, chihuahua, canis familiaris,
land piranha nipping at Aztec heels.
 
Aye chihuahua!
 
Heart of a Techichi warrior
becoming yipping snarling *****,
eyes pulsating, patellas luxating
at the stench of **** erectus
US-es post-alus carrier-alopulus
approaching, adorned in
sky colors crowned in ivory pith.
 
She is fed on belly rubs and Kirkland’s
grain free turkey and pea stew
in the red can, served in a faux
Wedgwood bowl which she gently
mauls in her tiny maw with the
crooked right canine.
 
Queen Sharma is a diminutive avenger  
who brooks no men, except Daddy,
yet dotes in squealing delight
at the touch of women and children.
 
Her territory, a peed-on scent trail,
extends from Guinevere to Lancelot
to Tristram to Merlin to the end
of Camelot Lanes, Streets and Places.
Neither hated squirrels, rabbits
and other canine species are allowed.
 
She can neither jump on the sofa
nor forge mighty streams.
What she lacks in peripheral vision
she makes up for in astute echolocation
and good stiff sniffs of her nose.
 
Yet she has a deep dark secret
that stains her royal dreams.
The scruff under her neck to the chest
in the russet form and color of a fox,
which she struts with a rooster’s pride,
is the product of her Chi-Chi mater
cohabitating with a spritz of Pomerania,
making her neither chihuahua nor pomeranian,
but yes, an adorable pomchi!
 
Yet that neither bothers her nor me
as she paws at the bed covers draping the
leader of this pack, burrowing under to
be close to my side, and dream dog dreams
of walks and car rides and never leaving me.
of walks and car rides and never leaving me.