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.

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.

What will happen
when we
stop writing poems?

What will poetry become
when we stop inspiring
and the beauty of words
is silenced or rejected?

We will leave the writing table
and descend into the valley
to find new sounds and laughter.

We will drink the last water
from thirsty mountains.

We will listen
to the resounding
music and laughter
of our own dark forests.

I collect the death masks
of everyone I see,
many ready with their
mouths turned to  the earth,
eyes closed tight in hellish denial.

Except for L’Inconnue de la Siene
pulled from the river in utter peace,
lovely as Ophelia floating in the reeds,
the resuci Anne of two centuries
of death and resurrected respirations.

Her I grant the heaven she envisioned,
rescue her from the sterile pummel
of kisses and mechanical resurrections
for the body forever remembers its debt
to the devil’s dance of an aspiring life.

I am an exiled poet like Dante
finishing the Paradisio and Inferno
before the malarial last vision
and stone cold gasp reveals
the world and God as just a trick.

I witness the world pleading mercy
to the executioner before the beheading.
“No, no Madam you must die.  You must die”,
is the death mask maker’s answer before
the axe man takes his three swings.

I wonder, like Keats, before the wax
embalms his consumptive face
“How long is this posthumous
existence of mine to go on?”
The answer coming one year later.

I know the world will die, like John Dillinger
in a hale of bullets under a movie marquee,
its death mask ceremoniously displayed
next to its ***** pickled member
and the Sheep Child bleating for love.




Notes:
L’Inconnue de la Siene is a famous death mask created from a Parisian suicide.  Her death mask was a popular morbid collectible found in many French households of the late 1800’s and early 1900s. The Death Mask was also used as the face of a  popular CPR teaching mannequin known as resuci Anne.

The Sheep Child is a reference to the James Dickey poem about a creature that was the off spring of *******.

John Dillingers pickled ***** is rumored to be a part of the Smithsonian museum’s  hidden collection of oddities.

The moon was neither
voiced into creation
nor was it defined.

It was just parted
from the dark ink
of God’s voice.

Alphabets don’t
exist on dark vellum
just illuminated papyrus.

God doesn’t have the power
to banish those things
that have always existed.

He can’t create the perfect night
just pull crows out of it,
really, the simplest of magic tricks.

The small orifice below the cheekbones
exists to project the whiteboard
scribblings of the human mind.

Man is sad because he knows
that his words and thoughts
fall short of God’s magnificent language.

The moon witnesses what
is below and above its light
and keeps both their secrets.

I plea for my mother’s spirit
to wait for me before the ascension
because I want to know more
beyond her sun, moon and stars;
for her to show me
the other colors
hidden inside her;
shades my crafted words
can only reflect in broken shards.

She draws me a symbol
for a word only
known to her and God,
a word so complex
I can never remember
how to draw it,
never define it fully
and can only stutter-
a seed stuck
in my throat-
whenever I try
to release its
sounds to the world.

December 3, 2019

She was displayed before me
with her eyes closed
and mouth agape,
leaving me to wonder whether
she died in terror or awe.

Was her last breath
the honest gurgle
I’ve been seeing
for the last few days,
that I took comfort
in hearing restart
every time I called her name
between bouts of irregular apnea
(our last little private game)-
or the silence caused by Benadryl?

All I know is that
the call came at 6 am
and I spent one hour with her
and then walked into
the last of the darkness
and the first of the light.

My first breath outside the hospital
stretched back thirty years
and each tear was
full of joy and sorrow,
the ash of memory.

By the time I got home
the long movie
I had shared with her
was over.

January 3, 2020

Now, hope fails me.
Grief is my truth.
Yet, I refuse to be
deluded by grief
nor abandon hope
one month since
your passing.

Your death was your
greatest gift to me
and now I must struggle
with how to live with it
and accept it kindly
because in the end
you folded your life into my timeline,
fitting everything and all neatly
between my cancer and cure.

For 10,604 days-29 years, 12 days
I am grateful  for the
joy only you(I) can embrace
the sorrow
just only you(I)  can endure.

The long way to heaven is to dig through the earth.
Walk with me.  Fall with me.
Be the helmet light in the tunnel.
Hold my feet less I fall into the abyss.
Shackle your friends to you,
foot to foot, arm to arm.
The long way to heaven is to dig through the earth.
Pull me from hell, while all the others
**** us to heaven’s salvation.

I like America’s Got Talent,

especially when they have dog acts.

I love dog acts.  I cry at dog acts.



I wish dog acts would bark and chase

those young kids and aspiring adults

who sing opera every year and

get into the semifinals off the stage;

chase the pretentious dance troupes

and acrobats; half-funny comics;

the children who sing lustily in adult voices;

the seniors with fading contralto dreams;

the day glow CGI artists who

illustrate on a big, dark canvas;

the magicians with their card slight of hand,

even the ones who just do regular magic—

right off the stage with a bark and

a push of their snouts.



Dog acts are pure.

They sit.  They heel.

They stay.  They obey.

They even sing, dance and draw too.



All acts should be dog acts.

All dreams should be dog dreams.



Every million dollar winner,

mongrel or pure bred,

should have a 100% canine heart—

even though they would trade it all

for a pat on the head, good treats

nice walks with you and belly rubs.

Don’t take away my words
by not repeating my poems inside.
My poetry is revolutionary
as a floating feather.
Close your eyes and catch it
knowing the vision is in its flight
and not where it falls.  
Pick it up from the floor
and it becomes a Cobra
spitting, aiming to poison you.

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 lightness of paper
soft enough to crumble
to a chirping palm ball
released into the air,
an imagined perfect pitch,  
too gossamer to float
to its ultimate arch,
unfolding in the web  
of alluring sunshine

aspiring to be
in its unfolding angles
a thread of silk
caught into the patterns
of a spun handkerchief,
flapping finely down to dirt,
flagging to human desires,
a reverse puff tucked black
into a left back corner pocket.

In its extending it is
****** wood pulp
culled and hewn
from rings of fine pine,
rising in its descent
to barely glimpsed evolving
beaks, talons, feathers
caught in the spider’s web
and shook down by thundering axe.

Dreaming Graceland or Zombie Land: Double Tap


When you think Elvis was a fraud,
a rip off the black man’s voice;

when you finally meet someone
who smells like candles
instead of gunpowder and whiskey;

who is comfortable with you
driving that pink Cadillac
all the way to Memphis;

who won’t
throw your pink stuff
to the side of the road;

who will kiss you
and hold your hand

until you arrive at Graceland
and try on those blue suede shoes
that actually fit;

let you gyrate your hips,
and for one moment,
feel like the King;

until you open your eyes
and really, really see
that you’re  in Zombieland.

The poem rumbles in my brain
and wakes me at three in the morning
as if my devil branded me with his pitchfork
reminding me of our inspired bargain

My nemesis love calls me to the fiery sheet
his impish pride burning praise in me
that swears fealty with ****** words

Oh poetry
how your satanic verses
chum and shudder in me
sharking nightmares to dreams
and my words to the exquisite limbo
doomed to fall short of true divinity

The poem squatters in my mind firmly
fixed in the ninth circle of treachery
offending my soul
crushing my heart

It takes and takes and takes
and never gives not even
granting the guilt of ***** lucre

Words are my blood
Poems **** my veins
My quick-fire brimstone lines
are my epitaph

I am both cursed and blessed
to this addiction
yet I hope this passion never cools
only  flames and reflames

Oh Poetry immolate me
burn me to the purest ash
leaving a diamond legacy

The poem is not a song
but the fire inside the song
the sulphur mistaken for honey

Oh dulcet sounds why and thank you for
making me an exile from life and tomorrow
a lonely sad witness to the world

Why and thank you for
fating me to this fiery covenant

It’s easy for them to slip into the ice,
the big crack of nonjudgmental water,
absorbed entirely in the joy of now.

First winter blankets them, then the frost,  
the quiet, until the last of their woolens,
the black and red squares of their scarves,
their blue and pink pompoms trailing down
become the final gender reveal, the last
memory of their life that skates grief circles
in the frozen lake of their parents’ memory.

The water will lift their lost children
back into their parents arms,
the only mercy the lake will grant them.

Some will replace the weight of
their grief with other newborns.
They will watch them put on weight,
watch them weigh them down,
always keeping their new ones
from the cold weight of water.

The rest will dream every night
of the white cloth that covered
their small and silent bodies.
They will leave a light on hoping
their children will open the door
and come home again—

not lost
in the dark water,
come home again,
not lost
in the eternity
of their blue life.

From form  
vile evil
in the shade of hades
sire and rise
the lived devil,
the tornado donator
that is the heart of the earth.
God denying, dog hating,
it listens for silence, the license
to edit the tide to its whim
and sink man’s canoe in its ocean.

The world is the ultimate trick
It grants man thunder yet steals his lightning
every time.
It makes him think he has the sweetest smell
of every thing
even that his **** does not stink
that taming fire was his best theft
of all time
that a caged dove heralds peace
in our time
the best of love
that time is a curse and not a gift
that the wolf is the enemy of pigs
that the world spins straight on its own axis
that he has a mind of his own design
that the red rose blooms for him to smell
that cancer is part of its mortal revenge
that nature taught man how to frown
that it would steal his nailed smile, if it could
The world is the ultimate trick
and it poisons him to think she’s his motherland

When the giant bagel fell from the sky
everyone complained when it blocked the road.  
Even when children cut it into pieces
and passed it out, lathered with shmear and lox
the town folks refused to eat the manna.
A host of angels descended to clean up the mess.
The town folks rushed to the angels,
still neglecting the heavenly bread.
When the last crumb had reascended to heaven
and the angels began to flap their wings
and take flight, the town folks begged them to stay,
but they would not. Instead, they left behind
a talking chicken to remind them when the sky fell.

Mommy, esta di descubrí el lenguaje de los fantasmas

Ghost talk? What are you talking about, Jonny?

Si mommy.  En serio descubrí.  Escúchame.

Ghost talk? What do they say?

Para saludar dicen: hoo hoo.

Para decir que sí, dicen: Hoo

And how do they say goodbye?

No lo sé.  They haven’t left yet.

Mama, today I discovered the language of ghosts.

Line 3:

Yes, mama. Seriously, I discovered it.  Listen to me.

Line 5:

To say hello they say: Hoo hoo.

Line 6:

To say yes they say: Hoo.

Line 8:

I don’t know.

Everything’s broken, diseased, sold and resold.
The pandemic’s breath blows on us.
Everything’s is devoured in a hunger never filled.
So why do I see a glistening in the distance?

In the day dream, a forest appears on the border.
The scent of lavender and lilies exhales out.
In the nightmare,  the zodiac is ****** into
the black hole of a distant dissolving galaxy.

You wonder the miracle, if it comes,
will arise from darkness or dawn.
Will it arise from the first
natal nightmare or dream?

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?

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?

The tears fade in
the screaming inside howling brick.
It is our cancer
swirling around,
stone, flesh and home.
Our history is in its eye,
our profile in this wild night of carnage
slouching towards mornings. We turn
away and the brick frees us.
We turn back and are inside
our granite selves forming in the sculpting wind,
erring in the perfect sad light,
different, broken-whole.
Our names are erased from brick,
letters spreading like smoke
in the all defining wind.
It drops in the field of its birth,
a flash in the silent mud and clay.
It shimmers on my wife’s white blouse,
and when she walks away,
settles in memory.
The wind chisels a robin
falling, dying in my stare.
The cloud of my neighbor
floats towards me, pale eyes
trying to define me
but I am not a window.
Her face is lost in the brick
and the wind erases her,
the street, their signs,
the names of those in houses behind.

In the rear view mirror
he can see the specters..
  
her upside down reflection
scatter when a foot
hits the puddle…

hear the notes
of a trumpet solo
popping thru the
open red door
of a jazz club…

remembers when they
whacked his partner…

and left their
footprints on his ribs..  

left his mouth
out of joint…

wounded,
in love with that
woman in the blue dress
holding him in her arms…

asking her if there
is anything else
he should know..

because she is
a major part
of the mystery…

Ay, florecitas
clouds of white
frozen in sugary divine,
little flowers of my soul,
taste of sweet desire
of little boys in
San Juan, Moroves, Ponce,
exiles in Miami and the Bronx
tasting the beauty
of their mother’s youth—

knowing love by the rattling
of small blooms in the big tin,
the maternal hand scooping
pastels of confection perfection,
passions hard creamy diffusion
dusting her, making her
a florecita of love—

until florecitas became the way
they interpreted the sky—
there a lavender snail,
an erupting volcano,
a devouring whirlpool,
a burst of flame
a feeding octopus—

until all became
the florecitas
of their beloveds form:
her lips a strawberry florecita
splitting apart to his
first hesitant probing,
her ******* a pink florecita
waiting for his sweet consumption,
her *** a light brown florecita
gently swirling open
to his tongue’s taste,
*** a fleshy little flower
to be split in
his sweet embrace,
all of her earthy and ****
as a Neruda sonnet—

until all that is left
for themselves,
for my self,
is the fading scents
of all the florecitas
never tasted.

The only choice
                        is blossoming
                                            in  the terra cotta
                                                   let the bright
                         renderings loom          
                                                a bloom
                                 too heavy
              for the stem.

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

Good mothers make their children
fold and put away all clothes,
even hers after death.

Bad mothers make sure
they always wear them
for the rest of their lives.

Footballs always dazzled me,
composed boxes on the shelf,
like pigskin half moons and suns
needing tees from toppling down,
a kick or a toss to send them
hurling to human planets.

The long run, perfect spiral
is inherent in its form,
as is carnage, grace, error.
Its life is moving forward
in the give-take of the game
and the frenzied need to score.

In the flash of flight my dreams
ran thoughts of the gridiron:
the quick release, the jute fake,
the deer stride to the end zone,
the soft jump over the safety
for the champion touchdown—

existed in perfection
on the lined green schoolyard turf
until the surest pass ever thrown
slipped like butter through my hands,
the handoff fumbled down, down…
I was born… to be a fan.

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.

You were unburied
10 years before I was born,
pulled from the Arie riverbed  
the day Nagasaki burned.
You died like a samurai
in your daughter’s arms,
bowels flowing,
head severed cleanly,
falling to the water
amidst the silence
of dead human trees
with their bark skin turned inside out,
among the screams of the living
realizing that not even water
can stop their burning away.

You were unburied
65 years before I was born,
killed by the big guns
with Conestoga wheels in the
ravine near Wounded Knee Creek.
You died running with your nursing infant
in your arms trying to touch the flag of truce,
your child still suckling long after
the Great Spirits call—  still suckling
as you were piled in the mounds
of mothers with no ghost shirts.
Others children’s children still
Ghost Dance and tell your lore.

You were buried
32 years before I was born,
shot in the back after
you had dug your own grave.
Shot in the back after
you had watched your house
burn in a kerosene blaze.
Shot in the back after
you knew the children
were safe in the swamp.
Shot in the back after
all of Rosewood burned
from the fury of white rage.
Shot in the back
until you were erased
from existence
except in the memory of tears.

What am I meant to do?
It’s summer and the
magnolias are blooming,
the cherry blossoms are ripe,
the black hills spruce
admits its forever mildew stink,
reminding harvesters not to
ever make it a Christmas tree.

I call out not knowing your names,
giving you invisible ones
that will reflect your death and life.

What am I meant to do?
Your unburied ash, spirit,
your buried charred bones
exists in wretched longing,
your names bleed into
the riverbed, the ravine, the clay.
I mourn as I freely travel the spaces
that others had trampled over you.

What am I meant to do?

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.

I can’t remember when death
turned moments to memorial,
gifts unfolded to blessings.

The tan slippers of Christmas past
snuggled my mother’s lost toe
so the others never mourned.

Those mules never left her feet,
even on her final nap.
“Bless me Papa,” her last words.

I don’t know if they were lost
or she was buried with them.
I thought they were forever gone.

And then twenty three years on
I gifted my friend some pair
my new wife found on last sale.

She wore them, a sacrament
to  follow from home to ward
bequeathed from last breath

thru the fragile bruise of time,
the visions of Christ near her,  
repeating deliriums

of cold, cold, cold: hot, hot, hot
and I love you, I love yous
until lost in all the moves

from ICU to hospice,
unable to find others,
a new fleshy blanket I

draped around her cold/hot feet,
until it snuggled just so right,  
perfect as a thank you.

Five days after Thanksgiving
she passed away and I took
the cloth home to wash and wear

to find my wife had found it
and regifted what I could
not own to her sleeping soul.

She dances alone,
the black child
in the yellow dress.

Alone amongst
the black and white oxfords,
the ivory Buster Browns,
the brown penny loafers
with smiling Abe Lincoln’s
looking up to her
from the confines
of their penny keepers.

Her white socks touch
the polished mahogany
hopping silently to
the beats of Chuck Berry
and Johnny B. Goode

She imagines hearing
her name in the lyrics:
Go go go
Go Joanie go go go
Go Joanie go go go
Go Joanie go go go
Go Joanie go go go
Joanie B. Goode.

She is loose but precise,
careful not to leave a mark,
correcting every footfall
with the more perfect
ballerina form
she saw once in
a Moira Shearer feature,
the one where the dancer
dies in the final act.

In the background she hears
the white throng under the
blue and white stripe panels
of the Republic Theater
dance to their own rules
a mess of governance that
obeys its own inane logic.

But then not one of them
had to sneak in through
the backstage door
when her brother, Marcus
chickened out at the first
“******” spited his way,
denying Joanie
even the indignity
of a colored only entrance.  

At the still point
between the lyrics Joan
finds the real dance,
the one intent on hiding
a choreography of grief,
a sadness, a defiance
she shares only
with her shadow.

She imagines herself
a joyous, living, wondrous
thing at play,
a girl reborn into a woman,
a dancer over America.

1.   Greensboro boys at a counter
watch dead astronauts rain on Texas,
2. hear the scream of eight states  
being ripped from Hidalgo’s belly,
3. imagine themselves the first black hand
to cast a ballot in front of snarling mastiffs-
4.  Cochise chanting a war chant
in front of white captors-
5. A free Mexican crossing the Rio Grande-
6. the black Babe Ruth circling the bases-
7. a dark Sinclair Lewis accepting the Noble-
8. an Eagle Scout-
9. their fathers fighting in Guadalcanal,
10. receiving the Medal of Honor from FDR,
succeeding him as President,
11.  even Nelson Mandela blinking in the bright light,
12.  grateful no Lincolns need ever be born.

13. They paint American Gothics,
14. write Valentines to their sweets,
15. take the A-train,
16. score 30k dunks like Wilt the Stilt,
17. toil for minimum wage,
18. are jailed and freed a la the Chicago Seven,
19. speeding free in a T-bird singing Smokey Robinson,
20. imagining they’re Batman and Robin,
21. knowing their bodies will wash ashore on Zawiya,
22. no WEB Dubois,
23. just American casualties of Desert Storm,
24. wishing upon a star,
25. the nightmare that has Liston beat Clay,
26. nobodies never seeing the Grand Canyon,
27. never playing Ebony and Ivory on a Baby Grand,
28. everyone saying “Goodbye, farewell and amen”,
as the last episode of MAS*H fades off

29. as they die on the bonus day in February
no one wishes to be born on.
The day Gone With the Wind wins it all.


This is not only a February poem but also a black history month one as well.  Note the numbers 1-29 denote events that happened on that particular day in. February history.

We tell our children not to wander in the woods,
never to stop or enter the cottage with
the peppermint scent and gingerbread façade
for a naked witch is sleeping inside.

Beware the milk weeping from an axe handle outside,
the tingling inside that stretches from heart to toes
that neither sinks nor swims if tied with heavy stones,
the ointment on your back that makes you feel flight.

If you are sickened by the scent of roasting meat
kissing your nostrils, we tell them, do not enter there.
If she gazes at you and you see her reflection in the frosted panes,
hear her voice sweetly echo in the glittering fireflies of night, turn away.

Better to crush her bones to paste and use them to mason your new house
less you close your eyes and she be on top in your dream bed,
her pointed ******* caressing down, her black familiar nearby,
we tell them, never noticing the rancid butter on the neighbor’s sill.

If she smiles and you dream the image of a child inside her,
especially after barren decades of hope, many more watching her
tying knots at the end of your bed, muttering an unknown language,
do not ever let her in, we repeatedly tell them.

If she smiles and you see a frown, cast her out, we tell them.
If she marries you in heart and soul and never gets engaged,
If she weeps at the sight of every child in ambulation,
If she takes on the face of Norma Desmond, she is an evil thing.

If she lives in air, fire, ice and water, sees planets in the day;
Insists on walking when old and frail and fragile with age;
looks intently at every small thing, do not let her hair
touch your cross lest she curse you with an unhappy life.

Check your children’s hair lest there be witch powder there.
Beware their nightmares lest they be witch’s dreams.
They may be be-spelled if they struggle with things
greater than themselves, especially those you believe.

if they have contrary opinions, want to tour strange cities,
plea for mercy for the poor soul exiled on death row,
give a drink to a thirsty man, cry for the forever war,
they are surely bewitched and need to feel the switch.

Watch your children lest they slip the things they want
but can not afford into their gloves and pockets
for they are part of her infernal coven and it is time
to collect them together, find the matches and burn the wood.

My grief is stillborn, not consoled by the hope
of replacement of another good little boy or girl
with brown paws and a gentle lick,
another Anne or Tom with eyes that cry of heaven
and a bright mind that can write lines of cerulean clarity or calculate pi to the twentieth decimal,
a wife named All  or a husband named Trust,
a mother named Everything who can  feel,
understand the 10, 000 aches of my  soul,
or a father named Generosity who is there
for every birth, graduation and funeral.  
Everything and All that is  trusting
and generous can never be replaced.

My grief is a suicide that can’t be understood
by the generous and trusting,
everything that has come before
and everything that will happen since.
My grief is not yours and yours is not mine.
I can’t share it with you, only bear it.
All we have in common is tears
that fill a cup of pain and enough salt
to line a Margarita glass, the next
bunch of circular steps till the watch stops
and someone opts us for ash or six feet under.
You cant understand anything of my grief
until you have lost your Everything and All.

My grief is space, a dark, long, lonely void,
like a lost astronaut spiraling away from earth.
There is no consolation in the idea
that at least he won’t be suffering for long,
that God won’t give him more than he can bare
and then some. He doesn’t care that he has all space
to feel the slow asphyxiation that comes
with the release of gravity.  His parents will
still be earthbound, feeling the heavy loss,
forever looking up and wondering
why the sky took their joy away.
The world will let them cry just
as I cry for his floating away.

Tell me a story when I grieve and cry.
For I am a poet and need the comfort of words.
For I need the art that lives and can be passed around.
For I need to know what you don’t know.
For I need to show Everything and All.
For I need to imagine everything you can’t.
For I need the action of your kindness and time.
Grant me your generosity and trust.
Grant me the power of your pardon,
the grace of an honest look,
the sincere utterance of I’m sorry,
for when you lack the words
I know all the generous, trusting, healing ones.

When your mother dies
you grieve,
vow to change,
say a prayer,
plant a memory tree.

When your father dies
you swallow hard,
set yourself square,
curse all his mistakes,
and seed an oak.

When your brother/sister dies
you cry
for the good times,
regret their bad ones,
carve their dreams in evergreens.


When your wife, husband, lover dies
you sunder and wail,
fumble for reunion,
finally settle enough
to sow a weeping willow.

When you die
the world will bury you
or spread your ashes
in the peace forest
you have mournfully grown.

Wake dear, and rise,
sleep not this day.
Let our two dreams
play to and fro with each.

Let’s dance in the sun
shouting— one beam,
the light’s high joy.
You nor I will not cry today

as you gambol and swirl,
as I dream, hope,
now words, then love and vows
united.

‘Tis by the first touch
of moonrise’s delightful sway
will we share our future
with the stars.

Losing
a child never known
a mother known

love found
love lost

memories remembered
memories not remembered

old man’s tears
grief in womanly rags


heartbreak

These are the things he scribbles
in the little white paper of his brain:
catch the movement
of passing shadows in a window;
search the clouds
for the feathers of a robin’s wing;
listen in the spaces of music
for the laughter of angels in hiding.

These are the things she knows today,
yesterday and maybe tomorrow:
that car mirrors, puddles, all silvery things
reflect unmated and backwards smiles;
that fluffy clouds contain the best animals
but layered ones hold all her best dreams;
that Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah
leaves her aching, reaching, unformed.

These are the things their future holds:
she will be his forever song,
the smile that remains in the shards,
they will be the only mirror they know,
that cotton days will pillow their dreams
and nimbus nights will rain their pain,
their life will be Hallelujah and prayer
and tiny angels will be their best dreams.

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.

We carry our fathers on our backs,
honey boys to their joys and violence,
absorbing their frustrations in memory
or dispersing their cries into indifferent winds.

Our hearts listen for the end of the cycle
powerless to the mind beating the rhythm anew
and the soul’s prayers for forgiveness
bounded in an eternal history of all tears.

Even Jesus felt betrayed by the father
and knew that peace only comes
with the last soft shuffle of dirt
and the new born son’s first scream.

It’s hard to find an even house:

foundations settle at creation,
doors will sag from slamming,

tiles will chip from drop pots,
careless feet scuffing along,  
days when they sweat and cry,

bricks will crack, driveways too—
settling into a haunting beauty,

everything tilts differently,
microscopically altered
from your last place.

Yet, you wonder
if the windows
will stick in winter,
stay open in summer .

You wonder where will
the dust angels hide,
what room can you
see the stars clearly.

The screened in porch,
you notice, let’s
in too much sun.
  
You feel its heat
on your arm
during the tour.

Will it hold your gravity,
if it can’t hold its own?

The air conditioning
shrieks like a ghost.

You hear squirrels
dancing in the attic,
the ones that will
keep your dog
barking all night.

You look for the line
where the water stopped.

The angst settles in you
like night fog, like a lifetime
of settling that ***** you in,

The heavy rain comes
in amounts that
can’t be bailed fast enough.

The house is a lake.
The lake is inside you,
and in the collapse
of the roof, you see the sky.

The house starts floating away
and you disappear inside it.

We birth a thousand
destined broken things:

chair legs detach from their seats under  
the weighted repetition of sitting cloth

itself threadbare from
the rubbing of muscle.

We glue together the
blue China fallen in grief.

The silver nails of the crib are
reserved for our rusty coffins.

We mend the holes
of our tattered souls.

We reattach old soap specks to new
and shape them into a bath ark.

The fallen pecans and apples are
hoarded for the sweetest pies to be.

The broken necks of pollards
make our most savory stock.

The new rug turned ***** is beaten
until dust flies like stars.

We shut the curtains in the
afternoon to cool the room.

Mothers iron, singing in their reverie,
folding neatly, stacking all on the chair.

They listen for the passing mail car
so they can mark the new catalogs

with the dreams of their families
cruising to a distant, distant  land.

Everything under our houses is just
the dust of every housecleaning before,

the joy of  parents knowing their children
will move out and be blessed

to reach their Jesus year and know
the sanctity of resurrected dust.

Keep the things
you don’t understand
always near you-
in your pocket
or wallet-
so in idle moments
at the bus stop
or in line at the post office
at the bookstore
or coffeehouse
you’re thinking
until the inkling
of realization comes,
even if it’s
just a mark or two-
even if you have to
look it up in the dictionary
or on Wikipedia
or ask a smarter friend
or maybe even God
until you are certain
that you have
properly applied yourself.

For my reversal and recovery,
For my wife’s lost womb,
For a future free of cancers,
For the old brick house
toppled in the wolf tornado,
For the new cradle being
raised on an ancient cry of earth,
For the mothers who died
never seeing their children wed,
For rescued memories stuck on cardboard,
For dawning days of gray hair
and salt crusted smiles,
For all the altars yet to be built and crossed,
For all the twisted trees floating on rippled tides,
For all the roads, maps, stains and travails
that forged our life, created this prayer,
this hymn I sing.

I wanted to tell the street,
the tar, the grass, the blue,
the morning you died.

The crows, the wasps,
the bees and butterflies
already knew.

The roots of the earth
did not embrace your ashes
nor did the sky,

just the wings that
soared in between the
sweetness, beauty, and grief.

I was wrong to believe this
world to be your only one
or that I would bloom in you.

Your life was a darker fruit
with rains that fell cold
with your sadness and tears.

I could neither make you happy
nor save you— just love where you
rooted and carry you when you fell.

I can neither eat the honey pollinated
in the knot of your stunted tree,
just endure the stings of coming grief,

nor dip my hand into the freezing creek
that floods your lonely roots
without losing my heart.

I just can weep, grieve, try to sleep
on the other side of the bank among
the broken reeds and mud.

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.