My mother got married in a hand stitched dress
that each of her four sisters contributed a  
piece of their souls into the embroidered lace:
a skein of swans in perfect v formation
flew up her left sleeve, doves fluttered down
her right, peacock trains fanned cardioid eyes
of the most luminous white across her torso and
bluebirds hermitaged in the ivory lines of her back.
And since, they knew from experience that men  
are fickle- each secretly sewed coins and jewels
into the hem, for the inevitable day when her
children would scream too loud in his ears and he
will see only her fat and leave like a wolf in the night.

I tried on several of my father’s
old Brooks Brother suits
just before his funeral,
trying to save myself the expense
of an outfit I didn't need.  

Each was too tight on the collars.
too short on the sleeves, each
crotch inseam strangled my manhood.
I had outgrown them all.

Almost all of it will go to Goodwill-
except maybe for those old coal wingtips,
(still in their slightly battered but original box)
heels and soles worn down from hospital rounds,
the leathers evenly laced, spit and
polished to a proper navy shine,
solid and smooth, enough to go from
monolithic to Marley vinyl
without missing a beat.

I could almost hear “The Great Pretender”
play as he glided my future mom
(literally,”The Beauty Queen of Fulton Burrough”)
across the ballroom floor, and then,
suddenly stop, and leave her,
as the hospital pager buzzed on his belt.

All my father- a short, balding but
approachable looking guy, with the
devil’s goatee- ever needed to win
my mother over, was Nat King Cole.
What he left her with, was Harry Belafonte
swooning his existential sorrows out to her-
“Day-o, midnight come and I want to go home.”

I smelled the stale odor of talc
distinguishing itself from moth *****,
and was tempted to slip them on,
but figured the cost to resole them
wouldn't be worth the price. Besides,
that oxblood polish would be too hard
to find.  I left them there for the next
tenant to decide their fate.

The virus news carries me from room to room.
A Verdi aria breaks the solemn
chant of the rising death tolls in my brain
as Italians sing to the sick below,
voice to voice forming a single line of hope,
that filters down to the lonely windows,
my electric screen, all the world’s tablets.  
The music spreads over the mournful lulls,
penetrates through the hemagglutinin,
nucleoproteins singed by joyous noise.
The alarms of Corollas join the chorus,
even the rain ululates with applause.
The gift of every note dotes on the glass.
The ventilated sick duet with their eyes,
pale hands conducting the voices above.
The voices background the daily briefing,
the drone of Trump, and the doctors after him.
I switch to another song, more mellow-
Sitting on the Dock of the Bay, something
in the same tempo, in unison, that allows
my small cautious soul to match their big notes.

Two circles, two triangles locked in against a rail
exist as geometries of mobility in immobility,
movement stuck in a silence never intended.

The front wheel swings in the direction of desire,
forward progress the only direction it knows.
Yet, it seems impossible that it stays upright.

Without a kick stand it falls easily into the dust.
Without a peddler executing a delicate balance
it wobbles aimlessly, an unguided wild thing.
  
Four wheelers, existing in a heaviness
that can’t be toppled over, cough gray
exhaust smoke on its fragile wheels.

It would fly if it could flap, if it had wings
but it can only roll and roll and roll,
its rider keeping enough speed for a breeze.

Only the rider ponders that they can’t fly.
the machine only knows its movement.
Color is their expression, not of itself

Pink wheels, a red crank and grips
adorned with blue streamers await
the daughter in elementary school.

Handlebars like a longhorn’s skull,
black wheels and a leather toe clip-
the boy who lives to pop wheelie’s.

Gold resting on solid yellow wheels,
an elongated seat in cheetah print-
a speedy courier dodging traffic.

Gray on a sensible, sturdy frame,
a black padded seat, a frame basket
in front- a matron grocery shopping.

All wait for the lock to unclick,
be wrapped under the seat, the
rider to turn it around and move.

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

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

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

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

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

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

I am Jonah in the belly of Leviathan
living only when the beast surfaces,
exchanging liquid grief, heavy air
for the unwanted gasps of new life.

I pray out of this belly for gills
and only the ocean hears my voice,  
It deepens and encompasses me,
its  waves billowing me in absolution.

The beast vomits me out to her caress,
a body of weeds penetrating to my soul.
I dream of sinking, my thoughts fainting,
lungs releasing their corruption.

I relax and the waters reject me.
It refuses me gills knowing
that land creatures were meant
to see only mountains and sky.

I found the city a pitiless thing.
It smelled of steel, concrete and the bay.
I use to sit on the sea wall that edged
my old college condo, the one I shared
with a black cat, and sing Otis Redding-
skipping the whistling part of his song
because my lips could never purse the
right tune- and watch the tide roll in
catching rainbows in the sun’s glint.

It  was the inhabitants I couldn’t take,
all rude and loud, smelling of salt
and stale fish scales and crab shells,
so snared in tiny toils, frail and idle,
their itching needs thirsty and *****.  
I lost my wonder in the traffic dust,
the night haze and starless nights.
I avoided touching that life less
it should defile me in its lost light,
night terrors and phantasms.

Then, in the small church in
the out of the way corner,
I found her, a strange vision
trembling, ready to emerge
just past the reach of my mind
and the urge of my will. She existed
beyond all jaded aims and
drab  dissemblements,
something unfounded, unbuilt
but ready, waiting to be built on.

On my birthday she bought me
a lounge chair to grace my
unfurnished balcony, on the
very day I purchased my own.
And there we sat (my desire),
watching the city unseal itself
across from me in a sweltering love,
constantly revealed, being
forever built and rebuilt on
in pain and unfathomable will.

It was the light that told Vincent,
the one which always told him the truth
reflected his soul’s desire,
the glistenings of his mind,
that this mass of  gnarled roots
would be his last vision.

He could feel the gun smoke
creeping into his soul,
corrupting his thoughts,
the very rays of his world,
even his beloved
hog hair brushes and pigments

as he walked the Rue Daubigny
pass the Church at Auvers
he needed to canvas in June
when the flint of its history,
death, faith, passion and beauty
impelled him to create,

pass the wheat field absent of crows
which made the world seem more
beautiful with its darkness
hovering over the light of July,
diminished now to ordinary light,
smoke, haze and fog.

He felt his world constricted to
a blue room with a blue bed,
a blue chair wedged in a corner
draped in blue shadows
which could not be mixed
to the perfect colors.

When he saw the gnarled roots
exposed in late afternoon July beams
he knew that he would not live
to see the first dawn of August,
that this would be his last
perfect beautiful, silent spot.

He painted smelling the gun smoke coming,
the smoke turning into a bullet
as he passionately tried to  capture
life itself frantically and fervently rooting itself,
as it were, in the earth and yet being
half torn up by the storm.

The stars on the flag started falling off
when Private Walker returned home
to Tennessee after six months of being
in country in Afghanistan.

At Camp Leatherneck on the treadmill
he folded five points to pentagrams,
imagined fireworks nova his welcome back.

The flag rarely flapped in the arid silence
of base camp.  Was MIA everywhere else.

He landed unmet in
Chattanooga on Veterans Day
in time to catch the parade highlights,
which happened two days earlier,
being ignored on the airport monitors  
in the hustle of terminal traffic.

No flags decorated Broad street shops,
no watchers waived the red, white and blue.
Police motorcycles fronted the parade
and patrolled the back in sunglass alert.

Two Vietnam vets shouldering hunting rifles
marched grimly in parade formation followed
by alternating school bands and ROTC cadets.

All two thousand stars dripped down,
faded blue in the rush to show the next ad.
Every which way he looked
the rushing crowd turned his back to him.

He remembered Anousheh, the girl
whose name meant everlasting/immortal.

The child who hugged him,
kissed his forehead when he gave
her a Hershey bar from
his mom’s care package
while patrolling the base perimeter road.

The friend, the daughter, the grandchild
who died in a Taliban wedding bombing,
one week after her seventh birthday,
three days after their embrace.

His heart, his tears, his breath,
his every word was Anousheh.
All was and will be forever Anousheh.

And when he prayed
he prayed like Anousheh,
and on his knees at the airport
he faced her outbound heart
and prayed for a mutilated world.

by the third floor
the weight of history
had become too much
that you wanted to
release it to the sky

by the fourth
my sister still hadn’t
enough of rolling
in its ashes
hearing the moans

by the fifth there
was nothing to see
but the blue cinder terror

so we all took the elevator
to the basement to reset
eat lunch among the relics
and walk the street casually
to the next next door Holocaust

I am oxygen for you are the sky.

We exist only
because rain has formed the sea.

Our memory is buried
in every tide.

It waters swim inside
the roots of our blood.

The fluid of our language,
rippling stories in the school of words.

The bits of dreaming
are collected in clay pots.

Our thoughts are birds skittering
in the branches above the swirl.

Existence is the milky fish eyes
floating lifeless on the ocean’s surface.

Our kisses evaporate in the air,
not even dripping onto the
silent sea life nor sinking into the marl.

Our love is a bowl of feathers
waiting to form flight.

Until then are only meaning
waits in the icebox for the oven to warm.

Underwater, famished mermaids are eager to eat
the dreams and hopes of our sated angels.

Wait, I spoke
to the highest star.
It winked
and bowed to dawn.

Wait, I spoke to the low sun
that set.

Wait, moon.
It just glowed on,
gracing, gifting me with bright words. 

Wait, I spoke to my sad heart.
It beat as a heart does,
disobedient less it stop
trembling and just soon die.

Wait, to my brain
questioning all the high lights,
the bright horizon near,
all the lunatic noise.
They looked forth
changing faces, never silent, stopping.

Wait, I spoke to my love.
She answered,
Yes, heart.

The white light of my bathroom  
reaches down through the steam,
breaks yellow through the shower door.
I scrub my skin, try to scratch loose
all the sour, stinging memories inside,
hope the grime would disappear
in the porous mat under my feet.
The steam flows like a host of ghosts
into the vent fan-  leaves behind
only  the face of tomorrow
in my  mirror’s reflection.

--After Rainier Maria Rilke


The washers have lived with death
as they have with the lamp,
the flame and the  dark,
the nameless rinsing of limbs,
the even more unnameable nameless.
without histories relative to them.
Their sponges dipped the water
then the silent throat,
trickled rivulets on their faces,
waiting for it to absorb,
to convince themselves more than anything
that the body no longer thirsted.
They only stopped their toil
to turn their head to cough.
The older ones unclenched
the hands of the dead
that refused their final repose.
Only their shadows
****** the quiet walls,
the net of silent life
extinguishing to last existence
that ignored their shrugs
as the last now antiseptic corpse
was finished and the window shut.

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

The children silent
under a blue tarp
amongst the rubble—

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

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

You want
to look away
yet you can’t.

You must
look closer.

You must
look for longer.

Again and again you
must be the essential,
indisputable witness

to things no human
being wishes to see—

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

a less brutal
more hopeful image
connecting in solidarity

mothers divided  
by geography
and circumstance.

And yet, there
is the uncovered
mother and child

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

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

who stop you
in first gaze
and mid-breath,

who demand
you to act, demand
you to respond,

when you see the mass
graves of Mariupol

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

They are shoved into the silence,
the one that speeds down the road,
bumps and rattles disguising muffled horrors,
handkerchiefs in mouths, gloved palms
over squeezed lips tight as a kiss.
These are the ones soldiers are told to ignore,
to turn their backs on- civilians, friends,
family- just listen to the chain of command,
follow through on their one and only duty.
There is only them and the next green man
in front, and the next, and the next, next..
forming one long unbroken wall
to stem the disease in front of them.
The doctors and nurses are dead,
and now they must wear the masks,
glove, gowns the hazmat suits,
spray the disinfectant like Agent Orange
on everything that moves, eats, drinks, dreams.
The trucks in back are filled with those
surging to cross the border in front of them.
It could be Canada or Mexico, or just those
wanting to escape the land for the sea,
the ocean, to swim, sail in hopes of
finding their private island to populate.
The rich have bought their own countries,
separated themselves with a technological
continental drift that they do not share.
The middle class have marooned themselves
on the Great Pacific Garbage Patch
fighting for sustenance with gulls, *****, sharks.
Only the poor are left— and them—
the green men who pledged loyalty
to the Constitution and now know
just the orange beast who tore it up
and rendered it to ashes, the Congress
inhabited with lawmakers with
hands over their eyes, fingers in ears,
and palms over their mouths, that
know the knowledge and meals
the beast provides only to them.  
Freedom they know is not free.
it comes with the ****** of those
who disagree, those disloyal to the beast.
The green men are fed on K-rations, MREs.
Their Bibles, Korans, Torahs, all
their sacred knowledge, has been burned
and doused with ****. They know they and
the poor are the **** of this deaf republic.  
The green men hear the screams
in front and inside them.  They remember
when they fought for freedom and liberty,
or at least when it had meaning.  They dream
of the past, when America before the beast
was great again.  Their present eyes see only
themselves and the poor.  Those who sleep
in torn open air tents and live in cages
because the prisons overflow. They
close their eyes and they dream as
the poor surge forward to the border.  
They are too tired to stop them.  Nor do
they want to. They only just want to rest
and wait for the call of the next American Revolution.

A deaf republic can’t afford
to sit on its hands,

killing its sign language
in willful silence,

letting memory erase
the fear and the truth.

The disease existed.  
The shrouds too.

Concrete does not
pave over the blood.

A stroll in the park
does not tamp the pain.

The Punch and Judy show
is but the pantomime
for the forgetful.

The only sound heard
is the singing of
marionette strings

culled from a pile
of burnt violins.

When the air turns
khaki and violent,
the crowd disperses,

their hands in their pockets
signing and forming words.

In a silent closet at home,
the last parents teach
their children to sign.

The children sign
to the doors, windows,
the grass, the trees, the sky

anything with
the shapes of ears
before ears were banned.

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

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

The weeping willows shed snickers not tears.

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

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

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

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

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

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

When the earth is no longer a womb,
just a shriek and whistle of once uttered prayer—
a long,
puncturing howl of everything
that was once you
turned into casualties of silence,
then you know
that death has arrived,
noiselessly,
silent as a missile.

All the clamor outside-
it’s the hibakujumoku,
(the survivor trees)
insisting on life
within the blast radius
of your heart.

The greatest where’s Waldo paintings to be
have him the tiniest spot at the very top
in a population of near clones.

After searching everywhere he will be
the last thing you’ll  find,
the last thing you’ll see.

Your life will have meaning again
after generations of
searching and playing the game.
                 —————
In every Picasso there is
a copulating couple
waiting to be discovered.

In Guernica, you won’t find them
above the third eye
of the bull

or between
the neighing horse
and the illuminated light bulb.
                   —————
In Hitchcock’s Rear Window
the gaze to find that one point
where meaning and ****** collide

leads inevitably to the next obsession,
not solved until the end of Vertigo
where the same blonde in the same style

in the same fog and confusion of The Birds
is  saved from the ****** of crows
by the man she didn’t pull from the ledge.
                     —————
Freud always makes a background appearance
because Salvador Dali never got paid
for any of the watches he melted.

Picasso never forgave Dali
for the bull’s eye he stole
and sliced with a razor.

If they both looked up at the
tiniest spot at the very top they might
have seen and understood everything.



Note:

Freudians have been looking for hidden copulating couples in Picasso for a long time.  
Like Trump’s claim of election fraud none have actually been found or verified.  But his paintings  are deep and big so they have to be there somewhere?  At least, that is how the rumor goes.  

Dali and Picasso did hate each other and their respective work.  The bull’s eye story is just another unproven rumor.  The eye sliced in
Un Chien Andalou was also reported to be a bull’s eye and not a real human eye.

Rear Window, Vertigo and The Birds were filmed. and released in that order.  All three featured blondes and Hitchcock has been rumored to plant Easter  Eggs to the other films in  both Vertigo and The Birds.  Some film scholars treat Vertigo and The Birds as either sequels or prequels of Rear Window.

Let me swap your window view with mine.
Better yet, let me open a new window
anywhere in the world:

Swap my clouds with the widow Lotta
that delights in the sight of six boys skipping
on the edge of an Amsterdam canal

who then furtively disappear into
the dark wide open doors of the
*** Palace Peep show across the street.

Swap my lonely rainy sky with Bess the
matronly Cotswold poet courting Badgers
to fight over tossed scraps of Savory Pie.

Swap my lulling dark with Akhenaten
gazing at the sacred African ibis as they
chant and soar over the Pyramids of Giza.

Exchange my blue with Jean Paul
watching yellow turn red to gray night
in time-lapse from his Cassis maison.

Barter my coffee for Rakesh’s tea
and his Hindi copy of the Yajur Veda like
a still life posed on a blue  window ledge.

Ransom unbargained Chiara’s Roman tableau
in red clay tiles surrounding a blood bell tower
beautiful enough for a young Da Vinci’s pastels.

Exchange breaths with Kiko as she panics
when a Tokyo bullet train convulses through,
a reminder of both our unstable lives,

Until memories of Mary dancing in the  
downpour of a Manhattan summer shower
fall through the hospitals, the last goodbyes—

until there I am, a scared little boy
starring out my bedroom window
awaiting dawn for another chance

to splash in the blue blue kiddie pool,
walk in the un-paned grass, shouting
to the white sky that follows me always.

The oaks perceiving the assailing breeze shiver off  
their nuts, swallows and squirrels

upwards to a dark fearful sky
that camouflages broken peace in the wild promises
of the swirling winds.

Night breaks night—
smashing every compass point in impatience.
Bricks stem to snow, the wind ghosts every leaf
in mournful woe.

The wasp tail shears enter in breathing
a final winter to her old house.

Inside her chest the wind hornets sting her,
with the loneliness of the yet and not yet to be.

The sofa pillows fly down the stairs
saving her small barking dog ascending the dark.

She hears black birds caw to her in the chaos,
the bully air stabbing in sharp awe,
stabbing her aware.

She knows it now.  She sees the reason and agrees.

Man has
a map of the galaxy
for his body,
a map of his genes
that are his universe.
He has
a defense or attack
for every chess move
housed in Watson’s memory.
But precious of all,
he has
the ability to
grow crops,
to put water in the
hands of the thirsty,
to make
the right screws
to fit the peace machine
that makes our
better angels fly.

The town exists in harsh geometry,
the forest— a fiery flow.

The wolf leaps above their soul,
a crescent moon.

Run the wolf.
Flee the wolf.

Don’t go beyond the wall
lest you be devoured.

When the wolf howls
they make work their prayer,
their protection.

They pray a whole Bible
before the night comes.

The wolf howls away.
The villagers toil in their dreams.

They pray away in their cells
knowing the Lord Protector

and the Hunter keep them all safe
and from walking freely

with the wolves
of the forest.

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

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

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

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

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

The force is another Jedi mind trick
that convinces the soul that all
that is Sith is not necessarily sin
but the whining of a baby Yoda
aware of his Death Star.

Everything is a continuous white line
that goes on forever to the horizon
where the  next dream is always ahead.

Just you and the mustang
a body and a machine
moving through space and time.

Drive like you mean it.
Drive hard.
Drive tight.

The Mustang is a wild bronco
not wanting to be tamed,
just unleashed- and all the cowboy
can do is hang on for the ride.

The highway is a ***** slick *****,
eight miles of grit, passion, pride
and wild love that rides hotter
the wetter she gets.

At one point she becomes
weightless, disappears, and
the only things that matters
is who you are.