They set off from white rocks,
red geraniums, blue tile,
and let the green sea
lift and drop their ships far above the white foam waves.

The stony islands that were home
were swallowed in minutes by the hungry Atlantic
but they hunted the big fish,
the giant whales  with human eyes
who rolled and sang and swam
in oceans a continent away.

They came from Sao Jorge, Sao Miguel
Faial, Pico, Terceira, Horta -
Nine island emeralds set in a black volcanic chain,
neither of the old country nor the new:
Halfway there and halfway gone -
secret jewels of the Portuguese sailors.

They sailed into unknown waters,
south around tropical shores
where dragons smoked and writhed on the rocks
and birds with brilliant red and yellow plumage
rose in clouds around their heads.

Then north, and north, north again
to colder waters
where sea lions barked and lunged
at the strange massive wooden beast
that coursed the waters,
strung with brown bodies swaying
on the lines and cursing the sails.

North still they swept
casting contemptuous eyes on
the cheap turquoise waters and monstrous slow turtles
of the Sea of Cortez.
Coming up from the desert, past the palms and the yucca,
the Joshua tree and Spanish daggers,
they chased their smooth grey prey,
riding the vast Pacific on their wooden island,
herding the leviathans onto their spears,
adventurers with an audience of only
gulls and sky and seal.

Until they sailed too close one day
to a rock-strewn shoreline
and saw the golden hills.
Gnarled oaks like grandmothers from home
with orange poppy jewels at their feet,
missions strung like beads in a ruby marked rosary.

The boats slowed, ****** in by a Scylla of soil
rich and brown and loamy
waiting to be seeded with grapes and apricots
peaches, avocados, lettuce, alfalfa,
fertile and heavy with sweet promise.
And the whales sang and the lions barked and the gulls cried
but the sailors were entranced, encharmed, ensorcelled.
The treacherous sea, the mysterious deep, the stony jewels of home,
called and wept
and waited in vain for the sailors 
 - beached and grounded -
cutting not waves but earth,
tracking seasons not whales,

seduced by dirt.

Hounds

The hounds are barking again outside my window.
they are snarling and snapping with teeth of ice
that rips my tears into a tundra of frost.

The indifferent air carries their hunger
under the unhinged door in my head;
a gale is coming, feral and wild.

I am not comfortable in my head right now;
Chain smoke to keep my hands to myself.
I wander through ash and fire: what have I done?


Planets

I am helpless against my misfiring neurons;
numbed against myself and you;
Pills streak like comets across the bed.

In the sky the stars peer in confusion,
planets misalign again, a sun implodes,
Earth groans and shifts, somewhere something dies.

Swirling galaxies light up the synapses
Serotonin battles amphetamine
Orion stalks the twins and unsheathes his sword.

Submersion*

I need some water on my feet, my head;
submerge me in the Lethe and bathe me in forgetfulness
the room grows hot and I swallow another star.

I am swathed in your concern, smothered by your regard.
I need clear air to think,
the night and the susurrus of hibiscus bathed by the moon.

Inside my room in my bed
white noise and white sheets wrap me,
bundle and bind me tighter than panic.

No, I will not go outside tonight.
The hounds are barking outside my window-
they come for me.

Those vices I dropped like rhinestones
on the starry path to respectability
become diamonds when he whispers "tonight"
when he reaches out to my child weary flesh
-unwillingly- I will respond but.
I cannot shrug off the dishes and bills
the stain on the floor where the cat bled
the un-watered plants;
how many times have I written these lines?
Ah God…even my most poignant moments
have become mundane -
like the Taj Mahal must appear
to the beggar on the steps
selling downloaded pictures
in the shadow of holiness.

It was a green time:
a rose tree time.
Oregon spring budded children and
washed away five year goals and strategic plans.
The summer was scented with blackberry blossoms,
growing wild and thorny and sour and sweet;
They tasted of timelessness
and the utter lassitude of youth.
How charming it was to be charmed
by the low music of the chimes on the
beams of the back porch;
wine in hand, children on the lawn, blossom floating
like fairy tales on the air.

Time like a fish turning in the river
Quick smooth glint on the green water
Sun bulb flashes, then gone with a flicker.
Youth is a lot like that
Don’t blink or someone will die.

The world seems medicated today
susurrus of tires on wet pavement
while nicotine swirls like mist on graves.
The desert air collides with my memories
sharp and acrid, it ***** the water from my skin
leaving wrinkles and age like a kiss.

The past beckons
its hands are dark and translucently cold.
The blackberries are frozen in mounds of snow.
They won’t grow again.

We were hiding
- behind the rose bushes -  
red blossoms like blood -
hiding from the blood.
A splatter streaked dripping on the wall in our house
where rose bushes flower behind the walls.

We were hiding
in the thorns and blossoms
because we were small
and the anger raging behind the wall was larger
than we were
we were hiding
        
Behind the blossoms behind the wall she screamed.

We were hiding
behind the rose bushes
thorn-scratched, we bled.
Blood smells sweet  - like red roses.
Where he hit her blood sprayed red painted blossoms
on the walls –
We built our walls strong;
we built our walls between truth -
and what we could bear

We were hiding safe
outside the walls, and we built walls
to be safe inside the walls.

The rose bushes  bleed red -
thorns scratch -  this then is love:
red blood, red rage, red roses, red lust:
love is walls and thorns.
When he hits her, it is love.


When our walls are complete, we will hide
behind the walls and we will survive love.
Thorns, blossoms, blood, and lust;
all the aspects of love will roil vainly
against our walls
and we will stay safe because we know
what love truly is.
What love is.

The son of a carpenter climbed a cross
And Saturnalia was lost forever…
Slaves, adorned in masters clothing
once drank out of the golden goblet and goosed the mistress
vied with paupers for King of Fools
banged pots and pans, slept with sloe-eyed boys til morning
poked, prodded, pampered, kissed, and loved again
The solemn lords of the city peered from their heavenly contemplations
and felt, like a worm in the mysticism of direct communication with    god
a bit of remorse, a hint of resentment against the marble steps,
a yearning for the dance, for the abandonment of the senses
for a pageant worthy of those ***** old gods

MITHRAS, BACHUS, DIANA, DISCORDIA.

Before Christmas pushed jostled and shoved the holiday
out of the way,
we opened our homes to all the poor
they become the masters for the day.
while we ran behind with dishcloths and wild cries of
DON”T BREAK THAT
and infused with a small perverse pleasure
took our masks down for a night -
I will play sly servant lass
while my staid husband is forced into corners
with women who struggle to keep their teeth in
And their children fed.

If there were no Jesus,
the tree would still go up for the Norse
the presents still go out for the British
the children still adored for Saturn
the feast still cooked for the old Germanic tribes –

humility, guilt and being saved, saved, saved
saved from the drunkards in the streets,
saved from the firecrackers, the happy children, the Yule log,
saved the togetherness, the topsy-turvy of this most celebrated
happy out-of-control neighborly Solstice ancient block party-

That came from Christ.

Thanks Jesus, you old scrooge.

PART I: Midlife Crisis
She said:
Do not protest another year of life
as year on year into each other run,
mark not the dusk as a dying of the sun,
nor let the twilight cause unquiet strife.
Though in the deepening night lie shadows rife,
do not believe your cheer this year is done.
When webs of pain about your joints are spun,
do not protest another year of life.
Yet let this time be summer of your years;
It is this time that is compared to gold;
Your back is yet unbowed with care and fears
and still your spirit shines forth true and bold.
We – grey hair and aching joints all belie  –
will find our youth within each other’s eye.

PART II:  Suspicion
It’s not the way that silence cloaks the rooms;
he sits and sighs; she lives within her books;
she speaks;  he doesn’t hear nor even looks,
she reads and tries to block out strange perfumes
while deep inside her, knowledge slowly blooms.
He works too late to eat the love she cooks.
His temper short, she walks on tender-hooks;
Within their walls a confrontation looms.
There’s nothing worse than knowing she’s ignored,
that maybe someone else has his regard
She’s hiding from the truth, resentment stored
and building to the crux; true trust dies hard.
One day he comes home reeking of cologne,
“Nice try,” she whispers, and the seed is sown.




PART III:  Discovery
She lived with stale deceit and loathsome lies,
a dull and dispirited songbird of the night;
a speechless Lavinia hiding from sight
of he who threw away the marriage ties.
In the garden of lies and false intent
were harridans who in that marriage saw
stray bits and pieces that they stole and rent;
with laughter salted unfelt wounds more raw.
If she again finds love within his eyes,
offers her heart to he who laid it waste-
she prays that his integrity will rise,
discern her jewel- discard his pets of paste.
At home amidst the mercy she has rife
his heart will then lie naked for her knife.


PART IV:  Leaving
Her nature cries to leave this hostile land,
This cactus-ridden rock where she’s been kept:
Riding into what looked like a sunset,
Instead dusk ended in this hell of sand.
The lies have formed an ever tightening band
Across her chest and head, her heart is reft
of love, hate, anger; she is berefit -
Eat too much crow and talons grow on hands.
Yet there are conduits she still will not swim;
What’s left to them now?  Only bone and scrap.
The curtains close and all the lights are dimmed,
Call out the butcher, tell him it’s a wrap;
The heart exists only to drain blood;
Rain in the desert still is only mud.

PART V:  Forgiveness**
This she knew, all beauty soon becomes lost,
love and trust simply carts for grief and pain,
the buds that promised blossoms in the rain
grew black and shriveled at too great a cost.
The marriage ties too soon became encrossed
with kids, in-laws, resentment unrestrained;
this she knew, that nothing gold could stay
and all she gained would soon degrade to loss.
Self-fulfilling, of course the love would end,
her trust like glass lay shattered and deformed.
But in his tears she felt the moment bend
and like a barren tree out in a storm
she felt the glimmer of another life
Storm-wrecked, sure, but still as man and wife.

My eyes glow and glitter in the night
hard and reflective like obsidian
Watching you cradle her voice in your phone
if her words were golden-plumed cage birds
I would uncoil in an instant, spring and rip
Their little wings off.
  
Her wail soars
hangs in the air between us;
bleeding other-woman-anguish it
drops like a dead swallow into my palms.
It’s her suicide bid, her Hail Mary.
Your eyes are knifed with remorse
my sigh floats a white feather in the cold air.
  
In the barren coldness of this
New Mexico night
my wine weeps the dregs of
the distance between us.
My hands squeeze tighter,
bones pop, nails crease skin
the moon grins the truth at me:

*I am the other woman too.

I always like summer
best
you can run
endlessly through trails
in the primordial woods
jumping copperheads
and water moccasins
threading through creeks
slimed green with algae
slipping, giggling, racing
and resting panting
against an oak trunk
with the reflection of
the Chesapeake Bay stinging
your eyes
and slip the bounds of land
on a small sailboat
feet hanging into the wake
and be free and free and free
all the time
and not only when you open a book
and read.

Hail Mary
Grace that was yours
Grace of soul, of spirit
Stalled suddenly by stray bullet.

Hail Mary…
One more bead
Drawn and centered
You the center
Always the center
Center of it all.

Hail Mary,
beads slip through fingers,
You slipped through our hands
Through the sands,
Into the sand and into the hands of
Our Father, who art in heaven

Glory be thy name
Hallowed ground
Hollowed dirt
Honor exchanged for hope
Graceless bargain,
Thy will be done.

I am sorry to seem so
callous when you call out
in your sleep but i am weary
unto death of pain

addicted to sickness i watch
your breast rise and
fall fall fall
i too fall into your ****** dream
candy colored visions in the dark night

(what is it you dream of
my love, my beloved
my death and my life
my life begins and ends
with each slow breath)

and christmas betokens
an end to these quiet rooms
this eternity of fits and starts
your breath like a spidery leaf
drifting in the winter breeze

tell your god good show
good show old man if
not for the pain i would
never have known he was ever here

In the faded light of the laptop screen
I let the green screen shadows lie with me.
Your phone is set to muted; messenger open to enter
But your eyes are shuttered like an empty house.

My lips you kiss once a day do not quiver anymore
Do you see?  Still as stone, cast in iron.
The fire that once raced from your fingers to my frame
Is far distant, searing trails on some other’s skin.

I, the painted fool, jestered in court
Capered for your desire and hoped
This tiny sliver of a heart left yet unbroken
Could hold you against the tides of your indifference.

I am the breath of sorrow and regret
The wineglass smashed beneath the groom’s feet.
The boundary has been demaercated
Whisper your nothings elsewhere darling, my ears are stopped with wax

like Odyseus’ sailors, who knew their will too fragile
to withstand the honeyed call to play
While the hero raged and cursed his bonds
and pined for soulless Sirens singing sweetly on a rock.

It is important to add just enough
of the lemon skin:
Too little and the cake is crushingly sugary sweet;
without the sharp texture that tickles the back of my throat
and brings on the threat of a sneeze.

Too much and the tiny yellow pieces-
like gold, like garnets, like tiny crystallized pieces of the sun,
like summer  -my youth-
can overwhelm all else with the sharpness of tears, sour and bitter.

Smell is the sense
Most closely related to our memories
It should be sight -
I can teach my eyes to see anything.

I grind the lemon carefully against the grater
releasing summer in a rush of yellow
too heady for me.
and stare out the window through the pane.

If I focus hard enough, I can pretend I see
your suitcase was only a briefcase
as you hurried down the path,
and the giant lemon tree in the front yard
was budding soft white stars of scent.
But the smell of golden pith springing from the grater
prompts the memory of pendulous fruit dropping to the ground instead –
the wanton tree already ******* for spring’s touch.

The grater grinds against my knuckles
a drop of blood falls into the batter.

I am reminded again that
only the best fruit will hang too close to the thorns,
only the theft that is given makes us bleed.

The hibiscus is dying
bilked to the hungry maw
of a desert kobold.
Listen to the knell of loss;
screeing of mouse in crushing jaw,
tiny sparrow philistined to a
mammonism of white-
seizing cold and jet trails.
Desert nights mordant,
aestival qualms hurry to
obliterate green orange pink red -
promises of what this dry rock soil
longs for prays for dies for.
Greedy dust -
I suffer no greater blow
than this dead blossom.

Blue water laps at blue tile.
blue depths beckon.
I will float in the starry silence
and play Ophelia one last time;
a sacrifice to the playwright.

Jumbled, run-on, fragment…
thoughts are like ill-written sentences.
I drop my shirt, choose another
curl into the linen closet
cry.


Stop the thoughts
I don’t want to know.
Seek the white noise
surround myself in sterility.

In the blue blue water
no agony of the soul exists,
no god-thrown insult as exquisitely painful
as what flies in and out of my mind

on the wings of a crow.

The beauty of the desert
Is not in the land;
Barren, dry, harsh and bitter.

The beauty of the lake
Is not in the water;
Brackish, still, cold and endless.

The beauty of a man’s soul
Is not in his prayers;
Angry, conciliatory, false, importunate.

Look up

All reflects what shines above
Sun painting mountains pink
Glint of light on wave
Love that gives more than it takes

Beauty in the eye of the beholder
Blessing in the eye of the beloved
Perfection in reflection

Peace within and without
This walks with us
The vessel must be open
To receive the wine.

All those pretty boys and girls
in Utah with perfect families
and straight teeth and
golf weekends and BYU

I wanna be a Latter Day Saint:
faith like a gorget keeping
holiness inside and sin without,
my eyes turn blue contemplating sainthood

In the south they shout in tongues
they have a private line with the devil
and he lurks in the hearts of
Communists and liberals he says.

I wanna be a born again Baptist
full of hellfire and moonshine
fundamentally patriotic and God
looking down every day at my white hot purity
It’s a good day to be a Baptist my friend.

My Catholicism is a ragged old red robe
seams dragging through the dust
of old men’s prayers and smelling
of my grandmother’s face powder
even when she died.

In the end the rain washes over the berms
of every river not only Jordan
and when the flood comes I will be
lying open in a field
smelling of damp earth and crushed grass
my knees unbent and my hands unclasped
my heart in my mouth still beating.

When the flowers begin to grow
the tender sprouts require constant
vigilance:  fed, watered and shaded
babied as they begin to grow.
Long and rangy, the show the promise
of buds in the tips of their long bodies.

Then they bloom, no assistance needed
One day just needy stalks
the next a profusion of gentle lilac
and vivid yellow and ***** red
blue, white, pink.
The delicate petals entice the insects
and charm the air with sensory beauty.

But comes a colder time
buds may crumble and revert to weeds
blossoms browning and begging for release
Bulbs straining to escape the clay *** on the patio
It’s a careful gardener who knows when
the time comes to cut off the blooms
plant the bulbs in the wild

where they will bloom for strangers.

Do you remember December in the valley;
a time of fog burned off by heat?
Sun burned hot in the truck, warm like an oven,
my sisters and I small gingerbread cookies baking in the bench seat while Dad stops at the Nightcap on Main Street
where the giant neon martini glass
is tilted and almost spilling the massive olive
into the dusty parking lot?
It is cool and dark in the Nightcap; it smells of farmers and dirt.

Did you know the pretty lady with flame-red hair
who fed us cherries from the dish at the end of the bar;
gave us quarters to buy grape bubble gum?
Dad smiled a lot then, drank clear liquor
talked about cotton and rain.
Did you know how slowly the day called him out
until he packed us back in the truck oven
we sat, lined up and sleepy and smelling of grape and cherry.
We flew past dusty fields, past roads named Idaho and Kansas and
did you see us coming up on Jackson?

Jackson Road was a tangle of barbed wire buried deep in dirt,
a broken gate and twisted steel, a
car barreling past the stop sign.
Half-drowsy from the heat and the cherries t
that I could still taste on my tongue,
just before the windshield exploded into flying stars, I saw you,
a face in the windshield that was not mine.

We were laid like waifs in the weeds at the side of the road,
My leg was bent there and there and there.
Did you see the ambulances skid through the gravel:
they put us kids in one and the grownups in another?
You and I shared a bed, foot to head, I saw your face
through the windshield just before.

Did you see how I tried not to move?
Your clothes were ****** like mine, you were small like me,
but your hands hang limply while mine were fussily
hanging onto the rails, straining to keep the bed still for you.

When you sighed, the world changed.

Did you know that when we were unloaded, I went one way
where they pulled on my leg to straighten it
but they forgot to check my knee and ankle
so they pulled on it even more
months later and even more after that
until one day I told them
to stop pulling; it was crooked and would stay that way.

Like life.

But you, you went down a long white hall away from me
same as your mother, the last one unloaded from the grownup
ambulance because there is no hurry for the dead.

And did you know that at least your place was quiet
and they didn’t pull on you and sign your cast
and ask was your daddy drunk
and then turn away in disgust
when you threw up red cherries on the white floor?

A snake rattles and
slithers to the rock where
it will hide in serpent secrecy like
a tongue in mouth that lies.

A boot fears no snake bite
hardened leather and harder soles
as protected as a buried coffee can in the desert
baked impenatrable, this the snake will not bite.

The unshod foot, the unsuspecting mouse are
fair prey for the fangs that drip a poison
that kills without mercy, ****** with impugnity
and swallows whole those who trust.

Better be a boot; inflexible, unpenetrable,
than a bare foot or quiet mouse
when snakes lurk
in the secret shadow whispers of the dark.

Balanced on the grey razor skyline,
the sun is impetuous with licks of flame,
smoldering like old promises
on my paper, white as the bedroom walls.

The crow outside my window
watches me with eyes like ink.
A sparrow spirals against the glass window,
hits with a tiny thump
and falls. The crow barks a laugh.

The demarcations go down;
illusion and flight fuse.

Somewhere between pen and parchment,
I stall, stretch my wings
and find nothing beneath;
melted wax and
the gravity of truth -  
my pen will not bear that weight.

I can not I can not
let loose this slender thread of beads
memories on a string of prayers
a few Hail Mary's thrown in
at the end of a long game

I can not forget this torn
this ripped shredded posture
lying like a shattered mirror on the linoleum
Curled like a fetus on the floor
I can not


I can not see
Prometheus replayed
Green lights and muted beeps
Electronic hourglasses
Scissors wait to cut the beads
No forgiveness,
the gods have sublet Olympus

I can not
Though autumn starts a new season
and leaves drift on the empty bleachers;
The rains bring new green weeds,
rank and inviting in the wet field

but I can not.