Today some cloud
Put on a show,
Streaking across
Clear blue sky.

Pretty
Empty
Condensation
Evaporating far away

in some houses no one,
presses, steams and irons,
clothes, the inevitable linen,
no more.

busy days we are pressing words,
hanging out for all to see,
to disagree.

a private place, a box, there
are some you will never see.

secrets.

So many colorful shards,
so many scattered books,
my Father left behind.

He connected the dots
with me, in space and time,
listening to the wind
when it was raining.

Absent and so close,
he used to say:
“Listen to what’s on the ground.
See what lifts us at night
when the birds go silent.”

He gave me more unrest,
he was the left hand
forced to write
with the right.

He believed in me
when the system
sent me away,
dismissed me.

He had hope
without medals,
standing steadfast
in the last row.

Now the body crumbles.
There is a memory
full of holes.
A counting echo—
he remembers,
he doesn’t,
it’s fine,
still hard
but his voice lives…

Time is blending
into a rusted chain
of events.
Tenderness,
resistance
to the falling apart
of departure.

He won’t come back.
He won’t recover.
The body is warm,
life doesn’t want to escape
the shrinking shell.

Sharp words cut helplessness.
Many nights still come
until the final return
to the embryonic state,
to point zero.

I am here,
into this deep night
being the witness to breath,
awake in the dark gentleness.

I feel time running like a wild animal tnrough my body
the air might hide from itself in the frenzy of an embrace
the molecules of emotion create the music of muscles, of spheres
I watch this momentum of life unfolding, rising and decreasing
passion feeds the wind, the waters, the eartquakes, it dances on liminal edges
bound and unbound the pulse of creation, of destruction
I am so very quiet, as quiet as the retina that translates the light
when the light touches you my optic nerves get burned but look
how strange,
I see further away into the clarity of hands

Settle in the corner where the cat sometimes curls,
Where the painting of chrysanthemums hangs
Free of all Distraction-

Where the single vase of tiny flowers
Sits and a solid lump of stone rests

Volcanoes
Oceans
Moons and women only they

Know how to flow

In the shadow of the Cairo
(yellow-bodied, stony-crowned,

its high and untroubled brow
gazing over our fleeting forms

as we scamper to small habits)
I think of you O love, though

(rain heads are drifting east
in humid fists of fat vapor,

air hangs in cloying squares)
the city is all alcoholic laughter.

Or maybe that's me projecting
(I grew up in a green country

with cornstalk and cow, my room
brimmed with book and song;

after that first divorce I collapsed
down into a city that teemed

with such friendly drink, helped me
forget a clever father who left me,

a lock-in mother who didn't care,
forget sweethearts waltzing away,

friends turning and fading, fires
I ate as they ate me in turn).

Now it's a hundred and change
in the Cairo's shade and I think

of you, sweet one. This yellow king
sweeps a wide view over the bake

of the block as I wander down
to finish your teal. (O, I'm alone,

always alone, but with you
I'm a little less aware of it).

Stay with me and touch me -
remind me why I'm still alive.