(from: Jonah's Map of the Whale)

(June 2003)

Quadruple witching hour.
A spread of futures and options
in upturned cards and palms,
expiring before our eyes.
Down point-eight-six this second Friday of June.
The witches, done squealing in the empty pit,
straighten their skirts and mount their brooms.
A storm hunkers above the isle,
wind rushes through the busy streets.
Lightning flares behind the cloud,
as thunder tumbles on electric stairs.
In a cab, heading uptown,
Coconuts drop from his Palm Treo:
“Jam on FDR, wait by the Iamassu”.
The Metropolitan, second floor, east face:
Assyrian grandeur.
The winged bull and lion of Nimrud,
alabaster guards that flank an arch
stare cold-eyed down a hall of slab reliefs.
He sees her hover by the yellow room beyond,
her silhouette dwarfed by the sculpted beasts.
Like Ishtar, she kicks at the doors of heaven.
Like Venus, she is out of bounds until Sunday.
She runs a finger along the bull’s cleft hoof
and checks for dust.
Polly, valent and aesthetic,
owner of an unconscious pout,
wonders what is keeping him.
And there he is, as if conjured.
The rain, roadworks, Irish driver,
you know…So you found them then,
the great Assyrian bulls…
No, they found me on the stairs,
asked me up for tea…extra sweet.
Said they’ve cousins in Nineveh,
modern Mosul, on the Tigris.
That’s nice.
Not in the least,
unless you like car bombs and dead kids.
Apologies to your tea-buddies.
Oh they’re used to the likes of you.
What do you mean, the likes of me?
They had Jonah down there once,
all grim and prophesying doom.
A tad late, but guess he was right…
A shrill little man with bad breath…
Whale bile, see; it does that to you.
Funny, sounds just like the VP.
A few inhibitors and a hand-job
that might have stopped all the trouble.
So that’s how you treat your patients…
No, most of them self-medicate.
So what happened to old Jonah?
Buried in a hill, with whale bone.
Home Sweet Home.
They sat on the bench, beneath a map:
The Drake, Chicago, Sunday at eight…
Alright, and how is your lovely wife?
She signed… I have nudunnu,
perfumes to pour upon your head.
Sent her back to daddy, then?
Mother was livid, her lotus curled shut.
She wouldn’t have you near her, see,
defiled as you are by work,
but my future is with you.
Is that an assumption agreement,
Or a proposal?
Does it matter?
Yes, I do.

Maybe your tongue could be my own
Maybe your teeth are the mirror I’ve been fearing this whole time
Maybe your mouth is where I want to hide forever
Or maybe I want to be trapped within your mind

Maybe I want to see you from the inside
Not hearing what you have to say
But really see you from the inside
In a Jonah sort of way

Maybe I want mine to be your body
Incessant movement where one cannot tell
Where you begin and where I end

Maybe I don’t want it to ever end
Maybe it scares me if it never ends
Will it never end? Or more importantly, will it even start?

In a game of one
It’s nice to think that someday
There’ll be a two
In the game called life
Happy endings are the ones
That are created from
Those moments when
The whole world falls apart
And the only way to contain it all
Is by lying under the wooden slats of a bed frame
And feeling the press
Of those sturdy wooden bars
Dig into your head
Because you can’t contain the outcome
You can’t make it just appear out of thin air
Like a filthy magic trick or sleight of hand
Life just doesn’t work that way
It brings heartaches and sickness
Moments where you cannot get out of bed
Mornings where you lie awake
Questioning the just and quick of reality
And the mysteries that lay within it
Embedding themselves wrapped around a system
Of congruent vines that are almost touching
The pole to which to climb
But it all takes time
Moments where your brain is a tyrant
And your dreams are so realistic
That you dare to put forth and live in this
Minutes to minute frame
Ticking by slow or fast or slow or fast or slow
And those dreams speak of fear and wonder
Of grand libraries and future lovers
Of doubts and claims on meetings
That haven’t even happened yet
That is when you have to reach inside
And pull those doubts out
Like the removal of painful wisdom teeth
Crowding your mind
Crowning at the edges
The white poking through pink gums
When you finally realize
That you can’t control
Everything that occurs
No matter how hard you try
And each boundary gets bigger
As the freedom dares to taunt and swallow you whole
In one big gulp
You are Jonah inside that whale
Searching for an answer
You can’t see through the thick wall of baleen
Because the thickness is murky
You sit stubborn waiting
For a miracle to happen
But that miracle is you
And you realize this now
Typing out a poem at three am
When people start to go to sleep
You have just woken up
To reap the benefits of night
And all its flippant grasp
And pull of darkness
But being Jonah
You know that in the belly of the whale
Is not a dangerous place to be in
In fact it’s quite comfortable
Also humbling by making you sit tight
And think to the maximum capacity
About who you are
And where you are going
In this great speck of universe dust
You call home
So much like Jonah after
He escaped the game and emerged
Stronger than ever
Free of childish notions
A fully formed adult
Or at least a resemblance of one
That stepped into the light
After years of dingy darkness
A lift off out of the cavernous hull
Of bright pink flesh that was once his humble abode
For so long he knew of nothing else
And then like you his hands parted the baleen
Like parting thick coarse hair with a hot comb
Head emerging like a second birth into the open blue

After being whale vomited, did Jonah swear off eating fish?

What should we have expected from new ascents?
You think there is simple safety in messages sent?
Melancholic waves descend, lonely veins sink in,
If I was simple before, you'd be able to see,
See through the extremities that bounded me.

But how could a flower begin these internal spins?
Bounded by piety to seek love away from sin,
Destined, we hope that this one will sink in.
If life's a play then this one is just pretend,
And the toil of tragedy, revealed at play's end.

But if this life is an Odysseun ode,
Then oh! the wonders to be told!
For each new ascent, a heroic tale,
On the way down, purified hail.

For we have cast Circe like Jonah's whale,
And fly alongside a dove's tail,
Whose wings spread in glorious white,
Revealing Leila, mistress of the night.