The Flash of the Matrix

It's got the ocean in it she says.
He moves closer to see the sea in her necklace.
She catches his breath. Not unpleasant.
An achievement for anyone over 40 she thinks.

What was he thinking? Hopefully nothing.
Hopefully she had intercepted whatever
passed between head and heart and
back again. Just breathe indeed.

By now he is completely utterly
immersed in the element of her scent,
lured effectively by the flash of the matrix.
Ghosts, she recalls, do get this close

but without such heat. Radiation? Emanation?
Yes. Now his arms lift involuntarily.
My God, she wonders. Can he swim?
She hears him gasping for air. Beauty

does that, she remembers. Will he still
talk to me afterwards. After I save him.
He begins to vibrate in that instinctive
rhythmic way. The way of the animal

power. The waves lap all around now
and she begins to sing. As if his life
depends on it. After all there are rocks
out there suspended in disbelief.

Thinking of the Other Side

Thinking of the other side of the other's
I'd like to talk with the others eyed by
my inner mind the Oh There! sighed
chin to palm to elbow head alea
and aloft clouds soft and whereabouts
suspended in the mountains nothing
to tell the messenger who waits
but for the resident frog's silence
all last night as if this stillness
stopped his grumbling for once
or was he just afraid to speak
for fear the spell would break
and he might not hear the wind
making her way down the peaks

The Other Side

I had to ask but you're in charge.
I let that happen, didn't I. Out there
in the corner of the other room our food
gets prepared. I scratch my head.
Our elbows shush their way across
open spaces. Motors run louder than usual.
Must be the bakery. I've got two avocadoes
but they're the other side of ripe. I'm still here
in my body but I forget from moment to moment.
This morning these sorts of details were beyond
my grasp. The horizon? Forget it. Not there.
Edges too. Only the waves defining everything.
The sun didn't rise, we rolled into wakefulness.
What if the other side is this hazy and bland?
What if it's full of Chinese prophecies? What if
the bread there is upside-down pan au levain, slightly sour
and your day is going better than this?
I had to ask these questions whether anyone's
listening or not. My ears and your voice.
Softly we find ourselves on the hard road.
Softly we begin to notice the colors of dried grasses.

Patient

Today we sat in the surgeon's waiting room 55 minutes after the scheduled appointment time, missing almost an hour of hula, the last hula session of 2013. Our conversation ran the gamut from Bill Cosby's greeting for a very late doctor: No. Sorry. You can't come in. You have to wait out there till I'm ready...to Seinfeld's, Let's see, 55 minutes, rounded up to an hour of my time, that'll be $125 (I'm cheap. Those are teacher substitute rates from 1999).

30 minutes past time, we were saying, Okay, another five minutes and that's it. Five minutes came and one of us went to the secretary, who said, Oh he just came in, he'll be right there. 45 minutes into the empty, soulless closet with the Thai batik of a man playing a flute to a small herd of goats, we decided to walk out and ask for the $30 copay back. Besides, a friend had recommended a surgeon on O'ahu who would most likely do the consult and the surgery on the same day. After all, this is a small thing, an inguinal hernia brought on by coughing, or was it chainsawing the Formosan koa a few weeks back? or hefting the first volume of the OED looking for Lopate's use of the word agon, referring to Emerson's striving for moderation... The image of me busting a gut cutting back the invasive species on our five acres sounds way good. The portrait of a word searching fool holds a weird sort of glamour. But serious, hard-core coughing points the way, truth be told. 65 is old(er) and I'm still figuring out how to act my age.

54 minutes and 59 seconds into this psychically draining, dehydrating, sensory-depriving experience, my mild-mannered persona actually slipped and I announced I was leaving, Let's go!

A split second later Doctor Harry Wong knocks on the door. I love it. We're stuck in his cubicle for almost an hour having a one couple encounter crisis and he knocks. Can I come in?

Why is it that 55 minutes after the meter's needle has moved from Nice, Easy-Going Pacifists through green, yellow and out the other side of the red zone into Unpredictable Anarchists, Doctor Wong comes in and we're all smiles, shaking hands? In no time at all, one of us drops his drawers with complete, utter trust in a perfect stranger. See how we suffer gladly the waiting, the inconvenience, a disdainful regard for our time, because...because one day in the near future he'll be holding the knife. And for this, he will be richly rewarded.

Trial by patience, I suppose, on the Hero's journey. How did we do? Hobbit-ish, I think, grumbling all the way, without giving up. But really, it's so easy to get caught in the cynical drift of the victim's undertow. That's the real cause of a hernia, isn't it? The whole world's a heavy thing when you try to move it.

On Seeing Julia's Work in Progress

ON SEEING JULIA'S WORK IN PROGRESS

Up on Beers Road the artist woke up one
morning rising from bunched and wrinkled
dreams and walked out before someone
she thought she knew too well could catch up

this is how she found the light behind
the ordinary the way shadows tell time
what to do as they move over the ground
we see her crouching here hand reaching

touching the surface of things so
many things the plane of passing glances
offers to the trained eye her repetoire
flickering busily we could say interacting

that is to say her inner world brisk
against the outer world trees leaves
bark stones pebbles dust branches
alive and dead some semblance of order

but little recognizably formally human
we could say that's not what she's about
and color her language tempting to say
solitary tongue with whom can she dialogue

when it comes to color? she stands here
and looks about her. Huntress.

THIS TIME

"When you get up in the morning, smooth out the shape of your body from the bed."

Thank you Pythagoras for your hypotenuse of the dream
the triangulation of mind body spirit in a field of 300 count Egyptian cotton.

Even the sunrise holds the shadows in high esteem
saying words such as new and day and break.

Like the hollow forms in the ash of Vesuvius
the puzzles we leave behind are empty.

Meanwhile on the edge of the street we stand
marveling at the migration of geese
while scholars sift through the dust.

Last night I dreamed of snow
vast stretches of cold white perfection
mysteriously balanced sculpted into
frozen dances or lovers' entanglements
but getting close I touch hard plastic forms beneath
and beneath that trickery
the smell of the past rankled enough to wake me up

and send me shuffling through the dark
reaching for door frames fingertips on walls
positioning myself over that hard white opening
porcelain pure functional and implacably sterile
that frightened me so much as a child.

I guess I'm older.
Something's changed I know.

Give me the song of one Winter visitor on a telephone wire
and I'll be good.

Even one of those slow whorled shells emerging emerging
their antennae thrusting in the rains
will do.

All I ask. All I ask is new. This time.

CRYSTALS AND WATER

CRYSTALS AND WATER

How is it possible, this breaking open? Finding
perfect facets clustered, teasing us with mystery.

And think of this, the first vibration upon which
everything is built, recorded here, frozen.

The flood, the great battle on the plains
and the greatest love story, all here. The ark,

the spear, the kiss that changed the world,
all broken up for the light of right now. Listen.

You can hear the river meeting the surface
far below like thunder, like the breath of a dragon

that never ends. Here. Step here, into the cave
behind that curtain. Here, it’s safe.

You cannot be found. Here you can whisper
the question you’ve been longing to ask, and

when you’re ready—there’s no turning back—
follow the answer over the cliff.

KUPUNA HULA

KUPUNA HULA

Last night the rain came in.

Lying there I knew that could have been us.

The way we met: land, cloud, their heat

exchanging day for night. It found me this morning

out here in the pasture getting ready

to tell this story, how we got this far

and step this way, sweep one foot across

the threshold, hold our arms out to each other

thus and thus. We turn one side. A hand flutters

close to the mouth. We’ve come this far, we say.

We give ourselves now to something words

can’t express. We have to say this with the knot

they tied at birth, circling, circling. We reach up,

maybe clouds, maybe stars in this story.

The knees give a little. Our eyes beckon to each other

across the distance. There’s mountains. Now there’s

a fierce hot stirring beneath our feet

but we shake our heads oh so lightly and smile.

We’ve left ourselves at the door. The windows

are all open. Everything’s spinning or holding strong.

We do this for each other, for our children, for the old ones.

I GAVE IT ALL AWAY

Ah! Secrets! Gave those away

but usually paid the price.

Virginity you ask? Do men give

that away? Don’t we just...

Oh, never mind, I suppose

I did give mine but I think I gave it to me

very carefully after 24 hours consideration

of her question Well? Are we

or are we not? I was 17

and she was 24. Uh, yes!Yes!
Giving what you have away

—might imply throw it

to the wind or distribute

randomly out the car window

as you pass through the bowry.

The nagging truth is that

the phrase could be construed

as impedimenta—a lovely word

I recently heard used by an eminent biographer

who seems to relish in things given

and received especially reluctantly.

As I was saying, if I chose

the Buddhist gate they’d stop me

no question and say Wait a minute!

Hang on hang on, you haven’t given it all away.

And I would balefully show them my empty pockets

—a mimed affair since I’d be starkers—

and say Oh Come On I didn’t bring anything with me.

What’d you think happened to it then?

Ah yes. The truth is I’m a hoarder.

A disease. It crawls in your windows

and up your trouser legs when you’re wearing them.

Throwing away is practically

impossible. Every scrap of wood

at our place is inventory and that goes for all

the nuts and bolts in the workshop. Books?

Forget it! Not quite true since

I really love giving people books

but I do catch myself picking up doubles

of say, Philip Larkin’s Collected Poems

because I know I’m itching to give one away

but where would that leave

me? Now advice?

You can have that for free. It's yours.

CHRISTINA'S WORLD

CHRISTINA'S WORLD

after Wyeth’s painting

I know that girl the girl in the field

the field still long the grasses tall

she’s there on the ground do we say that

the ground bound by tall grasses not mown

the girl twisting at the waist a sense of

distance the house on the hill a place

of remorse the crows gathering

at a window of the outbuilding

washing on the line the far side

the wind slight the dog barking

up at the sky she looks back

it’s hard to care about why

the girl the ground the house

why she’s there as if outside the circle

why do I care I suppose it’s a place

I know very well and recognition

draws me to her

to the girl

and her bleak

American landscape

I DON'T CARE ANYMORE

I don’t care anymore

and the next word is hole

a very tiny arrangement

with sphincter-like musculature

and the guillotine decisiveness

of an old-fashioned single lens reflex

yeah

camera

not obscura

more the fuck you ra

because I don’t care

and there’s so much I don’t care about

so much that will not fit through that

tiny pinprick

if it doesn’t fit then sayonara suckers

with all your politicizing your bureaucratizing

your proselytizing your capitalizing your

monetarizing your theorizing your down-

sizing and your upsizing I’m done I’m through

the magazine subscription reorder forms

make great book markers anyway and landfill

does it ever reach the recycling center?

Oh yeah I forgot

I don’t care

excuse me while I take a sip

brush a hair from the page

filter out the sound of a passing mynah

sit up straighter so the breath

will find my toes

press my thumb against the table edge

just so

think of Kipling Empire and dead queens

which reminds me of that nonsense

about the champagne and Kalakaua

I’d drink too wouldn’t you?

but the military outfits...

my hand isn’t fast enough to say it with ink

and these abstractions begging me to say

Get knotted calligraphers of the world!

Untie or die!

Do you care? Do I care if you do or don’t care?

And that rhymes with not fair their share

who’s the mayor and she’s a player

Bayer Bayer your beehive’s on fire

and the beetles don’t even like honey

I don’t care so much it hurts

I woke up last night talking to a ghost

and she said you have to stop caring

but she didn’t say “anymore”

like the raven or not like the raven

She said just stop

IF YOU NEED IT

If you need it you’ll find it, I learned

from the Rolling Stones, oh yes, years

after Philosophy 101, I got it from LPs

threaded through and through by steel spindles

turning turning the needlepoint wisdom

transmitted through mesh-covered boxes

encasing tweeters and woofers as if

all the avian and—what’s the dog world called?

fidelity—were being brought to bear in our

search for food, soul food, that is, the sort

found incidentally in famed foraging scenes

of yore as we began copying trees and standing upright

seeing over the tops of wheat ears—beer

would come first, bread much later,

but the yeast the rising agent was born

in a kind of omnipresence that preoccupied us...

I was going to say in a kind of thing-ness

as in “everything” but that feels so mathematical

so Phoenician sheep-traderish. No, no,

the world that truly nourishes us is not made of things.

There’s another bigger essence, isn’t there,

and if you need it you will not only find it,

it will find you, but you will recognize it

there in the laughter of taboos broken

in rush light or candle light

our collective habits acted out

made fun of in the dark

we might even pay good money to sit there

burning our foreheads on the intense glow.

JACK-IN-THE-BOX

He’s missing 

before we get our words out he’s gone

absent nowhere to be seen

even present was invisible a scent a waft

wandering through the rooms

a vibration in the turn of a door handle

or the fall of a hammer least expected

mutely we look around

ask approval most of all advice

knowing this won’t translate

his is a new language

the old useless

where he’s gone

we find ourselves in a world held together

fastened glued patterns arrangements

clever ingenious

his second tongue

he understood how the spring coiled itself under pressure

its mouth biting on the small burr

fingers and thumb of one hand

holding it all together

a jack-in-the-box squeezed into that studied moment

perhaps he will rise again

when we light the stove

twist its automatic ignition

maybe return on the imperceptible desert breeze

when we open the windows on the edge of night

slide them in their grooves

glass walls on the move

hear them click

satisfied complete

releasing us from the box

letting us breathe at last

in this new language

I Stay Tight as a Bud

I stay tight as a bud the rest depends
upon the weather and whether I can
drink your water through my toes

see how the petals nest inside each other
the one spinning against the outside my
overcoat these 64 years keeping all this

together note the elbows frayed
the patina of encounters in late
night conditions the slowest to bloom

that's what they say or what a waste
to quote my mother but I'm not complaining
nodding yes can't you see agreement

with the all when it's in front of you
resilience is everything to me the colors
with their elemental promises of one

long parade that day will come and all
the horses with their leis float up like Chagall's
kites making sunrise and sunset at once

I never get tired of the word epiphany
though it's out of fashion I know and
I know too the many splendored day

should never be saved up it must be spent
woken up lifted against the eternal night

Aaron Thibeaux Walker Is Asked to Set Realistic Goals

But but but he raises his cup
opens his mouth to say it
and drink it both at the same time
what's possible what isn't possible
without a suit a shiny silk suit
and a cool tight sleek silk tie
a knot I tie around my own neck
this morning before the medicine
cabinet you know the one with a slot
on the back wall inside for used
razor blades and a clean shave
with a close shave I can do anything
but I know what you mean how long
a pause is this going to be?
lips part and the next sound
caught in his throat here it comes
he croaks okay okay I get it
never be president that what you mean
or a brain surgeon or a rocket
scientist or an automobile designer
and anyway don't wanna be no
transvestite cross-dressin' fool
keep your hands off me don't come
any closer just kidding no
I know what you mean but I don't know
I just hit the notes and if they
wrong I know which way to go
what road to go down swinging my axe
flick my tongue between the frets
twist them pegheads home I
ain't holdin' back long as my sweet
strings hold up five minutes more
I've got more I know the rules you
keep your goals my friend I play
by the rules while you fools can shoot
for the moon and who knows
that's you not me

AN INCREDIBLE NUMBER OF COINCIDENCES

An incredible number of coincidences fall
from the tree each night and in the morning
wait glowing in the grass for our fingers
this is Easter and Christmas everyday
all around us being awake in a dispassionate
and curious way it's how I got here after all
an event that now runs in my blood
acted out six thousand no seven thousand
miles away from here across two oceans
and one continent ah but the ship's name
was hindsight and my own tongue the rudder
in the salty seas of analogy here now
the pages of light where I point my dark
words twisting the lines around the sun
till penumbra rhymes with rain and every
thing every living thing drinks and drinks
you call my name and my thirst is slaked
and bent like this my roof holds out its
wings spreading the downpour evenly
to the flower beds below the hanging
fuchsia and strawberries the Spanish
moss with its curtain flattering your eyes
as you look out on this scene gardenia
begonia Mexican sage Hawaiian ti
and variegated banana mamake
and ferns all speaking in tongues
while we list the ways we might never
have met let's listen longer you say
okay I'll get the wheel barrow and
meet you in the lower bed the mulch
too with the ten tine fork and old
newspapers old news we will lay
out on the ground ready to return
to the worms before sunset

IT GOES LIKE THIS

It goes like this there was weather and people in outfits

crying too and my father hands in trouser pockets his

cuffs belled out over his shoes he was Clark Gable in

-cognito later I would attend college near the famed

actor’s home town unless that was a drunken rumor

this however was fact my own birth I remember it well

the release the lights the rush of air I look back on wet

claustrophobia the little movements when my mother

surrendered her bicycle to the gods of the pavement

those moments were not my style though I am open

to contrary opinions Paddington it was the hospital

not the station subsequent visits to both confirmed

my suspicion it was a grey world entered either way

when my cave turned inside out when her waters broke

and I tumbled helpless in the shallow waves onshore

in view of all but out of reach until I got my drivers

license it was raining that day too with some sun

PUTTING AWAY THE FIREWOOD

It's time to put away the firewood
our orange cat still
hasn't come home

IN THAT SEA OF DESKS

Clenching two days travel between my teeth
I perched on an empty desk in that sea
of desks a hundred or more of those
hungry inkwells sucking at shadows

in that lifeless classroom where the bell
expelled one last ring and the long board
long wiped clean holds only ghosts
of how things added up or names

famous or merely naughty or shifty
how fitting the flag hung down up center
where the last teacher to stand on that spot
beamed up or bled down through those 13 stripes

of red and white to that field of stars
oh say can you see there's no ceiling
in heaven no spit wads or notes
passed blindly hand to hand

while here on earth the founding fathers
framed like a recent photograph
look hard into the room for the living
ah what's the use I wanted to come here

now there's no one else to blame
no point yelling or even hunkering down
cynically thinking about the children
I had a thought that drove me here

and now it's gone I'm seeing over there
my dad looking out the window
and the brother in the brown cassock
fingering a rope belt giving him the eye

STUDY FOR 3 GRACES

stripped away
the cave venus juggler
with her tummy flopping
right down to her mons

how many millenia
has it taken us
to get so close
to the bone

how hungry we still are
will always be
we mustn't show
the old signs

childbirth's stretch
smoothed over
hills valleys
softness lost

airbrushed out of the picture
even the knot
just a spot
for a bauble

THE SEA CAVE

Each time we reach the far end of the beach
we reach into to the cave with our feet
or at high tide our minds
always our coming and going does this
today we turned before the dark mouth
that always pulls us in
next thing I know you're on the sand
back to the lava
the smell of seaweed strong today
the vision of its bright green fringe
still vivid around the pulse of stone
always I recall how it came
oozing down
when
so long ago
hot molten earth innards
from where
a pu‘u
an opening
an eye wet with fire
a goddess enraged
I can't say
so here we are
you on the sand
so much new ground
your hand touching a smooth washed place
and I follow
a novel thing
a change
a matter of timing
serendipitous for us
for the tide
I can't say
today's moon Mahealani
one of the four full Hawaiian moons
yesterday Hoku before that Akua
but who's counting
I sit next to your exquisite sense of now
and all is quiet calm a gentle breeze
an idyll in the sun a moment's magic
engendered as we press our backs
to the rage that cooled long before
who knows how long before
was it a rage I keep wondering
or was it so hot fierce primal and core-driven
so inner planetary honest that it truly defies
my anthropomorphizing
so I bask in you
our instant sanctuary
our nest of beginnings
when around the corner from the public beach
where stick figures mill about along the strand
with umbrellas buckets sunglasses token coverings
a man and a woman enter
surprised to find us there just sitting
and you thought you were all alone she says
en route to the cave
it's purple inside
he says as they leave
and another woman leads another man
if she doesn't come out I didn't do it he says
and we look at each other both understanding
it's time to go

SHARD

for Kenji

White porcelain piece thumb-sized
fractal of a bowl thrown by the potter
on say an island off the coast of Kyushu
a cross-hatching all that remains
of the blue house where she once waited
for his return the glaze now a thin study
of what endures perhaps wagon wheels
horseback who knows and the long voyage
into the rising sun to the islands located
at 19 degrees latitude themselves shards
broken like her heart like this bowl
that served so well a man who stayed
worked hard and never returned
I know this because today I found it
in the gravel above Kenji's place
not a stone but a made thing a small
keepsake outside the house of one
who combed the shorelines of Kohala
a land once covered in sugar plantations
canes cut down for the world's cravings
by men who never went home again

BREAKING THROUGH CRUSTED SNOW

Breaking through crusted snow
in the woods surrounding your place
sugar pine and Doug fir you’ve taken care of
more than half your life

not once not every time we sink
suddenly a comedy routine laughter
and we feel our way onto the surface again
no longer solid ground no more

the illusion of easy going
whatever we were saying about our lives our loves
we keep walking till we reach the creek
a runnel snaking through trees and brush

icicles reach into space along white feathered edges
snowmelt you say by early summer gone
how you discovered that first hand
setting up the tipi trusting

the sound of water to see you through
now that memory’s marked by stones
the pit fire circle’s enduring shadow
and we climb from there to the clearing

where your propietary neighbor
placed a grey wing of bleached dead fall
on a grand uprising of rock
a found monument or more quietly

a lichen-covered sentinel a boundary marker
taking our eyes
to the snow-capped Siskiyous across the valley
how we stepped through now and then to reach here

laughing each time laughter we knew
would fade and die if every step
were to break the rhythm
and pull us through an untenable trail

pull us again and again
into endless snowdrift
instead we’re just wet around the ankles
a couple of guys in our sixties

we can laugh as we step out on the surface
and head back
we can forgive the unpredictable
so sparingly measured out

and we can be forgiven for thinking
the uncertain layer of snow in late spring
is the ground
until we ask what is the ground beneath

THE CROISSANT

The croissant innocent there upon its circle of white porcelain
is the sculptress I lived with on Colney Hatch Lane the girl
with a smile who operated the follow-spot. The Lane led
notoriously to a madhouse but I stayed south with my bicycle
dripping light oil on the knotted cord carpeting just inside
her front door an English racer with taped handlebars
tamed and accounted for like Picasso’s head of a bull
an escaped simile in this short chant dedicated to the metaphors
of my time in Sam Wanamaker’s tent theatre on the Bankside
the Bull’s Head a fantasy pub where I met Chaucer’s ghost
as he pushed his ethereal head into the table distraught
with his next tale the tent theatre my nomadic life in London
Archway to Greenwich to Clapham to West Hampstead
to the aforesaid Colney Hatch Lane not to mention
all the other rectangles of linoleum cold to the touch
in Notting Hill Gate for example where the carnival
taught me how to dance to Reggae between pub tables
my formative years a place for elbows and wet pints
of Guinness their circular kisses overlapping
in Venn diagram fashion room for breathing
getting smaller and smaller the linoleum
the backdrop the ever present back cloth
where all my dreams came to life at night
and returned to their flat world by day

BLUE AGAIN LIKE MORNING

BLUE AGAIN LIKE MORNING
for Slyde

Blue again like morning
but never mind—breath is my friend
though I’ve neglected her these months
while the doctors looked for my throat

Give me my horn I’ll take it up
and summon up that long sigh
the one I gave the first time ever I saw
you walk across a room

Voices in that place still fight
to be heard face against face
plenty wine tequila cocaine
give me that blue again

If we had pain then we never knew
how long it would take to reach
the high notes without each other
breath is my friend, sister and brother

Days pass kids are born
their kids—news torn up
thrown in the fire in LA
or on the road

Give me my horn again
I hear that riff on the piano
I see your smile from the door

THE MYSTERY OF KNOWING

THE MYSTERY OF KNOWING
for Larry

In the beginning was the word, meaning the big
vibration from which all things animate and
inanimate issue forth, but it could very well
have been Hey! You molecules virals spirals
stardust bacterias plasmas miasmas and scilias
swimming in the cosmic sea making your way
to the shores with the Australian crawl
or the little bawl of wax...Get off your
microscopic asses and create life, all right?
Okay? Now! I have spoken...
And that's how tricky those before times were
when all things short and tall were delegated tasks
big and small by the invisible boss with a thunderous voice
or the still small voice from a boss so big
you can't even see him or was it her
don't you see? Oh say don't you? The more
you know the more of a mystery meaning
each of us as the bard would say has her own
entrance and exit the lights dim or grow
we put our lips to the mask and blow
this is our time the much feted now
the elusive running grasp...come, let me clutch thee!
Oh reality, my head's spinning with inner
nebulae! The Aztecs had it right all along
with their crystal skulls. So much for bipolar
dichotomies! What's frozen to me moves too fast
for the representative from Sirius. What's more
important is that space between, not the thing.
Resurrection gets four syllables, one
for each corner of the bed and it's time...
Oh, yawn, stretch, fart, oops, really?
to wake up and nourish the soul
break the fast and sing the endless song.

THE WAY OF TOTAL INTEGRATION

THE WAY OF TOTAL INTEGRATION

First in the beginning and from the outset
before before before input when laughter
merely stuttered and your name mumbled
in the eucalyptus which did not sway
the snake came and knotted itself inside
your brain into the Celtic sign for geese
in flight you had no say in this although
you knew thirst and all the other cravings
but one which we will not talk about yet
in the circle no one knows how the boulders
moved by sound waves or by brute force
built for the first pit fire that gave birth
to the first constellation the shadow crossed
over and we truly understood the wildness
that would stalk us and watch us even from
inside the cage we so fearfully assembled
mounted and kept in that place the question
that brought you here the one you will take
with you to the end where there is only
music disguising our confusion

how rivers begin

snow crust openings
icicles reach into space
over mountain stream

EMPTY SHELLS

a cicada shell;
it sang itself
utterly away
—Basho

EMPTY SHELLS

counting syllables the haiku
disappears from the branch

blossoms that called out in the night
now fallen under the bed forgotten

the tree in leaf moves on without moving
unless the wind says otherwise

short or long the breath of the wind
has no regard for chopping up its words

we hear wind we don't even know
this language we've been hearing all our lives

the insects leave their shells behind
as do the molluscs on the shore

leaving their shells how convenient
all these found instruments for a breeze

watch out a gale will scatter these remains
like so much debris inside such a sound
that overwhelms like a flood like a drowning

like a barking dog in the night
we speak out against the darkness of the wind
that hasn't yet arrived

KEEP ME FROM WHIPLASH

KEEP ME FROM WHIPLASH

Hold me back the world's on fire
too fast too much or not enough as usual
can't make up my mind
not with the lights all green and the roads empty
mover over ghost I see you there
cycling down the margin in daylight
the testy owl languid over your
bobbling frame see how she launched herself
from the fencepost is somebody timing this
the slowing down of the heartbeat the counting
as the breath pulls in yes pulls my friend
I've got the bellows working midships
the belly of the beast a white man in disguise
you know just an ordinary bean no distinctive
confusions only the tingling sensation
as the warmth grows up your arm
get out of the way I say
I'm coming through you can watch the clock
all you like I'm down to skin on the road
slow as a guitar string returning to the fret
these vibrations and hand slaps don't care
anymore about keeping up with no
Joneses I don't even know anymore
except that speed does kill
exhilaration's the name of my game
and it's dripping like honey down the road

SHORTER WITHOUT A NET

SHORTER WITHOUT A NET

You can do it!

That's the voice I want to hear

with me stepping out into space

from the branch of a tree

onto the roof of your house

I know you're in there although

there's no doors or windows

I just need the small voice

to stir me on

all these years thinking trusting

waiting for that permission

to fly slowly by like a comet

give me my mission statement and

three days or so to get off my ass

ah the roof tops

slippery in March

when the cherry blossoms fall it's like

stepping into heaven

with the green leaves in their infant ways

unfolding watching it all go down

it’s touch and go up here on the ridge

smoke curling out of the chimney

somebody's in I know it though there's

no stairs no rooms no furniture only

a space called home and a vibration inside

that sounds like yes

I should have been listening long before now

but this is it

with the fall

all in my mind after all

perspective rushing at me like the ground

still frozen in some back country hollow

that's got my name on it

I should know better

I've played cat to this tune before

landed on all fours keeping my knees

bent my arms outstretched thinking

of Leonardo and the Wright brothers

and our long line of flight attendants

real and imaginary

THE MOON

Always she

fullness to pendulous

When gone utterly: new

When slender as in her luminous blade

or heavenly bow: the huntress

Always ruler of the night

even in her absence

Before I knew better

I thought the sun followed her

in their round and round

When I began to know too much

she lit my way

After I suspected I knew nothing really

she lit my dreams

casting as they say

her pale as they say

silver coat across the nearest chair

wanton in her ageless way

I too never agreed with that first step

man’s boot upon her face

its print still there

On nights when she tugs at the tides

if you squint you can make it out

a tear near one eye

The Shoe

All laced up and nowhere to go but
dead center I look up at the ceiling
waiting for the other shoe to drop
while this one makes an impression

slightly muddy with a chance of black
with the word shoes in various scripts
gray white blotches of red could be
blood could be paintball but now

but now the tongue strapped down in
its chassis depressed unable to speak
holding its own against the void where
a foot might go where a foot has been

toes turned up as if what was future
is now past there it goes again the foot
thudding heel first across the wooden
floor I look to the clock I think fleetingly

of the sensitive seconds the chiding
words the loss of it all as idiosyncracies
cross purpose each other and yet
the shoe remains stolid or solid

staid and quite without weight
in its heavy way again I want
to look ceiling-wards but cannot
take my eyes off this one shoe

The Show of My Life

-->

I took a bite mmm the crunch of a toasted circle

resounding in the cave of the mouth

I'll just sketch a few lines here on the walls

and forget the public viewing who knows

perhaps some unwitting day tripper lured

off the coastal path by lanterns of red fuchsia

deeper and deeper till they reach this place

how many thousands of years from now

will marvel how I depicted ocean waves

upside down on ceiling ribs found sculptural

gestures highlighted by my rather crude

untrained local dyes crushed hawthorn berry

and dragons’ eyes but let's not get carried away

not today this is the show of my life and there's

no turning back no scaffolding to rest upon

no mail order catalogue fast or simple enough

for the kinds of colors and brushes I need

I could leave it blank and it would look finished

it's all in the mind I heard somewhere

what’s empty to me is a wash of Rothko

or the weave of the canvas let's give credit

to the antecedent I want to say before

I press my palms against this wall

two poems for no one in particular

today I saw a flock of white cattle egrets

fly across my truck windshield and I

didn't count them

—there—

that's progress

that's cause to celebrate

and the firework smoke still lingers

today two fat turkeys wild and sleek

ran uphill before me till I herded them off

through stands of casuarina

in my wake of unfinished business

isn't that the way the light and the truth

what else did I scatter behind me

as I fled from Egypt? I could say oh

the things I forgot to tie down the bits of life

that didn't stick and some of them have names

they're the fading butterflies who can’t rise up

wearing my remorse

now there's no reasoning no physicality behind all this

animated gossip about my past I look up

and sense it's my job to keep going keep

searching for the right hue be unafraid of painting

over and over so that the car I rolled becomes

her shoulder becomes the drunken night

in the apple orchard becomes the rise

of our first child in her womb becomes

our daughter’s first fall the despair of knowing

there's a net there’s a knot before there’s

a break and then this place this shadow

near deep red hibiscus flowers big as faces