After Work

 

On the walk home from the train, work falls away.

Like the shedding of a damp kimono on a hot day

moulting to the floor the coarse texture that scratches,

my front door will ease the arduous weight.

I pass sunflowers, great globes heaving sideways

to catch the fence, arching upwards for blessings

from Helios, lithe and strong and posing, a tilt and twist

for more attention from passers-by,

elegant, homely sunflowers seeking the camera I usually point.

Not today, I think, I just need a bath to wash the vessel.

I am an empty vessel, an unfinished pottery jar,

an incomplete masterpiece waiting to be daubed

and stroked with an impasto effect,

though with my luck I will be left lumpy and messy,

with no chance of glazing to luminous transparency,

a warm golden glow.

Best to be a sunflower, petals soft as kitten ears,

sharing smiles and sunshine,

a bumble bee nuzzling my nectar.

 

 

 Peace is a Virgin

 

       I.        Under the crescent moon

                  white bird soars, descends,

                  lost to my sight in the brush.

                  Canyon sage for a cloak, I shiver,

                  waiting for rodent scream.

             

     

II.         She was found yesterday; she left a note:

                  The world is flat again, visible, acute.

                  I listen to the news. I cry when they cry.

                  No one cries when I cry.

                  I want to go back to God.

 

       III.      They mistook him for a fag,

.                 beat him to death.

                  It was an honest mistake.

 

     IV.        The moon is: two-faced

                                       for some, she illumines hell.

                  

                   The wind is: golden flight on breathing fields

                                        for some, clotted dust.

                 

                   Love is:        a curl around faith

                                        for some, a bone in the throat.

 

   V.            Is this all I meant to you, god? We all pray in our own way.

                   Does a beast not know you have betrayed her,

                   as you have me? Anguish of her calf, agony of a child’s lament,

                   burns to flesh, blood on soil,

                   a cut to the heart hurts.

                   In my time before I go, I need to know.

                   Is this all I meant to you?

 

  VI.           In a dream I saw Her like a vapor of light;

                  I reached for Her but could not touch.

                  She wondered how I knew her name

                  as we had not been introduced

                  and She was not well-known

                  or ever recognized.

                  I told Her of the gilding

                  they paint around Her thighs

                  and the gentle nod Her likeness gives

                  to lambs and doves and children.

                  In anger She rebuked me,

                  for my familiar ways.

                                

 

Cremation July 20, 2020

 

My cool body lies

waiting for the fire.

They will not ask,

How were her poems?

What was she like as a young girl?

Someone dredged up my best skirt

a second-hand affair that whirled

around my calves

on solitary strolls under these Hungarian skies.

The heart is calm now.

It is no more mine, now,

than the tree that shaded me

as I wrote my words.

No more mine

than the dreams that marshalled me

across the dry plains of my despair,

up the mountains of hopes,

to cross rivers

       muddied from the elk waste (of my humour)

       clear to the pebbles and sand (of my inspirations)

       rough with the white water and boulders (of my challenges)

       stormy with the logs and limbs (of my lost loves)

       forbidding with the ice and undercurrents (of my fears)

Dreams opaque as a teary eye,

they dissipate like warm breath on a window

and perhaps leap onto the next

unsuspecting victim - my dream is your dream.

A box in the upper corner of the closet.

The closet in a house from long ago.

A dried rose, preserved. From whose coffin?

Whose wedding? Whose hopes?

This body is no longer mine.

The blood has stilled.

The breath has paused and holds.

Will one last thwack push out the final pocket of life?

Or leave it to expel

when the nerves jump, muscles contract

and the flesh fries in fat.

That breath will soar.

That breath was me.

Giving Up Cigarettes on Christmas Day in Southern California

                      

                                 JULIANNE             

     Whenever did you begin calling him Gerard?

                He’s your damned father.

                               HARRY

                Like you have such respect.

JULIANNE

                Well, I never called him Gerard.

HARRY:

                I heard you call him "pork rind" once.

JULIANNE

                No! I never! When?

HARRY

                That Christmas you came home from

                college, the first year. You said,

                give the pork rind his reindeer tie

                that he hates and make him wear it

                for me, cause I gave it to him when

                I was eleven.

JULIANNE

                Why pork rind? You made that up.

HARRY

                No, no, I did not invent that,

                Miz Julianne. You made some nasty

                comment about the stripe around his

                sweater when you walked through the

                door--said it emphasized his middle.

(Gerard pulls out a cigarette and starts to light it.)

JULIANNE

                Well, I must have been joking. That’s

                not like referring to your father as

                Gerard--put that thing out. I thought

                you were giving that up.

HARRY

                Just trying to annoy the old bat who

                sits here picking at brains.

JULIANNE

                It’s that fooh-fooh British dialect

                you’ve affected--is that what your

                English friends do--call their father Gerard?

Shortlisted

 The suitcase is heavy, almost unmanageable.

Oof. Then the other smaller one.

And backpack. I travel uneasy, heavy.

All I own on my person—notebooks, teddies, Christmas ornaments.

10 years dreaming of Scotland,

met with resistance, stony faces, grilled with questions:

If the awards ceremony is one night

why are you staying a month?

I’ve emptied my account for this, why not?

My judge boozed up, forgets his notes on me,

my poetry a second thought.

This heart inside my chest is an Amazon. She rears and claws,

forgetting she is old woman fading, remembers spotlights.

He calls me a name I don’t use…I thought he knew.

My Amazon hisses. She explodes the light.

She winds tendrils of metal around his soul.

She inflates to suck his air.

She leads me over his carcass as I walk to the door,

where they hand me the winning pamphlet

already printed, with acknowledgements by the poet.

I accept with grace and move down stairs,

step out of the building where thunder cracks into applause

and stars roll down my cheeks with the tears.

Christmas Haiku

 

 Boughs in the window

Bright tree sways with Bing Crosby,

A tune that sells toys

 

Church on the corner

Glory be to Him on high

Votives give us hope

 

Finding God

No religion thrills

like temple gongs through blue spruce

at day's end: bonnnnnng bonnnnnng

Let me say it like a white girl

 

El Chapultepec was not like the Blue Note

Or the joint on Cahuenga

in the 60s when I

an 18-year-old underage

blond and virgin

crept in after hours

to watch the music up

there at the end of the dark

room with just a few

tables of bodies

murmurs around

cigarettes and tight lips

riffs I’d never heard before

moans I’d learn to understand

riffs to swirl my head

beringed dark fingers

soothed me to my shoes

with his long grooves

and ladies’ hips

quiet gyrate long

around my soul

I smelled the heat

I felt seriously real

But here on Market Street

in the other room

away from blowing

saxes and drumbeats

I beat Jaco at pool

And helped him to a seat

Couldn’t have won

If he’d not been done

out with that stuff

but he was gone.

So I left him alone.

That was in my 30s

I’d learned my way

around the circle of 5ths

and scatted with B.B.

Can you believe it

on a snowy night in

Boulder when things got

rowdy even a white

girl could make an

old bluesman laugh.