At the red light before
the five minute tunnel,
Does on the lawn
watching over their speckle coated fawns.
Two broods of quail on the roadside,
hens with crests tossing in the ocean breeze
hurrying the chicks
under a tangle of mustard.
One brave chick jumps on a branch,
flopping and fluttering
after some illusive prey.
The two mothers
seriously corral the
wayward chicks
into a quickly moving line.
They hustle down the road
as the light turns green.
Saturday, June 21, 2008
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Dreamtime
This is dreamtime
where desire becomes
light that comes up from the horizon,
where the light becomes the color that
leads us into the day
where desire becomes the
touch of one on the other.
where desire becomes
light that comes up from the horizon,
where the light becomes the color that
leads us into the day
where desire becomes the
touch of one on the other.
This is dreamtime
where the light falling on the one and the other
bleeds from gold to rose,
and from rose to a fire that burns in dreamtime.
where the light falling on the one and the other
bleeds from gold to rose,
and from rose to a fire that burns in dreamtime.
This is dreamtime without maps
and dreamtime where music is without score
and the novel is without words
and time is without boundaries.
We carry light that comes up over
the horizon that is a known dawning.
This is dreamtime where a new dawn
has not been before on
the touch of one on the other,
where the mist that swirls through the street
before first light
is a dance to a song previously unheard
in a rhythm previously untapped
by the touch of one on the other.
has not been before on
the touch of one on the other,
where the mist that swirls through the street
before first light
is a dance to a song previously unheard
in a rhythm previously untapped
by the touch of one on the other.
Days and hours and minutes and seconds in dreamtime are
days and hours and minutes and seconds in the swirling mist
that dances through the street before the first light on
the touch of the one on the other.
days and hours and minutes and seconds in the swirling mist
that dances through the street before the first light on
the touch of the one on the other.
Days and nights are dreamtime in the
light of the song previously unheard of
the crow calling from the street light as
the bus pulls up to the stop,
as the door opens
and the dream unfolds into a ride
imagining the touch of one on the other
light of the song previously unheard of
the crow calling from the street light as
the bus pulls up to the stop,
as the door opens
and the dream unfolds into a ride
imagining the touch of one on the other
which leads into a walk through
manicured grass and neatly trimmed trees in
the first morning light
imagining the touch of the one on the other.
manicured grass and neatly trimmed trees in
the first morning light
imagining the touch of the one on the other.
This is dreamtime crossing the street and opening the door
and alighting steps
and sitting with a cup of milky coffee
imagining the touch of one on the other.
and alighting steps
and sitting with a cup of milky coffee
imagining the touch of one on the other.
This is dreamtime of
the day looking out on the manicured grass and neatly trimmed trees
and the solicitous squirrels and
simpering students and distant bridge
and through these
images and impulses
that are the imagining of the touch of one on the other.
the day looking out on the manicured grass and neatly trimmed trees
and the solicitous squirrels and
simpering students and distant bridge
and through these
images and impulses
that are the imagining of the touch of one on the other.
This is dreamtime
in the most mundane of
grocery stores or public transportation
or in the walk on a well traveled street
in a late afternoon breeze
that caresses the tips of hair that bring
the desire of the touch of the one on the other.
in the most mundane of
grocery stores or public transportation
or in the walk on a well traveled street
in a late afternoon breeze
that caresses the tips of hair that bring
the desire of the touch of the one on the other.
In the dreamtime that you are
in the dreamtime next to another ocean
at a different time of night
in the dreamtime of Schubert’s
miracle of youthful lucidity
to one in late middle age
that is is the desire of the touch the one on the other.
This is dreamtime
where desire for touch is strongest when
light from the horizon is gray and darkens into night.
The light fades from the room
and shadows grow long with longing
for the touch of one on the other
in dreamtime that brings the two into one
in touch as
a song that brings light from
the far horizon of days to come into
a form of
love.
where desire for touch is strongest when
light from the horizon is gray and darkens into night.
The light fades from the room
and shadows grow long with longing
for the touch of one on the other
in dreamtime that brings the two into one
in touch as
a song that brings light from
the far horizon of days to come into
a form of
love.
Tuesday, June 10, 2008
Sunday, June 08, 2008
060708 goes 060808
What isn't about desire?
Tell me a noble truth and I'll tell you
it is about desire
or the transcendence of such desire
or the experience of the desire
or the reliance on desire to
bring desire into
fruition.
Have I told you
that I want to lie naked next to you
to hold you in my arms and
caress your face as
we kiss in abandon and ecstatic joining?
Have I told you
that I want to run my hand
down your back
to the crack of your ass
that I want to take all of you
in my mouth,
a carnivore of desire
that I may taste the
length and breadth of you
that I may savor the
heights and depths of you
that in a darkened room
there will be a new kind of light.
Light that is not based on the laws of physics,
nor metaphysics nor theology.
This is a light based on the
light that falls through the imagined window
on to the imagined forms on a bed
on to the imagined coupling
on to the imagined desire that
appears in the light that comes though the imagined
curtain at the imagined window.
I so want to be with you. This is desire
and as I know in my heart
All existence is suffering
and the root of suffering is desire
and on the early Sunday morning
after coming home late
and tired I would tell you
let us suffer our desires together.
Let us offer the other succor and release
let us offer the other the possibility
of release from suffering desire in
the night that comes through an open window.
Tell me a noble truth and I'll tell you
it is about desire
or the transcendence of such desire
or the experience of the desire
or the reliance on desire to
bring desire into
fruition.
Have I told you
that I want to lie naked next to you
to hold you in my arms and
caress your face as
we kiss in abandon and ecstatic joining?
Have I told you
that I want to run my hand
down your back
to the crack of your ass
that I want to take all of you
in my mouth,
a carnivore of desire
that I may taste the
length and breadth of you
that I may savor the
heights and depths of you
that in a darkened room
there will be a new kind of light.
Light that is not based on the laws of physics,
nor metaphysics nor theology.
This is a light based on the
light that falls through the imagined window
on to the imagined forms on a bed
on to the imagined coupling
on to the imagined desire that
appears in the light that comes though the imagined
curtain at the imagined window.
I so want to be with you. This is desire
and as I know in my heart
All existence is suffering
and the root of suffering is desire
and on the early Sunday morning
after coming home late
and tired I would tell you
let us suffer our desires together.
Let us offer the other succor and release
let us offer the other the possibility
of release from suffering desire in
the night that comes through an open window.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
Saturday, May 24, 2008
1
Forms come to disappear
as damp stones and
a fox running through
a birch filled wood.
The dreamless night, hard and damp as stone
reveals morning and
running through the wood
Stippled with mists and mosses,
the peeling silvery bark on slender trunks,
whisper of acid greens and
the tenderness that is in spring.
What persistent clouds will cover the filtered sky
with dangling questions and lingering doubts?
What fogs will sing initial apprehension
in a minor?
The motif returns in breath, a song.
Neonatal light is a melody
of startling configurations,
Cardinals and Wrens, Finches and Doves
in arpeggios, at first cacophonous
only to resolve singularly, a fiat,
chords in D major.
At the furthest edge before croplands,
the trickle, treacle slow stream
the damp stones and birch behind.
The fox follows a fugue of scent
to the den of his mate
gone 40 more days.
2
The glens and glades are
The soundtrack is the tingle of James Brown barking and
cajoling Sex Machine.
I am at least
one fourth of the way hard,
laughing at provocative images of entwining.
Please, pass the Three D glasses.
Succulents in brick planters,
Walled Bougainvillea red, pink and magenta and
Junipers pruned and teased into
arrangements of spheres on a line
Offer a tentative respite from the forms
of forty days hence
on the rumpled bed linens.
Late spring morning light
filters through the wafting curtains,
the scene overlays
with reflections of planters
tended to order.
3
If James Brown is the Bach of Sex,
would Marvin Gaye be Mozart of Seduction?
Would that make Mozart the Marvin Gaye of opera?
and James Brown the Sex machine of the cantata?
(at his organ,
the choir exalts.
as the soloist reaches the crescendo
the space fills in glory
to all above.
Get on up ah.)
If honi soit qi mal y pense,
then does love come to he who thinks joy?
Look upon this as
a methodology,
a calculus for
arranging the momentary
into a semblance of realism.
If Jean Luc Goddard is the Ornette Coleman of film,
then is Ornette Coleman the Jean Luc Goddard of jazz?
Look on this as
A taxonomy, exhaustive
variations on walking Masonic,
from Geary to Hayes
on a theme by Bach
as seen from behind.
4
Today, I left dishes in the sink.
Today, is to be considered
in scattered images and
Burmese curry on tofu.
Today, is disquiet and determination
to have good posture.
Today, is a laugh from a distance.
Today, is the tiny dog chasing pigeons.
Straining at his green nylon leash as the pearly birds
flutter in disarray,
away.
Today, fog lifted late
and warmth came promptly.
Consider this a phenomenology
of sensations in no particular order
that result in words of foxy non-importance.
Monday, May 19, 2008
Late Self Portrait by Rembrandt at the Frick
Late Self Portrait by Rembrandt at the Frick
Stand before me.
If you let me,
I will tell you what it feels like to age.
Not only will I show you
how flesh looses elasticity,
how lines progress to sags,
I will show you how
doubt creeps into the heart
that come to the waist.
It is only,
it is only,
it is only from the darkness
that there can be light.
It is only from the night
that there may be a new day
when I may don
my golden tunic and my vermilion sash,
take out my sword and black beaver hat
to tell you
Look closely at the wrinkles on my hands.
These will be your wrinkles one day.
Look carefully at the wattles at my throat.
These will follow you into your life one day.
It is only because I have faced
the fear and the fact that
life comes to an end
that I may whisper to you,
Come closer
and you will feel
the approach of your last breath.
Come closer and
you will feel the gasp of fear
as the darkness takes over
and the possibility of light
recedes, like the fading daylight
as I put my brush to the pallet,
and the brush to the canvas,
to tell you, not reassuringly
that it feels like a kind of living hell
to see the ones you have loved
die before you,
to see that all you have accumulated as bounty
is dispersed,
but also to tell you that
for all the fears and pains,
you must stand before me
and quiet your mind,
and listen
as my breath fades from a rattle into
the Endless Silence
Where I pray there is Light.
Dream
I would enter your dream
as a Lark
I would enter your dream
in song.
I would enter your dream.
The song is a gift
as small as a kiss.
The song floats up from the
soft wet grass outside your bedroom window.
The song I would send
to enter your heart.
I would enter your dream
as a man.
I would enter your dream
as this man
in this uneven shape
and forlorn form.
I would whisper
the bird’s song into your sleeping ear
and offer a small gift,
as small as a kiss.
As our lips touch,
the Lark will sing to the embrace
As our lips touch,
Imperfections disappear as
I enter your dream.
New York Suite
1. While Waiting: Vuillard
Not lead.
Smoked cotton
Makes green more.
Not lead.
Smoked cotton
Makes green more.
Redbud and dogwood
Filter the skyline.
Lines not crossed
Cease to be lines
And disintegrate
Into women
Forming and reforming
Between black parentheses.
It isn’t about the detail.
He only gives the resemblance
And an indication
Of possible details
That add up into another view.
2. History in the Heart
For Dan and Andrea
There is a shorthand
That functions as
Walking together
From the Upper
To
Where histories are enhanced
In chill wind and warm conversation.
The day has gone from green
To a gray mist infused
With neon glow.
It isn’t the glass brick tower
At Fordham or
The slant of the light hitting a
Woman buying toothpaste at Duane Reade,
It is this moment of connection
Through laughter and love
Between friends.
It is the utter strangeness that has
Brought us together on this
Night so far from home.
It is the sheer joy of a shared meal
In a basement taverna,
Tzatziki and deep amethyst wine
From Mount Athos.
It is the touch of a hand to a shoulder
Or the telling of a moment
When a hand is grasped across
The table at the bar
At the
The accumulation of complexity
And the revelation of simplicity
Bring tears behind a closing door.
The elevator rings and
Floors below on the street,
We will all walk with
This new history in our hearts.
In the middle of this
Steel and glass temple of modernity,
Across a table topped with concrete,
Hands meet and
A world of cold with words and complications
Opens into a
World, green and complex with possibility.
Your son, your daughters, your ex-wife,
My dead partner, my ex-lover
My sister
Your father
Combine into a current that
Runs from your hand through mine.
You walk me back to
A drunken lucidity,
Stopping at corners to wait
For traffic and to lean in for kisses.
Moments ago,
Peonies in the florist’s window
Were tight buds.
Now, as we pass,
The ions and electrons flying
Off our kiss
Have turned these heads into
Pink explosions fit for
An
As she sits in her pew,
Reading from The Book of Common Prayer,
She remembers
Kisses withheld, over time may become scars.
She remembers, kisses offered,
Sometimes in lust, sometimes in affection,
And sometimes an admixture of both,
Become, in the heart,
Another kind of prayer
For another new day
Of green or gray complexity.
Years withheld,
The tongue becomes a clapper.
This bell calls all to praise.
For CM, May 4, 2008
Cubism and Its Double
The breeze through an open window
hits the midsection,
causing instant death.
hits the midsection,
causing instant death.
Well, not really death,
but a possibility of rebirth.
Not in the tinkling bell
and incense way,
but in the consciousness
of the recognition of the possibility
of another.
If I place this bottle and this glass
on this wooden table,
if I unfold this newspaper and
set it next to a spoon
holding a cube of sugar,
and then, I am struck by lightening,
Just where am I?
Just what view of me will you see
and What view of you will I see?
This process reveals that
all color is gray or brown.
Or, that gray and brown can
stand for any color.
Through this realization,
we allow the window to open
further a crack.
There are leaks from the soul and the body.
2.
Through this window
there is no return.
This leap cannot be reversed and
all Sound, vision, touch,
all smell and taste are reborn,
soft and squalling into orphaned sense
where everything is new.
Even newness itself
has not been patched or darned.
This is the long told mortal coil
housed in a moth eaten sock.
All that remains are rents and gaps
that give this insupportable structure
a lack of heft.
Having slipped through the crack,
we find there are no planes,
no longer walls.
All that is left is in between.
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Taxonomy of Loss: Bodies of Water
Taxonomy of Loss: Bodies of Water
Prologue:
relentless rain,
the cistern overflows,
the distillation
and collection of all the sadness of the left behind.
water, dissipation in
swirls and ebbs, eddies and whorls
of blackness into light
and back to black
bodies
of water.
(the long night)
the all encompassing ocean
is the drop of rain
concentrated as essential loss.
1. Containments and Releases
a. Volcanic: Crater Lake, Oregon
purpled by altitude,
a granite bowl of ink,
the sky, dull and listless by comparison.
drowsy with color,
drifting in all directions;
trunks in silhouette
gnarled by the short light of the long summer morning,
in a car, nearly 45 years ago;
with my parents and my sister.
b. stagnant puddle
teaming with larvae and polliwogs
losing tails to gain legs
c.
The spent and smashed battery,
the clot of leaves,
runs the gutter.
outside of Woodland,
after too much malt liquor
and too many Reds,
Cookie Del Rio wrapped her Rambler
around a light post.
where would she be
30 odd years gone down?
chasing after Mexican boys
outside of Winters?
Or reformed, working her program
and swimming laps at the Davis Y?
d.
oak table
in a green room,
the glass vase holds
daisy water from days gone long.
that room was your bedroom
and is no longer.
whenever I pass,
I am reminded.
e.
The ocean keeps getting deeper.
15 years falling
into the end
that never ends.
trickling,
cold fingers of memory
rescind the real and move it darker,
into another sadness that is
the ocean getting deeper and deeper.
15 years passed
and gone still, and utterly forever:
water over rocks
in dappled sun.
fishing for trout
on the South Fork of the American River
past Placerville, Strawberry and Lover's Leap
past Tamarack and up the hill and at the Bridge,
or in the secret spot
down by the red cabin.
Salmon eggs
on a hook
on an afternoon in 1963.
two rocks hanging onto the side of the bank
a rainbow trout skitters under.
the scent of Queen Anne's lace,
shocks of lupine across the bend,
the glint of the salmon egg on the hook
as it splashes into the darkness.
the current carries the bait under the rocks.
a slight tug
and the old Rainbow is snagged on the hook.
the slow hum of Highway 50 as
The South Fork of the American River runs and
flows through Sacramento, through Cortland and
Rio Vista and Antioch and Martinez
to the Bay and
out the Golden Gate.
(bridge to bridge)
(mountains to oceans)
2. Streams of Arrested Desire
a.
did he save or sell his soul?
did she walk to work?
did he try to get better?
did she ever really feel connected?
did he want for affection?
did he ever want to jump from a bridge
into a frigid river
under a titanium cloud cover
in a wasteland of discarded furniture and bric-a-brac?
did he ever love a man in a cabin on a beach
on a churning night
in a summer
in the nineteen- forties?
did he ever ford a stream
with his heart full with another?
did she fill his heart or
did it ever?
does it ever?
b.
Was it parenting in absentia?
under a spring moon,
on the cascading water,
blossoms drift through the breeze.
birdsong trails into a quartet.
did you ever sing for him?
did you ever reach under his arms and lift him from behind?
did you ever sit
silently together with your memories
of sad love songs from the radio?
Did you talk about the watery weather?
under the bridge.
c.
how much is real?
how much is what was memory of what was heard
or some combination of
memory and having been told?
On the back porch, flush with measles,
being washed in the concrete sink.
Happy sings in her cage
hanging over the raised floor above the basement door.
Sansaveria in a ceramic pot in the high window sill and
the scent of cleanser and linoleum.
Out the screen door,
a shrimp plant and carnations
and metal lawn furniture painted silver.
The ballerino's house was beyond the hedge
through a hidden gate.
d.
So will there be some kind of a bookend
on either side:
a neat package
of banality and revelation,
a final gift before
what is left of life leaks out?
Will it be reflected in the pond outside the window of a hospice
where just within hearing are red winged blackbirds and pheasants
in the dun reeds?
e. sparkle
bounces off the shimmering waves and
elevates the quivering motes
into a rippling and roiling current.
dappled iridescence elicits
slinking charcoal and a coral burst of
slipping into an aqueous sunset.
f. Absence of Love
is Hell
g. presence of the past
20th and G Street
Said yes
and didn't:
a living room on the second floor
a flat above Ali the Pakistani
who beat his wife.
solace, liquid in perpetuity.
it is mostly light now,
speckled and wandering in memory.
a vacuum cleaner is left behind.
1975
Mona, Gavin, Roger He is So White He is Wong,
The Lady Montessa de Rambova and
Dino, who might have been there,
but I am not sure,
one by one
jumping out the first floor window into the hedge.
the dew dampened the back of my shorts.
after, around the table in the dining room,
peaking as Mona talks about Pioche,
I see spheres within spheres,
and hear the sound as they radiate outward and to the side: Spheres;
sounds within (within Spheres)
sounds within (within Spheres)
sounds (within Spheres).
July, midnight blue under street lights and stars night.
You will always remember your wedding cake and
the back of the red couch
and the scent of the disintegrating geometric patterned hotel rug.
Could you forget the drops of light
that sparkle in geometric patterns from every object?
h.
Mona took me to
The psychedelic shack high in the sky.
Behind another house
and up a rail less, steep staircase.
The black walls,
patterned with fragments of broken mirror,
shimmered with reflections of leaves and sky.
The psychedelic shack high in the sky
was more shack and less psychedelic.
3. Currents
Riptide
pulls out stronger than in.
go under.
deeper
and go out further without a raft
into the night.
there are no stars under the water.
phosphorescence is no substitute.
b. Lumahai Beach, Kauai,
with John and Zella and Bob and Chris.
We were the only ones on the beach.
A steep drop from the mangroves to the water,
but just enough room for mats
and places to drift off into the afternoon in the
overarching sun.
Body surfing:
swimming out and waiting
for a wave
to ride back to the beach.
Zella caught in a wave
tumbled to the floor of the ocean,
twisted her shoulder
and had her breath knocked out.
She lost her confidence
around the ocean for a long time.
c. Water Falling On Rocks in the Redwoods
4. Cycles
There are more questions than answers.
questions breed more questions.
answers are mutable.
questions are permanent.
Will there ever be a resolution?
or will the questions become the resolution?
the rain evaporates into the atmosphere as
sadness dissipates,
yet never disappears.
the cycle of grief is not the the cycles of water and weather.
ten years without clouds.
ten years of rain without end.
ten years a reign of something other than joy.
yet, in the joyless sound there is
a tinkling chime that somehow allows it all
to go on.
somewhere there is a glint or glimmer
that plays as a refrain
returning and reminding
that the past is ever present and
the future never arrives.
in the cabinet in the living room
Aunt Cassie and Grandma Nettie are still bickering
so many years after death.
Aunt Edna is ever suffering.
the arbutus in the front yard drops fruit
at once brilliant and bland.
Grandma Lopez is ever present with coffee milk and little fish.
Grandpa's hat is on the lampshade, ever on this side of singe.
It is before he got more mean and before she became a bear.
The living room and dining room are taken over by an amalgamation of tables
that stretch so long
that if you are sitting in the living room
and need something in the kitchen,
you have to go outside and around the house
and go in through the back door
to retrieve what it is that you need.
Mom and Dad and Zella
and Grandma and Grandpa and Grandma Nettie
and Aunt Lollie and Uncle Raymond and Patty
and Aunt Babe and Uncle Tom and Diana and Karl and June in a high chair,
Aunt Vera and Uncle Jack and Johnny and Jimmy and Mickey,
Dick and Jan Ryan and Donna
and sometimes Uncle John and Aunt Dorothy
and sometimes Uncle Buster and Aunt Marianne and Butch and Tommy and Jimmy
(it is before the little Ben) gather to celebrate or mourn
or both.
Most of them are gone now,
but the memory of putting pitted olives over my fingers
and plates of ice cold celery with cheese spread
are as vivid this night as they were
when everyone had gone home
and my Mother was washing dishes at the kitchen sink
and my sister drying the dishes
and my Mother saying that she would never do it again
until the next birthday
or holiday came around
and everyone would be at the table
eating spareribs from Barbecue Heaven or take out from China Palace
or Grandma's awful concoction of chicken in Sacramento brand
tomato sauce with hard boiled eggs.
Disintegrated into energy,
reformed by breath alone
Floating, disembodied,
detritus and ephemera:
the stuff that comes together to form
the veil.
The closet becomes an elevator
the bare light bulb
with a string and chain to pull on and off.
Floor please?
3rd please.
2nd floor - ladies foundations, better dresses and coats
3rd floor - notions and yardage, cafeteria and gift wrap.
It was never my turn to be Miss Universe.
I was always the first runner up,
Miss Venezuela.
In the garage
mixing a potion
of blueing, bleach, and amonia
and painting it
on the three foot dancing doll.
Waiting to see the results
as the fumes wafted out the door
open to the street
across from Mrs. Clark
who lived next door to Wilda
who raised earth worms
in a bathtub
in her back yard.
Wilda lived across from Don and Hazel
Janice wore a makeshift veil to
married her Siamese cat, Charlie,
with a backdrop of pink "Naked Lady" Amaryllis.
Patty officiated as a priest
of the one Holy and Apostolic Church.
I was ring bearer and witness.
at about 4:30 p.m.
in the late Spring
at the side of Aunt Lollie and Uncle Raymond's light green house.
Strawberry guava scent the ceremony.
Twice, we went to Seattle.
The first time I was six
and the second time I was eight.
The first trip was
picking blackberries along the street,
watching Curtis and Rodney and Janice fighting over
chicken hearts and gizzards,
and waterfalls and Puget Sound.
The second trip was
the Seattle World's Fair,
digging for razor back clams
and a kitten caught in the fan belt
We stopped both times
to visit Mrs. Pearsons and Maxine.
On the second trip home,
we stopped in Tillamok
and tasted cheese at the factory.
We stopped at the Tress of Mystery and
posed with the giant Paul Bunyan and
his Blue Ox, Babe.
My Mother and Father would wake us at 2:30 or 3:00 a.m.
Zella and I would be in our pajamas.
Groggy in the backseat
we set off in our Ford
up 99 through the Valley.
Sleeping and dreaming on vacation.
We would stop for breakfast.
Zella and I got dressed in the car.
Hash Browns. I always wanted whatever came with hash browns.
We crossed the Columbia River near dusk.
We crossed the Columbia River in the early morning.
We stopped at a beach in Oregon
and climbed down a steep cliff
and collected colored pebbles.
We stopped at Shasta Dam.
Once, Gordon and Vera
came to Sacramento.
They brought Rodney and Janice and Curtis and Cheryl.
Rodney and Curtis and I slept
in Uncle Carl's and Aunt Lil's house trailer parked
in the driveway.
Rodney and Curtis taught me how to play squirrel.
Go for the nuts.
I wanted to play Squirrel every night.
Another time, older, Rodney returned to Sacramento.
He taught me how to roll cigarettes from butts.
He was a narc.
Cheryl married a black man.
The only time we ever made Grandma Lopez angry
was when Zella sat on the salt shaker and
the little metal ball at the top broke off in her butt.
We all laughed and Grandma scolded us as
she comforted Zella.
The little silver ball is still buried in
Zella's butt.
Afraid of my uncles in this order:
Tom
Raymond
Danny
Ted and Lynn were with Peps.
Ted set a church on fire
and ate wax fruit.
Ted put a bean up his nose
and it sprouted.
Lynn doesn't register.
Pep's died of cancer the night
I went with Wade and B Bill to see "Help
at the drive-in.
Ted went to jail
for shooting a man
who had spit
on his car
while cruising K.
Tehedingo.
Dan and Marianne lived in the projects.
Aunt Lollie and Uncle Raymond did too.
Dan and Marianne lived in a brick house
down by Southside Park and the cemetery.
We took Grandma Nettie to cemeteries.
We cleared the weeds from the graves
and put sweetpeas and carnations
in mason jars.
It was Uncle This and Second Cousin That,
a neighbor and
a child.
Flintridge.
5. Bath
Eleven years and forty-seven days gone
and still, when I walk into that room,
you've never left.
It seemed like days were night and
it would never end
and then, it did.
The rattle is real.
Until you've heard it,
you'll never know.
After the rattle ended,
I closed your eyes
and called the doctor and the coroner.
I went into the yard to tell Zella
and called Theresa and Rabih.
They tried to comfort me.
But, I did not know how to accept this comfort
until I had performed
the ritual that I knew I needed to complete.
I put warm water in a basin.
I found a cloth
and I began to wash your lifeless body.
I don't know why I did
I just knew I had to.
I washed the lesions and wounds.
I washed your feet that had not touched the ground in weeks.
I washed your hair and your once beautiful face
I washed your arms that had been so recently connected to the IV.
I washed what had been public
and I washed what had been most private
I dried your body with a soft towel.
At some point while I was performing this last offering for you
I saw your soul fly out of your body and through the open window.
The coroner came, wrapped your body in a bag and took it away.
You were not gone for long.
Prologue:
relentless rain,
the cistern overflows,
the distillation
and collection of all the sadness of the left behind.
water, dissipation in
swirls and ebbs, eddies and whorls
of blackness into light
and back to black
bodies
of water.
(the long night)
the all encompassing ocean
is the drop of rain
concentrated as essential loss.
1. Containments and Releases
a. Volcanic: Crater Lake, Oregon
purpled by altitude,
a granite bowl of ink,
the sky, dull and listless by comparison.
drowsy with color,
drifting in all directions;
trunks in silhouette
gnarled by the short light of the long summer morning,
in a car, nearly 45 years ago;
with my parents and my sister.
b. stagnant puddle
teaming with larvae and polliwogs
losing tails to gain legs
c.
The spent and smashed battery,
the clot of leaves,
runs the gutter.
outside of Woodland,
after too much malt liquor
and too many Reds,
Cookie Del Rio wrapped her Rambler
around a light post.
where would she be
30 odd years gone down?
chasing after Mexican boys
outside of Winters?
Or reformed, working her program
and swimming laps at the Davis Y?
d.
oak table
in a green room,
the glass vase holds
daisy water from days gone long.
that room was your bedroom
and is no longer.
whenever I pass,
I am reminded.
e.
The ocean keeps getting deeper.
15 years falling
into the end
that never ends.
trickling,
cold fingers of memory
rescind the real and move it darker,
into another sadness that is
the ocean getting deeper and deeper.
15 years passed
and gone still, and utterly forever:
water over rocks
in dappled sun.
fishing for trout
on the South Fork of the American River
past Placerville, Strawberry and Lover's Leap
past Tamarack and up the hill and at the Bridge,
or in the secret spot
down by the red cabin.
Salmon eggs
on a hook
on an afternoon in 1963.
two rocks hanging onto the side of the bank
a rainbow trout skitters under.
the scent of Queen Anne's lace,
shocks of lupine across the bend,
the glint of the salmon egg on the hook
as it splashes into the darkness.
the current carries the bait under the rocks.
a slight tug
and the old Rainbow is snagged on the hook.
the slow hum of Highway 50 as
The South Fork of the American River runs and
flows through Sacramento, through Cortland and
Rio Vista and Antioch and Martinez
to the Bay and
out the Golden Gate.
(bridge to bridge)
(mountains to oceans)
2. Streams of Arrested Desire
a.
did he save or sell his soul?
did she walk to work?
did he try to get better?
did she ever really feel connected?
did he want for affection?
did he ever want to jump from a bridge
into a frigid river
under a titanium cloud cover
in a wasteland of discarded furniture and bric-a-brac?
did he ever love a man in a cabin on a beach
on a churning night
in a summer
in the nineteen- forties?
did he ever ford a stream
with his heart full with another?
did she fill his heart or
did it ever?
does it ever?
b.
Was it parenting in absentia?
under a spring moon,
on the cascading water,
blossoms drift through the breeze.
birdsong trails into a quartet.
did you ever sing for him?
did you ever reach under his arms and lift him from behind?
did you ever sit
silently together with your memories
of sad love songs from the radio?
Did you talk about the watery weather?
under the bridge.
c.
how much is real?
how much is what was memory of what was heard
or some combination of
memory and having been told?
On the back porch, flush with measles,
being washed in the concrete sink.
Happy sings in her cage
hanging over the raised floor above the basement door.
Sansaveria in a ceramic pot in the high window sill and
the scent of cleanser and linoleum.
Out the screen door,
a shrimp plant and carnations
and metal lawn furniture painted silver.
The ballerino's house was beyond the hedge
through a hidden gate.
d.
So will there be some kind of a bookend
on either side:
a neat package
of banality and revelation,
a final gift before
what is left of life leaks out?
Will it be reflected in the pond outside the window of a hospice
where just within hearing are red winged blackbirds and pheasants
in the dun reeds?
e. sparkle
bounces off the shimmering waves and
elevates the quivering motes
into a rippling and roiling current.
dappled iridescence elicits
slinking charcoal and a coral burst of
slipping into an aqueous sunset.
f. Absence of Love
is Hell
g. presence of the past
20th and G Street
Said yes
and didn't:
a living room on the second floor
a flat above Ali the Pakistani
who beat his wife.
solace, liquid in perpetuity.
it is mostly light now,
speckled and wandering in memory.
a vacuum cleaner is left behind.
1975
Mona, Gavin, Roger He is So White He is Wong,
The Lady Montessa de Rambova and
Dino, who might have been there,
but I am not sure,
one by one
jumping out the first floor window into the hedge.
the dew dampened the back of my shorts.
after, around the table in the dining room,
peaking as Mona talks about Pioche,
I see spheres within spheres,
and hear the sound as they radiate outward and to the side: Spheres;
sounds within (within Spheres)
sounds within (within Spheres)
sounds (within Spheres).
July, midnight blue under street lights and stars night.
You will always remember your wedding cake and
the back of the red couch
and the scent of the disintegrating geometric patterned hotel rug.
Could you forget the drops of light
that sparkle in geometric patterns from every object?
h.
Mona took me to
The psychedelic shack high in the sky.
Behind another house
and up a rail less, steep staircase.
The black walls,
patterned with fragments of broken mirror,
shimmered with reflections of leaves and sky.
The psychedelic shack high in the sky
was more shack and less psychedelic.
3. Currents
Riptide
pulls out stronger than in.
go under.
deeper
and go out further without a raft
into the night.
there are no stars under the water.
phosphorescence is no substitute.
b. Lumahai Beach, Kauai,
with John and Zella and Bob and Chris.
We were the only ones on the beach.
A steep drop from the mangroves to the water,
but just enough room for mats
and places to drift off into the afternoon in the
overarching sun.
Body surfing:
swimming out and waiting
for a wave
to ride back to the beach.
Zella caught in a wave
tumbled to the floor of the ocean,
twisted her shoulder
and had her breath knocked out.
She lost her confidence
around the ocean for a long time.
c. Water Falling On Rocks in the Redwoods
4. Cycles
There are more questions than answers.
questions breed more questions.
answers are mutable.
questions are permanent.
Will there ever be a resolution?
or will the questions become the resolution?
the rain evaporates into the atmosphere as
sadness dissipates,
yet never disappears.
the cycle of grief is not the the cycles of water and weather.
ten years without clouds.
ten years of rain without end.
ten years a reign of something other than joy.
yet, in the joyless sound there is
a tinkling chime that somehow allows it all
to go on.
somewhere there is a glint or glimmer
that plays as a refrain
returning and reminding
that the past is ever present and
the future never arrives.
in the cabinet in the living room
Aunt Cassie and Grandma Nettie are still bickering
so many years after death.
Aunt Edna is ever suffering.
the arbutus in the front yard drops fruit
at once brilliant and bland.
Grandma Lopez is ever present with coffee milk and little fish.
Grandpa's hat is on the lampshade, ever on this side of singe.
It is before he got more mean and before she became a bear.
The living room and dining room are taken over by an amalgamation of tables
that stretch so long
that if you are sitting in the living room
and need something in the kitchen,
you have to go outside and around the house
and go in through the back door
to retrieve what it is that you need.
Mom and Dad and Zella
and Grandma and Grandpa and Grandma Nettie
and Aunt Lollie and Uncle Raymond and Patty
and Aunt Babe and Uncle Tom and Diana and Karl and June in a high chair,
Aunt Vera and Uncle Jack and Johnny and Jimmy and Mickey,
Dick and Jan Ryan and Donna
and sometimes Uncle John and Aunt Dorothy
and sometimes Uncle Buster and Aunt Marianne and Butch and Tommy and Jimmy
(it is before the little Ben) gather to celebrate or mourn
or both.
Most of them are gone now,
but the memory of putting pitted olives over my fingers
and plates of ice cold celery with cheese spread
are as vivid this night as they were
when everyone had gone home
and my Mother was washing dishes at the kitchen sink
and my sister drying the dishes
and my Mother saying that she would never do it again
until the next birthday
or holiday came around
and everyone would be at the table
eating spareribs from Barbecue Heaven or take out from China Palace
or Grandma's awful concoction of chicken in Sacramento brand
tomato sauce with hard boiled eggs.
Disintegrated into energy,
reformed by breath alone
Floating, disembodied,
detritus and ephemera:
the stuff that comes together to form
the veil.
The closet becomes an elevator
the bare light bulb
with a string and chain to pull on and off.
Floor please?
3rd please.
2nd floor - ladies foundations, better dresses and coats
3rd floor - notions and yardage, cafeteria and gift wrap.
It was never my turn to be Miss Universe.
I was always the first runner up,
Miss Venezuela.
In the garage
mixing a potion
of blueing, bleach, and amonia
and painting it
on the three foot dancing doll.
Waiting to see the results
as the fumes wafted out the door
open to the street
across from Mrs. Clark
who lived next door to Wilda
who raised earth worms
in a bathtub
in her back yard.
Wilda lived across from Don and Hazel
Janice wore a makeshift veil to
married her Siamese cat, Charlie,
with a backdrop of pink "Naked Lady" Amaryllis.
Patty officiated as a priest
of the one Holy and Apostolic Church.
I was ring bearer and witness.
at about 4:30 p.m.
in the late Spring
at the side of Aunt Lollie and Uncle Raymond's light green house.
Strawberry guava scent the ceremony.
Twice, we went to Seattle.
The first time I was six
and the second time I was eight.
The first trip was
picking blackberries along the street,
watching Curtis and Rodney and Janice fighting over
chicken hearts and gizzards,
and waterfalls and Puget Sound.
The second trip was
the Seattle World's Fair,
digging for razor back clams
and a kitten caught in the fan belt
We stopped both times
to visit Mrs. Pearsons and Maxine.
On the second trip home,
we stopped in Tillamok
and tasted cheese at the factory.
We stopped at the Tress of Mystery and
posed with the giant Paul Bunyan and
his Blue Ox, Babe.
My Mother and Father would wake us at 2:30 or 3:00 a.m.
Zella and I would be in our pajamas.
Groggy in the backseat
we set off in our Ford
up 99 through the Valley.
Sleeping and dreaming on vacation.
We would stop for breakfast.
Zella and I got dressed in the car.
Hash Browns. I always wanted whatever came with hash browns.
We crossed the Columbia River near dusk.
We crossed the Columbia River in the early morning.
We stopped at a beach in Oregon
and climbed down a steep cliff
and collected colored pebbles.
We stopped at Shasta Dam.
Once, Gordon and Vera
came to Sacramento.
They brought Rodney and Janice and Curtis and Cheryl.
Rodney and Curtis and I slept
in Uncle Carl's and Aunt Lil's house trailer parked
in the driveway.
Rodney and Curtis taught me how to play squirrel.
Go for the nuts.
I wanted to play Squirrel every night.
Another time, older, Rodney returned to Sacramento.
He taught me how to roll cigarettes from butts.
He was a narc.
Cheryl married a black man.
The only time we ever made Grandma Lopez angry
was when Zella sat on the salt shaker and
the little metal ball at the top broke off in her butt.
We all laughed and Grandma scolded us as
she comforted Zella.
The little silver ball is still buried in
Zella's butt.
Afraid of my uncles in this order:
Tom
Raymond
Danny
Ted and Lynn were with Peps.
Ted set a church on fire
and ate wax fruit.
Ted put a bean up his nose
and it sprouted.
Lynn doesn't register.
Pep's died of cancer the night
I went with Wade and B Bill to see "Help
at the drive-in.
Ted went to jail
for shooting a man
who had spit
on his car
while cruising K.
Tehedingo.
Dan and Marianne lived in the projects.
Aunt Lollie and Uncle Raymond did too.
Dan and Marianne lived in a brick house
down by Southside Park and the cemetery.
We took Grandma Nettie to cemeteries.
We cleared the weeds from the graves
and put sweetpeas and carnations
in mason jars.
It was Uncle This and Second Cousin That,
a neighbor and
a child.
Flintridge.
5. Bath
Eleven years and forty-seven days gone
and still, when I walk into that room,
you've never left.
It seemed like days were night and
it would never end
and then, it did.
The rattle is real.
Until you've heard it,
you'll never know.
After the rattle ended,
I closed your eyes
and called the doctor and the coroner.
I went into the yard to tell Zella
and called Theresa and Rabih.
They tried to comfort me.
But, I did not know how to accept this comfort
until I had performed
the ritual that I knew I needed to complete.
I put warm water in a basin.
I found a cloth
and I began to wash your lifeless body.
I don't know why I did
I just knew I had to.
I washed the lesions and wounds.
I washed your feet that had not touched the ground in weeks.
I washed your hair and your once beautiful face
I washed your arms that had been so recently connected to the IV.
I washed what had been public
and I washed what had been most private
I dried your body with a soft towel.
At some point while I was performing this last offering for you
I saw your soul fly out of your body and through the open window.
The coroner came, wrapped your body in a bag and took it away.
You were not gone for long.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
Who is Entropy?
What was, for 45 minutes in 1988
appealing,
became a collection of sags and bumps,
wrinkles and soreness.
How does entropy
become optimism?
appealing,
became a collection of sags and bumps,
wrinkles and soreness.
How does entropy
become optimism?
Sunday, February 03, 2008
Sunday, January 27, 2008
I Am Not Gretel
Hansel and his older brother
led me into the forest behind their house.
Just after we crossed the road
it became darker.
The trees, a canopy of great height
obscured the sky.
We walked through thickets
and brush for what seemed hours.
Along the way, we picked
blackberries and salmon berries.
We ate them and saved
some in a paper sack.
We planned on taking them
home to make a pie.
We crossed a stream, rippling
and cold.
Before us was a ramshackle cabin
covered in vines.
Though it appeared to be abandoned,
there were signs of recent activity.
In a fire pit, there was a pile of cans
and paper charred at the edges.
Hansel told me that a
witch lived here.
His older brother told me that
no one had ever seen her.
We heard a rustling in the brush
a few feet away.
We ran and the sack of berries
fell from Hansel's hands.
Maybe, it was an offering
to the witch.
led me into the forest behind their house.
Just after we crossed the road
it became darker.
The trees, a canopy of great height
obscured the sky.
We walked through thickets
and brush for what seemed hours.
Along the way, we picked
blackberries and salmon berries.
We ate them and saved
some in a paper sack.
We planned on taking them
home to make a pie.
We crossed a stream, rippling
and cold.
Before us was a ramshackle cabin
covered in vines.
Though it appeared to be abandoned,
there were signs of recent activity.
In a fire pit, there was a pile of cans
and paper charred at the edges.
Hansel told me that a
witch lived here.
His older brother told me that
no one had ever seen her.
We heard a rustling in the brush
a few feet away.
We ran and the sack of berries
fell from Hansel's hands.
Maybe, it was an offering
to the witch.
Wednesday, January 09, 2008
Some of my favorite movies I saw in 2007
These are some of my favorite movies I saw in 2007:
Year of the Dog
I liked the mix of sadness and humor. Mollie Shannon was just perfect as a woman looking for love and finding it in an unlikely place. Peter Saarsgard was very good as a man who thinks he is doing "right", but is really clueless about his effect on others. Laura Dern was wonderful as the sister. The movie is a right blend of chaos and hopefulness. I liked Mike White's work as an actor and he displays a very fine style as a director.
Amazing Grace
An inspirational film about what one person can do to help bring change and justice to the world. I didn't know much about William Wilberforce before I saw the film, but truly appreciated his quest to end slavery in England. All of the performances were quite strong. Michael Apted is always at least interesting, but here is masterful with a historical epic.
Red Without Blue
This documentary just showed up on Netflix and I took a chance in renting it. I was very moved by this family's search for ways to love each other and their ability to love their differences.
Away From Her
I had admired Sarah Polley as an actress, but she proves to be a remarkable director with this film. Although all of the performances were amazing, Julie Christie gives the performance of her life as the woman sinking into Alzheimer's.
Junebug
Amy Adams displays a naturalness that at times made me cringe for her and at other times marvel in her character's optimism. Celia Watson was great as the mother and the rest of the cast was without weakness. I liked that the film took me to a part of the country not often seen and made what could have been a bunch of yahoos rounded and moving people.
Once
My favorite film of the year with first time actors delivering heartbreakingly real characters told through song. The music haunts me and brings tears to my eyes every time I hear Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova perform it. I loved the way the characters find love for each other and don't act on it. The mix of humor and sadness is right on the mark.
Looking through this list I realize that these films are all about looking for love and finding in in unlikely ways. From The Boy and The Girl in Once who find each other on the street, to Peggy and her dogs, to Fiona and Aubery paralleled by Grant and Marian in Away From Her, these stories all looked beyond the typical into not only what can be territory for loving, but into the reality of new kinds of love.
Year of the Dog
I liked the mix of sadness and humor. Mollie Shannon was just perfect as a woman looking for love and finding it in an unlikely place. Peter Saarsgard was very good as a man who thinks he is doing "right", but is really clueless about his effect on others. Laura Dern was wonderful as the sister. The movie is a right blend of chaos and hopefulness. I liked Mike White's work as an actor and he displays a very fine style as a director.
Amazing Grace
An inspirational film about what one person can do to help bring change and justice to the world. I didn't know much about William Wilberforce before I saw the film, but truly appreciated his quest to end slavery in England. All of the performances were quite strong. Michael Apted is always at least interesting, but here is masterful with a historical epic.
Red Without Blue
This documentary just showed up on Netflix and I took a chance in renting it. I was very moved by this family's search for ways to love each other and their ability to love their differences.
Away From Her
I had admired Sarah Polley as an actress, but she proves to be a remarkable director with this film. Although all of the performances were amazing, Julie Christie gives the performance of her life as the woman sinking into Alzheimer's.
Junebug
Amy Adams displays a naturalness that at times made me cringe for her and at other times marvel in her character's optimism. Celia Watson was great as the mother and the rest of the cast was without weakness. I liked that the film took me to a part of the country not often seen and made what could have been a bunch of yahoos rounded and moving people.
Once
My favorite film of the year with first time actors delivering heartbreakingly real characters told through song. The music haunts me and brings tears to my eyes every time I hear Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova perform it. I loved the way the characters find love for each other and don't act on it. The mix of humor and sadness is right on the mark.
Looking through this list I realize that these films are all about looking for love and finding in in unlikely ways. From The Boy and The Girl in Once who find each other on the street, to Peggy and her dogs, to Fiona and Aubery paralleled by Grant and Marian in Away From Her, these stories all looked beyond the typical into not only what can be territory for loving, but into the reality of new kinds of love.
Sunday, November 18, 2007
Sunday, November 11, 2007
I was at Community Thrift yesterday and found some great cookbooks. Among them was "The New Joys of Jell-O" from 1973. I was playing with some of the pictures and some old paintings of mine and came up with this Afrojello wedding. This sent me on a web search for mp3 files of The Lady Reed doing her character The Madam in the spoken word pieces called "The Sensuous Black Woman." I couldn't find them anywhere, so if you know of where to find them, holler.
Sunday, November 04, 2007
Tuesday, October 16, 2007
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Taxonomy of Loss: Bodies of Water
Taxonomy of Loss: Bodies of Water
Prologue:
relentless rain,
the cistern overflows
the distillation
and collection of all the sadness of the left behind.
water, dissipation in
swirls and ebbs, eddies and whorls
of blackness into light
and back to black
bodies
of water.
(the long night)
the all encompassing ocean
is the drop of rain
concentrated as essential loss.
1. Containments and Releases
a. Volcanic: Crater Lake, Oregon
purpled by altitude,
the granite bowl of ink,
the sky, dull and listless by comparison.
drowsy with color,
drifting in all directions;
trunks in silhouette
gnarled by the short light of the long summer morning,
in a car, nearly 45 years ago;
with my parents and my sister.
b. stagnant puddle
teaming with larvae and pollywogs
losing tails to gain legs
c.
The spent and smashed battery,
the clot of leaves,
runs the gutter.
outside of Woodland,
after too much beer
and too many reds,
Cookie Del Rio wrapped her Rambler
around a light post.
where would she be
30 odd years gone down?
chasing after Mexican boys
outside of Winters?
Or reformed, working her program
and swimming laps at the Davis Y?
d.
oak table
in a green room,
the glass vase holds
daisy water from days gone long.
that room was your bedroom
and is no longer.
whenever I pass the room
I am reminded.
e.
The ocean keeps getting deeper
15 years falling
into the end
that never ends.
trickling
cold fingers of memory
rescind the real and move it darker,
into another sadness that is
the ocean getting deeper.
15 years passed
and gone still, and utterly forever:
water over rocks
in sun.
fishing for trout
on the South Fork of the American River
past Placerville, Strawberry and Lover's Leap
past Tamarack and up the hill and at the Bridge,
or in the secret spot
down by the red cabin.
Salmon eggs
on a hook
on an afternoon in 1963.
two rocks hanging onto the side of the bank
a rainbow trout skitters under.
there is the scent of Queen Anne's lace,
shocks of lupine across the bend,
the glint of the hook as it splashes
into the darkness.
the current carries the bait under the rocks.
a slight tug
and the hook is snagged.
the slow hum of Highway 50.
The South Fork of the American River
flows through Sacramento, through Cortland and
Rio Vista and Antioch and Martinez
to the Bay and
out the Golden Gate.
(bridge to bridge)
(mountains to oceans)
2. Streams of Arrested Desire
a.
did he save or sell his soul?
did she walk to work?
did he try to get better?
did she ever really feel connected?
did he want for affection?
did he ever want to jump from a bridge
into a frigid lake
under a titanium cloud cover
in a wasteland of discarded furniture and bric-a-brac?
did he ever love a man in a cabin on a beach
on a churning night
in a summer
in the forties?
did he ever ford a stream
with his heart full with another?
did she fill his heart or
did it ever?
does it ever?
b.
Was it parenting in absentia?
under a spring moon,
on the cascading water,
blossoms drift through the breeze.
birdsong trails into a quartet.
did you ever sing for him?
did you ever reach under his arms and lift him from behind?
did you ever sit silently?
Did you talk about the watery weather?
under the bridge.
c.
how much is real?
how much is what was memory of what was heard
or some combination of
memory and having been told?
On the back porch
being washed in the concrete sink.
Happy singing in her cage
hanging over the raised floor above the basement door.
Sansaveria in a ceramic pot in the high window sill
the scent of cleanser and linoleum.
Out the screen door,
a shrimp plant and carnations
and metal lawn furniture painted silver.
The ballerino's house was beyond the hedge
through a hidden gate.
d.
So will there be some kind of a bookend
on either side:
a neat package
of banality and revelation
a final gift before
what is left of life leaks out?
Will it be reflected in the pond outside the window of a hospice
where just within hearing are red winged blackbirds and pheasants in the reeds?
e. sparkle
bounces off the shimmering waves
elevates the quivering motes
into a rippling and roiling current.
dappled iridescence elicits
slinking charcoal and coral burst of
slipping into an aqueous sunset.
f. Absence of Love
is Hell
g. presence of the past
20th and G Street
Said yes
and didn't:
a living room on the second floor
a flat above the Pakistani
who beat his wife, Ali.
solace, liquid in perpetuity.
it is mostly light now,
dappled and wandering in memory.
a vacuum cleaner is left behind.
1975
Mona, Gavin, Roger He is So White He is Wong,
The Lady Montessa de Rambova and
Dino who might have been there,
but I am not sure,
one by one
jumping out the first floor window into the hedge.
the dew dampens the back of my shorts.
around the table in the dining room,
peaking as Mona talks about Pioche,
I see spheres within spheres,
and hear the sound as they radiate outward and to the side: Spheres;
sounds within (within Spheres)
sounds within (within Spheres)
sounds (within Spheres).
July, midnight blue under street lights and stars night.
You will always remember your wedding cake and
the back of the red couch
and the scent of the disintegrating geometric patterned hotel rug.
Could you forget the drops of light
that sparkle in geometric patterns from every object?
h.
Mona took me to
The psychedelic shack high in the sky.
Behind another house
and up a railless steep staircase.
The black walls,
patterned with fragments of broken mirror,
shimmered reflections of leaves and sky.
The psychedelic shack high in the sky
was more shack and less psychedelic.
3. Currents
a. Riptide
pulls out stronger than in
go under
deeper
and go out further without a raft
into the night
there are no stars under the water and
phosphorescence is no substitute.
b. Lumahai Beach, Kauai,
with John and Zella and Bob and Chris.
We were the only ones on the beach.
A steep drop from the mangroves to the water,
but enough room for mats
and places to drift off into the afternoon in the
overarching sun.
Body surfing:
swimming out and waiting
for a wave
to ride back to the beach.
Zella caught in a wave
tumbled to the floor of the ocean,
twisted her shoulder
and had the breath knocked out of her.
She lost her confidence
around the ocean for a long time.
c. Water Falling On Rocks in the Redwoods
4. Cycles
There are more questions than answers.
questions breed more questions.
answers are mutable.
questions are permanent.
Will there ever be a resolution?
or will the questions become the resolution?
the rain evaporates into the atmosphere as
sadness disappates,
yet never disappears.
the cycle of grief is not the the cycles of water and weather.
ten years without clouds.
ten years of rain without end.
ten years a reign of something other than joy.
yet, in the joyless sound there is
a tinkling chime that somehow allows it all
to go on.
somewhere there is a glint or glimmer
that plays as a refrain
returning and reminding
the past is ever present and
the future never arrives.
in the cabinet in the living room
Aunt Cassie and Grandma Nettie are still bickering
so many years after death.
Aunt Edna is ever suffering
the arbutus in her front yard dropping fruit
at once brilliant and bland.
Grandma Lopez is ever present with coffee milk and little fish
Grandpa's hat is on the lampshade, ever on this side of singe.
It is before he got more mean and before she became a bear.
The living room and dining room are taken over by a table
that stretches so long
that if you are sitting in the living room
and need something in the kitchen,
you have to go outside and around the house
and go in through the back door
to retrieve what it is that you need.
At the table are seated Mom and Dad and Zella
and Grandma and Granpa and Grandma Nettie
and Aunt Lollie and Uncle Raymond and Patty
and Aunt Babe and Uncle Tom and Diana and Karl and June in a high chair,
Aunt Vera and Uncle Jack and Johnny and Jimmy and Mickey,
Dick and Jan Ryan and Donna
and sometimes Uncle John and Aunt Dorothy
and sometimes Uncle Buster and Aunt Marianne and Butch and Tommy and Jimmy
(it is before the little Ben).
Most of them are gone now,
but the memory of putting pitted olives over my fingers
and plates of ice cold celery with cheese spread
are as vivid this night as they were
when everyone had gone home
and my Mother was washing dishes at the kitchen sink
and my sister drying the dishes
and my Mother saying that she would never do it again
until the next birthday
or holiday came around
and everyone would be at the table
eating spareribs from Barbecue Heaven or take out from China Palace
or Grandma's awful concoction of chicken in Sacramento brand
tomato sauce with hard boiled eggs.
Disintegrated into energy
reformed by breath alone
Floating, disembodied,
detritus and ephemera:
the stuff that comes together to form
the veil.
The closet becomes an elevator
the bare light bulb
with a string and chain to pull on and off
Floor please?
3rd please.
2nd floor - ladies foundations, better dresses and coats
3rd floor - notions and yardage, cafeteria and gift wrap.
It was never my turn to be Miss Universe.
I got to be Miss Venezuela.
In the garage
mixing a potion
of blueing, bleach, and amonia
and painting it
on the three foot dancing doll.
Waiting to see the results
as the fumes wafted out the door
open to the street
across from Mrs. Clark
who lived next door to Wilda
who raised earth worms
in a bathtub
in her back yard.
Wilda lived across from Don and Hazel
Janice wearing a makeshift veil
married her Siamese cat, Charlie,
with a backdrop of pink "Naked Lady" Amaryllis
with Patty officiating as a priest
of the one Holy and Apostolic Church.
I was ring bearer and witness.
at about 4:30 p.m.
in the late Spring
at the side of Aunt Lollie and Uncle Raymond's light green house.
Twice, we went to Seattle.
The first time I was six
and the second time I was eight.
The first trip was
picking blackberries along the street,
watching Curtis and Rodney and Janice fighting over
chicken hearts and gizzards,
and waterfalls and Puget Sound.
The second trip was
the Seattle World's Fair,
digging for razor back clams
and a kitten caught in the fan belt
We stopped both times
to visit Mrs. Pearsons and Maxine.
On the second trip home
we stopped in Tillamok
and tasted cheese at the factory.
we stopped at the Tress of Mystery and
posed with the giant Paul Bunyan and
his Blue Ox, Babe.
My Mother and Father would wake us at 2:30 or 3:00 a.m.
Zella and I would be in our pajamas.
Groggy in the backseat
we set off in our Ford
up 99 through the Valley.
Sleeping and dreaming on vacation.
We would stop for breakfast.
Zella and I got dressed in the car.
Hash Browns. I always wanted whatever came with hash browns.
We crossed the Columbia River near dusk.
We crossed the Columbia River in the early morning.
We stopped at a beach in Oregon
and climbed down a steep cliff
and collected colored pebbles.
We stopped at Shasta Dam.
Once, Gordon and Vera
came to Sacramento.
They brought Rodney and Janice and Curtis and Cheryl.
Rodney and Curtis and I slept
in Uncle Carl's and Aunt Lil's house trailer
in the driveway.
Rodney and Curtis taught me how to play squirrel.
Go for the nuts.
I wanted to play Squirrel every night.
One time Rodney came to Sacramento.
He taught me how to roll cigarettes from butts.
He was a narc.
Cheryl married a black man.
The only time we ever made Grandma Lopez angry
was when Zella sat on the salt shaker and
the little metal ball at the top broke off in her butt.
We all laughed and Grandma scolded us as
she comforted Zella.
The little silver ball is still buried in
Zella's butt.
Afraid of my uncles in this order:
Tom
Raymond
Danny
Ted and Lynn were with Peps.
Ted set a church on fire
and ate wax fruit.
Ted put a bean up his nose
and it sprouted.
Lynn doesn't register.
Pep's died of cancer.
Ted went to jail
for shooting a man
who had spit
on his car
while cruising K.
Tehedingo.
Dan and Marianne lived in the projects.
Aunt Lollie and Uncle Raymond did too.
Dan and Marianne lived in a brick house
down by Southside Park and the cemetery.
We took Grandma Nettie to cemeteries.
We cleared the weeds from the graves
and put sweetpeas and carnations
in mason jars.
It was Uncle This and Second Cousin That,
a neighbor and
a child.
Flintridge.
5. Bath
Eleven years and forty-seven days gone
and still, when I walk into the room,
it is as if you've never gone.
It seemed like days were night and
it would never end
and then, it did.
The rattle is real.
Until you've heard it,
you'll never know.
After the rattle ended,
I closed your eyes
and called the doctor and the coroner.
I went into the yard to tell Zella
and called Theresa and Rabih.
They tried to comfort me.
But, I did not know how to accept this comfort
until I had performed
the ritual that I knew I needed to complete.
I put warm water in a basin.
I found a cloth
and I began to wash your lifeless body.
I don't know why I did
I just knew I had to.
I washed the lesions and wounds.
I washed your feet that had not touched the ground in weeks.
I washed your hair and your once beautiful face
I washed your arms that had been so recently connected to the IV.
I washed what had been public
and I washed what had been most private
I dried your body with a soft towel.
At some point while I was performing this last service for you
I saw your soul fly out of your body and through the open window.
The coroner came, wrapped you in a bag and took you away.
You were not gone for long.
Prologue:
relentless rain,
the cistern overflows
the distillation
and collection of all the sadness of the left behind.
water, dissipation in
swirls and ebbs, eddies and whorls
of blackness into light
and back to black
bodies
of water.
(the long night)
the all encompassing ocean
is the drop of rain
concentrated as essential loss.
1. Containments and Releases
a. Volcanic: Crater Lake, Oregon
purpled by altitude,
the granite bowl of ink,
the sky, dull and listless by comparison.
drowsy with color,
drifting in all directions;
trunks in silhouette
gnarled by the short light of the long summer morning,
in a car, nearly 45 years ago;
with my parents and my sister.
b. stagnant puddle
teaming with larvae and pollywogs
losing tails to gain legs
c.
The spent and smashed battery,
the clot of leaves,
runs the gutter.
outside of Woodland,
after too much beer
and too many reds,
Cookie Del Rio wrapped her Rambler
around a light post.
where would she be
30 odd years gone down?
chasing after Mexican boys
outside of Winters?
Or reformed, working her program
and swimming laps at the Davis Y?
d.
oak table
in a green room,
the glass vase holds
daisy water from days gone long.
that room was your bedroom
and is no longer.
whenever I pass the room
I am reminded.
e.
The ocean keeps getting deeper
15 years falling
into the end
that never ends.
trickling
cold fingers of memory
rescind the real and move it darker,
into another sadness that is
the ocean getting deeper.
15 years passed
and gone still, and utterly forever:
water over rocks
in sun.
fishing for trout
on the South Fork of the American River
past Placerville, Strawberry and Lover's Leap
past Tamarack and up the hill and at the Bridge,
or in the secret spot
down by the red cabin.
Salmon eggs
on a hook
on an afternoon in 1963.
two rocks hanging onto the side of the bank
a rainbow trout skitters under.
there is the scent of Queen Anne's lace,
shocks of lupine across the bend,
the glint of the hook as it splashes
into the darkness.
the current carries the bait under the rocks.
a slight tug
and the hook is snagged.
the slow hum of Highway 50.
The South Fork of the American River
flows through Sacramento, through Cortland and
Rio Vista and Antioch and Martinez
to the Bay and
out the Golden Gate.
(bridge to bridge)
(mountains to oceans)
2. Streams of Arrested Desire
a.
did he save or sell his soul?
did she walk to work?
did he try to get better?
did she ever really feel connected?
did he want for affection?
did he ever want to jump from a bridge
into a frigid lake
under a titanium cloud cover
in a wasteland of discarded furniture and bric-a-brac?
did he ever love a man in a cabin on a beach
on a churning night
in a summer
in the forties?
did he ever ford a stream
with his heart full with another?
did she fill his heart or
did it ever?
does it ever?
b.
Was it parenting in absentia?
under a spring moon,
on the cascading water,
blossoms drift through the breeze.
birdsong trails into a quartet.
did you ever sing for him?
did you ever reach under his arms and lift him from behind?
did you ever sit silently?
Did you talk about the watery weather?
under the bridge.
c.
how much is real?
how much is what was memory of what was heard
or some combination of
memory and having been told?
On the back porch
being washed in the concrete sink.
Happy singing in her cage
hanging over the raised floor above the basement door.
Sansaveria in a ceramic pot in the high window sill
the scent of cleanser and linoleum.
Out the screen door,
a shrimp plant and carnations
and metal lawn furniture painted silver.
The ballerino's house was beyond the hedge
through a hidden gate.
d.
So will there be some kind of a bookend
on either side:
a neat package
of banality and revelation
a final gift before
what is left of life leaks out?
Will it be reflected in the pond outside the window of a hospice
where just within hearing are red winged blackbirds and pheasants in the reeds?
e. sparkle
bounces off the shimmering waves
elevates the quivering motes
into a rippling and roiling current.
dappled iridescence elicits
slinking charcoal and coral burst of
slipping into an aqueous sunset.
f. Absence of Love
is Hell
g. presence of the past
20th and G Street
Said yes
and didn't:
a living room on the second floor
a flat above the Pakistani
who beat his wife, Ali.
solace, liquid in perpetuity.
it is mostly light now,
dappled and wandering in memory.
a vacuum cleaner is left behind.
1975
Mona, Gavin, Roger He is So White He is Wong,
The Lady Montessa de Rambova and
Dino who might have been there,
but I am not sure,
one by one
jumping out the first floor window into the hedge.
the dew dampens the back of my shorts.
around the table in the dining room,
peaking as Mona talks about Pioche,
I see spheres within spheres,
and hear the sound as they radiate outward and to the side: Spheres;
sounds within (within Spheres)
sounds within (within Spheres)
sounds (within Spheres).
July, midnight blue under street lights and stars night.
You will always remember your wedding cake and
the back of the red couch
and the scent of the disintegrating geometric patterned hotel rug.
Could you forget the drops of light
that sparkle in geometric patterns from every object?
h.
Mona took me to
The psychedelic shack high in the sky.
Behind another house
and up a railless steep staircase.
The black walls,
patterned with fragments of broken mirror,
shimmered reflections of leaves and sky.
The psychedelic shack high in the sky
was more shack and less psychedelic.
3. Currents
a. Riptide
pulls out stronger than in
go under
deeper
and go out further without a raft
into the night
there are no stars under the water and
phosphorescence is no substitute.
b. Lumahai Beach, Kauai,
with John and Zella and Bob and Chris.
We were the only ones on the beach.
A steep drop from the mangroves to the water,
but enough room for mats
and places to drift off into the afternoon in the
overarching sun.
Body surfing:
swimming out and waiting
for a wave
to ride back to the beach.
Zella caught in a wave
tumbled to the floor of the ocean,
twisted her shoulder
and had the breath knocked out of her.
She lost her confidence
around the ocean for a long time.
c. Water Falling On Rocks in the Redwoods
4. Cycles
There are more questions than answers.
questions breed more questions.
answers are mutable.
questions are permanent.
Will there ever be a resolution?
or will the questions become the resolution?
the rain evaporates into the atmosphere as
sadness disappates,
yet never disappears.
the cycle of grief is not the the cycles of water and weather.
ten years without clouds.
ten years of rain without end.
ten years a reign of something other than joy.
yet, in the joyless sound there is
a tinkling chime that somehow allows it all
to go on.
somewhere there is a glint or glimmer
that plays as a refrain
returning and reminding
the past is ever present and
the future never arrives.
in the cabinet in the living room
Aunt Cassie and Grandma Nettie are still bickering
so many years after death.
Aunt Edna is ever suffering
the arbutus in her front yard dropping fruit
at once brilliant and bland.
Grandma Lopez is ever present with coffee milk and little fish
Grandpa's hat is on the lampshade, ever on this side of singe.
It is before he got more mean and before she became a bear.
The living room and dining room are taken over by a table
that stretches so long
that if you are sitting in the living room
and need something in the kitchen,
you have to go outside and around the house
and go in through the back door
to retrieve what it is that you need.
At the table are seated Mom and Dad and Zella
and Grandma and Granpa and Grandma Nettie
and Aunt Lollie and Uncle Raymond and Patty
and Aunt Babe and Uncle Tom and Diana and Karl and June in a high chair,
Aunt Vera and Uncle Jack and Johnny and Jimmy and Mickey,
Dick and Jan Ryan and Donna
and sometimes Uncle John and Aunt Dorothy
and sometimes Uncle Buster and Aunt Marianne and Butch and Tommy and Jimmy
(it is before the little Ben).
Most of them are gone now,
but the memory of putting pitted olives over my fingers
and plates of ice cold celery with cheese spread
are as vivid this night as they were
when everyone had gone home
and my Mother was washing dishes at the kitchen sink
and my sister drying the dishes
and my Mother saying that she would never do it again
until the next birthday
or holiday came around
and everyone would be at the table
eating spareribs from Barbecue Heaven or take out from China Palace
or Grandma's awful concoction of chicken in Sacramento brand
tomato sauce with hard boiled eggs.
Disintegrated into energy
reformed by breath alone
Floating, disembodied,
detritus and ephemera:
the stuff that comes together to form
the veil.
The closet becomes an elevator
the bare light bulb
with a string and chain to pull on and off
Floor please?
3rd please.
2nd floor - ladies foundations, better dresses and coats
3rd floor - notions and yardage, cafeteria and gift wrap.
It was never my turn to be Miss Universe.
I got to be Miss Venezuela.
In the garage
mixing a potion
of blueing, bleach, and amonia
and painting it
on the three foot dancing doll.
Waiting to see the results
as the fumes wafted out the door
open to the street
across from Mrs. Clark
who lived next door to Wilda
who raised earth worms
in a bathtub
in her back yard.
Wilda lived across from Don and Hazel
Janice wearing a makeshift veil
married her Siamese cat, Charlie,
with a backdrop of pink "Naked Lady" Amaryllis
with Patty officiating as a priest
of the one Holy and Apostolic Church.
I was ring bearer and witness.
at about 4:30 p.m.
in the late Spring
at the side of Aunt Lollie and Uncle Raymond's light green house.
Twice, we went to Seattle.
The first time I was six
and the second time I was eight.
The first trip was
picking blackberries along the street,
watching Curtis and Rodney and Janice fighting over
chicken hearts and gizzards,
and waterfalls and Puget Sound.
The second trip was
the Seattle World's Fair,
digging for razor back clams
and a kitten caught in the fan belt
We stopped both times
to visit Mrs. Pearsons and Maxine.
On the second trip home
we stopped in Tillamok
and tasted cheese at the factory.
we stopped at the Tress of Mystery and
posed with the giant Paul Bunyan and
his Blue Ox, Babe.
My Mother and Father would wake us at 2:30 or 3:00 a.m.
Zella and I would be in our pajamas.
Groggy in the backseat
we set off in our Ford
up 99 through the Valley.
Sleeping and dreaming on vacation.
We would stop for breakfast.
Zella and I got dressed in the car.
Hash Browns. I always wanted whatever came with hash browns.
We crossed the Columbia River near dusk.
We crossed the Columbia River in the early morning.
We stopped at a beach in Oregon
and climbed down a steep cliff
and collected colored pebbles.
We stopped at Shasta Dam.
Once, Gordon and Vera
came to Sacramento.
They brought Rodney and Janice and Curtis and Cheryl.
Rodney and Curtis and I slept
in Uncle Carl's and Aunt Lil's house trailer
in the driveway.
Rodney and Curtis taught me how to play squirrel.
Go for the nuts.
I wanted to play Squirrel every night.
One time Rodney came to Sacramento.
He taught me how to roll cigarettes from butts.
He was a narc.
Cheryl married a black man.
The only time we ever made Grandma Lopez angry
was when Zella sat on the salt shaker and
the little metal ball at the top broke off in her butt.
We all laughed and Grandma scolded us as
she comforted Zella.
The little silver ball is still buried in
Zella's butt.
Afraid of my uncles in this order:
Tom
Raymond
Danny
Ted and Lynn were with Peps.
Ted set a church on fire
and ate wax fruit.
Ted put a bean up his nose
and it sprouted.
Lynn doesn't register.
Pep's died of cancer.
Ted went to jail
for shooting a man
who had spit
on his car
while cruising K.
Tehedingo.
Dan and Marianne lived in the projects.
Aunt Lollie and Uncle Raymond did too.
Dan and Marianne lived in a brick house
down by Southside Park and the cemetery.
We took Grandma Nettie to cemeteries.
We cleared the weeds from the graves
and put sweetpeas and carnations
in mason jars.
It was Uncle This and Second Cousin That,
a neighbor and
a child.
Flintridge.
5. Bath
Eleven years and forty-seven days gone
and still, when I walk into the room,
it is as if you've never gone.
It seemed like days were night and
it would never end
and then, it did.
The rattle is real.
Until you've heard it,
you'll never know.
After the rattle ended,
I closed your eyes
and called the doctor and the coroner.
I went into the yard to tell Zella
and called Theresa and Rabih.
They tried to comfort me.
But, I did not know how to accept this comfort
until I had performed
the ritual that I knew I needed to complete.
I put warm water in a basin.
I found a cloth
and I began to wash your lifeless body.
I don't know why I did
I just knew I had to.
I washed the lesions and wounds.
I washed your feet that had not touched the ground in weeks.
I washed your hair and your once beautiful face
I washed your arms that had been so recently connected to the IV.
I washed what had been public
and I washed what had been most private
I dried your body with a soft towel.
At some point while I was performing this last service for you
I saw your soul fly out of your body and through the open window.
The coroner came, wrapped you in a bag and took you away.
You were not gone for long.
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