Sometimes I lose my life, only to find her again in a bar, in a conversation, in a completed task, or in a run through the park. She's mine because she has a will, energy, and direction. When she walks in the sand she leaves footprints and they're often crooked, stepping to a jazz that she listens to on her own. The rest of the time I leave scarcely a toe print-jutting off the edge of the communal impression where my shapen foot doesn't quite jive with yours and yours and yours. Its our path I suppose, but we possess it soulessly, without contemplation, with a murky purpose. And all the while phantom ways dance inside my head, leaving vanishing toe prints on my play dough brain and I feel them as something that could be, that could have been. But nothing more. The impulses fade before I can shift even a little toe. To translate a potential into action, imagi
ne the neural pathways that must be run. So we walk, trod, plod, as indicated, aware of a settling unease and oblivious, just oblivious to a source, an escape, to ourselves marching to no end. And then I feel a peck on the neck or forearm and warmth spreads down my spine, into my soles and into my soul. A peck from full lips, anxious and loving, reincarnated upon meeting my molting skin. She's my life. Today I found her in the restaurants and bars of quito, as I shuddered and extended an arm and bent in a demi-plie, listening to myself dancing on my brain. And she grabbed me tight in a sprawling waltz as a stranger laid his life before my eyes. Because I saw how much deeper my feet sink with her and how good the sand feels between my toes and how much happier the course. So me and my life, I think we might shine for a while now. I think we might laugh loudly, and I think we might hope not to get lost again



domingo, 21 de febrero de 2010

In some other world

In some other world
We're all growing old together
We were there when we all turned 21
Just like we were there when we turned 16
We watch clouds on blankets
As the wind rushes against our cheeks
And "how have you been?" has no meaning
None of us have learned what it means to live in the cold
and changes come in increments
as they should
No one asks what we will do
And we all know everything can be worked out
We carve deeper and deeper infinities inside each other's hearts
and no one can say that a gesture is her own
Yes, in some other world
I've been there often
in smiles and touches and understanding
But today I wonder
If in that other world 16 or 21 really had any meaning
If maybe our desperation, our dreams of separation
Carved the first nicks into which
the stream of our understanding has flowed
in that other world
Could I write poetry
Or taste coffee
Or feel so sad and alone and connected in suburbia
Under blue skies and palm trees on a winter's day?
Goodbye other world
remain in my heart
but today I wake up among paper bags
and plastic and strangers and a million good byes
and a million hellos
But today I will laugh and cry and taste and see
Because I know, deep in my heart, here,
and in some other world,
we're all growing old together

It is I

It is I, the eternal illness
the eternal sick
the eternal dark
the eternal knowledge
that i will never be with you
that we don't see eye to eye
that we claw at one another's
souls
that we were separated at birth
that the cord was cut
that i can say where your body ends
and where mine begins
it is I
eternal lonliness
eternal longing
eternal existence
I am pain, nausea
a heaving torso, a writhing spine
and wet eyes
I am sick with grief
even we are sick with grief
A gulf that pierces us all
right through the center
black stitches through a colored quilt
it is I
I that holds the world together

Autumn

Oh how terrible the beauty of the first day of fall
The girl can only cry
She senses deep power
She senses the wind within
And if she were to perish
So she could dance
But what to do with the body of a mortal
Such power would kill her
Trample her to death
As unharnessed horses
for they know her not
though they rage within
But how to harness the wind
How to tame the sea
to forestall our own deaths must we kill?
She dices her own pain with words
The sea is calmer now
But oh such power
She must be the power
Or she will surely die
of grief
of a broken heart
of the waves crashing into her shell on the sand
But to live
To face the wind with dry eyes
How?
Create her pen whispers in black
Create
Translate
Translate
Translate
May your words sing the wind
Your steps the sea
Your eyes the skies
Your fingers the trees
Your face the moon
Translate, she dries her eyes

Saturday Afternoon

She was a young woman now. She sat on her bed and her heart ached. It ached with deep longing for completion and meaning. For relationship and a shared life. She sensed that depth existed. She felt the call to intense waters, to balance, to encountering a soul, a place, that would shift her own and give the whole a moment of ecstasy. Give her a moment of ecstasy. To fill a latent potential. To strike her match. She longed to burn. Every shifting center has a million purposes through which it is fulfilled. Through which it provides fulfillment. A match when lit, a doll when played with, a car when driven. The earth, we, endow beings with the gift of giving. And those moments of realization of purpose are orgasms, fulfillment, divinity, life. This pen, this ink, this paper, ecstasy. They satisfy the greater situation and so satisfy themselves. But she, where did she fit? Who could write poems with her form? She longed to spill ink. Longed. Was a writer near? She was within her grasp. She smelled a life that she knew long ago. Before she understood anything at all. A candle stand, molded, elaborate, a foot or two tall reminded her of a bygone era, that lived deep within them all. What were all the surfaces referencing? Children, technology, money, Africa, god? Her bedroom told a story of enslavement, though she could not exactly say why. Four walls, a single window, sharp edges, space. No matter where she looked, there she was, within those four walls. They contained her mind. The "outside" shaded and glassed. And there she rested in the middle. Minute, staring at herself from all directions. Floating in space. She breathed in chilled air. Her mother told her people believed in empty space once they stopped seeing the air as a being. A being she had an intimate relationship with, yet she could still only think of molecules and space. A wall separated her and her brother. Floating in boxes in space. Calm because it was Saturday afternoon.