I can still write a love poem

We are all, all of us,
trying to be. I believe that.

I remember Samantha
in her lonely apartment,
stingy with the pinot
because she is agoraphobic
and an alcoholic,
talking to her parakeet
in whistles.

Jamie asked me to dance,
and I declined
as I was fielding other offers,
and other silky heads of hair
grooved on my shoulders
as she watched.
I would know the same.

I go back to Nancy knitting in her chair,
routing for the Yankees,
standing up for A-Rod like a spouse
with every woolen loop.

Sue's mouth open,
the kiss of winter,
and now, the dry heat of the angels.

Frank asked me the same question,
and showed me the same goods.

I remember my father's words,
separated from his reckless voice
like yolks.

And my mother's face
when she realized, when she stood,
the broken shells.

That kid who panicked
on the high board, and cracked his noggin,
and it was I who dove in after.

We're trying.
We're trying.

Polly stifling
professional tears.

I remember what they wrote
in my yearbook, I read it from time to time.

Anthony broke the ice,
floated with me downstream on the flows,
and he's married now.

And I remember you,
a you, one version of it,
trying, trying.

I saw souls encumbered with reality,
trying quietly to be, to be.

Never

Never scorches the sidewalk.
Never singes the hairs on our chests.

Never, the last gas station
on the mountain. Never,
a separate entity,
its own,
eternal,
always.

If I saw you,
and entered reality fully,
briefly, if only,
with my six pack of Newcastle,
and punctured your stasis,
or whirlpool,
or shimmering,
then grateful are we
for the realness of life and all.

My darling,
my enemy,
my everything/nothing,
the broken twig
is transplanted -
the splice is to generate
wholly its duplicate,
mothered by earth,
fathered by time,
which is nonsense;
don't worry.

It was your own fault,
not mine.
And their fault,
not ours,
and my fault,
as it goes,
so I'll always be willing,
to shoulder the burden
of living,
while you float,
while you float

on the puppy dog cloud
I have given you,
and I'll puff at it wildly,
perpetually, madly,
incessantly,
driving the whisp of you upward
as I furtively sink
to the core.

Keep smiling.

You will breathe the air.
I will absorb the ore.

We will dig until the bedrock,
and course until the skylight glass,
until my drill bit busts,
and your wax wings melt,
and we are human beings once more.

Saturday is New

I've returned to the twin palms,
and they've been gossiping about me
ever since.

Back to the endless strip,
of taco stands and gas stations,
and hidden marvels
in the hills.

Returned, I have,
with nothing
again, but feathery thoughts,
and enamel wishes.

The hunter has returned,
from his sabbatical/imprisonment
in the city of spires,
to the city of holes.
From the asphalt jungle,
to the tropical wasteland.
From the melting pot,
to the griddle.
From man to woman,
and back again.

What If?

What if they told you
the world was following you?

Like a swarm of fruit flies,
and a week-old basket of strawberries;

Like the pope and his cardinals;

Like a film director
and the production assistants.

What if your travels were not travels at all,
but the world rotating to meet you?

Like a carousel turning
to reveal another scene;

Like a paper towel roll,
or a treadmill,
or peek-a-boo.

What if you knew
the power of your hoping?

Would you lie between your sheets?
Would you shout it, and sing it?
Would you wait until tomorrow?
Would you spend another moment engaged
in anything but yearning?

What if your curses came true too,
not in flashes of light,
but in several months?

What if your heroes were ready
to kneel before the new them?

What if all you wanted
was all there was?

How would you sculpt your wishes?

What if heaven was not a place to go,
but a pie to bake?

What if Jesus, and Buddha, and Muhammed said,
"Stop worshipping us from so far away!
Join us here in this soup!"
How much of that poison cup
would you drink? How much of your self
would you give away? How much prophecy
would you fulfill?

What if you knew
that everything you've lost
will turn out in the wash.

What if they told you
you were very important,
and what if what we call the world
was waiting for your word?

For Joshua

We are crying the tears of nations,
Darnella and her white husband.
Men who took women,
and families to which
the setting sun
became the destination
of a generation.
Westward,
westward,
the ramblers flocked.

Westward,
westward,
where San Francisco and Los Angeles
are the drain catches,
festering with riches,
rotting in the glory,
dripping medicinal nectar
on the tongues of beggars.

Your boy, Darnella,
must learn the tongues,
must know his tribes,
and all.

Your boy, is our hope;
he is hope for young men like me,
just learning how wrong our fathers'
fathers' got it in translation.

Bring instead all the warblings,
all the dances,
all the dishes,
all the moonts,
and howies
of the clans,
of the child himself.

Bring them to him,
and in so doing,
bring them to us all.

For Billie

My little Jewish grandmother says this:
You cannot unearth a seed,
to make sure it is growing.

We are not related by blood.
She says, You cannot pull apart
the petals of a rose,
and say it's blooming.

She's saying, I love you.
She is saying to me, I am old and know
what it is to blossom.
I can see what you cannot.
She is saying trust me.

She says, These are ripe times.
We are related by underground wellsprings.

Now I'm mad about the bullshit

The whole country smells like it,
different kinds of crap.

Stuck in the teeth
of the ranger at Yellowstone,
smiling at my Jersey plates,
from under his Smoky Bear hat.

Under the fingernails
of midwestern truckers,
speeding up to keep me from passing,
coordinating moving roadblocks with their fat CB's,
smiling at my Jersey plates,
with half & half eyes,
through bearded veils.

Sprinkled like manna over the Badlands
and the alkaline flats.

Like grit in their hair,
and their underwear,
and the shitstank of anyone
saying, This land is mine.

From the corporations,
from the suburbanites,
from the farmers,
from the settlers,
from the natives,
from the pioneers,
from the trappers,
from the nations,
from the cowboys,
from the cavalry,
from the yuppies,
from the hippies,
from the gaurdsmen,
from the tribes,
from the clans,
from the families,
from the men,
from the women,
from the children,
from the elk,
from the bison,
from the foxes,
from the bears,
from the maples,
from the conifers,
from the rivers,
from the glaciers,
from the sand,
from the rock,
from the dust,
from the star dust.
This is not land.
This is not place.

And your jobs
should go to Mexico,
should go to India. That movie
should be shot in Canada.
There is no
should.
These things
will.

These men are not evil.
These men are not good.
Men are.
Men do.
This happened to you;
you happened to it.
She didn't leave you;
you didn't fail.
The way is never blocked;
life finds itself falling everywhere.
Stamp out melancholy, its quiet rage,
unless it's changing,
unless it's growth.

Fly from evolution.
Do not impede the naked children of these lands,
of these cities and farms,
replacing the transmissions
of their tractors or sedans.

Wrap evolution around you
like 30 yards of silk.
Let evolution tickle
every corner of your flesh.
Be growth.
Say to those you love, "Grow!"
Grow as humans, yes,
but grow into humanity itself.
For there will be others down the line,
and we will be the jilted peoples of old,
the taken-advantage-of women,
the starving prospectors of the Donner Pass,
even as we cruise at 80,
and brag about credit card debt.

Even as now we are whistling
at our own reflections
wherever we can find them:
in the stars,
on TV screens,
in her eyes,
in a roll of the dice,
in a bottle,
in a sweet little thang.
Grow into these,
and out of them.
Grow with them,
but not away from yourself.
Grow upward,
but do not sprawl.

The desert weeds are desperate for water.
We are not to spread so thin.

The river can afford to trickle and freeze.
All its efforts will be returned.

We are not weed.
We are not water.
Spew forth your liquid self at intervals,
in measured squirts.
Retain the rest.
Rest, rebuild, replenish.
Engage the process.
Leave all the shit.
Burn it for fuel.
Feed it to the corn.
Then eat the corn.
But don't eat the shit.
Don't put it on someone else's plate
and call it supper,
or how it is.
Because the how of it,
the way,
the it itself,
ain't yours,
or mine,
or anyone's come before,
or anyone's coming.

Grab the earth with your hands.
Do what you will with this.
Teach growth,
and don't call it nothing.

What is authentic then?

If I loved you,
and I did you true,
then was it not the dream?

Santa says that dreams are not real.

And welcome to this side of that fence,
the grass is colorless.

Nothing
anyone
does
is real.
Fuck you.

Dreams are real if you make them so?
Good luck.

The christmas tree,
as soon as I said it,
disappeared.
I would like
very much
to believe in something,
and not be saying,
"Well, you're not really..."

Where, oh, where did my little dreams go?
They left like everyone else.
Time is such a ruthless bitch -
it was fun pretending though, huh?

If there's anything in the world you could do,
and you knew you could not fail...
Um, be a big fucking star?
I guess, rule the world?

I was not the tree.
I saw it.
I was not the fear or pain.
I felt it.
That's who I am.
Hear this voice?
That's who I am.
That's who you are.
This is who you are.
This is who I am.

But it's not real.
Child, what do you know of reality?
This place
was made.
Make it real.
This clay, you, the world,
molded. Mold it.
It is real either way.
Clay is the world.
Clay is real.
Mold it into a person.
The person is real,
an idea
made
of clay,
made real,
as real as possibull.

One Way

I've been writing all this
for years, but not living it.
I've not been living enough,

to say
with words
what I observe
with feeling
as I live it.

The work (!) is not "to write"
or "to do"
but to live,
to be.

To be alive is your work,
though death has been waiting
in the corner since the nursery.

I could be a breadmaker.
That is not who I am.
I could do it as a tile setter.
This is who I am.

This here unknowable life.
Can't with mind, free of that.
Yes, shell-less,
intellelectual-less,
flaw-less in this.

Free to be selfish, callous,
and still be

all those things
I was not allowed to be,
different every moment,
and still...

Looking still like me
at 12 or 43,
and everyone else,
seperate parts
of a whole,
the blurry edges,
the world, the way,
a watercolor.

Their souls, my soul,
one soul fractured
into tiny little shards,
sparkling through
our little bodies.

We are putting back together
this great crystal,
which came shattered in its box,
piece by piece,
heart by heart.
Picking and choosing,
but aware.