when that which harms feels right

The years
have lined up my spine,
traced its route
from heel
up to where
neck meets head,
where my hair is fluffed,
innocent and unaware
of this injustice.

All this time,
I thought
this stiff cord
drawn against the length
and the loss of my soul
would hold me up,
suspend me,
make me the iron warrior
I thought I wanted to be.

Did I want to be a warrior? Yes.
But one with heart of duck down pillow
and purple irises.

This yardstick of titanium
that works so well in the movies,
has broken my creative hand,
my freedom of thought,
my ease of Spirit.

Since it was implanted for me
when I was a child,
my back, my will have been broken.

to want again

To Want Again



Funny how it
desists flowing for excruciating periods,
and depression is then something,
an awful real thing.

But then some conspiracy of things,
like a book,
or a new coffeeshop
or the vision of a lady
with legs bare in the harsh cold of near winter
literally dragging two huffy beagles down the street
outside said coffeeshop,
or…like a book,
strike you flat on the head.
And not only can you write again,
but precluding this,
you want to write again
and you want oh so very much
to read again, to read more and more.

But quite simply,
You want again,
For want is of the heart,
And your heart had been closed –
To friends, to self, to the hope of ever finding love again,
And not least of all to poetry.
And now you want, just want, not a thing
or a circumstance, but wanting like the impetus
that rises us from bed in the morning, from the womb.
Maybe you just want to sit and give thanks.

sunfish

leaving
town;
leaving it down the road,
down the
down
into the ground,
grave thoughts,
grave graves,
buried,
I am buried alive…

yet on the other side
I see reason
(hope)
mope toward the light,
reach with full spine,
into the future,
into now,
touch what is not possible –

it surrounds,
permeates you
like the ocean beguiles a sunfish

feel it

total acceptance
of the moment
and everything in it,
feel it,
know it,
glow it alive,
inside out with your heart,
blow the flame
into the glass,
make it drip sweat
and sear with end of steel rod,
seeing red,
sparks golden,
metal molten,

and blame no outside agency
no person
or institution
or idea
or convention for what you find here;
blame nothing,
just be with it,
blazing light into your secret, sodden places

the ones you dread

we are the chosen ones,
the illegitimate sons,
the incested daughters,
the smudged faces
of orphans,
kicking a dirty soccerball
through dusty, drunken lots.

we hold a secret
deep down in our shirts,
a midnight cry, a city scream,
a heart-hurt,
like an M-80 frozen
halfway through explosion.

we are the ones you dread,
the same ones you put hope in;
for we will find our way,
and in finding ours, we will find the map
for you to
find yours.

dog -- GOD

dog -- GOD

it is God who is weeping
as that dog,
moaning
for its owner,
a molecule of pure feeling
surrounded by energy fields
woven into energy fields –
that are manifesting the body of a mongrel.
that dog knows a thing or two
about how much
it sucks,
cheeks puffing,
eyes glistening,
yelps minutely escaping jowls,
jowls clenched against
the whole fucking WORLD!

loss and love and longing
and loss and loganberry pie
and licking his feet... licking, sniffing,
and licking, kissing his feet...

he is now licking the feet of the beloved,
who has stepped out of the cafe
to retrieve Him,
the now rejoicing God-dog-doggy-dog.

and in His lowly eyes,
savior and salvation and Self,
are all reflected;

in the eyes of this beagle who watches his life
slip away
and be resurrected
every single night at around 8 o'clock
outside of Caribou coffee,
in those eyes of innocence and Infinite depth,
are the beginning and ending
of everything,
and the beginning and ending
of everything.

jars of green glowing

jars
of green
glowing silver-blue,
overflowing,
flowing into the sink,
circling down,
counterclockwise
into the disposal

little beings
of sun-stricken grief,
struck to heart by
desire to see
the sun that has
given us energy
and a hand up the puppet's
neck to belief;

the star-blue star wreck
of impossible broken heart healings;
lift color to a new zone --
zone of evolutionary knowing.

shortly after dawn

this one kind of says what it says, then skeedaddles.



grey,
everything grey,
the pavement ---- grey,
the black chairs and black metal tables
on the coffeeshop porch,
dulling grey in the pale grey light of early morning.

only the tall-grass blades by the window
shine with their sheer openness,
green and light-green,
kelly-green and yellow-green and white-green;
the poms on the tips of the burlap-grasses,
a hint of red
and milk-weed white,
shy, blissful rejoinders
to a sound of wind and voices and traffic I cannot hear
behind this window,
here,
sipping sugar-cream coffee and ice-water.

what I did at work today

the reading material
I brought
is coarse
and luscious,
brimstone, treacle
and transcendence

love the taste
of those
Buddhist heart
murmurings,
love the
songwriters' tales,
the unknowns and
halfblown geniuses
and the Kenneth Rexroth poetry,
Chinese style shorts
and original, leaf-turning
chicken medallions
with honey barbeque
glaze

I could give up this job
and pile books to read
for endless anonymous afternoons,
but I don't think I'd enjoy
them as much
if I weren't sneaking them in,
paragraph by paragraph,
between clients

my books

had been thinking of the insight meditation books I've been reading when I wrote this, but it applies to Ursula LeGuin and all of the poetry I've been reading (Rilke, Neruda, W.C. Williams, Lorca, et cetera) and other books, of course.


my books
old friends
dead letters
living under
leaf
of dried, browned, bound pages,
lifting life
to new heights,
new levels of light

and each new breath,
each word or phrase,
each mark of punctuation
a new step
into deepest, blackest night,
forevermore...

no return,
no retreat,
no hope
of scaling
a peace that takes
no prisoners,
with not a word,
without a
fight

what it has all been for

why friendships have broken my heart only to heal it again -1) because, until recently, I hadn't had friends for years and years and became a kind of social moron, and 2) because of the below...



blossoming
heart,
fire in belly,
burning through,
water flow,
fresh, free and clear,
stone at foot of mountain,
layer of rock and rubble
holding up layer
of rock and rubble,
holding up, carelessly, ceaselessly
until peak is reached.

whole Earth, bare,
rooted in ether
and swirling
rivulet streams
of golden light,
moving, living gold,
watching --

we are not alone,
this I know,
this is what it has all been for --
we are not alone.

introvertabrate

Wondering one night at a coffeeshop how I can be a dazzling social butterfly, but only until I turn back into a pumpkin.




garrulous
tonight
for short shocks
of sullen,
sorryass
5 minute
bursts of conversation,
bumbling at the end of each
then leaving off
and going back, going back,
to put my face in a book.

Rod McKuen Was Not a Poetry Ho

Well, maybe he was, but it doesn't appear so from my perspective. He was one of the best-selling poets of all time, which does suggest he must have been a ho, but...well, I like a lot of his stuff because it's like the MacDonald's of subtlety and innuendo and meaning. If you want some smooth poetry in a hurry, pull up to the drive through and maybe order "ONE" from Listen to the Warm, stolen and posted below.






This is the way it was
while I was waiting for your eyes
to find me.

I was drifting
going no place.
Hypnotized by sunshine
maybe,
barking back at seals along the beach.
Skipping flat stones on the water,
but much too wise for sand castles.
My castles were across the sea
or still within my mind.

There were the beach bars
and the other beach people
sometimes little bedrooms were my beach,
but I was drifting.

I must have thought the night could save me
as I went down into pillows
looked up through dirty windows
smiled back from broken mattresses
turned in Thunderbirds
and kissed in elevators.

I cried too sometimes.
For me.

I loved every face I thought looked pretty
and every kindred eye I caught in crowds.
But I was drifting
before you.

chapbook sneak peak -- "breathing out"

he flew into the bus shelter,
blinded
by his passion for flight,

crashed into the glass,
hit the ground
and hopped, flapped,
stunned.

he offered no resistance
as I lifted him into my palm,
and changed plans
so I could take him
to the Nature Center
on the #26.

he just sat there,
warm and pulsing,
yielding.

the bus driver,
when he saw him cradled in my hand,
shooed me away,

but that was alright;
I laid him on the ground
near a sprite little tree
on a breezy, park foliage-island nearby
and walked away.

She Heals with a Word -- my second chapbook

I will be creating a new chapbook soon, filled mostly with what I call my more "pretty" or "healing" poems. They will be twenty pages at five dollars and proceeds may be going to a mission for orphans in Kenya. If you'd like a chapbook, please contact me at jazzcoffeefreak@yahoo.com as I am only creating about 50 and will make more if need demands.

when I am difficult

I actually don't feel this way more than 25% of the time.



Indifferent,
I turn away
from the levers
that control the Heavens.

One pull,
one crank,
and you could thank me
for making your life better.

Yet I refuse
to put myself in the mood
that contorts my face
into a warm smile,
that lightens my limbs
to the point where
they raise of themselves
to reach those levers.

I am indifferent, but I am not selfish.
I am simply sluggish with melancholy,
lacking vision to see any
hope
in any venture ventured today,
in any attempt at the supernal,
whether lost or gained.

"donkey" and "tantric healing" (two haiku)

first, it's the carrot,
then, Friend, the whip: Dear Donkey,
find your true longing



I wanted you to
heal my heart through tantric love.
You did, you said, "No."

What She Knew

Bless Mark Hopkins soul for wanting to publish this in the Cleveland Reader, while his dratted foil (okay, Nick's a cool guy too) passed it over. I remember things like this to the minutest detail. I can tell you how it felt to be there. this happened circa -- 29 years ago, written four years ago.





The kid had skipped out of practice
and had just arrived, halfway through, out of uniform.
But with one sentence to coach Terrengo,
all was forgotten.

“There’s a girl choking by the lower field.”

We had never seen coach T. run,
let alone run so fast.
He was a huge guy, in height weight and muscle.
He just flew down that hill
and the other coaches managed to keep us up there
until everything was alright.

We followed down then
to find her on a bench,
turning back from blue to peach,
coach T. standing next to her.
The story was that he’d
Heimliched a piece of gum from her throat.

The next day,
I looked over at her a couple of times
in Spanish class.
She sat there in a grey sweatshirt,
and I remember noticing how frail
and, for the first time,
how pretty she looked.

The drone of Ms. Coffey’s voice
hovered over the room,
odd and dull,
while Ginny gave off this aura of humility,
real and palpable,
as if she knew something
it would take years and years
for any of us
to understand.

ZION

Gee, another Cleveland transit one right after another. An old one but one I like. At least I'm learning how less to use commas.





Hands-down,
the
most
beautiful
scene,
with soundtrack,
in Cleveland –
riding
the Red Line
over the Cuyahoga mouth,

graffiti
unfurls
down below,
buildings emblazoned
with words,
misspelled, meaningless,
non-existent non-sequiturs –

ZION
DIZER
GERL

not all of which I understand,
but they seem to belong,
along with
this river of suggestion,
the dirt and grime,
the hands of ghosts
worked to the bone,
the businesses,
restaurants and clubs,
trying to keep hold,
boats,
towing freight
out to the lake,

and me,
30 yards up, looking down,
humming, REM’s “S. Central Rain”,
to myself.

transit, TV and graffiti

an old one which I think I read once at a poetry reading then never shared with anyone else. self-inventory -- I put the boring ones in books, send the boring ones to contests, and generally keep the good ones to myself. must remedy that. may that this be a start --




houses appear behind hills;
snow lauds, litters brush-strewn narrow ways;
brush, brown and bright red,
usurps like a tangle of bodies in Purgatory,
longing, reaching for release.

warehouses graced by graffiti,
schoolhouses,
bored spouses behind hidden windows,
TV screens onto TV queens
watching machines that make them forget,
carrying a nonsense of history,
a litany of
the banal, the barren, the crude, the crud,
clogging memories down to the pixels.

and more graffiti, more,
“VERBS” and “DANK”
and things I can’t even make out or understand.
the sides of sitting trains and abandoned factories
where it is scribbled,
comprise a television for our time,
for two decades of RTA rides.

and in this space, these artful young hooligans
are the producers,
are the stars,
and the set designers
of shows for which
the commercials are the show itself.

but no money flows in
or out
of their hands;
barren of all but a glimmer of hope,
their hearts starve for the doing,
for the living, and the aching;
and no respect remains
for the walking of other peoples’ straight lines.

open and close

this one was such a delightful discovery. I don't know how I got in the mood I was in when I wrote it. but I'd like to find the stuff, bottle it and sell it.



open self,
see into
heart space,
close
and open,
flutter
like butterfly,
beautiful, beautiful
butterfly,
opening and closing,
like a shy little child
opens and closes
her hands
over her eyes

The Unraveller's Son

I will give him forgiveness
when he ventures
and stumbles,
and I will stand by him;

I will be his steady rock,
take him in my pocket on travels,
unravelling mysteries
(that is my profession).

I will take him to worship
in the House of Love,
to teach those impoverished
but by nomeans unworthy;

I will give him wide berth,
an open field
in which to express
in letters and pictures,
in music,
to sing his song, compose harmonies,
one, tenor, for him,
-- and a higher harmony for her,

and she will sing with him,
and he will know her heart,
and thus know his own;

and they will know the mystery
that begat all mysteries,
and they will wed
and explore the wayward world
and seek its corners and tiny places
for the mystery
that ends all mysteries.

and when she passes
into folds of white sheet,
he will remember me and call to me,
the one he held high, always higher than his own head.

but for once,
I will not answer.

and he will grieve;
he will mourn my loss
as he mourns her loss,

and then he will know
that knowing mysteries
does not a life complete,
but resting in the silence one
has dug out of the raucous world.

learning how to fall

I count on you.
I count on you.
When you burn from under me,
I will either levitate in mid-air
Or I will fall, hard.

What of it?
Falling is a precise science,
a worthy exercise.

Let me fall if I don’t understand
how to fly.
I will hit the concrete 7X7X7 times.
And I will repair and heal the same number of times.
Calloused and strong of heart and bone,
levitation will become
obsolete.

innermost sentinel

out, out,
out on Erie,
frozen chunks,
broken, raw, cut blocks of lake –
sullied water…on the rocks…with a twist.

behind the miles of liquid expanse,
a lone building, weather station rests,
seagull love nest where people barely visit
but to run tests on weather and water quality.
a monastic it is, with no one to speak to,
nothing to share but for blips and dots,
waves and numbers
spewed inland
to encumber machines and minds,
weary with information.

and with the din of sunken ships,
sailing in, sailing in
to break walls, to dead loved ones,
boats bounce off rocks,
seafarers clock hours til tea, til time for lunch,
til it’s time to come home to arms of loved ones;

and in, inward in,
past Halite factory,
streetlamps, shoreway,
fence guarding nothing down that forlorn hill,
trees, weathered, wintered,
sentinels before all,
broken, leafless, snarling, gnarled,
standing farthest in, but for one more sentinel
taking precedent –

the cold, the chill of grey frost in the air,
from the horizon to here;
my face feels unwelcome
in its red wonder at the beauty of solid desolation.

Prophets and Physicists

“Each sin brings an equal and opposite wrathful act of God.”

Moses was Newton –
He brought the law.

“Your sin is relative to where your heart is standing.”–

Jesus was the spiritual Einstein –
he brought relativity.

And there will come one who will demonstrate that
all is Love,
that a vast Unified Field of Love
underlies all of the fields of energy, all of the matter,
all of the Beings, all of the suns,
all of the comings and goings of the Universe.

And along with the Nobel Prize for Physics,
he will win the Pulitzer Prize for both Fiction
and NonFiction,
for his “Bible of the Heart”,
which will be touted as both the funniest
and the saddest book of all time.

And few will see him as the second coming of Christ,
but those who do will certainly not know him
as the 12th incarnation of Vishnu,
the last Qu’tub,
and the final manifestation of Dorje Chang, the Universal Buddha
– as he truly will be.

And after a “scandal” trumped up by a jealous young physicist
who was once his most promising student
(something concerning a hotel-roomful of strippers
and a weapon of Universal destruction),
he will retire in relative obscurity,
and will be virtually forgotten by the greater part of humanity
until long after his death, when a desperate government
will exhume his body to extract its relics
for the blessings
to repair a now impossibly catastrophic and jaded world.

And all they will find
will be a rubber nose and plastic moustache,
crossed by a rose.