the naked branches of trees
float, reflected in the fluid
of forest pond,
the panorama of sky
drifts in the retina of a young man
thrown out into the world
by a father, wasting his allotment of humanity
couch-surfing in friends' basements;
he often walks the woods as penance
for faults not his own
but today,
stoned to the bone and amazed,
vibrating at the frequency of unmade babies
in the flux of womb waves,
of amniotic nirvana,
his awareness opens
to the scintillating energy around him,
a sparrow alights on a tree branch…
he stops
to count his breaths;
he deliberates
and then smiles…
he is remembering a time
when he was not breathing
as we do,
with lungs greedy and isolate,
when his heart was beating
in synch with another's,
with a mother’s,
to the rhythm of the Universe,
when all was well,
when she still knew possibility
and could feel
pain
Saturday, June 25, 2011
Sunday, June 19, 2011
OUT
Home bound
Stone ground
Laughing til it’s holy
Loving life only
One way down
From the upper room,
Climbing out
Your father’s womb,
All that noise
All that crying
Pop stars mop bars
Wrong way moon down a one way tomb
The light can’t see
The fingertip feel
Itself, it’s sealed
It sells
Like sex on Sunday,
Gloria Mundy,
Solomon Grundy
Driving a Hundai
One more word --
third eye groping,
And heaven opens --
OUT,
I am out,
Inside out
No doubt,
No dust clouds
Hanging over me
And I burn and am free
In the strange, incidental truth of it.
Stone ground
Laughing til it’s holy
Loving life only
One way down
From the upper room,
Climbing out
Your father’s womb,
All that noise
All that crying
Pop stars mop bars
Wrong way moon down a one way tomb
The light can’t see
The fingertip feel
Itself, it’s sealed
It sells
Like sex on Sunday,
Gloria Mundy,
Solomon Grundy
Driving a Hundai
One more word --
third eye groping,
And heaven opens --
OUT,
I am out,
Inside out
No doubt,
No dust clouds
Hanging over me
And I burn and am free
In the strange, incidental truth of it.
Monday, June 13, 2011
Driving through the Bronx
Driving through the Bronx
Driving through the Bronx,
parks run for a couple of miles,
rolling woodlands and open fields
in a 500 foot strip along the freeway, slumped
beside broken buildings,
piles of projects,
products of some god’s idea
of a joke
or of a tentative mercy –
house the poor, but don’t keep them safe or happy…
And the poverty and the crime
are hidden from the night
in daytime, a deluge of light
just past a week of bad rain
and overgrown anxieties
and domestic pain
Driving through the Bronx,
parks run for a couple of miles,
rolling woodlands and open fields
in a 500 foot strip along the freeway, slumped
beside broken buildings,
piles of projects,
products of some god’s idea
of a joke
or of a tentative mercy –
house the poor, but don’t keep them safe or happy…
And the poverty and the crime
are hidden from the night
in daytime, a deluge of light
just past a week of bad rain
and overgrown anxieties
and domestic pain
Thursday, June 9, 2011
skulkers
They skulk
And that is the only way to describe it.
Cats at night,
Homeless and home-free,
Prowling the Universe, the hood,
The protectorate of Isis,
They, pussy-footing down driveways
Across street ways;
What is their point, what are they trying to say
Why do they look at me that way?...
…Like I’m crazy
Well, it’s not my idea
to fawn over the cute little f'ing things, “Well, HEY there, cutie. Well, HEY there,”
As if I were talking to a one year old child;
It is they who cull this ninnyish salutation from me,
They who make me feel like a warm mammal in pajamas,
They who, concurrently, make me feel like…
…I am an affront to sanity, talking to stupid, skulking, prowling, pussyfooting,
Conniving, feline, fraulein, fornicating, free-basing, drug-smuggling, embezzling,
adulterers!, adulterers!, MURDERERS!!
They think they’re so fucking intelligent,
Pretending they know what the hell I’m saying, what I’m thinking,
Then looking at me with necks haughtily cocked back a fraction of an inch,
With eyes appalled,
never thinking to validate me in my insatiable hunger to feel okey-dokey.
Well, all I want, after all, is just to pet them.
But they spot it. They sense the neediness. Run off like beauty queens
From an old pimp.
Not so unintelligent at all really.
Self-protection. Intuitive creatures, indeed.
The short of it is, she’s gone,
And I dreamt about her last night,
Petting her, she on her back, pawing my hand.
And if I would have only held it together in 1999,
If I wouldn’t have kept cutting my wrists, I’d have kept that apartment,
Not had to give my poopy-butt,
my black cat Audrey,
up to the APL for adoption
or for slaughter.
And that is the only way to describe it.
Cats at night,
Homeless and home-free,
Prowling the Universe, the hood,
The protectorate of Isis,
They, pussy-footing down driveways
Across street ways;
What is their point, what are they trying to say
Why do they look at me that way?...
…Like I’m crazy
Well, it’s not my idea
to fawn over the cute little f'ing things, “Well, HEY there, cutie. Well, HEY there,”
As if I were talking to a one year old child;
It is they who cull this ninnyish salutation from me,
They who make me feel like a warm mammal in pajamas,
They who, concurrently, make me feel like…
…I am an affront to sanity, talking to stupid, skulking, prowling, pussyfooting,
Conniving, feline, fraulein, fornicating, free-basing, drug-smuggling, embezzling,
adulterers!, adulterers!, MURDERERS!!
They think they’re so fucking intelligent,
Pretending they know what the hell I’m saying, what I’m thinking,
Then looking at me with necks haughtily cocked back a fraction of an inch,
With eyes appalled,
never thinking to validate me in my insatiable hunger to feel okey-dokey.
Well, all I want, after all, is just to pet them.
But they spot it. They sense the neediness. Run off like beauty queens
From an old pimp.
Not so unintelligent at all really.
Self-protection. Intuitive creatures, indeed.
The short of it is, she’s gone,
And I dreamt about her last night,
Petting her, she on her back, pawing my hand.
And if I would have only held it together in 1999,
If I wouldn’t have kept cutting my wrists, I’d have kept that apartment,
Not had to give my poopy-butt,
my black cat Audrey,
up to the APL for adoption
or for slaughter.
Wednesday, June 1, 2011
haiku for Nenette
Nenette, subject of the film "Nenette" is a rather large, 40-year-old orangutan. Bored-seeming and coyote-spirited, she looks out on the passers-by at the Paris zoo.
you laze on the cross
of your daily lassitude,
orangutan-Christ
you laze on the cross
of your daily lassitude,
orangutan-Christ
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