....From The Tree Of..................Pain Around Us
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_______________________________________________________ To Shape This Dark There's been a shifting of the subsets, drift just far enough for me to claim new footing before I fall--I cannot fall. If I should lean as far as horizontal, something holds. This mid wood, densest ground, although it's terra firma, has no space; there'll be no hand springs here. No coo cajoo, Mrs. Robinson, Ms Fitzgerald--that face is always someone else's face, and so unlike me; if there were ways to describe the plummet off of every star I've held, in thought or in desire, I'd try to word this properly. There is no tongue could shape it. No separate house for the way my mind has split from solid form- you see me standing here, you don't see, it's a ghost one. Last I believed, it must be years ago before this one thought marked ....... the way: it's possible to love without me. Sex, well, sex is rapid as an eyeblink, leg look, battering the skull. What need of hull here? None, and so where is the where am I?......I was ten thousand blinks in a row, five thousand blinks ago when I didn't know the thrummed continuum. It minds not what it loves, there is a singing in the blood; it's stunned me into this firm piece of stone in midlife, attractive as the mud from which I, me- and a curve of rib made eons back, when I climbed out of an ooze of lovemood wearing bright and morning-eyed ex pec ......................... tan ................... cy-- ............ that too thin ..... caul of lies not thick enough to blind me now. Sunday Him Sunday, him and me- we'd fill our pockets of loneliness, with little scraps of almost 'there ness' silly as it seems now, knowing what a chore it was ....... for him to pick up the phone and lave me with his words; to be a drug for me- ............... I wonder where I'll find another Cyrano? ....... And was it sacrilege? No, I think it made the idea of savior real- ................and you ........who would be told how churlishly and awkwardly it went- ..................you did not see that smile of his- above jismed ........hands. The Woman With No Face Waiting room was quiet- boring; people waited to hear their name called. Looked at a watch or the clock on the wall. They'd taken out insurance cards, filled in medical histories: allergies and whether or not they showed the signs of diabetes- plants were wilted. Muzak played a corny Bobbie Vinton song- the happy Polish one the folks in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania love him for: that Moya something or other. Everyone was waiting to get the thing to start their lives again- a knee brace for a socker game on Friday night, the carpal tunnel wrist splint so the boss would let up on some of the friggin typing. There were whip lash cases, anxious to put on collars so their lawyers would be pleased with polaroid pictures of the foam and stockinette covered stretched neck, turtle look. There was even an amputee for fitting his state of the art, brand new leg he knew he'd be able to golf with just as advertized. The last of the appointments was a little, bent down black woman; neck on chest mahoghony with terrified eyes- the whites shown all around the shoebutton irises. No hair, no ears, no nose at all, just strips of bony structure showed, ill- covered by a sort of patch. Her neck had grown by leathery scar right to her sternum.... burns do that.... the tissues shrink, and grasp and shrink and harden; she couldn't raise her chin. Her doctor did the graftings one by one: striations, pink-toned, angry looking strips that would, with time allow her to look you in the eye. She'd come for a collar herself to help her graftings heal---but I could tell the house still burned around her; there wasn't much that poor old gal, without her husband of sixty years, the one who went up in smoke, would choose to see. Empty Birdbath sits, without the birdies splashing- they never used it. Never once; too busy with their skies and puddles- worms, bugs and every manner of birdie thing or else they see a cat that I cannot. Heart yearns. Opened up without a voice to put inside it. Hollow, clapperless bell, air making the eerie echo of empty. Perhaps its sound was taken by a kind of cat who ate the bird inside it. Cardiology Angina, tachycardia arrhythmia are names by which we catagorize what ails the heart. But fear- loss, jealousy and sadness are the real disease. We have pills to manage, medicate or placate every one but with the second set- the pills affect the brain and only work by making one forget what knocks below; what beats in pain. What through exhaustion, raps and raps and raps. Empty Nest All the loved ones in my life are needing 'yeses' and I have only 'no's' and with each no, a tear of the tether between us- Soon I'll be alone with nothing to say for I'm watching the words dry up as well. I'm left with 'bed', 'death'. 'no', of course, and 'run'- I'm a hen in a world of eggs without feathered-ass enough to nurture even one. Mailboxes, Even Side of the Street The guy next door went off for surgery: two days, tops is what he said a week ago. That black house at night disturbs me. Where's his spotlight? Who will line the rails with orange, not red tomatoes, safe from rot? Who will keep his lawn just so, in ways that make me feel Bohemian by comparison, and therefore young- who will call me 'kid'? Long grass on either side of the fence is just long grass and doesn't matter. Untidy patches of two aging neighbors who stare fearfully at cars too long in the driveway. It's all we have of affection, but it's there, one of the props of life: there's Margaret on the other side- Lou, who's gone, and me. Margaret's mother, Clara is near ninety and with eyes snared up by cataracts, still keeps a steady watch. .......We hold the block. Give it our faces, .................... now ....................one is .........missing War is Blackhawk down--in my heart, a greasy smoke plume: boys on bird for home their stretched tired wills fill the belly of the thing like prayer inside the body ...........................-legs .................dangle, eyes well with sweet relief. They're rising over Golgotha, and then the hit- blade's gutteral, downward spiral unto death ..........while .............on the desert floor, white teeth gleam deadly in the mouth of the man who holds the launcher wanting only an ear or dogtag, an American CD, or photo of a girlfriend just eighteen, as tongues trill high coyote sounds, ...there's body parts like manna ....and another wave is coming in the elbow of tomorrow. Open And Shut I am too exposed, too told outright: too many blanks filled in. I have no mys tery. Give maps to my heart too easily. I need more glue to close me, open ended ly; leave room for you to dot the i's and if dark corners, bridges cut in half are what this poetry business is about, apparently I've failed. And what's the difference say I, booting up my computer on a weirdly sunny and warm, November sunday afternoon, if outside Mosul two someone's sons are slit like pigs, their bodies thumped by locals in the deadliest meter of all, then poety and prayer have not a snowball's chance in hell: these are the Dark Ages come again. No Tennysons amid murder, no flowers in the crannied wall, the best that we can do is write how light will leave the eyeball like a semaphore signal home and how there is that last twitch of acceptance, then he's gone. Tenth Year Lucy should have known it was wrong, of course she should, but no one told her wrong could come from such mysterious eye-closed fun, so she followed Freddie behind the warehouse- what she saw were worms dying in the sun, dried alphabets of worms on asphalt. Neat like matted prints of bisque on black. Lucy studied every one, forgot her skinned knee, knelt to eye them closer marveling how still, artistic death was on a late May day with the face of summer on it- print dress cottony soft and damp, one strap straying off her shoulder- one sock up, one down when he said, "Close your eyes and open your mouth, Luce", Lucy did. Years hence, she remembered the sound of her giggle, tongue pressed, uvula slapping glans, ears cupped by hands, before hips hitched: heard the world through rumpled moans all tangled, tumbling into tar where worms kept shriveling under a red eyed, closed lid sun, and Lucy slid into Springs that tasted of oyster alleys, yeasty Levis, knees in cinders, heart stopped, racing to home .....put crooked for ever. Return To Contents This site sponsered by 
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