There is something wrong with everything, and that is often where its poetry begins: In the rightness of its wrongness. A wrongness that frames and feeds my Unformed Faith.

My unformed faith:

The vestiges of fairy tales,
Wise men,
Their wands,
My age
and the condition of my dreams.

Regardless,
I can always leave, start something new,
Forgetting everything.

How Dare I?
Because I am the pride of my own self.
A tribute to my me-ness.

How Dare I?
See this badge of courage?
Awarded for the imperfection of my questions?

Or,
I can refuse to leave, and press through a hive of mysteries
With the mere persistence of my presence,

Which is all wrong,
Lacking symmetry,
At first glance, pretty ugly –

Although awkward,
Never blundering, mostly trusting
That the pattern made by all those questions
Will be revealed.

Started 2005 (the only one that year)
Finished enough to post today.

Herculean

So many things have happened that no one knows about.
They didn’t make the news. They left no artifacts.
They didn’t live to tell the tale, or were considered unremarkable
at the time.

The exhibitionist on the bridge,
The other robbery,
The haunting melody,
The courageous village
and the father of three—

All buried under nothingness,
swallowed by forgetfulness,
Nobody’s cautionary tale. Nobody’s allegory.

But if I’m quiet for a minute -—
If I open my hands, and listen,
My heart flashes.

Like recalling where the exit was, having passed it just a moment ago;
Like looking down at a hurricane, gazing into its white funnel,
I am reading the Chronicle,
Singing with Troubadours,
Reported and reporting on the Network News.

Everything is everything and I don’t wish to smooth it,
Only to infuse it
With the knowledge of its own unpublished grace—
The memory of the gift it gave itself.

June 2007

Waits (haiku)

The sweetness of a
gruff man singing while he plays
a black piano.

May 2007

Untangling

Was it for nothing in particular
or for the swollen flood of fragments
I can no longer count as memories
that love comes more easily,
and love for more things

with fewer apologies,
less camouflage,
more pungently,
a bit clumsily,

as if all this light is new.
These breezes have combed out the knots.

My heart, less tightly wound,
is warmer, fatter, noisier,
and beaming
boldly, simply,
like the sun.

May 2007

She Does Not Rhyme

With Thanks to Georgia O’Keefe and the Empress Card of the Tarot (3)

The Nerve!
She JUST CHOSE the most beautiful color she could.

How Dare She!!

As if Life would permit us to retain this much sweetness

from Its privileged height

As if God would not be offended we had taken

this degree of LIBERTY.

As if a moment can give birth to itself

over and over and over.

As if innocence was the child of wisdom.

As if age begets light.

 

Meanwhile

His perfect sonnet leans

against my dreams

with rhymes as delicate

as summer morning breezes

pressing petals against leaves.

If I am his lover

then you are my mother

kneeling over and over and over

to catch my falling head as I am born between your legs.

 

You have painted the sun into the backside

of an indigo pansy.

 

You have poured milk

over velvet (you slut).

 

You have washed my mouth

out with eternity.

 

And I owe you

And I can never repay you.

 

 

1997

Tell You Why

I love not literature
Although there was a time I did chase
Form and pathos, passion, plot and rhyme
Down labyrinthine hours.

No, it is the letters,
Solitary, neat, and bunched together
Tightly to make meaning burst upon my senses
Rose or velvet, sour milk or midnight shouts.

So, do not ask me about
Augustine or Virgil, neither Shakespeare,
Dickenson or Frost, when what I study
Is the E tucked under R, next to a D or N

Elusive, huge, eternal footprints
Like a bird’s or rivulet’s
Upon the sand, ephemeral and shifting
Quiet shells and scales and feathers in my hands.

 1997?

Haiku

Piano picking
plink plunk plink plunk plink: Thoughtful
touches, gentle notes.

November 2006

The Promise and the Memory

There is a name for that thing
that is both practical and perilous,
beautiful and treacherous,
comforting and poisonous.

Today I am a moth, having
the hardest time discerning
the moon from near
a thousand candle flames.

Now, I mustn’t blame the flame.
I can just realign my instincts,
look deeper than the glow,
trust the part of me that knows

not to fear the haunting shimmer
but recall with love the moon.
Though my wings are singed and tattered,

somewhere tonight,
there is a light that will lead me home.

November 2006

Is This Full Circle?

Because I came ready for a fight
Nobilized the misery
Clung to the loneliness
Felt sorry for myself

A thick and smoky film
Dropped heavily
On any sanity
I may have brought or conjured
For this damn town

November 2006

Utopia

Why did I keep it, and why did I let it go?

Through how many years and cities did I carry the book?

Gazing with anticipation at the pictures
but never quite finding the expected thing
and always believing it was there

if I looked one more time
if I turned one page I’d somehow never turned

and would I know it when I saw it?

To you, the circle may appear complete:
I’ve returned to my Home Town.

But a single place on earth is home
to those whose walk is solid,
weighted by long roots.

I do feel the pull, and always hear the call,
but packing for this non-return
I either gave up on ever finding the page
or realized all at once
it was elsewhere, closer at hand

than a book on a shelf
in a shop that spoke
to a girl
whose sharp intake of breath
each time she saw the word, Utopia,
on its spine, defined
the nature of her choices
from then, on.

October 2006