I AM A [click!] PHOTOGRAPHER

I am a photographer [click] -- 

I flatten and [click] frame the world

to lose [click] consciousness, I forsake

my soul [click] to surface and texture,

there is no content [click] in my 

mind or my work or my medium, 

there is no [click] meaning in 

the world for that matter, I am 

no Vermeer, no Avedon, [click] no

I am no impressionist, I

don't [click] care about any 

of it, I just shoot pictures, I [click]

steal images, peel the world's [click]

slick light and [click] obscure shadows 

through parallax processes and

[click] lenses, glass eyes and 

I think through latent processes, 

chemical and [click] electromagnetic

radiation, the stuff that 

penetrates everything we know,

[click] all that business about 

the soul?, there's nothing but [click]

pixels, numerically translated 

[click] 0's and 1's, I am what 

we fear [click] the most, a

mathematician, someone whose

work counts on what what never adds up,

[click] the deep numbers in the heart of

[click] everything since the first big

division, the [click] split of light 

searing the photosensitive

fabric of  the [click] cosmos.

FLIGHT DELAY

All day we are migrating south, 

first a bus that trudges through 

the blizzard, gathering passengers 

who bitch at the driver about 

cancelled flights, delayed trains,

and the fucking cold--"No wonder 

no one takes the Greyhound!" 

as we prowl deeper into the snow.

We make Midway five hours late,

shivering in serpentine rows

hugging our luggage like the roped

and padlocked trunks that steerage

ushered onto Ellis Island.

The gates are stuffed with travelers

stuck, delayed, postponed, the terminal 

looks more like an insane sleepover, 

faces hypnotized by fluorescent

gloom, anxious and apprehensive,

phantasmagorical huddled hordes,

each seeking holiday bliss.

The announcements come in hoarse

rumblings, the delays, the cancellations, 

the gate changes, and with each garbled 

update the chill of discontent

trembles through the terminal.

This should not be happening! 

We deserve better!  This is 

America!  This is the 21st Century!

Jesus Christ this is our Christmas!

And when the plan arrives like some 

vaporous ghost from the falling snow 

and darkness, an ice monster, 

an antediluvian horror, we board, 

in defeat, all of the flamingo dreams, 

the conch shell cocktails and glimmers 

on she crab bisque and sand dollars, 

palm trees and sun-drenched cabanas, 

gator snouts and manatees, all these 

reveries have been rubbed free from 

the mind's wrinkles.  We rise into 

the snowy night, exhausted and vain, 

transported into the absolute 

zero of our lives, into the cold 

above the world's skin, alone and 

drifting into the starless stillness.

RESPITE

This morning

while reading 

about the life

of the mind 

and the divide 

between the 

world of objects

and the world

of private 

consciousness

and all that

stuff that fills 

our heads, fear

of losing

control

I recalled 

a dream from

the night before:

We were driving

by the river

drinking coffee

from a thermos

when the boys

giggled and pointed

their skinny fingers

out the window

and there in 

the thick grass 

three woodchucks

sniveled clover

like ridiculous

lotus-eaters, 

absurd philosophers,

phenomenologists

of the soul,

their fat haunches

and stumptails

waddling to

retrieve their

dignity, their

heady propositions, 

their mentalsitic

schematics--

--they were plump 

whistle pigs,

petty thieves,

street hustlers,  

hobo pedagogues

learned carpetbaggers 

hustling ideas  

and secret theorems

as they waddled

in the grass,

and we snickered

at their brown 

wobblefur

glamuphing 

and wishing we

could join them.

SANIBEL ISLAND, CHRISTMAS DAY 2.0

Riding the big 

balloon tire bikes

we tooled the island

      in long lazy curves

      under the hot sun

      down the narrow

asphalt roads and 

mangrove swamps

until the road opened

     and we rolled past 

     flamingo and sherbet 

     colored houses -- 

 

a drunkard's rum 

and coke fantasy, 

orangesicle bungalows

     lavender cape cods, 

     lime rickey cottages 

     bragging luscious red 

azaleas, lipstick

roses and rhodedendrons,

it's Christmas Day!,

     and once again

     we're alone, roaming

     the streets, lost

among the migraine

whine of the locusts,

all these empty

     homes and the hot

     afternoon sun 

     on our heads and

the aimless ease

of these bikes,

pedaling the world's

     loneliness, it's

     all so big and 

     distant, like 

imagining the world 

when we grew up, 

wishing we were stars in

     some rock band, Tommy

     James and the Shondells,

     singing "Crystal Blue 

Persuasion" and 

"Crimson and Clover," 

to really know what 

     love is all about, daring 

     to hold hands and 

     understand that 

unspoken something 

in the mangrove swamps,

in Percy Faith's "Theme 

     from 'A Summer Place,'"

     impossible to 

     cross that bridge

without knowing you.

DAWN, MILWAUKEE HARBOR

              How appalling it is to sit here

at river's mouth,  under the red 

lighthouse, uninvolved witness to 

the slow unfurling from the east, 

another day, like any other,

destiny borne to spread its 

indifference across the sky -- the 

river slumps harborbound while red-

bellied gulls circle overhead

like some great pagan  wheel, as if 

some eternal message can be 

divined in their mockery, the river 

pushing, insisting its vagrancy 

everywhere.

                    How appalling, then, 

to be reading  Matthew Arnold--

Matthew Arnold of all poets!  

Might as well read Arnold the Pig

or Arnold Schwarzenegger!

This is a darkling plain right here, 

the river, the sky, the dying stars, 

the sun crawling through slumped clouds

and consciousness.  You cannot hear 

the rumbling of stones here--the 

crashing of waves--there's no Sophocles 

or Sea of Faith here!, no great thought 

or myth, no blood-drama, no goat,

no redemption, just these speechless 

facts, the lighthouse, the harbor

glimmering copper, these gulls 

caught in the tragic flight of time,

the slumber of water, the 

pale phenomenon of light

dividing facts from shadows.

CEDARBURG

I should write a poem about this rain here

in Cedarburg where time is preserved in

antique shops and woolen goods, nostalgic

hideaways like this bed and breakfast where

time is arrested, where you can return

to the old values, the old ways, where craft

and truth blend in the great loom to form 

a single vision before the Great Disruption

tore our lives to shreds.  At breakfast we

gather in the dining room before the hearth

and the spread of peaches, a basket of bread,

crockeries of cream and pistachio pound cake,

crocheted place mats and oatmeal with maple

syrup.  We gather after a night's blessed and

sinless sleep in pencil post beds: the pregnant

woman, immense in her imminence, ignored

by her husband and the rest of us, she swells

in her radiance.  The women Harley riders

seeking to cleanse themselves of something they

do not know the source of, the couple from 

Illinois staring out the windows at the rain,

wistful, they'd made plans to buy scented candles 

and handcrafted silver jewelry, and now 

it's cold and raining, and, what's worse, "It's really 

a wet rain!" one of them declares, while I eat 

my peaches and pistachio bread.  

We have all gathered here to what?  

To stare out the distorted glass--the old 

wavy glass!--at time itself, this village, 

this settlement, this restoration of 

an earlier time, a simpler time, a time 

we ache to enter.  

It is March, and we are removed from 

these trappings, these rocking chairs and linens, 

the ye olde's and blacksmiths and stablers, 

by a 100 years.  We live in a Great Depression, 

where value shrinks and dies.  Here in this 

museum the air is tale, the ledges 

are dusty, the sachets of lavender and 

potpourri have dried out, we agree to 

return to this story because we 

do not dare face the cold rain, ourselves, 

the rain chilling our skin, the smells of copper 

and dirt and skunk flooding from the  marshes.  

We are each of us desperate to find our way, 

desperate to hide, each afraid that the lives 

we've been living are not wholly lies but 

not wholly true, either.  If only we could 

remain here, behind this old glass.  If only 

we could hide in this story that was never true, 

the lies of the Great Narrative, and live 

among the trappings of deceit, the shared 

awareness that it was all good, it was all 

so much better, it was even better 

than we can imagine now that we are 

trapped in our own time, our own lives, our own 

fear of the rain.

ARIZONA

This garden of mourning doves and mockingbirds,

palm trees and magpies and water weeping 

from rock into the swimming pool, so lush

with roses and succulents and fig trees, you

expect Gloria Swanson in her leopardskin 

coat and her soft bellied flesh, William Holden 

with his cigarette case, it is the loneliness

of age, in this oasis between purple 

mountains, the surrender to the desert,

the heat, the night chill, the death, the vast

stupid beauty of the stars lost in

the vagrant darkness, but here, here in this

garden of cactus and stone, you spread yourself

out by the pool beside the dead sparrow,

the concrete stained by mulberries, the slamming

of truck doors from the porn shop beyond the 

stone wall.  In  Sunset Boulevard William Holden  

was chasing a story, his own garish 

desire, prying into the decadence within

his own mind and flesh, his thirst for beauty

in the ruins, the savage thoughtless thrust,

and Gloria, Gloria, what was she but beauty

and time and desire herself, Salome, 

the great temptress with bracelets and long arms

and that face, her close-up, comic in her

celluloid past, the diva, the anguish, 

desire unfulfilled on the screen, the great hunger,

the misery of the mind and the flesh, 

the tortured femme fatale within each of us

longing to be seen once more, and consumed!

Yes, America, this is a great depression--

we built this sprawling madness in the desert,

America from our hunger, our desire,

it is splattered everywhere, we have

disrupted great rivers to quench our thirst,

and here under this dying star we must

learn to face our fear, the dead sparrow

beside the pool, that our great Babylon, 

our great tower to the heavens, the great 

garden of sighs and earthly delights, 

is just another script, another screenplay

in which our hero, our tragic hero,

too late!, discovers his fatal flaw, 

his love for innocence and sin, how he

ravaged Barbara Bel Geddes with

his ignorance, his smart ass cleverness

now reduced to the pathetic, now shot

in the back and floating face down in the pool,

and ridiculous, as ridiculous as 

the story he tells as a corpse, the great

confession from the lurid curiosity--

this is our story, the America story,

the collapse of order here in this

Arizona hotel and beyond,  this garden 

of cactus  and rock and chlorine. 

desiccation and lies, where the poor dope

gets his pool and she gets the eyes 

of the whole world.  But that wasn't good enough...

Isn't that good enough? What's money for 

but to buy us anything we want?"

NOTES FROM THE COCOA BEACH HILTON

Walking through the cabana bar

where some punk on sax and his friend

on electric piano play "the future 

of jazz," you walk over the bridge 

than spans the mangrove river

bed, the last vestige of Florida

here, in this strip of rockets

and strip clubs and cruise ships,

pass through this arch of polo shirts

and gold chains, so many men shouting 

into cell phones, to whom?, until you

enter  the sinister silver glare, 

the heat, the sand, the ocean, 

the gulf stream.  This is the existential

scene, to be stranded here on the edge

of the west, there is nothing here, 

nothing but the migraine heat 

soothed only by the sudden rain.

After all the margaritas 

and mojitos, women in long 

dresses and earrings that tingle 

like wind chimes, the iced coronas 

and seared yellow-fin tuna, 

the papayas and gator wrasslin, 

you have only this, the heat, 

the ocean's slick silver skin.  

There are no words here.

No language that can carry 

our stories on into the future.

You have come here 

to die.  There's no escaping

this, the quintessential fact.

It turns out there is no soul 

after all, no redemption

or absolution or grace, not even 

the decency of an epiphany.

It is godless and mindless,

just your skin scraped raw

by all this coarse sand,

the shimmering atomic age

insinuating itself everywhere,

radiation burning time itself.

Letter to My Son From the Other Side of God

                                      from a bus in a blizzard

                                        

You asked me if I believe in God, when

I stopped, and how that happened, a question

I prayed my father would ask years ago

when I shirked that yoke of love and glory,

that guilt and story, all that sin and and faith.

You believe in physics, you say, and the way

you talk my belief sounds so distant, like

some Greek tragedy or dead Latin tongue 

chanting ancient truth from a lost monastery.

The truth is I am a prodigal, an 

amnesiac, a fraud, a minor criminal 

who bets the house that he's one confession 

removed from rebirth or salvation, one miracle

removed from the prayers I offer up even now.

But the truth is that, like you, I am godless.  

I am as empty as the void of the universe

and all that dark matter you think about,

and yet for me there will always be 

a holiness in that time before time, 

when God created order from disorder,

as if we could ever really know that 

kind of disorder.  I believe that she plucked

matter from antimatter and spun the cosmos

like a giant cotton candy machine,

spinning hot threads of pink and gooey-sweet 
substance and that this led to the great 
swirl of galaxies and light and after it all

cooled we had The Great Ocean and The Great Virus 

and aeons later The Great Lightning cleft 

the human brain so that idea and image 

might smudge and separate and lead to 

human order.

I only know I believed and then I 

did not, and when I did not I felt the 

cold.  I trembled, not out of fear for 
my soul, or guilt, or a savage sense 
of repudiation, but more the loss

of story, the loss of theory, a sudden 
solitude, so much inconsequence, 
the indifference, the lack of anything 
within the atom or the quark or the 
spaces between all that microscopic stuff -- 
it turns out there's nothing substantial about 

the cosmos at all, it might as well be 
the idea of matter, the story of matter, 
the belief in matter, in the end it's
still all an act of faith, no?

What I need to tell you, then, is about

that coldness I felt, that loss, I knew then 
that that indifference was God.  I felt alive

for the first time, son, void of feeling, the way

the universe must be like at its very core-- 

elemental and paradoxical, lacking thought 
or purpose. I was sitting at the kitchen table,

writing and listening to Chopin, my hands 

trembling, I was alone, and a dead star 
smoldered inside of me, and between the

sustained notes of Chopin, the etudes and 

the nocturnes, I felt the dark matter. 
I was a nomad, a prodigal seeking redemption
or absolution from the world surrounding me
and the terror within.

Letter to AG

Writing from the other side of God, I

need to tell you something about love.

Not that I'm expert, believe me, but

I've learned some things, I'm no prophet or

preacher but I've studied the Bible, I've done

my share of prayer, I've given witness, offered

my soul to Jesus, read Holy Scripture, 

delivered sermons, served as an acolyte 

and watched God's breath whisper across altar candles, 

passed out communion wine in tiny 

plastic chalices, dropped the body of Christ 

onto the waiting tongues of those seeking 

redemption, I've eulogized the dead, hugged 

those who were losing God, witnessed the 

holy spirit blossom from the lips of 

my mother when the insistent urge to live 

vanquished.  

                       God is not a judge.  She is a not 

a malevolent, vindictive god any more 

than she is one of those dumb nodding 

velveteen dogs you see in the back car window,

bobbing at every passing car.  She's not 

into guilt trips or sin or any of that stained 

by the Mark of Cain crap.  She doesn't believe 

in Original Sin or the birthright of evil.  

She believes in redemption because she

knows it's hard enough to find salvation

in this world.  She believes in sex and the

divine laws of the physical universe, 

the wondrous tantalizing senses, beauty, 

she wants you to enjoy yourself in this world.  

That's why she made  potato chips and 

Sugar Babies, the summer solstice and 

fireflies, mangoes and avocados, fingers 

and elbows and lips.  God is a precious 

song, a prayer, a sacred poem filled with the

 pagan stuff of life.  God does not care about 

the little things, all the wicked mind machines

we carry in our heads.  She does not want us 

to wrench ourselves into knots over 

indiscretions or the pleasures of the flesh,

over wine, over desire, over the 

contradictions of petty moralities.  

She wants you to love yourself, to accept 

yourself, to breathe and eat and love, 

to dance and make music, as we entered

the world, naked and unashamed and

holy.

SHITTING THE QUICHE/WAUWATOSA

Look, lady, I don't know

if the quiche your dog ate 

is fresh or not, it's been

in the snow for days, it

was awful, an that's why 

we tossed it out the window.

It froze, and then the fucking

squirrels got at it, they 

ate the crust, but even 

the raccoons that shack up

in the sewer wouldn't 

touch it, maybe they don't

do quiche, but they pluck 

everything else from the trash,

the jellied ham, the rotting

zucchini, the box

of bisquick, I guess

we were hoping some 

coyote might sniff it up 

and drag it off and poison

the son of a bitch but I guess

that won't happen now, 

seeing how your dog 

wandered over here and

ate the whole thing, tin foil

pan and all, jesus, all that

brie and ham, parmesan,

onion and peppers,

I mean he wolfed it down 

in frozen hunks, I don't

know how without breaking 

his teeth, jesus, imagine 

the ice chunks sliding down 

his gullet the poor son of a bitch

but I say look, lady,

we're not running a

goddamned brasserie 

here, it's a goddamned house, 

a three-ring circus of 

burnt pancake pans and

a sink full of cooked broccoli

and Kraft cheese whiz, scalded milk  

and empty wild turkey pints-- 

it's serve yourself or suit 

yourself--if your dog is 

shitting up the carpet, 

or puking lakes of yellow 

cream, or just wishing 

he were dead, his guts 

bloated like a dead opossum

on the road, I don't give 

a damn, he should have

picked the fucking

turkey tetrazini or the

pea soup or pork hocks,

but he made his bed, I

suggest he lay in it.

ARRIVING

All day we migrate south.

First, a bus that trudges 

the blizzard, gathering 

angry passengers who bitch

about cancelled flights, airport delays, 

the snow ashes drowning the world,

and the fucking cold--no wonder

no one ever takes the bus! one shouts

as we prowl deeper into the storm,

blind and blurry wet.  We make

Midway five ours late, shivering

in serpentine rows lugging 

our baggage past gates of  

the stuck, the delayed, the postponed,

terminal's  an insane sleepover,

faces hypnotized and narcotized

by florescent gloom, deep sea creatures 

insulted by the endlessness of waiting

and the gray gathering of snow, 

anxious and apprehensive, the phantasmagorical

huddled hordes, each seeking asylum

somewhere else.  The announcements 

arrive in muffled staccato, more

delays, cancellations, gate changes, 

and with each garbled message 

a wave of discontent washes 

through the terminal like

an anguished flood.  This 

should not be happening.

We deserve better, don't we?

But when our plane finally arrives

like some great ghost 

from the cold migraine,

a hideous phantom, 

an icy monster, 

an antediluvian horror 

in the fog, we board, 

in silence and shame--gone 

are the flamingo dreams  and conch shell 

cocktails, glimmers of pink crab bisque 

and sand dollars, palm trees 

and sun-drenched cabanas 

and manatees floating

gracefully in cabbages and 

mangrove swamps.  All of these 

fantasies have been rubbed free 

of the minds' wrinkles. We rise 

into the night, exhausted 

and transported into the great darkness 

that surrounds us all, the absolute zero 

of our lives, alone and drifting south, 

into the starless flowered land,

the land of hibiscus and camellias, 

of gladioli and exotic banyan trees, 

of Florida, that  great dying land 

where we all must go to die

some day.  

LETTER FROM SANIBEL ISLAND/PUNTA RASSA

Walking this old shoreline, 

this heap of shells and sand, 

this abandoned port

heaved from the gulf of death

all of the old questions return,

all of the masquerade and greasepaint

washes off, the harlequin tattoos

and carnival blues, the jester bells

and tide pool marketplace smirks

until nothing remains when

the dark psyche spills its banks,

the sun sloshes your skin, palm fronds

waver across your mind, 

the warm, bitterswet water 

laps your feet, your eyes burn like old stars, 

sacred stones, you are being 

unborn.

- - - - - - - - - 

You have known this feeling

before--a pilgrim walking the coast 

of Manitou Island, its shipwrecks 

and green lagoons, its rookeries and 

steep dunes sliding into the west,

the buoyant couplings in Lake Michigan's

cold waves under the aurora borealis,

the failed schoolhouse and its fallen apples, 

the abandoned graveyard, making love 

everywhere in this island of ghosts

and lost ancestors, apparitions

dissolving in the morning mist,

unspoken souls wandering

the water's edge, seeking asylum

in some forgotten tongue.

- - - - - - - -  - - - - - -  - - - - -  - - - - - 

Or Northport, tiptoeing the cold

slippery stones beyond the lighthouse,

sliding and teetering in the slick muck

and rocks, like learning to walk

all over again, balance betrayed, 

you follow the shallow glimmerings,

the fabulous petoskey stones, 

scarred with ancient star eyes!,

where waves criss-cross,

an eternal dissection of diamonds,

the silver ripples on the surface,

and the luminescent light looming

across the stones below, you are now

Atlas, straddling two bodies

of water. infinity spreading itself 

everywhere before you.  There is

only expanse, only the north, 

only the unreachable and unreadable.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - 

Years later, across the lake,

what you never tell anyone,

getting lost in Death's Door,

chanting poems on an outcrop of stone, 

blue lips trembling those words

haunting the cold November shore

like angry ghosts, the mist 

of naked birch, the fear of fear itself, 

the ache in your soul, the longing

for the end of longing, when

the dark psyche spills and

runs amok, and there is 

nothing left but you on the stones,

the water lapping, the chill,

the shivering, the fear. 

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -  - - - - - - - - 

So, what exactly are

the old questions?

What are the words that remain

after all of the hubbub, the

flotsam and jetsam, the debris,

the trappings, the endless propositions?

They are inscrutable, the signs

and symbols inscribed in a world

of nouns and verbs, a deep grammar

deeper than anything we can know,

lines and marks, smudges and tempestuous

mood, quotidian derivatives,

tones and sounds, scents and flavors

of stone and metal, lodestone,

something we can only know

and not know, and knowing,

never fully capture, or translate,

or get down in anything like 

apprehendible form before the 

the ashes vanish into ghosts

breathing across the water,

abandoning all form and time

and being.

SEARING BLINDNESS AND CAMELLIAS/SANIBEL ISLAND

Lying in bed this morning, the sun

pouring through my eyelids like some lizard

fixed on a rock, the molten alchemy

sears my optic nerves--I awaken blind

to the rattle of the island wind 

and the smell of camellia floating.

Well, I'm not really blind.  I mean,

the core of everything I see is black,

surrounded, like the sun, by a

corona of flames and, in the periphery,

floating on the camellias, just

blurry distinctions, smeary sun and

the faint suggestions of apprehendible

form.  Like St. Paul, stricken on the road

to Damascus, I have been blessed with 

divine vision--I see sacred flames 

everywhere!  And while the loss of that old

visual field is mildly amusing, I

do not mourn it!  All is holy! Emblazoned

in sacrament!   Pentecostal!  Serpents 

and fiery symbols, black hole vortices 

pulling everything to the godless abyss!

My eyes: stone ashes!  What would I trade

for this gift?  Would I swap it gladly for 

all this stumbling in the world of built form?

Groveling in the gravel driveway, falling

in the stinking ditch of cattail muck 

and algae scum?  Of floating camellias 

and brick?  All those memories of wonder?  

The Chagall chalked seascapes?  The Northern Lights 

bursting across the night like waves crashing 

the firmament?  Your naked body diving 

like dolphins knifing up the coast?  Your back, 

the river of desire, and the camellias 

floating there?  No.  I would not trade those 

for these glowing stones, this searing beauty, 

this pagan agony, for any of that. 

WHAT DO WE DO WHEN WE KISS?

Last night I dreamt

we were getting married!

Odd, given the facts,

we don't speak and

I don't love you 

and you don't love me 

and we're both married

to others.  A groomsman

was helping me with my tux,

my carnation boutonniere 

and I thought wait a minute!\

I don't even know you!

We haven't even dated,

or necked, or held hands,

hell, I don't even know 

your last name and now

this whole thing's fate,

odd, isn't it?, I'm almost 

ashamed, my only thought

was what do we do 

when we kiss?  I mean, 

since we've never kissed?

And this wasn't about you

or me but the congregation,

those people waiting for us

to seal the deal?  

Would a simple 

peck on the lips do?

Or something more intimate?,

a suggestive brush of wet

softness, or one of those

histrionic dipsy-doodles? 

A real lollapalooza,  a passionate

tongue-swimming circus!

But it was a kiss of shame--

shame that I did not want

to kiss you, that I did not

find you kissable or

attractive and of course 

knowing that you found me

repulsive, a hideous wretch, 

but wouldn't admit it, not

at the threshold of our joining, 

yet knowing this was stupid, 

that this little moment

was such a clear sign 

of how our marriage 

would unfold, a passionless 

arrangement, a quotidian 

agreement to honor

each other's schedules

and machinations.  And how, 

I wanted to know, does one

kiss another bride in front of

one's wife?  But again, that had

been arranged.  This was more

like Judas and Jesus 

squaring off for their mythic

moment in Gethsemane,

a kiss neither of them 

wanted either, a kiss of

sacrament and shame,

a kiss of indifference 

in some passion play, 

the way a kiss should 

never be.  As we approached

the altar I watched the candles

flickering, the smoke curling

into curlicues, the brassy cross

shimmering.  I could not

look at you in your dress

of white roses or listen

to the prayer of the pastor,

I could only think of

the fate that awaited us,

ambivalence, disregard,

sealed not with a kiss

but the awful knowing 

of that kiss.

CHRISTMAS DAY/SANIBEL ISLAND

No miracle last night except shrimp

and crab quesadillas, tiki torches

and the faint lights of fishing boats trolling

home, the fussing of pelicans shrouded 

in palms, all the Russians and Germans

smoking in Charley's Cabana and 

shouting across the globe into iPhones.

No, today is the celebration 

of salvation, the birth of redemption,

there are three sage ibis stalking the docks, 

stray egrets and heron minding their flock.

The Euros drink coffee at poolside 

and their children eat waffles and smoothies

in silence.  The morning mist dissipates

and the island burns under the sun.

Sailboats anchor offshore, filling the air

with Neil Diamond songs and the smoke 

from charred steaks and when Charley shouts 

"Hey, you want bloody mary's?" above the jet ski drone 

and the waves lapping off the cigarette boat wake,

we know a miracle has been born.

What it will be we do not know, only

that the the myth is written in our blood 

and takes us years to understand.

CHRISTMAS EVE/SANIBEL ISLAND

One thing is for certain in the world
tonight--surrounded here by tiki flames
and fountains, palm trees languishing the shore
and the primal darkness of the gulf:
the world turns just like a great big wheel
just as the night swirls above the firmament--
stars of spilt ash from God's great bonfire
aeons ago return in the cosmic wind,
prehistoric birds roost in the mangroves--
you can hear them muttering among crickets
and the muted trumpet jazz piped in from
Charley's Cabana.

Two thousand years ago the old story
kicked off, a star, a manger, an innkeeper
and a couple seeking asylum.
Are we any less forsaken now, Son of Man,
cast on the edge of the desert of the great
Babylon? Sprawled on the poolside deck chairs,
our skin illuminated by the day's sun
and the eerie watery glow, the flickering
tongues of the tiki torches, ignored by
the concierge and obeying some
inscrutable impulse to please someone
we do not know--are we any less chosen
to these portents in the sky, these omens,
these signs burning in the ancient night?

Tonight is the night of the great story,
the story of our great belief, here, in
this ring of tiki torches, these palm trees,
these fountains and heated pools, this jacuzzi
bubbling and steaming, this savage night
of ancient birds and loneliness and betrayal--

it is the only story we know, the only story 

we tell ourselves, the holiness of 

making it through, of wondering, what do

the stars hold for us tomorrow, what do

we do with ourselves until then?

DESDEMONA

Desdemona, seated this morning
on the verandah looking over the gulf
of ibis and pelicans brooding
across the water, drinking coffee, legs
crossed while she writes in her journal,
reclaiming her life here, returning to
the elemental, the sea, the morning
wind, the sun, her black dress, her black hair
draped suspiciously down her shoulder,
looking for words, for the four-handed
massage at the spa, stones warming
her back, the promise of spiritual joy
and awakening. O for mimosas at brunch!
A love affair, and coffee! Starfish and collecting
shells naked along the shore, feeling Cuba
in your mind, in your thighs, candlelight and
starlight from the balcony, incense
in your sleep, seared tuna and spinach salad,
bowls of she crab soup, kisses from
the past, anguished betrayals, the cleansing breath,
the promise of love, the memory, and
of course the words, these words, these words
she lives by, abides by, the words she cherishes,
conch, whelk, cockle, sand dollar, dolphin,
scallop, lover, lonely, alone, naked,
the shore, the tide, the stars and the moon,
mojitos and Italian jazz, destiny...
Desdemona, the unfortunate,
waiting on the verandah, and writing.

MORNING/SANIBEL ISLAND

Christmas Eve


Sun through the shutters creeps
across the bed, a blessing
in our sleep. We rise
to prehistoric birds circling
our dreams, pelicans and
osprey, audacious crows
spreading their malarkey
in the palms, even eagles
with their fingers stretched
upon the sky.

Coffee on the verandah
as the hotel staff spray
down the deck from last night's
carnaval, spilt pitchers
of sangria and cerveza
and mojitos, and you now
in your peacock hat
and your Ben Franklin
flip flops I find so fetching!
After breakfast I walk
along the docks, the shore,
the boats, and find the poolside
abandoned, save the fountain
of steel egrets spitting
a pool, and old lovers
in a white panama hat
and pink flamingo pantsuit
drinking prune juice
under the palms. I am
here alone, drinking coffee,
sprawled on a cabana,
bathed in the sun as the wind
washes over me. I am
the prodigal, a hedonist
stretching my limbs,
my sinews, closing my eyes
so the translucence pours
onto me, a stiff and godless
thing, an emptiness,
a wastrel in god's poetics,
these lush and pagan
latitudes awaken the body
slowly, lovely, the winter blood
and bones stirring, waiting
for you.

Tenderly

For the last eight years I have been listening to Chet Baker, especially a song entitled "Tenderly." I found it on a CD entitled "The Last Concert" that I stumbled upon in the stacks. His music has always seemed hauntingly familiar, as if somehow imprinted on me, especially this last recording, in which you can definitely hear the rasps of mortality in his voice. There are moments when the trumpet work is divine. I have played the CD over and over these past few years, have listened to his earlier recordings, and have even written a poem for him. There is something wonderfully fragile and vulnerable and confident in "The Last Concert" that has really had a pull on me. It's shaped my sense of nuance and mood and feeling. So much so that I've sought out other artists recordings of the song "Tenderly." (Even this afternoon I was caught off-guard when driving along Captiva Island Road to find a residence named "Tenderly." Among all of the typical nautical monikers and island names and pirate titles, we saw "Tenderly," which seemed as out of place and refreshingly rare as any boat or place name I've seen in years. So tonight, imagine my surprise when listening to Mantovani's recording of "Tenderly" that I suddenly recognized a song I'd been listening to all of my young life! The version is so schmaltzy and cleansed of countermelody that it sounds almost unrecognizable, except a particularly rich phrasing of trumpet. I used to place that song, and that Mantovani album, over and over when I was young. I played it because it evoked a deep sense of feeling in me--a confusion of tears, of sadness, of joy and love, of grief and sorro, of loss and loneliness. (Leave it to Mantovani's rich strings) . There was something in Mantovani that said it was okay to feel in music, something I realized in snippets in band. It was a bit grandiose, and haunting, and full of bathos, sure, and for me it was the ultimate escape in a household that seemed devoid of emotion--schmaltzy music that was nothing but emotion. It was about being alone, letting my constructed self go, and letting this music in, letting feeling in. In a way, when I was home alone and listening to my mother's Mantovani album, for that brief respite of loneliness, the solitude of being alone and listening to the music, that hour of self-indulgence, the house could have been called "Tenderly."

POEM FROM SANIBEL ISLAND

for SD, Winter Solstice, 2003


Walking the frozen trails
of the County Grounds
(now excavated and
smoothed of their history)

the narrow ice-tamped
runs in fields of hip-high drifts,
burdock and milkweed husks
stubborn in the wind,

you walk ahead, fists buried
in your pockets, your arms
scored by stigmata, burning
even in this savage cold,

you trudge along, stingy
with your secrets, the past,
the unimaginable story,
the unspeakable crime,

and yet, behind you, stumbling,
I keep asking, lest the words
spilling from your blue lips,
the burning anger, the raging

star beneath the skin, should
suddenly stop. You let blood
speak but it does not speak
the truth you know you must

shape with guttural sounds,
while overhead as we trudge
in the angry ghosts of breath,
a big hawk chases us, his cold

eye glaring, his yellow beak
knifing the solstice air:
is he a menace? or
guardian? and below us

as we crunch and grudge,
we see runnels of mice,
like veins in the ice, rivulets,
passageways dug through

the snow skin, shadows
scurry in the cold, let's admit
it, we came here on the
shortest day to witness

the death of the year,
the death of the world,
to punish ourselves, to
reach beyond the darkness

and the fear, beyond
the ice and the terrible
cold, to somehow lay bare
the great betrayal

and the unspoken
remains, to begin again.
Tell me your story
one more time, and this

time, when you ask me
why I care, think about
those trails, how much
our fingers ached, your

trembling lips, that hawk,
those mice running under
us--the stubbornness
and the world's last gasp.

When you ask me why I care
think about the stories
buried all around us,
those who could not give voice

to the truth of their lives
and how all of that does not
matter any more to anyone
and that when I say it matters

to me I mean it, it
means trust me and what
I say, it means I am here
and I will follow.