Our Song

Thanksgiving Day, 2008


"Remember?" you ask, over Sunday morning
bloody mary's and Mandy Potemkin's
"Over the Rainbow," your Kim Novak necklace
sparkling over sausages and strawberry-stuffed
waffles as lucsious and delectable as
that summer we spent ourselves on the shore,
hypnotized by the rhythm of the waves,
claret and chablis splashing your skin,
"Remember?" you ask, "our laundramat?"
like lovers who share some sacred poem
whispered, like a prayer, by some erotic
prophet, or some secret sign, or some song,
"our song," some Captain and Tenille ballad
while we shuffle under the gym backboard
and slide across the sawdust in clumsy sweat
and English Leather in darkness, or
"our cafe," that cheap Chinese joint next to
Coney Island hot dogs, our first date
where I first tasted sweet and sour,
Cantonese pineapple, we spilt mustard
on our fingers feeding each other egg rolls,
and rose water!, and fortune cookies we
savored like divine oracles.


Our laundramat! Remember?
Sunday evenings as the sun spread
across the west and the dying river,
all lavender and brassy, we hauled
baskets heaped with sheets and cordouroys
and dangling bra straps from the Electra,
fed the washers with fists of quarters and
powdered soap as darkness bloomed in the
streaked windows and neon Open script,
the candy bar and coffee machines, we
leaned against the machines as they cycled,
the sweet vibrations opening us, like
those fat reducing belts on the Lucy show!,
ridiculous gyrations that shook us silly,
we trembled and hummed, unconscious
to our lives, the tremor in our bones
like bees sleeping and abuzz! As the night
emptied, we moved through the joint like ghosts,
desperate for the warmth from the dryers
and the glass-eyed doors, our oracles!, to
return the heat to our souls. Later
we will drive home in the cool of the night,
cross the river in silence, and unload our lives
for one more week, cheap date!, reaching
into the darkness, neatly folded, still
radiant with out hands smoothing the
wrinkles, preparing ourselves for what is
to come, our laundramat!, our song!, our
children!, our bodies loving and
unloving in time.

Idea...

For two years I was known as "The Boy."

Or "Boy."

Two summers at the nursery, the Dutch owners called me that.

I was 15 & 16.

I was the water boy. The weeder. I carried trees and shrubs and lifted them into cars. Toted fertilizer and peat moss and manure. I swept the parking lot. Carried flats of flowers, unloaded trucks. Anytime someone needed help, they called for The Boy.

"Where is 'The Boy'?" Thelma used to ask. Robert called me "Boy." "Okay, Boy," he'd say, and he'd lead me out to the beds and show me something new, how to prune junipers, how to mulch, how aerate the root stock, how to tag shade trees.

I was the gopher, the errand boy, the bell-hop.

No one really knew my name. I was the skinny nameless kid in cut-offs and wet shoes.

Strange how for over thirty years I have forgotten that. I was an imp, a curmudgeon, a cur, a ragamuffin at the beck-and-call of everyone in the nursery: Get a hose. Get a wheelbarrow. Load this. Unload this truck. Go get that.

During the busy season, I was a blur of activity, 4 hours a day after school, twelve hours a day on Saturdays. In summer I'd work 60-70 hours a week. Near mother's Day and Memorial Day I exhausted myself. We were all running on adrenaline, on vapors, literally running all day. Then later, as the days lengthened and business slowed to a crawl, I spent hours in boring stasis watering, weeding, sweeping, unloading semis. I guzzled bottles of Mountain Dew and cheap grape soda all day, my skin scalding crab red. My feet wrinkled like prunes and stank. I disappeared among empty greenhouses and the lost beds of leftover nursery stock. It was wretched, watering the same baskets of dirt and plants every day in silence, listening to the hot wind waffle the visqueen skin of the hoop houses...I was tormented by a routine in which no one saw me or was aware of what i was doing, but when they needed me they didn't even know my name, ad I felt rescued by the faint praise of that lame recognition. "Boy, there's a truck of fertilizer that needs unloading." "Boy, can you carry this stone deer?" "Boy, go get a rfope and tied this down."

.. .

...

UNTITLED, Riding the Robert Noble

As the Robert Noble is unmoored, a
heron, standing on the jetty rocks, spreads
his great wings, a curious omen, of
what? Darkness? Our doom? That we are fated
for some tragic end? Who knows? We sway and
nudge each other in ways we dare not
on shore--the ferry invites us to share
our bodies as we join the waves, strangers
in the wake and volume of our lives, we
are always departing into this cool
blue existence, aren't we?, this "This is who
I am!" and "That is what I was!", as if
the very sense of being empties itself
into the widening gulf, this bay of being.
Here in this buoyancy you are blind
to the future, this now unraveling
in the foam and sway is the only now
that ever was, waves splashing the sandbar
and shoals, what a pleasure to be freed
from the tyranny of time! That buoy
bobbing off starboard is not is not a warning
or a marker but a sign of affirmation!
No regrets! No danger here! Bird Island
creeps up from the horizon with its
long-billed ibis and egrets stalking the shores
and here, swooping across the deep blue,
a string of white pelicans, they, too, are
immigrants escaping memory. We
are floating in consciousness itself, Gravel
Island, Hog Island, they all slide past like
so many lives we once led, no regrets!,
until the engines slow and the ferry turns
and we dock again, the lines are fastened
and we join the the great sadness, the weight
of our souls, something we know that pulls us
where we do not want to go.

To a Lone Bird on a Phone Line Outside Sevastopol, WI

Look mister, let's
get one thing straight.
Your attitude

needs adjustment,
you've got your beak
all bent outta shape

over what? Perching
there above the field,
feathers all dusty

and raggedy-ass
in the heat like
all this somehow

comes down to you?
I don't think so,
Mister I-don't-give-a

fuck!, Mister Lord-
of-all-creation!,
Mister chirp aleck!


Let's face it.
no one wants to
hear any more of your

cute-as-a-kitten
singing, that sweet
music you seem to

think is so god-
damned important,
we don't want

to hear another
peep! Smart ass!
You best get off

your high horse, mister,
if you know what's
good for you -- it's

high time you started
acting more like
a crow or a hawk

or even an owl,
for Christ's sake, not
some shrunken finch,

it's time you
acted your age. son.
I'll knock that

smirk right off
your beak! I swear,
you think I won't,

but I'm not afraid
to tan your tail
feathers, trim back

your little wing hard.
I mean it. I don't need
your sulking, your

judgement, your high
falutin' airs! Now,
stop acting so

sorry for yourself
and help me rake up
all this hay

before the sun
goes down.

AIRPORT ROAD

Heart of the island, we
ride our old beater bikes
past birches lining the road
just to lie here in the meadow
and wait for the planes
to arrive. We are lost
in the blue, lake wind
blowing back our hair,
gossiping in the tall grass,
the wind sock floats
as casual as a whisper.
From the fields, ripe
hay rolls over us as
grasshoppers click and buzz.
Then we hear the the plane
approach, a lonely drone
as he circles the field,
steel dragonfly drifting
in slow circles, it's all
so narcotic!, so dizzy!,
the earth spinning, hay
and clover smelling of
mock orange and honey,
we're falling too deeply!,
and then the plane swoops
over the haystack, rumples
on the grass and surrenders.
We are passengers
waiting for our next flight
into oblivion, waiting
for the next moment
to come.

S T A V K I R K (Church of Staves) on the Island

a wooden Norwegian church,
dating from the 12th Century



Independence Day.
While the islanders
watch pagan fireworks
at the ball field, we pilgrims
seek an evening of prayer
in this stern viking church.
So strange to find this
medieval pagoda,
this tribute to conversion
of those Norse raiders,
here, under a glade
of maples where no ship
or shore or savage wind
meet. It is as stark
and unadorned as a
reformer's creed,
a Jerusalem Bible open
on a lectern, and folding
chairs, and suspended
from the rafters, like
some deus ex machina,
an empty sailboat
in the breathless
nave honoring a woman
who died too young.
Hard to imagine
a loving god here
in this frugal, dispassionate
space, hard to pray here,
and hard to seek
redemption or even
rapture in this barren
wood. Outside, as dusk
falls, we walk the garden,
retracing Gethsemane
while the sun sets
in violet and peach
and wine-blood while
the muffled fireworks
explode. In the forsaken
orchard of fruit trees
and wild wheat, juniper
and grackles, swallows
dive into darkness.
We penitents, idolators,
transgressed the coming
night, we pissed on
clover and stirred up
the bumble bees--we
were invaders, renegades,
transplanted evangelists,
zealots seeking, as
we all do, salvation.

ROADKILL ON COUNTY ROAD ZZ

Riding the crowned asphalt
of August and the black pools
of heat mirages, the coarse sand

and wind-burnt junipers,
glades of aspen tongues
gasping in the wind, a land

scorned by god and prophets.
Everywhere there are signs
of failure: bankrupt farms,

belly-up barns and caved-in
shacks, farm houses scrubbed
raw and ramshackled,

orchards swollen with weeds
and bees and rotting fruit, traces
of roads swallowed by scrub.

As I crest Watersend hill
and coast into the valley
I spot the three black vultures--

big, bold and savage in their
reality, working a carcass
in the road. As I approach

they stiffen, indignant,
their ancient filled with disgust,
their cold eyes perturbed

by my insistent wheels.
Finally, as I rush upon them,
they bolt from the road in

slow savage wingbeats.
There on the ghost line
lay the remains of their

complaint: a deer head
no bigger than my fist,
fresh blood and splintered

bone spilt on the asphalt,
the head perfectly untouched,
glassy eyes staring, the body

obliterated. I ride by,
innocent of this grisly
murder, yet somehow stained

by the act of witness
as the vultures circle overhead
and swoop back down

to refresh their appetites,
this land is unrepentant,
like so much of us, it's best

to keep pedaling in the heat,
wipe the stinging sweat
from your eyes, and find

salvation somewhere, in
water, or god, or, if nowhere
else, some scavenger of love.

DEPARTURE

As the ferry turns
in the harbor, a Russian
mother chats on her cell,
her kids giggling at the gulls
laughing in their own
Russian gibberish, at our
sudden uneasy buoyancy,
we are all drunkards,
Karamazovs freed from the
certainty of the shore's
firm language.

As we slide past the jetty
a cormorant spreads his black wings:
an omen! We enter Death's Door,
a terrible passage! Who will
place coins on our slavic
tongues? Who will carry us
to the island of dreamers
and lotus eaters, the lyrical
sirens and pagans of desire?

CAPE CANAVERAL (on the plane from Kansas City)

Yesterday, on the solstice, we
lay on the shore, sweating
in the cabana's shade, eyes

blistered from the sea's
silver searing, unable to read
or even think, just staring

through squinting slits
at the shimmering,
we spoke of physics,

my son and wife and I,
he described crystallized
miracles, carbon-fiber

ladders that would stretch
into space beyond the sweep
of satellites, gossamer

threads like elevators,
spider silks to the skies!



We lay there mesmerized
by the elemental, the heat,
the waves, the blinding

light until, exhausted,
we could take no more science.
We ran across the sand

to wade in the sea's warmth.
We spread ourselves in that
lavish wet bewilderment!,

that gentle world, where
our sunburnt lips tingled
in the brine, and watched

the ancient birds dive
among us, where jellyfish
billowed in the wind, and

we floated there, three
bodies open to the sky
like buoyant starfish,

free from the mind's
gravity, just floating,
as if consciousness itself

were suspended there
in a vast ocean of being,
waiting for the great

rising.

CUANDO CUANDO CUANDO

Why do you remember her, that
Cuban woman singing Cuando cuando cuando
in the October night? That Bayside club
of mojitos and limes and sweet plantains,
sitting at the water's edge,
dipping your hand into the warm
darkness, the moon ghost haunting
the gulf and its smell of monkfish
and crabshells on the wind, her voice
filling the evening's sadness
with a desire you can only possess,
a yearning from somewhere ancient
and familiar, an insinuation, something
deeper, cuando cuando cuando,
how her bracelets slink and shimmy
as she sings, her mango skin, cuando,
how the needlefish nibble your fingertips,
the tingling sting of delight,
how there's nothing more
to say but to let the feeling come, that
temptation, cuando, her singing,
her arms calling out cuando cuando cuando,
the sheer feeling of feeling itself,
and when she calls you must feel
that feeling, you are alive, loving
love more than you can ever stand,
the fullness of that loss, that emptiness,
that fear: giving in to that song
like a shell held to the ear,
innuendos and intimations,
inklings and whispers,
the lyric of divine anguish.

Untitled (for Joan Mitchell)

About your drawings and all that red!
And those birds! I have traveled there,
The loneliness of red turkeys
In a cornfield as the first snow flies,
The terror of red vultures
Pecking a roadside armadillo,
Those bloody crows that sway
In the wind and leaves! How they haunt
Me with their insistence of words
And meaning, surely there is some
Story scratching its way beneath
The surface, the promise of
A language I can understand
Only in the darkness of my veins.

Anyway, in my dream I got it
Wrong. It was all scribbles and lines,
Angry erasures, frissons of
Childhood, furious scrubbings of
Pastels, curlicues of color!
Flagellates! A clusterfuck of hue
And mood!

I woke up knowing you
Are in danger girl, you need to
Watch yourself! This dream is an omen!
The ancient ones burnt entrails and
Smelt the blood and gristle to
Divine their fate. The blind ones
Listened too closely to the mad
Music of wings, the awful truth
Of shooting stars streaking across
The night! Not because of the art
But because of the content
Of the story in their blood,
The bird of consciousness itself,
Always watching, preying. You draw
That darkness in your veins.

On Attending the Conference Panel Regarding Teaching Creative Thinking and Critical Thinking

And so we all gathered in the bowels
of the great Hyatt Regency! Under the
humming florescent lights all geeked
and ramped up to talk about creativity
and deep critical thought, sharp,
intelligent mindfulness, all of us
scholars and professors, pedagogues,
eggheads, academics, intellectual
willy-willies, silver-haired, thick-tongued
cockeyed bobs, all knotted up in
cravats and scarves and blazers,
it's a Roundtable Discussion! We're
sharing ideas in this breakout
session of linen tables and ice water
and photocopied paradigms and
nomenclatures and the one thing
we're not doing is sharing ideas,
we're too busy sharing rigamarole!
Marvelous circumlocutions! Superfluous
verbosities, loquations, lofty philosophical
cogitations, gaseous construction, ideological
caterwauling, rationalistic intercourse,
mentalistic stuff! The almighty social scientists,
the holy trinity of presenters,
the sagacious brainy thinkamobbers
sit with their goblets of ice,
their flip charts and their grids
for categorizing the world and its
slippery phenomena--oh they are
geniuses! They answer every question!
They are clairvoyants, oracles, epistemologists,
lexicographers, mathematicians, logicians
of the soul, they close off every mind
like a guillotine! Snap! There are
no messes! There are no formative
concepts, no fricatives or sibilants
floating in the air! Just these ghoulish
faces staring out at us from their
black eyes and their pens scratching out
dead words on paper, and we've all got
our marching orders: we need to teach
our students to think creatively! To think critically!
They are failing! They are lugheads! Thick-headed,
vacuous, dumb beasts! We need to teach them
how to think! We run for the door,
gasping for breath, zombies all rhombus-
noggined, desperate for some life,
something real, a cup of coffee, a conk
on the noodle, a smack in the kisser,
fresh air, a poem, a punch in the belly,
a spin in the hotel's revolving door,
anything to penetrate this scrim
of vacuous ratiocinative parlance swimming
in your brain. Meanwhile, there are
cardinals bragging in Millennium Park!,
Snow Stars!, hyacinth spreading their
syrupy headstrong nectar across the wind!,
fields of daffodils, like sunflowers, like windmills,
like men kissing and slobbering each other
on the serpentine stainless steel bridge!,
girls parading by with their "Hug Me!" signs
and giggling and boys copulating everything!,
everyone with a camera flattening the world
into digital pixels, transubstantiation!, there's
your fucking miracle, professors!, there's your
fucking rubric for creativity! You can't
separate the world into Manichean
dualities, it's all one ectoplasmic
slime, one big ass swamp cabbage,
a horse lattitude jibber jabber!,
the most dishwater lurid carnival
of your life! Put that in your post-modern
metaphysics!, your General Education
academic schematic!, your post-Marxist
templates for fostering unique and
monolithic exhortations that scream
please, please, think differently, just like
we want you to.

AIDS Walk 2005

We gathered by the water
by the thousands
dancing in the sun and glitter
while freighters in the distance
braved the depths, magnificent ships!,
and flags and spinnakers rippled
in the harbor wind! The voices
from the main stage swirled around us
like carnival rides, there was so much joy
and sadness in our hearts!
Politicians declared their fortitude
and rallied around rainbow t-shirts
with pleas for compassion.
Health care workers and love-scarred partners
prayed for precious love and defiant justice,
they prayed for mercy and thanked those
thousands before them vibrating in
sun-drenched sweat, their heart drums pounding,
the children rallied and thrilled by blood
and words and music and signs that
their world was our world,
and waves swept the shore clean in pulses
that washed over the crowd
and we were cleansed by the fury
of our fierce love. And that is when
the stage emptied except for the three
cages and three white doves
stared out on the crowd
and one by one they were released,
the first flew out over our heads, its wings
fluttering in a rush
as if from a magician's hat
and then slowly circled us.
The second joined her and the two
swept the sky in perfect arcs,
circling the water as if this
were the eternal moment, the sacred poem,
the great life prayer, while the third
stood on the edge and waited, as if
she were afraid to brave the depths,
she could not dare the blue gulf.
Her friends circled wider and soared
higher until they disappeared.
We waited for the music and the drums,
the beginning, suspended in hope
when a burst of white spilled over us
in a gasp, sweeping down to the third cage
and the last dove rose and followed,
followed as they flew as one soul,
white spirits riding the endless blue
until we could see them no more,
and as the the drums and music swelled,
we walked, together, nameless and one,
following, shoulder to shoulder,
we hoped, forever.

How Do You Just

How do you just
let it all go,
open your mind
like you might
open your hand
to a lover?

How do you let go
of every breath
as if it were
your last? Do you
struggle to keep it
in til you turn blue?
Apoplectic?

Or do you give in
to the inevitable death?
What are you
holding on to?
Dying is not
so different,
you simply let go.

You wish you could
let go when you
make love, when you
listen to Beethoven,
when you look at
Matisse or Kandinsky
but it's so hard
when the incessant wars
of thought splash
over you, the words,
the clenched need
to control something,
the anxious synapse
twitch...

Opening yourself
means to live in
that dying present, aware
but not aware,
consciousness devoid
of judgment,
hopelessness
in the fabric
of all moments,
raveling and
unraveling...

He Says He'll Send Roses, Too, But They Never Arrive

Vanquished by the wicked
cold, the mercurchrome
and melancholy of love,
he rode his bike away,
shivering from the late
spring, the cottonwood's seeds
floating down in the river's
chill, his knuckles burning,
his face and lips smitten
with her fragrance. What
was it that he wanted
after all? A night's tussle
under her lilac arms, her
incomprehensible joy,
her silly clothes, she dressed
more like a snowfire crab
than a redbud, more star-struck
than slender or graceful
but behind her big fishbowl
glasses she gazed in wonder,
naked and lovely in
her robe of bearded iris,
and as he rode home
in spring's full flooding glory
he knew he must return
to his room and his books
and the window on which
he looked out on the world,
it was safer there, behind
the glass and the pane,
he had to wait for this season
to spend its fury before
he could venture again.

Ragged Time

for Eve Shelnutt

We filled our days
with church, she
swathed babies and

I swept the Narthex,
on Sundays she sang
alto, I was acolyte,

there were matins
and vespers, missions
to migrant camps,

we filled our souls
with piety and truth,
devout offerings --

these were not
acts of faith but
acts of belief.

Summer days I
walked her home
past the swamp and

heaps of smoldering
mattresses and
tires curling pillars

of smoke, rotting
cabbages and
magazines, we

walked the valley
of shadow wasps
and dragonflies

as ashes rained
down on us and
the cattails--we

we were too young
for the body's
blessing to serve,

forsaken as all
must be before
suffering holiness.

More of Something

I woke up to the sound of nothing, really, and that's the problem.

I can't hear myself, or nothing else, for that matter, but there were no dream ghosts, no Debussy, no dark Mahler, no existential pulse.

[Now... I need to start thinking.... Who is this character? What is the story he propels? I have the beginning of a mystery, a conflict.... Where does it want to go? What does he need to do? What is his story? Where will it go?]

Beginning of Something

Here it is 18 degrees. It snowed all day and night.
So this morning, when I awoke, it was still dark. The world glowed with a radiance that only a new snow can give. A crystalline luminescence, a dream.
I did not sleep, but listened to the snow falling, and all the emptiness. Ashes falling to earth and landing with a hiss. I could feel them on my naked flesh, star ashes, cold and searing, even under my comforter I could not get warm. I shivered and sweat and worried in the glittering light.


Night sweats.


So here I am, sitting here, looking out the window, drinking coffee, and this is what I know.
It is 18 degrees.
It snowed last night, all day yeserday.
The cedars are bent and sagging.
Everything has shrunk.
The powerlines have drooped, the birch tree snapped.
The sun is pouring in, blinding me.
I am staring out at all of this brightness, this resplendence, and I can't bear my own breath, can't bear that gust of snow sworling just outside the window pane, that squirrel gnawing at the plastic lawn chair. I cannot feel my cold feet.
I have missed three weeks of work. I yanked the phone cord from the wall. The sink is stacked with pans of Beefaroni.
I shivered all night.
Why didn't I get another blanket?
Why didn't I sleep beside the radiator?
I could not move.


These are the facts. The cold hard facts.
I am so tired of the facts.

Summer Solstice 2007

This solstice is absurd!
The day stretches beyond
our minds... catbirds and
cardinals, ecstatic or
confused, keep singing as
new patches of time erupt
in jubilance, the sky
never quite darkens, you
can hear children squabbling
about vegetables, freight
cars groaning from the valley,
church bells at all hours,
insect clicks and buzzings,
ridiculous laughter,
bootylicious howls and jests,
bawdy moans and cries,
green maple swellings, ripe-
bellied gibes and the mocking
bawlings of crows swaying
in the sun-splashed
tree tops. Who is that
lusty comic swinging
naked atop the dawn?

for Bob Riegert

He is The Hanging Judge,
The Great Abnegater,

The God-Who-Always-Says-No

There's never been a case
He didn't deny or reject

There is no pleasing Him

no way to earn His love,
no escape from His wrath

there is no coup, no revolt

no rebellion, no way to
overthrow this Dark Lord.



The only way to survive
this life is to install

your own appellate judge

someone who can speak to
the jury, plead your case, some

Great Adjudicator,

Someone who will take your
side, tell your story, trust

you at your word, take you

on faith alone. Tell me,
who else in your life

will do that for you?

Who else will listen to you,
embrace your soul, and love

only you?