transitional housing

A house opens for business-

The crowding of silent customers

All those death shadows

Jockeying for position

Around the guest book.

Their wallets are full 

of sand, grave-gris,

The carpenter’s tab still inscripted

On their shallow chests.

Waiting,

forgetting why they came

A prisoner in the half world

Hallways like memories,

Stairs into the ground.

betwixt

Around the rough table

we eat with our hands

roast pig, cheese and bread,

roasted peppers.  In the fields,

grapes rot in the grass,

and fill the sunset

With the smell of the end.

This season will not last long,

the table will be empty,

And we will pick at our teeth waiting.

(Untitled)

Brother, we all pay tithes

in the hope that our

empty pockets

fill finally.

Some pay in time, or in blood-

useless tissue.

Others pay with money,

and other paper drugs.

Isn’t it interesting

that Ownership

does not exist?

We’ve made dangerous rituals

For ourselves.

Senescence

Like too many
moons in the mouth
the twin sides of a knife,
cold and perfect.
There is no absolution,
only the clean cutter's edge

Night before a boat race

the white tents by the river

make me think it’s a circus

sleeping. Tomorrow

alligators and elephants

will emerge,and people
in Harvard sweatshirts

will stare, puzzled.

Planning for an old friend's wedding

I have two dresses to choose from:

A coral one and a deep green.

I have so many boxes of jewelry.

I have one beautiful white coat, heavy

and well-made. 

Looking in the mirror,

I was thinking and thinking

About how I seem-

I plan my arrivals and escape routes

Which is hard in a city I don’t know.

I imagine who will be there

And calculate when they saw me last.

It’s a common thing to feel like

Everyone has conquered and claimed

Their lives completely

While you flounder in a patched

rubber boat, bobbing off the coast of

A whole nation of loss. 

Re-direction of the mind

is necessary sometimes.

I take a hold of my minds material

and shape it playfully, solemnly.

This nation

accumulates like history

a constructed landscape.  I am forced

to crumple up drafts in my fist.

Where am I, really?

Finally I see the real as I squint

through the dust of deconstructing forms.

A jungle rises up, infinite roots serpentine

in the acrid soil-

wet and breathing emotion.

Beyond the jungle, mountains-

instant blue altitude, a looking spot

where I can go cheek to cheek with God.

From there I can lay my palm in the air

and smooth the plains, steeping in time

an internal ocean that rises and falls like a sleeping chest.

Above is a soundless sky

with clouds moving like a herd of animals

drawn towards the slipping horizon.

And the horizon itself

is fluid, even from afar, the sea,

a heaving deep content in forming all maps.

She moves sunlight and moonlight,

reflecting, cradling, sucking it down into

the hidden chasms of the Earth.

I decide my nation is sacred

as are the nations of my neighbors.

I am the one being that all

the enduring things cradle.

Because in all loss is the remarkable

inescapable tolling of hope,

a throb of the eternally true.  

They are waiting for us to return (Bohinj, 2006)

Already drunk, we walk a half mile

to the mostly empty hotel

and buy two bottles of vodka at the bar.

We use the old money,

soft and pocket worn.

The dining room is hot from the fireplace

but we don’t bother to unhook our coats.

The man wraps the bottles in paper

and we leave.  

Walking back, 

there is such satisfaction in seeing the winter sky,

the rapture of night in infinite ink.

Everything is still with ice

except the soft squares

of light farther down the path.