no great watchman comes
with claws to take him
in the night before he can master
techniques of gliding
from tree to tree, so he can
find just what he needs, for that
is what he is looking for.
Starry Wizards
Under the dark blue pre-night sky I stood
holding a flag I had cut from an obsolete windbreaker
and painted with the green fluorescent initials
of our brand new organization. Because of some
quality of the disintegrated light everyone
was a silhouette. William teetered on stilts beneath
the unmistakable hat of Abraham Lincoln. Lula
was the adorable giant robotic rabbit that marched
through our favorite television program harmlessly
ruining the plans of the space fleet authorities
as they endlessly circled our atmosphere in the not
too distant future, waiting for enemy beings
or rogue asteroids that never came. We were
a ragtag collection of young collectors.
We felt enthusiasm for the tentative friendships
we had after long years of hiding from each other
on the breezeway at last and almost too late
aggregated to protect our enthusiasms. Someone’s
pet cat was lazily stalking someone else’s
giant pet snail. It was all too good to be true
or last. Soon we would all be graduating and along
would amble the appropriate goons to gather
us into the welcoming arms of our new apprenticeships.
We knew if we went wherever we wanted
the starry wizards would guide us, and
if we didn’t we would never see them again.
Paper Toys of the World
Friends, what is beauty? Right now for me these paper replicas
I glanced at in a book I did not buy. Paper Toys of the World. I hardly
think of anyone but myself. For a little while right now
I know many tiny pagodas were built with knowledge they are not
meant to last. There was paper and there was time someone
had to consider, time no one was in crisis, time no one was dying.
I think each breath the maker sent through them is like
a trusting class of architects sent through an ancient building
where used to be copied terrifying decrees. I bet people
who build pagodas are people who think they won’t ever see them.
That thought is true, people know people and I am one. I like
saying this morning in Houston contains many tiny pagodas of wishing
for better things for people we do not know. I like knowing
somewhere social workers consider their clients. Last night Tonya said
I worry too much, she said it softly and firmly because she hardly knows me
and knew I worry I worry she’s wrong. Here she is in my thoughts
along with all this beautiful silver fear, beautiful because
it with a silver penumbra protects the family readying itself
for school and work. So I choose to believe and choose to ask you
to believe it too. Today we are driving through the Painted Desert
where a few people live and breathe, it seems possible, Vic says look out
the window and feel and that’s what I’m going to do.
Poem
Your eyes are not always brown. In
the wild of our backyard they are light
green like a sunny day reflected
in the eyes of a frog looking
at another frog. I love your love,
it feels dispensed from a metal tap
attached to a big vat gleaming
in a giant room full of shiny whispers.
I also love tasting you after a difficult
day doing nothing assiduously.
Diamond factory, sentient mischievous
metal fruit hanging from the trees
in a museum people wander into thinking
for once I am not shopping. I admire
and fear you, to me you are an abyss
I cross towards you. Just look
directly into my face you said and I felt
everything stop trying to fit. And
the marching band took a deep collective
breath and plunged back into its song.
Poem for Ferlinghetti
Everything I know about birds
is I can’t remember plus
two of the four mourning
also known as rain
doves, the young ones
born in my back yard
just this April. I saw
them moving their wings
very rapidly in a back
and forth motion
particular to their species.
Monica said it means
they want to be fed.
Their parents are likely
deeper in the stand
of trees being careful.
The wind has a metal hand.
Around them the city
explodes with helicopters
and tourists but here
you also live this yard
is protected but not quiet.
I can hear the Russian
woman talking out
the window, I catch
a few words, one
of which sounds like
“object force.” It makes
me think of Anna
who is probably married
to that Finnish Brazilian
martial arts instructor.
That was afternoon.
Now it is later,
much, the absolute
worst pure center
of night, for an hour
in bed I resisted coming
here to my desk
to search for those terrible
destructive questions still
hiding from me.
Do you do that? Or
is there some other way?
I thought I might
but I can’t see
the yard at all, just
some yellow safety
lights in the alley. I try
to keep the chair
from creaking, I know
Sarah knows in her sleep
I am in my study,
disturbed. I wish
I could send the word
asylum out very far
into the air like a clear
colorless substance
all my friends could
breathe in sleep, you
can never protect
everyone. That constant
humming sound is time
coming to take us
away from each other.
Or the refrigerator,
keeping the milk cold
and pure. So much
noise all the time
in the city, do you like it?
You must, you stay.
Last week I limped
in my giant ridiculous cast
one block to get coffee
on the corner and sat
outside feeling very sorry
but also happy. You
sat next to me and I was
pretty sure you
were you but I didn’t
know. I gave you
my New York Times
and we talked about torture
and baseball and how
many more weeks
are left for newspapers.
And then you asked me
if I’d ever be able to walk again.
That’s what it’s like
to be eighty I thought
but I don’t know. Nothing’s
natural to me anymore.
I forgot to buy a light bulb.
Now in the afternoon
the blades of grass
are completely still. No one
tends a little television
in the Russian woman’s window.
All I know is I have tried
for a long time to be useful,
like everyone I am also
always balancing
on the small blade of not
letting other people down.
Now it is getting darker.
Orange nasturtiums
you can go out and gather
and place directly into a salad
are glowing, and pink
roses wander along
the very old green wooden
trellis towards the blue shed
where Ephraim carefully traces
his engineering plans
for great structures
that will never be built
at least in the few
decades of his lifetime
remaining. He walks
with a little hunch towards
me to collect my rent
check and I am holding it
out to him both of us
with matching apologetic smiles.
In Oklahoma once
I ate blueberries, I
recall they tasted like lake.
If dust is particles
of our skin why
is there more each
time I return?
I know tomorrow
I will sit in that dark
before daylight without
a name, and feeling
the last few drops
of water from the shower
still on her shoulders
she will come and stand
next to me where I am
at my desk pushing
against one word feeling
its hinge creak like wind
would a gate if it could feel
anything at all.
III
Journey Through the Past
Listening to Neil Young in California
is like throwing away the old pills
that used to cure something and turning
your face towards the day, i.e. the ocean
filling the window with grey boats
floating in totally bright present aloneness.
For several weeks on my laptop
I had a picture of the space shuttle docking.
Then I replaced it with the ravenous
woolly adelgid covering a blighted eastern hemlock.
One branch looks like a limb
destroyed by an improvised explosive device.
Friend whose father is dying,
let us exchange dreams.
I am strong enough for yours
and you can move
down the long boring beige literal corridor
and replace the batteries in the thermostat,
fingering a diamond hair clip.
Travelers Among Mountains and Streams
Today I have the feeling no matter
which way I turn my head I am
into ideas like everyone is freer than me
painlessly bonking whatever
is the mental equivalent of my nose.
My actual one itches, it’s the plum
trees shedding invisible sexual particles.
Onto the streets I go and see the horrible
charming Victorians of my new home
San Francisco where I have moved for love.
Like purple plastic wedding dresses
they are ready to be left out imperviously
in the rain. Let’s put down the book
about the later phase of Le Corbusier
when he planned the perfect harmonic
Indian city of Chandigarh and pick up
one about makers of an early type
of Japanese kimono called the kosode.
On them sometimes artists painted
landscapes such as Kosode with Tree
and Flowering Plants by Sakai HÅitsu.
Like the little figures in the picture
through the picture we journey slowly
with our eyes closely observing mountain
formations, a waterfall, trees, a village,
and tiny figures of travelers just like us.
Once the silk over someone’s body
rippled, now the kimono hangs
on a wall. Oh lifestyle! Oh cake!
Between my ears is drifting now
the strange translucent golden word
axolotl. Through its whole life it never
grows any older. Through its shoulders
you can see its blood. Thousands of miles
away THE EAST a kingdom covered
by giant clouds. Where was I born? Among
human faces, deep in the sun of a real
young mother, under blowing unmagical snow.
Poem for San Francisco
Afternoon, almost
too bright to stare at directly,
also contains dark shapes. Black windows
in the old converted warehouses
filled now with new industry.
Shadows cast by telephone poles. So many
wires everywhere, how is it
I have never truly seen
all the infrastructure and methods
over my head everywhere
in this city I go? I think
they are quite beautiful. Always
the wires are unexpectedly framing
parts of the sky and all
natural and human things it contains,
making transitory paintings the very
subject of which is cloud motion. Truly
I fear animals. Now I am growing
very analytical. A kind of
peacefulness into me carefully
moves like a grasshopper
into a room full of totally believable metal
grass and trees. There is one great bridge
at the edge of the city falling asleep. And another
humming an orange welcoming song.
Kingdom Come
She asked me how long it will be
until the giant black rose
she has seen in her dreams
bursts out of the ocean just beyond
the walls of the circular city
and drips molten fire on the heads
of likenesses of the smiling gods
who sent a message from outside
our solar system crying
and swearing to protect us
if we built them. Quite
a long time. Probably many
hundreds of years. First we must
build the circular walls,
then the towers and the steps.
Then we must build the satellite array
and send it into the atmosphere.
And we don’t have that
technology yet. The scientists
who can dream of building it
have not yet even been born. So
for now I say to her let us live
here in this apartment and make
sounds of love on this futon
while outside the window the orange
extension cable strangles
the white and green flowering branch
and monks cry anciently on the radio.
Letter to a Lover
Today I am going to pick you up at the beige airport.
My heart feels like a field of calves in the sun.
My heart is wired directly to the power source of mediocre songs.
I am trying to catch a ray of sunlight in my mouth.
I look forward to showing you my new furniture.
I look forward to the telephone ringing, it is not you,
you are in the kitchen trying to figure out the coffeemaker,
you are pouring out the contents of your backpack.
I wonder if you now have golden fur?
I wonder if your arsenal of kind remarks is empty?
I remember when I met you you were wearing a grey dress,
that was also blue, not unlike the water plus the sky.
They say it’s difficult to put a leash on a hummingbird.
So let us be no longer the actuary of each other!
Let us bow no longer our heads to the tyranny of numbers!
Hurry off the plane, with your rhinestone covered bag
full of magazines that check up on the downfall of the stars.
I will be waiting for you at the bottom of the moving stairs.
Frankenstein Love
I think there was a movie once
where Frankenstein fell in love with a vampire.
A small mummy at first interfered
but later provided the requisite necessary
clarifications. He can only
meet you at night. Her face
is scarred in a permanent expression
of doom, but her bolt glows whenever
she sees you. The rival for the vampire’s affections
was a vaguely feminine zombie. Frankenstein
felt not very mysterious. Many different
feelings cycled below whoever’s
skin she had been given. Did they even
belong to her? In the many pages
of the book of love this is only one story.
But everyone goes through it once. The main
question is, will you be the one unable
to control your temper, sewed together
as you are from the past? Or the one
who always ends up turning away in search
of another likeness?
White Castle
In Wichita Kansas my friends ordered square burgers
with mysterious holes leaking a delicious substance
that would fuel us in all sorts of necessary beautiful ways
for our long journey eastward versus the night.
I was outside touching my hand to the rough
surface of the original White Castle. I was thinking
major feelings such as longing for purpose
plunge down one like the knowledge one
has been drinking water for one’s whole life
and never actually seen a well, and minor ones
we never name are always across the surface