Little Things.
any one of which could change the world-
for others, if not for yourself.
This year I wish
that you connect with
a bounty of seredipitous moments
in which to use those gifts.
Sunday, January 17, 2016
Little Things
any one of which could change the world-
for others, if not for yourself.
This year I wish
that you connect with
a bounty of seredipitous moments
in which to use those gifts.
Monday, March 25, 2013
New York Street Scene
I was thinking about you when I stepped out from the curb into the path
of a Yellow Cab. The jagged patch of crisp blue sky, edged with the
black filigree of East Side fire escapes, waved around like a flag and
continued to sway gently as I lay tangled on the ground.
Absurdly, my mind continued to hold on to the thought of you, while layers
of human concern gathered over me. First the random mix of colors,
smells and voices-- concern in Babel. The silhouettes of heads now replacing the jagged tops of facades around my patch of sky.
Then there were the sirens and lights, flashing translucently in the
bright morning sun. A new layer of navy blue and black; the smell of
gasoline and hot, dry rubber tires. They reverently lift up my body
like a broken chalice, unaware that absurdly, it is still filled only
with the thought of you.
It is all I have become, my whole existence precariously held together
by the very thought that placed me in the path of
the monster city like a sacrificial lamb. This thought, now full of the captured sky rolls around like a marble in the bottom of the broken chalice; barely missing the fresh, jagged edges between my life and my death as
the ambulance sways through the busy streets.
I slide out of the ambulance horizontally and in under yet another layer
of human concern. The swish of scrubs and medical smells; the sounds of
electric instruments are like so many sirens, distant like the streets
outside; miniature, Liliputian to my broken body, now tied to the bed and
the metal boxes by wires and tubes.
A gentle fog descends and obscures the universe. There is only a small,
blue glow; a fuzzy light at the center of my existence-- it is my existence.
The thought of you will not keep me alive, I know, but will not let it
go. I am too mesmerized by the blue and frozen momentum, not to flirt
with a further fall from grace. The thump of my confused physiology
tells me I am alive, but my life still leaks out through cracks and
jagged holes left by the missing shards; runs down the stem of the chalice
into a tarmac-gray oblivion.
Killer McQueen by AmiBly
From:
King Guezo of Dahomey 1850-52: The Abolition of the Slave Trade on the West Coast of AfricaSaturday, March 09, 2013
Rich Dark Chocolate
The way you purse your lips
when you are melting chocolate in your mouth:
it stays with me forever.
Now, my endorphin rush always reminds me of your eyebrows,
tugging hopelessly against your eyelashes,
effortlessly pressed together in pleasure;
blocking out the world for sweetness sucked.
The slight and quizzical turn of your head.
The little sound of your painted fingers
folding the squeaky wrapper.
when you are melting chocolate in your mouth:
it stays with me forever.
Now, my endorphin rush always reminds me of your eyebrows,
tugging hopelessly against your eyelashes,
effortlessly pressed together in pleasure;
blocking out the world for sweetness sucked.
The slight and quizzical turn of your head.
The little sound of your painted fingers
folding the squeaky wrapper.
Monday, March 04, 2013
Thursday, July 21, 2011
28 March 2001
28 March 2001
Oh, here again.
Didn't these same airs milk snowflakes from a turbulent sky, over the lights of Columbus?
As we sought our way down through the chaos of intellect and emotions, mixed like cold-fronts and warm-fronts, the snow settled on the ground below;
So thick and luxuriant that your boot prints could be lost in mine like a child's hand in her father's.
But here again, is without you, and the white blanket of engine noise wraps only my tired spirit and the love that wants to be here on this paper, where you might one day see it.
Oh, here again.
Didn't these same airs milk snowflakes from a turbulent sky, over the lights of Columbus?
As we sought our way down through the chaos of intellect and emotions, mixed like cold-fronts and warm-fronts, the snow settled on the ground below;
So thick and luxuriant that your boot prints could be lost in mine like a child's hand in her father's.
But here again, is without you, and the white blanket of engine noise wraps only my tired spirit and the love that wants to be here on this paper, where you might one day see it.
Thursday, May 05, 2011
Monday, February 21, 2011
Friday, October 22, 2010
SoHar or "The New Harlem"
Someone pushed me against you,
and I think we may have danced.
I still wonder why they did that,
but in the mean time:
Being with you is like holding a dove in both hands.
The sound of your voice is elegeiac;
of great distance, color and mastery of the air.
While quiet in my hands,
There is the power of great distances in you,
long, cinematic continuities, way beyond my mindscape.
And when it is over and you are gone
the signature of your heartbeat continues
to pulsate in my palms and fingertips.
II
You told me you are Aquarian and my smile is like the breadth of the room
and full of laughing confusion like the clothes on the racks and manequins:
Aquarians are my nemesis, I remember, no wonder!
(Run!)
III
Between 114th and 119th two stanzas:
Aquarians are my Nemesis:
Like the storms on Jupiter,
they last a hundred years, wreaking havoc through our several generations of manhood.
And:
Aquarius has crossed the Tropic of Capricorn.
To my delighted surprise,
Mocha Lounge has an open mike poetry night!
I ask and they offer me the overtime slot.
The MC, ready for the end introduces me as comedy by mistake.
I have dreamt of rising to such an occasion but I am only half-hearted.
Still I make them laugh, and out of a moments silence, I say into the microphone:
Being with you is like holding a dove in both hands.
And when you are gone
the signature of your heartbeat continues
to pulsate in my fingertips.
I said more, told them about my Dad's passing, and Oakland,
But that was it.
Someone pushed me against you,
and I think we may have danced.
I still wonder why they did that,
but in the mean time:
Being with you is like holding a dove in both hands.
The sound of your voice is elegeiac;
of great distance, color and mastery of the air.
While quiet in my hands,
There is the power of great distances in you,
long, cinematic continuities, way beyond my mindscape.
And when it is over and you are gone
the signature of your heartbeat continues
to pulsate in my palms and fingertips.
II
You told me you are Aquarian and my smile is like the breadth of the room
and full of laughing confusion like the clothes on the racks and manequins:
Aquarians are my nemesis, I remember, no wonder!
(Run!)
III
Between 114th and 119th two stanzas:
Aquarians are my Nemesis:
Like the storms on Jupiter,
they last a hundred years, wreaking havoc through our several generations of manhood.
And:
Aquarius has crossed the Tropic of Capricorn.
To my delighted surprise,
Mocha Lounge has an open mike poetry night!
I ask and they offer me the overtime slot.
The MC, ready for the end introduces me as comedy by mistake.
I have dreamt of rising to such an occasion but I am only half-hearted.
Still I make them laugh, and out of a moments silence, I say into the microphone:
Being with you is like holding a dove in both hands.
And when you are gone
the signature of your heartbeat continues
to pulsate in my fingertips.
I said more, told them about my Dad's passing, and Oakland,
But that was it.
Wednesday, March 17, 2010
Moose Mom.
Reminds me of the time I strode through a forest in New Hampshire with my daughter on my shoulders. It was late afternoon and late fall. The leaves were thinned and mostly the matter-of-factly golden yellow and brown that ends the autumn glory for which New England is famous.
I always tried to get up to the White Mountains at least once in each season because it is just so beautiful whenever! The Kangamangus highway snakes through the mountains, and accompanies a river much of the way. At this place, the river was set back some way down a non-descript side road, but there at the end, the river meandered through a sandy, beach-like setting with a steep rising hillside of dark pines on its opposite side. It was only my second time at that place...
"Daddy, will we see any animals?" Amina asked me as we jaunted along a narrow path out into a lightly wooded area. Searching for a way to make her disappointment less painful I waxed lyrical..
"Well, Sweetpea, you know, most animals only come out at night when its quiet and there is no one around to disturb them-- I doubt if we will see any now, they hardly ever come out in the daytime."
"Oh" she replied, clearly processing this information.
We strode on through the trees and light, stepping around fallen branches; me becoming more aware of my breath.
"Daddy." ( She still does this even now, pauses not so much for a response as for a moment of silence.) "Daddy, there's a big animal over there."
I felt a twinge of sadness that so many animals are nocturnal-- taking this to be her way of dealing with the disappointment by resorting to fiction.
"No, Sweetpea, I don't think so, they are all asleep this time of day."
We were leading the loose-knit procession of her Mom, and a colleague from work who lagged several paces behind us enjoying the air.
"Daddy, look there is a big animal over there..."
It was so matter of factly that I hardly bothered to take my mind off negotiating a dip in the path. As we came up on the side, however, I looked up to see a fully grown mother moose with twin foals hardly ten yards in front of us!
She looked up at me and my daughter with the same calm, but compromised look on her face that I must have had. They are huge, and surprisingly elegant animals, notwithstanding the onomatopoeic implications of the name "moose". A full grown moose is the size of a compact car-- or at least it is proverbial where they live that the outcome of a collision with a moose in anything smaller than a pickup truck is almost invariably fatal to the car, and often the driver.
I looked about me but there was no simple way to turn and run with toddler on shoulders across the shallow ditch, and over the branches we had just gingerly negotiated.
We eyed each other, myself and the moose mom while our young ones delighted in the moment-- mine, eyes wide at the size of a REALLY big animal, and her's in the fresh grass or acorns they had found underneath the golden leaves of a scrubby oak tree.
It was a moment of revelation about parenthood I will never forget. We two guardians were both caught off guard and knew each knew it. I took one step back and she turned back to grazing, gently nudging the twins to make them more attentive to the situation. A few more paces backwards and somehow I got a picture -- I don't remember taking it, maybe my colleague did, but I had it for years afterwards and would show astonished New Englander friends as corroboration of my story.
"There are people who have lived in New England their whole lives and never seen a moose even once!" they would say to me. "Twins!. Now that's something special!
Reminds me of the time I strode through a forest in New Hampshire with my daughter on my shoulders. It was late afternoon and late fall. The leaves were thinned and mostly the matter-of-factly golden yellow and brown that ends the autumn glory for which New England is famous.
I always tried to get up to the White Mountains at least once in each season because it is just so beautiful whenever! The Kangamangus highway snakes through the mountains, and accompanies a river much of the way. At this place, the river was set back some way down a non-descript side road, but there at the end, the river meandered through a sandy, beach-like setting with a steep rising hillside of dark pines on its opposite side. It was only my second time at that place...
"Daddy, will we see any animals?" Amina asked me as we jaunted along a narrow path out into a lightly wooded area. Searching for a way to make her disappointment less painful I waxed lyrical..
"Well, Sweetpea, you know, most animals only come out at night when its quiet and there is no one around to disturb them-- I doubt if we will see any now, they hardly ever come out in the daytime."
"Oh" she replied, clearly processing this information.
We strode on through the trees and light, stepping around fallen branches; me becoming more aware of my breath.
"Daddy." ( She still does this even now, pauses not so much for a response as for a moment of silence.) "Daddy, there's a big animal over there."
I felt a twinge of sadness that so many animals are nocturnal-- taking this to be her way of dealing with the disappointment by resorting to fiction.
"No, Sweetpea, I don't think so, they are all asleep this time of day."
We were leading the loose-knit procession of her Mom, and a colleague from work who lagged several paces behind us enjoying the air.
"Daddy, look there is a big animal over there..."
It was so matter of factly that I hardly bothered to take my mind off negotiating a dip in the path. As we came up on the side, however, I looked up to see a fully grown mother moose with twin foals hardly ten yards in front of us!
She looked up at me and my daughter with the same calm, but compromised look on her face that I must have had. They are huge, and surprisingly elegant animals, notwithstanding the onomatopoeic implications of the name "moose". A full grown moose is the size of a compact car-- or at least it is proverbial where they live that the outcome of a collision with a moose in anything smaller than a pickup truck is almost invariably fatal to the car, and often the driver.
I looked about me but there was no simple way to turn and run with toddler on shoulders across the shallow ditch, and over the branches we had just gingerly negotiated.
We eyed each other, myself and the moose mom while our young ones delighted in the moment-- mine, eyes wide at the size of a REALLY big animal, and her's in the fresh grass or acorns they had found underneath the golden leaves of a scrubby oak tree.
It was a moment of revelation about parenthood I will never forget. We two guardians were both caught off guard and knew each knew it. I took one step back and she turned back to grazing, gently nudging the twins to make them more attentive to the situation. A few more paces backwards and somehow I got a picture -- I don't remember taking it, maybe my colleague did, but I had it for years afterwards and would show astonished New Englander friends as corroboration of my story.
"There are people who have lived in New England their whole lives and never seen a moose even once!" they would say to me. "Twins!. Now that's something special!
Friday, March 05, 2010
Thursday, December 03, 2009
New York remembered.
In New York, I remember
this is a place so involved, so intricate and established
that it demands surrender;
commitment,
a willingness to forgo the outside world.
Even birds can only escape in orthogonal directions:
North, East, South or West;
straining in a steep ascent towards the jagged
trapezoids of blue sky
at the tops of the glass canyons.
this is a place so involved, so intricate and established
that it demands surrender;
commitment,
a willingness to forgo the outside world.
Even birds can only escape in orthogonal directions:
North, East, South or West;
straining in a steep ascent towards the jagged
trapezoids of blue sky
at the tops of the glass canyons.
Friday, July 11, 2008
Eluemuno.
My name is like a coiled spring:
and in those times when the rust
shifts and cracks to release an
energy -- constant and persistent,
gyroscopically focused on
the return home.
The rustiness is abuse; the "necessary"
time-out-of-spirit, time-out-of-land
which, left too long,
makes the uncoiling
Rebellion,
and constancy frustrating.
My name is like a coiled spring:
and in those times when the rust
shifts and cracks to release an
energy -- constant and persistent,
gyroscopically focused on
the return home.
The rustiness is abuse; the "necessary"
time-out-of-spirit, time-out-of-land
which, left too long,
makes the uncoiling
Rebellion,
and constancy frustrating.
Baby on the BART.
If I am a baby,
is it OK for my to hang out with my
Drugged up mom?
Is it OK to travel alone with her on the BART?
Asleep?
Am I less safe than when I was inside her?
What if I crossed the line? I mean, went back?
Would anybody know?
Should I cry?
Should I be silent?
What if something went wrong?
Who are all these people anyway?
would they help me?
She parked my push-chair real well. R-E-A-L well.
She even remembered to put on the brakes.
You see? She cares!
But what if she changes her mind?
Tries to take me up the escalator backwards?
Should I cry?
Should I be silent?
She IS careful,
My Mom.
june 08
If I am a baby,
is it OK for my to hang out with my
Drugged up mom?
Is it OK to travel alone with her on the BART?
Asleep?
Am I less safe than when I was inside her?
What if I crossed the line? I mean, went back?
Would anybody know?
Should I cry?
Should I be silent?
What if something went wrong?
Who are all these people anyway?
would they help me?
She parked my push-chair real well. R-E-A-L well.
She even remembered to put on the brakes.
You see? She cares!
But what if she changes her mind?
Tries to take me up the escalator backwards?
Should I cry?
Should I be silent?
She IS careful,
My Mom.
june 08
Saturday, April 19, 2008
Monday, March 03, 2008
Monday, September 24, 2007
Sweet Mountain Pie
I love your sweet potatoes
fresh dug earth smell
condensed milk
and red Carnation label:
The danger of your warm cinnamon
your too unflinching eyes
round as your breasts,
your mountain pies
adventuring into my senses
Unchanneled
you defy reality
and so define your own:
make mother sweeter
make gray skies blue
etc
Where are you my love?
Where is my brown skin girl?
My Southern Belle lost
No longer ringing?
No Skype
no urgent cell phone
no sound of San Francisco buses
in the querulous warmth and
straight-ahead light of
only San Francisco
I miss your troubles
and concerns;
long unburdenings
of your little girl
over the echoing line
our two-city cyber-room half green
half log cabin
You packed, I know
You left and are on your Great Journey;
I hope you're safe!
It is a wild world out there.
I love your sweet potatoes
fresh dug earth smell
condensed milk
and red Carnation label:
The danger of your warm cinnamon
your too unflinching eyes
round as your breasts,
your mountain pies
adventuring into my senses
Unchanneled
you defy reality
and so define your own:
make mother sweeter
make gray skies blue
etc
Where are you my love?
Where is my brown skin girl?
My Southern Belle lost
No longer ringing?
No Skype
no urgent cell phone
no sound of San Francisco buses
in the querulous warmth and
straight-ahead light of
only San Francisco
I miss your troubles
and concerns;
long unburdenings
of your little girl
over the echoing line
our two-city cyber-room half green
half log cabin
You packed, I know
You left and are on your Great Journey;
I hope you're safe!
It is a wild world out there.
Tuesday, September 18, 2007
Is that you
Sue?
Can't believe the easy
like you never left
just yesterday,
now sun-bleached and pound-less;
Third World girl,
complaining that your man
won't go fishing!
That there's nothing here
your missing,
Not in THIS nostalgic space!
I hear you girl!
Your free spirit makes me ache
warms me celebrate
That you still you
And not a heartbeat's worth of bravery
is missing between you and heaven.
Now two minutes later,
I wish I had saved our AIM-full
conversation and the way that proesy
dropped from the misspellings and urgency with which
we typed our exchanges
jumbling the sequence of the lines
into novel stanzas
and humorous allusions.
You made me realise how much
our journeys since we last met
were similar,
you made me realise how much I was free--
not that cliche hippy irresponsible freedom
But the freedom that comes from taking responsibility for the
world AS YOU SEE IT!
If you and I had not in our separate ways braved grief, pain
and separation
there would be no world out there today
I am sure.
Sue?
Can't believe the easy
like you never left
just yesterday,
now sun-bleached and pound-less;
Third World girl,
complaining that your man
won't go fishing!
That there's nothing here
your missing,
Not in THIS nostalgic space!
I hear you girl!
Your free spirit makes me ache
warms me celebrate
That you still you
And not a heartbeat's worth of bravery
is missing between you and heaven.
Now two minutes later,
I wish I had saved our AIM-full
conversation and the way that proesy
dropped from the misspellings and urgency with which
we typed our exchanges
jumbling the sequence of the lines
into novel stanzas
and humorous allusions.
You made me realise how much
our journeys since we last met
were similar,
you made me realise how much I was free--
not that cliche hippy irresponsible freedom
But the freedom that comes from taking responsibility for the
world AS YOU SEE IT!
If you and I had not in our separate ways braved grief, pain
and separation
there would be no world out there today
I am sure.
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Early, Sunny Spring - Pike Street Market.
How are the afternoons?
What news of sunlit, streaming
Cafes.
What the white people like so much,
Are they still intact?
It is saying goodbye to another day
As absolutely gracefully as possible.
Enjoy a beer-- a $3 reward
For clawing back the $26 I mis-spent yesterday,
On tea.
It's welcome spring again.
I'm thankfully over-dressed
Ready to shed my sleazebag armour
And join a new army this month.
How are the afternoons?
What news of sunlit, streaming
Cafes.
What the white people like so much,
Are they still intact?
It is saying goodbye to another day
As absolutely gracefully as possible.
Enjoy a beer-- a $3 reward
For clawing back the $26 I mis-spent yesterday,
On tea.
It's welcome spring again.
I'm thankfully over-dressed
Ready to shed my sleazebag armour
And join a new army this month.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
Shaving Ruminations
Yes, good morning dear!
You know, I think of you every morning:
Everytime I consider whether I need a shave I remember when you said
with so much absolutness:
"You should shave every day!"
But my beard is a tropical plant:
A walla full of December rice.
It needs sunshine and high temperatures
to rise beyond a stubble.
Shaving in these northern climes
is like gleaning.
Yes, good morning dear!
You know, I think of you every morning:
Everytime I consider whether I need a shave I remember when you said
with so much absolutness:
"You should shave every day!"
But my beard is a tropical plant:
A walla full of December rice.
It needs sunshine and high temperatures
to rise beyond a stubble.
Shaving in these northern climes
is like gleaning.
Friday, April 13, 2007
T. Rex Soup for the Soul
T. Rex: They finally did it!
Pulled collagens from some ancient bones
(All 65 million years of them in Montana)
Boiled them up, and hey presto!
Chicken soup!
Dinosaurs are, after all, like birds.
And frogs.
A hypothesis becomes a theory
For all brave scientists.
And for T. Macbeth
Eye of newt and tongue of frog
To keep the virulence at bay,
Fight the seasonal flus and coughs
On the molecular battleground
Thundering across Gondwanaland:
Today no virus can manifest its presence with THAT roar!
T. Rex: They finally did it!
Pulled collagens from some ancient bones
(All 65 million years of them in Montana)
Boiled them up, and hey presto!
Chicken soup!
Dinosaurs are, after all, like birds.
And frogs.
A hypothesis becomes a theory
For all brave scientists.
And for T. Macbeth
Eye of newt and tongue of frog
To keep the virulence at bay,
Fight the seasonal flus and coughs
On the molecular battleground
Thundering across Gondwanaland:
Today no virus can manifest its presence with THAT roar!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)