Not the solid
of a local truth
globally imposed
you desire.
No ground
to take in some
pitched battle
against forces
of the evil
of your choosing. Rain
you might catch now and then
on your tongue
if you put the umbrella away.
Surprising how sweet
the world tastes falling
on a day so gray
the bridge fades
before it reaches the other side
and you have
nothing to walk on
but water.
The Preserver
My office phone rings; some student says
his English teacher gave him my name,
told him I was a real writer. I’m wondering
what new-ex-friend ratted me out. The kid
rambles on, says he needs help; he can’t stop
writing; he says, words keep flowing like blood
from a deep gash; this craziness is ruining
his life, consuming him whole, he’s at 500
pages and running. Jesus, I think, he wants
me to read this thing, but he just keeps talking,
tells me he’s not the literary type, reads
the box scores in the paper, that’s all,
but now this. He’s so scared, he saw
a shrink who asked him about his mother
and gave him pills that put him to sleep.
I ask him what genre he’s working in.
I figure if it’s prose, I can weasel out.
He says he has no idea what I’m talking
about. I say, You know is it a story
or a poem. He says, It’s not like that;
it’s more like a universe. He asks
what he should do. I’m stumped,
but I tell him, Keep writing, this must
be happening for a reason. He thanks me,
but I can sense his desperation as the line
goes dead. I wonder if I did the right thing,
but I think there is a chance that in some new
and slightly askew universe, I am Vishnu,
the Preserver, at least until Shiva shows up
and teaches the kid about second drafts.
Old School
Good Christ, he muttered. Again
this morning, the tricked out
copper Kia was parked
in his accustomed spot.
As he pulled himself and his stuff
out of his battered Volvo,
the students took no notice.
Barely legal and over sexed,
they kept the AC running,
her seat reclined three-
quarters the way down, and he
looming over the stiff gear shift
hovering over her rising heat.
Their mouths open and connected
as they tried to knot their tongues.
The long-tenured English
professor tried not to stare,
so he couldn’t quite make out
where the boy’s hands rested
or did not. He trudged past
their windshield, office
bound, toting his briefcase
stuffed with ungraded papers
on Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress.
His resentment fermented
with each step toward his desk—
a fine and private place.
The Limits of Art
From Babel’s tower rebuilt in ink,
the poet’s forged bird sings.
The reader lured from below
follows the song to where he begins
to know past what he understands.
The page turns. The song wanes.
An airless night falls. Black mates
white to silent blue guitars. Dolphins
swim breathless and deep. The cold
startles the snowman into melting.
In a park walk a young husband and wife.
Thirteen identical blackbirds on the green
graze dumbly like cattle. He carries
the anthology he assigned to students.
The couple talks of numbers. He likes three.
She says she’s too old and prefers two.
They talk of names and welcome the night.
sitting meditation in a river
flowing fast, Buddha still
smiles. they say
cross the river
by feeling the stones,
but on this busy street it is
a matter of minding
the gaps. no way
but between
to dwell a moment on
this cloud of incense, still, sitting
Macao, March 2013
for Taylor Hada
The moon shivers in feral sky.
Cries of coyotes echo
in the void, pierce the silence
between a canyon and forever.
Shrill voices slice the dark
and the light in chilling fragments,
remind me of the pain
I thought I had forgotten,
the betrayal of a prairie moon.
If I told you my grandpa
as a young man
had a coyote for a pet
you might not believe me
but I have an old, sepia photo
of a young man crouching
beside a wild dog, each
wary of the other, both
seem surprised to be so close.
I have also been told
Grandpa used to run down
Jack Rabbits on foot.
This wild night,
This wild night
yammering beneath timeless stars
I shudder to contemplate
that which precedes me.
The coyote in all of us.
i learn by negation
how to breathe,
positions made unavoidable
by a city dancing between
qigong in the square
below Starbucks
and traffic that will not stop.
the proper stance is
flowing from there
to here, knowing
when to swerve.
a matter of collisions
a matter of avoiding
collisions — not
knowing, bodies falling.
Shenzhen, March 2013
When Billy Parham crosses into Mexico he does so with the best of intentions, but before he can decide to save the wolf he must decide to disobey his father. It is such disobedience that frees us to become some struggling larvae rising to new life, only to die – and our death – usually goes unnoticed, usually not considered, just flecks on the spinning wheel of time. But for a moment you and Billy rejected your father, and in that moment you never loved your father more, you never loved anything better, though it is a love that kills.
Φόβος οὐκ ἔστιν ἐν τῇ ἀγάπῃ, ἀλλ’ ἡ τελεία ἀγάπη ἔξω βάλλει τὸν φόβον…
1 John 4:18
Squills and daffodils
spill over barricades
of law-abiding flowers
until lawns with signs
that warn they have been
treated sweep them under a rug
and huddle behind iron fences
with locked gates. Mosque
exchanges glances
with the BP station
on the corner, a long
discourse concerning
corporate personhood
contained in the silence
between them. Christ
the King (a madrasa
in another tongue), not
a mile away, listens.
Fences begin to sway
where Muddy Waters lived,
and the sidewalk is a mosaic
of broken glass glittering
in sun. Most cardinals
stick to the score,
but song sparrows have been
jamming since sunrise. Spring
cannot contain itself, and when
a young guy strolls by miles later
on Wabash strumming a guitar,
I suppose less than perfect
love will suffice
for now.
I won’t sanctify it
by comparing the body
and blood of Christ
to processed curds
in a plastic package
but when the dragon
prevents sleep
few things comfort
like this profane element
molding in the fridge.
On such nights
I’d trade the moon
for a chunk of cheese.