ALL RESPONSES |
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You, who no one understands,
And everyone admires,
Are alone again.
An entire stage is yours, the crowd
Hears you speak, your words
Reach across oceans,
But you never hear applause.
This is best, because
If you could feel
What they do,
Curtains would fall
On your perfect theater. |
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dragging the night away,
the moon laughing
pacing in deep grief
like wolves do after a kill
having no thoughts of harm
when the radio clicks
sitting in front of a piano
with no hands
across town
a new cafe opens:
bright lights & yellow stools;
semi-circles of customers,
all counting by threes
blue suits,
dying from a habit
aching without explanation,
no one noticing
wanting to write theatre at midnight
instead, stewing in onions
permission given to an entire world
to pay attention to whatever
the sheer genius of it all |
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Small handwriting is a sign of what, really?
Your brother is like that.
I know him as well
As my own colon, but were we to pass
On the street, I would recognize
Your brother, certainly.
They both deserve more than a nod,
Perhaps a handshake, perhaps a hug. |
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Let me see your tongue
says Dr. Lu each and every time
before the accupuncture treatment
for my head ailments. I stick out
my tongue, feeling like I'm ageless
and defiant and recognize
Lu as the genius he is. |
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How do we take the measure of a man
or a woman, for that matter? My friend Lynne
in her beautiful death, said she had no
disappointments and no regrets
despite the midnight hours of crying
on my shoulder her tales of woe.
Einstein once said, ”If I had known
I would have become a watch maker”
proving that genius has its conscience.
I straddle both: my disappointment
and my regret make me wonder
if I could have made a different choice
yet I know my life is precisely that chain:
I want our dance to last
all night long and every space
in-between
to be filled
with light
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If I had defied
all the world's judgments,
I'd stick it out too. |
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Another adage
To add to the genius list
Large brain, larger tongue.
It serves you right
Bringing your flash camera
To the science lab.
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How do I take the measure of a man,
a woman, or my own life, for that matter?
My friend Lynne in her beautiful death,
said she had no
disappointments and no regrets
despite the midnight hours of crying
on my shoulder her tales of woe.
After the bomb exploded, Einstein
said,”If I had known,
I would have become a locksmith”
proving that genius has its conscience.
I straddle both: my disappointments
and my regrets make me wonder
if I could have made a different choice
yet I know my life was created by precisely that chain:
I want our dance to last
all night long and every space
in-between
to be filled
with light
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The tongue in its cage
Wants new flight paths, fresh rivers
I can’t hear its song
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flames flicker
from a back
fireplace
certainly,
a clock ticks
somewhere
her fingers are
to board as eyes
are to blue pupils
her love is genius,
wires, the weight
of her body
going up
and down
my own feet
listening
a staircase
walking blind |
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Everything lies in the tongue--the taste
for sweet, for salt, for love, for spurn.
Stick it out, stick it in, it’s a slick
muscle, a fleshy feeling, a snake’s
sense of direction, with a bent
toward confection. Being mammal,
a licker and a sucker, I prefer
confections. Frosting, creme,
your cheek, lips and neck. Your
skin, for example, is a remembered
presence my tongue so admired.
Such a small muscle, driving the body
with its manoevers, unsatiable demands,
pink, red, its ego always thickening.
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When Albert Einstein
Had too much wine
He engaged in his unfortunate proclivity
To dream up theories of relativity.
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Near the edge of the pond, stood
the plywood table where he cleaned fish.
I remember the silver knife’s tip,
its handle black onyx, how it fit in his hand.
Remember too the sound of crunching
as he lifted the gills, cracking,
as he rocked the blade through the spine,
how blood and slick ropey veins coated
his fingers, when the belly, he pried open.
How his sleeves, folded up in three-inch cuffs
stayed clean, his arms stippled with scales
and his breath smelled of tobacco
and mint,
their death
smelled of water and reeds,
of fear and consent.
Remember too how the light played
off each scale, how their hardness
and beauty silenced me.
Skin so soft, so sweet and white--
what they were underneath
this armored splendor,
what they were
when he placed them
in my hands, told me
to rinse them in the bucket
there, at the water’s edge,
then take them
please take them
to my mother.
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…laughter passes over the earth
Rabindranath Tagore, Gitanjali, No. 57
Einstein pulls a goofy face, his tongue thrust out
to mock the ones who grab his frowsy coattails.
While testing a topological notion, he uses his own big toes
but makes his socks too holey and strolls on his tender bare feet.
The smoke of his chimney-pipe precedes him. His cat,
depressed on rainy afternoons, stays home.
Science sans religion is lame, he says and waltzes
off his wild agnostic boogie, dipping and turning, he sings
in E minor ? religion sans science is blind, a melody
Tagore rewrites for the speed of Ah, the light dances
when Albert takes him sailing and Lilies and jasmines surge up
on the crest of the waves of light. |
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There is nothing more powerful than the way you feel when the world loves you.
I know, because I have walked the stage before adoring audiences, your animal applause never ending.
The intense vitality of your faces, your cathartic expression, your release, filled me with power.
When I wanted you to laugh, you did so, when I wanted you to cry, you wept hard tears.
I became wealthy, traveled the globe to perform, to play, to love.
Do you love me? |
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father never took slow showers.
he never talked about his dreams
over coffee or between bites of corn
flakes or raison toast with peanut butter.
he was never religious, even after Lisa
died his hands never prayed more.
i often went to bed with his Minneapolis
voice on the radio, static like white
bags of salt, selling London Luggage
leather or used cars from places
like Thorp or Chippewa Falls, cities
that supplied the world with cozy children.
there is no way back from there, and even
when i wake up with you on the edge
of my bed, trying to tell me your whole
life story in short sentences, i write
a poem and remember you tucking
me into my small bed with deft and love
and i considered you a genius
in the small city by the river in the trees. |
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I wish you well
though all would wish you ill--
it was not you
who pushed the children down
and pounded on their chests
until they disappeared
with wind, with light and bloom.
how terrible to be alone,
to open up a seal
and give life to
an ancient tale--
Pandora, you, the regrets
of every world cannot change
lightness;
if there is a heaven--
or even a god, or gods
of some shape and form, they
are no better than we--
isn’t that clear by now? and you
might understand small, Möbian
facts about how the gods viewed us
after they gave us fire
and let us think that we stole it…
You, god; distance is achieved
only through release,
so I give up on this one
sided tale. I tried to write
something meaningful, and all
that came out was this poem, which
I am not sure even has any import--
someone else would have written it
if not me
(how terrible to be)
--
is this how you felt
the morning after?) |
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we are all small gods
constantly shifting
from one plane to
the next
blinking in and out
of existence, pure
energy when we are
asleep
and chaos
theory
explains a little
less
than what is meaningful
or acceptable
to this background
of noise
that we live in
but it is all that we have
written down on paper
in libraries that will crumble
tomorrow
which makes us little
more than animals
really
only aware sometimes
of what is wrong |
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We expect all of our revelations
to come to us
dressed in black,
speaking in somber tones
of the mysteries
that we believe,
once solved,
will save us,
so we are surprised
when one comes in
wearing a funny hat
no matter how many times
it happens.
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Forget genius — you haven’t got a chance.
Just pack some rugged words
in a shabby suitcase and
lug it over the world — at least five countries.
Rain and lovers.
Sun and dark.
Little Jack of Diamonds in the nightstand drawer
at the third-rate hotel.
Get it beaten up and stamped
and cleared through customs.
Bring it home to the stillness of a room
unclasp the rusty locks
and there you have her — standing like a child.
In a moth-eaten sweater, a scar above one eye. |
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The last great bastion
of the good ol’ boys
uppermost echelon
of the male elite
no women admitted
except in supporting roles
like Albert’s equal,
Maleva, saddled with children
whose needs he could ignore
while assuming greater purpose
long before achieving it
like so many other, self-styled prodigies
and when success arrived
he cast Maleva aside
in favor of an insipid cousin
whose only talent
was doting subservience
Maleva, meanwhile, writ right out of history
E = MC2
Exclusive Male Club
raised by the power of two. |
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| Digital clock reads 2:19; it was 1:53 when I woke. Immediate impulse was bladder vacation; I fought it, but gave in to higher power and made the long walk down the hall. What woke me? I don't know. Maybe a drunk walking back from last call at Spinners. Maybe a drunk driving a Ford F250 Diesel from last call at the Circle Inn. Maybe I was at last call, and forgot. Or got abducted by nameless vampire aliens. I entered bedrooms on wing, sucked neck for sanguine rush, joined deathless hosts in flight. Now, metabolic urgency equals square root of dark side of earth. Everything reverses, eclipsed by raison toast. Tomorrow, do I speak in foreign font? Fortunately, in 1963, there was no such thing as ADD. It's good to be wired differently. If only one could get some sleep.... |
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Ashes to ashes,
dust to dust--
if it weren't for the paint
the ladies would rust.
The genius of an old limerick dances
around the truth.
We are all coming or going
despite measures taken to cover
our temporariness.
We sit still for
black marks on our foreheads.
One Wednesday follows another
until all the palms are dust.
Ladies try to keep from rusting;
gentlemen scurry about blowing on coals.
The fire is good while it lasts,
but turn around and the ember
has lost its glow,
the paint is dry and peeling.
Someone new gathers fresh logs,
lights a new match,
even in the old fireplaces.
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This is my poem to the way we stand:
you looking to horizons, events, future
pastures of plenty, me to you, breathless
and dazed
This is my poem to the way we
hold our arms around
each other: you lightly
companionable, hospitable
as if it is by accident that it is me
it could just as well be any
me wanting nothing more
than to squeeze inside your skin
dissolve like smoke
in morning fog, mutated
into pure fragrance, the taste
of you on my tongue like rompope
or gelato or anything indescribable
and tender, bruised like fruit
pinched a little too hard, like
a mouth swollen from kissing
returned back to myself each and
every time. This is my poem about how
we communicate: you speaking
in a foreign tongue of adventures
off to war in your costume
of flamboyant gestures, me
speaking of the silken pull of spirit
across my heart, finding comfort in
the way love has upended me
one more time but still able to get back up, smile.
Still waiting to pick you
out of the crowd, beckoning, mine
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The inevitable loss
of raison d'etre
-the blade is sheathed
unbled |
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Tweezers to pull the _____
From your finger,
Where it delicately
Lodged after your
Foolhardy attempt
To abduct it from the _____ sky
Say what you will,
The fact remains. |
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i am not a genius
in the usual sense of the word
i.e. high i.q. intellectual etc.
the thing that gets me every time
is the lack of logic (no math makes sense)
my number falls just short so
i do not qualify for member
ship in m.e.n.s.a.
a fact for which i was
taunted in a writing class
in my undergraduate
program at the university
when i received a better
grade than a person who
belonged to that geek club
brilliance is variously nuanced
i have a natural gift for
people (she has emotional i.q.)
i am genetically predisposed
to flirt with almost anyone
man woman or critter
(she just can’t help it)
i can untangle jewelry
when i hear a non-midwestern speaker
instantly i mimic the inflection
a double pisces i am intuitive
closing my eyes i can find
missing or stolen objects
(she scans the akashic records)
i can fix things with paper clips
duct tape rubber bands or hammer
i see disparate items know beyond
doubt which belong together
i sense danger in a place behind
me on the left side of my brain
i can pack a single carry-on
for a month-long stay anywhere
(she knows how to accessorize)
i can mentally place myself in
a painting and speak from the canvas
i can listen to you cry
i can make you laugh
(she is an empathic listener)
like christina rossetti
i can rhyme the word orange
go ahead ask me sometime
averse to punctuation and caps
(she is a poet after all)
none of these attributes
will get me into m.e.n.s.a.
but i have been to some
surreal and spectacular parties
with beings who know the dalai lama
(she is fine with that)
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