ALL RESPONSES |
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The period between joy and sadness
is the length of life.
Where both heaven
and hell, together,
fail
is self. |
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Before you can bag your camera,
help one old woman off the sand,
a northbound wind will gyrate, magnify
cotton into cloudburst, lightning
ruction toasts your toes, snaps
flashes through your still photography.
The gods don't know a being
from a bottle on Georgia's beach,
nor heaven from a hole in the sky. |
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It is night’s seduction
that empties the sky, trades
the curve of her breast for the hustle
of the streets in his mind. He hears
the crows bawdy cries
out his bedroom window
their black bodies blanket trees
now that it is February.
As the sky shifts
from violet to charcoal gray
he is torn
between flight and dive,
into twilight or into her.
Has seduced dissonance before
& knows it is hard to sustain.
Her skin
wears a loneliness he can taste,
wants to lick, wants to trace
with his finger map
his way to her center
where each fear can be named
and blessed, each word
redeemed, traded for a kiss.
Divine thoughts spark and flare
stoke hidden fires
as night drifts
and streetlights, haloed,
quiet crows.
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We live in cottages behind dunes.
No one wears clothes,
everyone fit and healthy.
No stress, no work ethic. No work.
On the beach, cabana
with open buffet,
fresh vegetables, shellfish,
beer and margaritas
for those who want them.
Every evening, when sun
mates with sea, a jazz band
begins to play. Couples return
from the dunes, relaxed.
The poet begins to speak.
We listen silently to our hearts.
Much later, the last of us return
to dark cottages, and sleep
like oysters at high tide.
Sleep, friends, sleep.
You will hear the poet again
tomorrow. |
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After sundown, more toward nightfall,
the sky and water both lunar blue
the two of them leaned toward each
naked from their bottom ends down
to their clothes at their ankles
he was filling her, upright,
with what she seemed to be missing,
her hands tearing the water bank grass
roots behind her for all she was worth
i watched for a few shadowy minutes,
regret flickering in and out like the red
tower lights over Half Moon Park
i suppose to them,
it seemed like heaven |
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Splendor and gravel
she carries on the souls of her feet
along with the tar that took
until fall to rub free
noon is the other side of the sun
a whistle blowing, and until then
she gathers dew in her dress’s hem,
twigs in her hair, braids grass to wear
around her waist and wrist.
Loves the feel of bark and trunk
between her thighs as she climbs
higher, into the canopy
folds her body into branch
listens to the world sing
in whispering leaves and quaking limbs,
in the chains of dogs and birds’ sighs,
hears too, her own blood pumping,
keeping time.
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Ask the ones you pass this morning
how they worship light
etching lines into their faces.
See how skilled they are
threading among gulls and white nosed pigeons
without scattering them into flight.
This day and every other couples murmur
as oily backed birds scramble for food.
An old man in fringed leather bikes by
with an empty bag in his basket.
One woman walks her black braid
bouncing as she covers the boardwalk,
balancing coffee, waving when she sees you.
A gaggle of mothers pushing strollers flutters by.
Young men from a group home spear trash,
one turns out and chases a wave, laughing.
You stand here listening to the music
of what has already left
knowing change is what this body is.
Everyday the dolphins, the surfers, the walkers
and you with them taking what the sea brings
what is broken and strewn on the shore.
You stand in the morning with palms open
to the waves’ unceasing prayer.
Aren’t you searching for rescue or myth
(where no one ever really dies).
Or are they not needed,
useless as wings in the wind.
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Heaven
Mark Twain says there is no humor there.
But, I say, can we be dead sure?
These several heavens overlap, I’d say.
One of blue sky, clouds billowing.
The other a black hole, the bottom line.
Chang Heng says heaven is like an egg.
The earth is yolk--
Where the jokes are, I’d say.
The white is the outermost reach, the limit.
From whence the pennies fall.
Heaven’s, to Betsy, I’d say.
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Happy
birthday, Uncle Charlie, Aunt
Vanessa,
Happy Birthday to you all.
Do
you hope for parties, things you never had,
Balloons,
presents, a trip to Coney Island?
Ah,
this is heaven. In heaven there is no time,
Birthdays
never come, nor are there mornings
When
thought arrives with waking: Birthday at last!
So,
even though we put it in the paper,
HAPPY
THIRD BIRTHDAY IN HEAVEN,
it
doesn't
matter,
Heaven
has no birthdays. And no gifts.
We,
not yet in heaven, can eat ice cream,
Mingle,
blow out all the birthday candles
To
prove the fast persistence of the breath
In
the face of all that dreadful counting.
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Something cheery then. Something warm,
something to make love upon. Something
fun. Something to run into and get wet,
feel the tug of something stronger, much
surroundier than you are or will ever be.
No need to compete here. Ha! Something
to jump and be happy over small measures,
content with duckling leaps, accepting of
the miniature you can make or be and so
tickled pink about it you laugh. Something
that makes the barefeet feel at home again,
“This is the life!” they grin. Something
attracting birds and all manner of mollusks.
Something that’s somewhere far away it some-
times seems. Some version we come from,
that we celebrate vaguely on birthdays, that
salty caress rising sometimes in dreams.
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As line touched
by circle tingles
with true direction,
knows ineluctable
future, scopes
forward, courses on |
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You sit in the morning with palms
opened.
Hoping. At least you have taken
the posture. Eyes closed.
Opening again to the flawless
incandescent sky, takes your breath
away. Trying so hard to breathe through it.
Maintain a steady rhythm. In. Pause. Out.
Pause. Despite the trembling in your bones.
Daring to ask. You have been here before.
Does your child prefer being home
in heaven? Is that why he couldn’t stay?
There are no tidy answers. You have learned
to live with that.
But you also have to learn to live
all over again. With hands opened.
Pieces of your heart on a string,
kited out to sea.
The pulse of ocean beats a tranquility
back to you that you don’t feel you deserve
and yet with every blink of your eyelashes,
there is nothing you crave more.
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there has to be grace,
let’s look for it together
a non-verbal cue, an eyebrow
rising above a blue iris
one finger curled around
the slender stem of a rose
every street i walk with you
today is a holiday, a holy day
on Ash Wednesday eve
you look at me
i take your hand
and ask, “why not?”
even the saints
are impressed
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I’m walking through a field.
The stars are sprinkled like salt on a summer tablecloth:
I see each dot roll across the night’s sky.
The field wraps into darkness, but it’s not a dark darkness,
no, there is some sort of light.
The light is in the peace that this darkness offers.
I’m wearing a dress; it’s unlike one I have ever owned.
I can’t describe it, for I have never worn it,
but I am beautiful, and I know this is me.
I walk as warm air lifts my hair and smoothes the skin that
slides over my shoulders to my fingertips, my ring—
and something whispers he’s through the darkness
waiting for me.
There is a piano beneath a naked tree.
I sit down; the cushion is soft and warm,
and it smells like my mother’s hugs.
I turn, my hair has returned to the baby blonde it was
as a child. It falls in curls below my shoulders, I flutter
my eyes, and without any aid, I see
and then He starts to play a song, and this is just the welcoming.
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In the morning, the same pelicans return.
They practice gliding low, just
above the breakers, wingtips nearly skimming
the churning skerf. Then rise, return again.
The same families of the day before come out,
chattering in Spanish;
the same Cleveland retiree couple emerges,
his face ruddy and dim,
her legs of elephantine cellulite,
and grab the same set of lounge chairs,
settle in to read the same book.
That Canadian jogger, grim, joyless,
plods her way across the sand.
Women in paradise wear broad floppy hats and
stand just above the crashing surf,
their gaze grown distant, cast across the clean
blue sea, and are lovely as they never
were at home.
Time puddles at your feet, stretches out and
slowly, under the sun's persuasion,
vanishes. Whatever secrets paradise holds,
the pelicans know.
Glide low. Practice. Later, have some fish.
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Message
Black holes stretch across
the tundra of my thighs
Small beaten mouths whisper and
stub out their cigarettes.
Someone must be watching your death.
Someone other than me.
I am galaxies away. Safely, as-
soft nebulas cushion the tornado of your whims we meet
like two mites in the dark – fighting and feeding
fighting and feeding behind the halfway house.
Someone must be missing something;
the apostrophe in yours truly
the darkness of want - of wish.
Love pairs the hardened leeches together-
making paragraphs of loneliness bark- page after page.
It's heavy being here
and with all the messages in the world I cannot get back to you.
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Heaven: a slice of wonder
lying beside placid waters
lying beside tumbling waters
but next to you
Heaven is a stone in my palm,
heart-shaped, that I found
on the grubby sidewalk
just when I needed a sign
Heaven: the roaring fire in a cold
cabin, in my pj’s, a glass of wine
carried across the bridge between
dwellings so I don’t have to
put on my boots
Heaven is your heart under my cheek, the child
wrapped in a blanket on my lap, the last
flowers before the frost. The rain after
drought, the newly green of leaves
on tender limbs. A popsicle on a
broiling day, the way you say
my name in the morning.
Heaven is understanding what someone
said in Spanish and being able to
answer in the correct tense.
Heaven is love you’s
going back and forth through time
without end. Never silent.
Never done.
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In the shadow of Olympus
in the white lane of our drinking
Lovers in the ground
lovers in the air
I offer you this
glass in the tavern
by the rustling oak
No roadmaps to the stars
We shall rise out of life like
foam... bright-eyed Aphrodite
let me touch you at last
the body a playground...
Half-way between
the end and forever
In the halls of Olympus
a closer view of the day
sheep grazing
white sheets surround you
after this bath of the
twenty first century
Close, my lovely
ghost of the mountain |
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This dog caught in the rain
looks even skinner
than she does dry. Fur matted
sinks between bones. She’s shed
most of her past, carries only
an idea of love, of home--
the place it fills,
all that matters now. Looks
for a corner, a nook
a hollow—nothing much,
for she is small enough to
slip into every unseen gap.
Her body a bell curve,
the trailing end, she moves
in curves through alleys. Grace
in her legs, eyes lowered,
searches for the fragrance
of something underneath the rain,
something smoldering,
that holds the heat of possibility,
the faint scent of tenderness.
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All time is ending,
even this moment passes away
with today’s melting snow.
Like the morning coffee drunk
under the grey mantled sky.
Or Thursday’s five-above,
cheeks gone scarlet, nose crying
caught in winter’s maw. Soon
buildings will stop their coughing
and trees hollowed of flesh
will again bend with breeze.
The bones of things,
austere and sterile, in forces
of black and white will surpass
and afternoons that come darkly
in the breath of unbound cold
will gradually crack to light,
the way ice opens to water
rivulets sweeping away old snow.
And it will be as if it were always,
as if this was not all that’s left
of my first winter without her.
Had she made it another year,
she would have tasted this air
on her tongue and never known.
But I’ve seen what time can do.
I’m not interested in waiting for March,
for hope to swell outside,
all kinds of passion pushing forth
in healthy shades of green.
For the anniversary
we promise to go west;
to the red desert where misers
grow of desperation; to the wasteland
full of peyote, prickly pears, devil’s claw,
bastard toadflax, saguaro, wooly daisies,
showy four-o’clock, ghost flowers,
where ancient stone worlds
still exist raw in crumbs of sand.
There we’ll wait as orphans
for fierce stars to crash down on us
and stop this stampede of lonely hours.
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so many books
with so many pages
and words
long tale glasses, pinched
between rose petals
and thorns
spines of vanilla sheets
filled with cabarets
and bistros
ice cream words, swirling
with chocolate, strawberries
and yearning
welcomed strangers,
an island-simple plot
and heaven
cloaked oceans, shifting
sand belonging to beach
and palms
a reader inhales,
takes air,
and becomes king |
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HEAVEN ON EARTH
Paradise is a place I visit
every time my daughter smiles at me.
It is the moment I live
when I see the first flower
peek through the wet leaves
and the melting snow.
Heaven is the voice of a long lost friend
reaching for me through distance.
Heaven is a state of mind,
it is a starry sky,
my breath condensing
in a cold winter day,
a reminder of being alive.
My heaven is in my pocket
when I get a note from my child,
it is a movie with a friend,
the voices of my family, a dinner,
I savor slowly
through time and memories.
It is a home, a love, a hope,
a gift I have not forgotten
wrapped in a summer blue sky,
and in my heart,
on this earth,
I am in heaven. |
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I think of you
while your face, like a mirage, dissipates
between the blue waves of the sea
and the blue of the sky.
I close my eyes,
and feel your hands caress me.
I haven't yet forgotten,
I haven't yet forgotten the feeling of you.
The memory of us is strong,
prompting me to dig my toes into the water-line
while I lay on this hot sandy bed.
My cheek lying on the sand,
I inhale the scent of salt and suntan lotion
mixed with the sweat on my skin.
Warmed by the sun, my mind warms up
to the memory of your body.
I lay suspended between an image and a memory,
listening to the waves and the sounds around me.
Your image trapped between my eyelashes,
held hostage as I am by the thought of you.
I look at the line that divides the sky from the sea,
you from me, here from there...
I wish you were here.
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