When Alexander the Great was in his twenties, he wanted to conquer Asia. I just wanted to write really good sentences and paragraphs. We’re all odd in our own way. Some oddness make us richer than others, hence Alexander’s palaces. Anyway, If EVERYTHING I DON’T KNOW I LEARNED IN TEGUCIGALPA, the poem I posted two days ago, is what I call a “sitting around” poem, here are four more:
Morning in San Fernando
Wind blew hard through the night.
Every stone in the plaza floor makes
a shadow in this low light. Rosalie
saw an orange bird in an orange tree.
I dreamed I saw yellow flickers between
leaf shadows falling across this table.
A young woman walks past, one
shoulder bare to the morning air.
The wind mixed me up. The jazz CD
skips, the coffee’s cold, the toast is
wood. In my dream I kept falling
and falling. She looks as if she’s thinks
she’s alone, or still asleep. A sparrow
is hopping on the table next to mine.
I was falling into my own head, scared
and waiting to crash. Behind her is a man
with a beard carrying a flute in a case
or maybe it’s a piccolo. (What do I
know?) She’s touching, touching,
touching her hair. In the morning
everybody has plans. Orange awning,
white plaster building, blue columns.
Hers are to slip through a chink in the wall,
climb a dozen stone steps, turn left into
an alley so narrow they carved the walls
round to let burrows pass. The man
with the beard blinks when he sees
the girl, or maybe he’s seeing someone
else. Mine are to meet a man I’ve never
met at the fountain behind me eight hours
from now. A line of brown wooden doors
opens neatly into the plaza. Everything
decent and good is what it is for no other
reason than that. Sleep ended early. Even
banal plans have room for adventure.
The man I’m supposed to meet
is a writer. He’s a gringo, he told me
on the phone. He has gray hair, mostly,
and glasses. They finally turned off
the skipping jazz and the silence
sounds familiar. There is no end
to the fall or the dream. Maybe the man
I’m supposed to meet is me.
————————————————————————–
Bust out
Ever want to tilt your head,
see under buildings or through
walls and girls’ clothes because
you know something’s there
but you’re not seeing it?
You sit in the shadow of the church
your head heavy and heart lazy
and your belly too big for proper
vistas. You haven’t seen color
in weeks until a man steps across
the street holding a tray piled
with pink and yellow food glowing
in a spot of sun and moved
to action, a pursuit of truth, you sprint
across the park and superman
off a stone wall, dive and fall
belly first to land on the tray
on top of the man, who crashes
on the sidewalk and all the pretty
food is smashed. You’re a little
hurt and the man is bleeding
from his lip, moaning and messy
and everyone’s shouting. Hands
lift and toss you back so your head
flops and bumps the wall
hard and the sky is terribly blue.
A magpie perched on a wire
winks. What does the world
look like now?
————————————————————————-
I sit above the city
on seventy-six white
stone steps and high above
a gust catches a hummingbird
between the towers, tosses
it backward across the sky
past the statue of the boy
who charged the fort, a flat
rock on his back to stop
arrows, a torch to burn
the gates, break the siege
and chase away the Spanish.
I’ve been awake since
early. A moment ago
I watched my wife walk
far below in a cobbled
ally with her green bag
to buy a chicken for dinner.
Not the one I heard
a moment ago when I closed
my eyes to better hear
but a cold, plucked bird
from the meat store.
Across the stairs wider
than any stairs—higher
than any stairs—I’ve ever
seen or sat on, a pigeon
perches on a steeple column
in the shade of the towers.
Behind it, blue sky and sunlight
make the cathedral glow gold.
The bells ring and ring,
and later, they ring again.
Who knows why?
Closer, I watch an ant
zigzag down the stone
wall next to me. It
turns here and there
and back again, head
down and down until
it arrives safely at the top
of the seventy-six steps
where I sit. When I was a boy,
I was fascinated by how ants
walked on walls without
falling and boys became
heroes. I still am.
—————————————————————————–
Bushes Cut to Look Like Seuss Trees
Bushes cut to look like Seuss trees
the puddle sky orange and children leaping
for strings of pretty flags make him think
the past is a cartoon, the future a clean
well-lighted room with nobody in it.
A puff of breath in the cold, sex but no lover
or the other way around, a box with wind in it.
What flowers grow? Same as behind the fountain.
Yellow, pink, white, red and blood red,
the color he loves most.
None of this is happening—or more
than he can conceive. Maybe he’s still asleep.
A woman lifts her baby’s face and kisses
whispers. The child closes his eyes, drools.
She wipes its chin with a blanket. He spent
the early morning very happy in his sleep
and woke to a woman sliding into bed
felt ready on her skin but
rolled off to wash and when he returned he tried
and she tried but he couldn’t.
She held him anyway and he felt grace.
Awake only fifteen minutes and so much
had happened.
What would the rest
of the day bring? Another invention
a stroll through a fissure in the wall, a tilt
of his mind toward death, a bite to eat
he hoped, and now this woman, her baby
the Seuss bushes, flowers, children leaping
for strings of flags in sunlight.