Good Luck

Once my heart burst
me out of sleep and urged me run across
the river (or swim — I did that, too) and knock
on a girl’s door. I had nothing but my desire—

no words, not even breath — so I kissed her
and she kissed me back, and the rest makes little sense
as well. Now I’m alone by a fire, drunk with the blood
that made me, dancing under the same stars

that made and turned millions, now all dead.
It’s just a way to keep from feeling alone.
I can hear my dad if I told him. Easily
amused but kind, he took my ambitions

seriously. In his last years his boyhood loneliness
returned, and he sat looking at things he couldn’t
understand, pictures, rings, pages of writing,
my mother. Good luck, he’d say, with all that.

There was no rip
and wild fall.
We lay down, remember?
There’s frost on the hay—
we’re on our backs,
the blue sky
harder than we thought,
the river grayer
than it’s ever been.
A canyon wind swirls panic,
leaves and ecstasy.
It’s afternoon—
but who can tell?
September. The race
is dry. I wait
for what I’ve done to name
what I think I’ll be.
And if it does,
if I do, perhaps I’ll feel
myself again.
Or lacking that,
we’ll build a boat.
Up high there’s snow, and the geese
can’t make up their minds.

What is your disposition?
Just the way I am today.

If it weren’t for your imminent death, who would accept your sincerity?
My dead mother.

Is that her face behind the bush?
I think it’s just a peach.

When you were young, what did you want to do?
Find the center pole, climb it, and talk with the birds.

What did you expect to tell them?
I don’t remember, but if I said it right, it would change everything.

What have you learned?
There is no pole. There is no it. There is no everything.

Is there nothing?
There is, but if I blink, it’s often gone as well.

And the birds?
I like to hear them sing.

Describe your life as a tropical fruit.
I’m easily plucked and sometimes bruised.

What do you say to the young who feel the situation growing hopeless?
Women keep getting more beautiful.

After all these years, who are you in those red shorts?
A man who loves his lunch.

What else is different from what you used to think?
It’s hardly ever true. I’m hardly ever right.

If you pulled a baby from the river, what would you whisper in its ear?
You need to breathe, always.

—————————————————————————————————–

You and Me and the Dead

Before we were here, they were.
They liked having lunch and their
nails done. They smoked pipes and took
long walks. Some had three wives
as was their custom, some had none, and some shared
husbands or had one and lived in a house made of hides
or mud and hunted with sharp sticks, painted
their skin, talked to the sky or the earth
or invisible animals, chewed coca and staked
hairless enemies to the ground.
Some thought cats were gods, or dogs were, or virgins
and others kept people as pets, grabbed them
and fornicated willy-nilly.
Many were fun and happy and many
miserable and not good company.
When they greeted each other
they bowed to the earth or grabbed each others’ testicles
if they had them, or touched noses
if they didn’t, or breasts. Some
were very important and others weren’t
and were slaughtered
because they lived on the other side of the river
or down in the valley.
Women came with cows, or were available for purchase
if a man had cows, but a lot of men and women
had no cows and they came, too
if they were asked
or whenever they wanted to. Sometimes
they loved –
did I mention that? — like we do. Sitting
late at night they put their chins in their palms
and listened.
They held hands and rested
on each others’ shoulders, whispered
dear in their own dear breath. Now
they’re all dead and this is our clear
light, our poem
and the day aches enough
to last forever. This is your life, too.
We’re both still here.

San Pedro Sula

Gangsters roam the last night on earth,
falling as it does, where she is, too,
no phone, like the old days when I dropped
into a hole and no one knew. What else
but love under a sky heavy enough to crush, and me
on rusted bedsprings with beer and soccer on TV.
I wonder if she’s warm, if the frozen lake
will hold, if wind snaps the sparks
of her fire toward the stars. Here mountains
turn to ghosts that mumble in the hall,
and I leave salt sheets to walk past tangled squatters,
sea-sighs of invisible women, a happy bowman
hunting sparse boulevards for the blink
of distant light. Nothing says good morning
like gunshots at dawn, and she, her feet in snow,
steps past pine and hemlock toward a cold car
she hopes will start. Snowflakes
sparkle on pastel, and skin burns to believe
air is water, the cracked sidewalk
a coral reef. Beauty swims mute with ugly, and I,
big with both, feel the roll of their affection
make new words for old things to say.

——————————————————————————————-

Always the Moon

Just you and me and the dumb
moon like every promise ever made
broken and made again
following us through trees and me high
with the love I’d just tossed away.
Did we talk? Did words matter? Did we
hold hands, lost and thrilled
to be so close in that pretty light?
I ate little, slept in the rain, and when you left
counted the full ones into the teens
and even after I lost count never
trusted again I might not sink
and think I was swimming, fall
and think I was flying, or drunk
on its light, take the dark road home.

Some do the required
reading, stay sure about
everything. Not me.
I’ve learned nothing, float
fall canyons, too lazy to fish.
Eyes closed, listening,
can I understand blue sea?
Or the bird’s red song?
Or my mother’s grief?
Dogs bark at ghosts
or at dwarves selling ice-cream.
I lean in, smell the girl,
her dark electric longing
rules the world.

—————————————————————————-

Warmth

On a red trail through the pines
a woman with a log over her shoulder,
twice her length, and next, a few steps back,
a boy carrying a box of blue lilies,
and well back, a man with two long logs
and two more lilies, full-rooted, recently-dug,
bending from his hand, make their way
up the sun-spotted hill toward home.

—————————————————————————-

Refugees

Grief and surprise hold
hands on broken streets amid
shards of concrete and steel
as the hungry pass, no longer
waiting for what they used
to know so well. Close
your eyes and see the line
grow long, draw in and dare
to search their dusty skin
for blood. Join them.

——————————————————————————-

Paul’s Not In The Sauna Today

He used to scratch his back
against the wooden wall,
to yawn and grin, amused by talk.
I wasn’t sorry I hired Paul—

his boss said at the service—
he never worked a sub-
par day. A friend called him a bird
who fell, but nobody dared to say

he stopped flying on purpose.
A neighbor boy, master of my block,
runs the walk and shouts
to invisible friends, stabbing rocks.

A teen broods in hip-hop
clothes, looks through clouds
at a splendid dream—money, girls,
respect—and for a moment owns

where he stands. A man is hard
to read but if he’s happy,
he’s just as lost. He wakes at dawn
to face the cold of dusk. What faith,

this rise, this dressing in the dark,
this shuffle across the floor,
what pathos, the draw of night,
the light above my desk, what love,

the rub of words, my wife
asleep, her breath a thin belay.
A bird fell from the sky.
Paul’s not in the sauna today.

Like us, he walked every day on the boulevard, the air
a long-legged woman with cheese on her breath,
but when all hell broke loose he died, cognac
in the cupboard, shirts in the closet, postcards hanging
on the bulletin board, and soap in the sink. Patriots
hung a plaque on the sidewalk outside his home: He died
for France.

We stand on the metro listening through ear buds
and nobody looks particularly happy to be living (or dying)
in France. Twenty years from now, old
and looking back at ourselves young and standing
while graffiti races past in the tunnel, what
will we see? I can’t believe my hair. Nice pants.
Our minds on the station we are going to. Our minds on the station
we got on. Our hearts set on the women
on either side of us. We hope to drink
all the wine in the city, make love to the women
and when we die get a plaque that misstates our intentions.

(A god with broken feet, trying to recall
forgotten language, old faces, lost
stone, he died for chocolate and baguettes, this sky,
that river, for villages and fields he never saw,
mountains and shores he only at his best imagined…)

Put everybody they say died for France in one room
and you have a crowded room with people who don’t
say much. Some were talented at things we care
about, and most less so. All of them lived
in some gone place—the city a river—
the plaque like ocher hand prints left by Indian
boys on a cliff wall. I back row, fight
the current, pause, and float on.

——————————————————————————

This year I won’t read the news, won’t sog
myself in helplessness or lose heart in the lies
nice people tell, try not to feel blue about where
we’re all headed and be sure to lie down when I can

and look at the sky. The old timers say
what a great city this was before new people came
and filled in the lake. There were reeds and everybody
had his own boat. The dumb were uninformed

and knew it, not so proud of everything
they just learned on the Internet. That was when Mexico
was the real Mexico, back in the big lake, big
pyramid days. Think of your old friend

and the father he lost when he was twelve.
No way to Google what it meant, he ripped around the world
for years, then shot himself on the basement couch. We all
know people who nurse too long their wounds

because the facts aren’t available.
I passed a young man chipping paint around a window. Later
I passed him again when he’d begun to prime.
He didn’t notice me as I didn’t notice the people

who passed me when I scraped and painted
decades ago. Where were they going and did they
get there? Nobody knows and you can’t look it up and most
are dead and those who aren’t don’t remember, which doesn’t mean

it doesn’t matter. Anymore, I only go to New Jersey
for funerals. It’s just worked out that way. Other places I go
for other reasons I don’t know, and I resolve this year,
when I’m lying on the grass, not to think about it anyway.

I could go where they have those paintings
I’ve seen in books, or to that park built for the princess
for love, or come back at another time
and see the jacaranda trees in bloom—

is that here?—or the cherries
that festival when people get drunk
put on strange clothes and dance wild
in parades, or have a drink where Baudelaire did—
or was it a painter who stumbled
out this very door and pissed in the alley?

His paintings are worth millions now but then
he slept in the street. Youth, where did
ours go? Was it here they piled the heads
after they cut them off? Or was it down that street
that ends in sky—that rue, where all the places are
we used to know or heard about and longed to go?

I read somewhere we are rich for things
we don’t have to do, the places
we don’t have to go. I drank tea at James Joyce’s
Starbucks and walked in a blizzard
along the Seine, threw snowballs at ducks
while a gypsy tried to give me a brass
ring he pretended to find
for gold — Your lucky day, he said.

Yes, mine. On this river heroes,
saints and fools, the promise of circus
and the dark encroachment of catastrophe
float by behind blowing snow
like a grove of giant cedars on Lolo Creek
another place I’ve never been
but sometimes think I’d like to go.

——————————————————————————

You Asked

It’s a crack in the wall
I blink through
at a weedy lot I vaguely remember

a door to where the dead
live, to rooms
I’ve only dreamed

a naked dancer in my yard at night
who draws me
to cup my hands to the window—

and when I turn back
blood racing, it’s my own
well-lighted room (chair, table, lamp)

neither dreamed
nor remembered
never even known until now

or later, lying in bed
feeling the wind against the side of the house
coming all the way from China.

————————————————————————————————–

Daughter

What seeds do you carry
and where? I see them cluster
in your hair.

They spill down your back
and scatter across
the shadowed path.

The wind blows hard, the leaves
begin to fall, and in the dark
I smell snow.

What is this language you make
me want to speak?

Your voice carves beauty
in winter air. I walk
behind and listen.

A pain before I move
of air and time and the apple
of jazz falling out the door
among shouts of invisible children
also death or not-me and the un-kissed face
of the girl—the light a blanket
over her shoulders—
make the day ache enough
to last forever.

A poem flew by last night
(I heard it in the air) and when I looked up
saw the North Star for the first time
in a long time, on my way home
in an alley I’ve walked a thousand times.
The earth is flat, the sky streaked with red wings.
If I’m this close to the edge
is there room for anything else?

It’s something I’ve danced
around and pointed to but have no clue
what’s really there. A streetlight, a dog
waiting by the door, an empty
table, a clean ashtray, a woman
writing in a book, the curve of her neck
an invitation to receive. The moon
is in every poem but there it is again
hanging over the biggest city
on this side of the earth and a man
cleaning his car sings a love song
written by somebody dead for somebody
dead or imagined.

Before we were here, they were.
They liked having lunch and their
nails done. They smoked pipes and took
long walks. Some had three wives
as was their custom, some had none, and some shared
husbands or had one and lived in a house made of hides
or mud and hunted with sharp sticks, painted
their skin, talked to the sky or the earth
or invisible animals, chewed coca and staked
hairless enemies to the ground.
Some thought cats were gods, or dogs were, or virgins
and others kept people as pets, grabbed them
and fornicated willy-nilly.
Many were fun and happy and many
miserable and not good company.
When they greeted each other
they bowed to the earth or grabbed each others’ testicles
if they had them, or touched noses
if they didn’t, or breasts. Some
were very important and others weren’t
and were slaughtered
because they lived on the other side of the river
or down in the valley.
Women came with cows, or were available for purchase
if a man had cows, but a lot of men and women
had no cows and they came, too
if they were asked
or whenever they wanted to. Sometimes
they loved —
did I mention that? — like we do. Sitting
late at night they put their chins in their palms
and listened.
They held hands and rested
on each others’ shoulders, whispered
dear in their own dear breath. Now
they’re all dead and this is our clear
light, our poem
and the day aches enough
to last forever. This is your life, too.
We’re both still here.

——————————————————————————–

Our people
used to use your people
as stools—for our feet, sure, but also
to sit on your bare backs and rest.

Our flatulence
made us shake with laughter.
What else could we do?
It must have been unpleasant

but our people were shit on
by the czar’s troops–or was it
the English lords?—when they weren’t busy
slaying our children.

We don’t like them.
But your people we always admired.
We were boys. We felt safe at last.
Our bottoms on your backs.

————————————————————————————-

Waking

You imagine it was always there
in the ether like a radio wave,
a purple ghost, a hovering saucer
(or peeking through branches with Boo)
–how did you live so long
without a clue? But you couldn’t
hear it until you suffered
as you did, lost that precious
thing, fell from the sky
and survived. Now your bones
ache and there’s an old word
you just learned and a woman you love
you hardly know. The light
is finally clear and the bird
sings the same song he’s sung
a thousand times. You’re waking
in your own bed. It’s morning.

Think of Quixote riding
his nag he imagines
a steed, toward a windmill
he imagines a monster
his joyful and beautiful
truth at that moment before
he hits.

Then think of him after
broken and bruised
on the ground
blinking through his bent
cardboard visor
dazed, the sun in his eyes
as Sancho says, See?

This is where we are now.
We can squint and see
a windmill, and ourselves
old crooked men
and we can lay our heads
down in the agony of the dry
dust before us or we can see
what he sees, a windmill
and our own aching bodies
that just a moment ago soared
(across the plains under an unending
arch of sky)
as proof of the changeling child
the enchanting power of monsters
and the truth of our own
dear dream.

————————————————————————————————

Right Madness

The sunshine on the hill
piled with pretty rock houses
built on bones under a sky
so blue it kills, or at least holds
mute over suffering, is why I like
the woman’s smeared red lipstick
twisted face and walking talk
as she scurries sideways under sculpted
trees, past tables of happy diners
like me.

Hey, I don’t need her
except to look
at the way her mouth
moves around words
or at her hair and the shadow
of her shape
the way her skin
covers her and her
waist connects
her to her
and how she sits
right here like the first
woman on earth
and her fingers
touch things
and her legs go all the way
down to her feet
on the floor
that sort of thing
the floor that holds me up.

Hey, I don’t need her
but the air
when she’s in it
is possible to breathe
and I have a hunch
if she left me
water would dry
lights dim, the door close
that kind of thing
and I’d be a man
underground
for a long time
breathing through a tube.

Hey, I don’t need her
I could do it
wait like that, buried alive
not the first
dreaming of her face
so close to mine her breath
would steam my skin
that sort of thing
if I had to
for an eternity
for another chance

—————————————————————————————

Solitude

Now it’s only you
and your idea
of time alone
but time moves
slowly and sometimes
you shiver with it
or it heats your head
until your brain boils
and your idea
has disappeared
behind the chair
no one’s there
through the door
and whatever hope
you might have had
fled with the night
and the moon
that lit the table
where she kept her things
by the bed
empty of all but shadow
your breath
the sound of dogs
while you wait to see
what happens next.

——————————————————————————-

Ivan Karamazov

How do we measure
if we’ve killed the pig
well? One,
two, fifty?
The form is the leg,
steeple, song,
street or novel.
Ivan Karamazov
I’m familiar with your suffering.
When it’s quiet, pigeons
coo and dogs
bark, bells
ring above
the schoolyard gate.
Under my feet,
rock and concrete,
silver mines
and men. Once
I dropped a pebble
down a well, tilted
my ear toward the dark
to wait. What’s happened
since has been
not nearly so important.

Gratitude

On my way
into a great city
I thought of the uncountable people
who lived there and wondered
if there was room enough
for me there too.

Nobody knew
I was coming.
How could they have ordered
the right amount of fruit?
Would they run
the endless streets
to find a pear
for the new guy?

When I got there
and nobody stopped me
said sorry, we’re full

—and there was space for me

to walk on the sidewalk, a room
a bed, a chair
I didn’t have to share

—and I asked for an extra blanket
and they had one,

I couldn’t believe my luck.

————————————————————————————–

What people I know
have done this week
in Mexico

Paint tree trunks white,
cut stones for street cobbles,
boil beans, shoot
pigs and hang the legs,

paint pictures of sad
naked women, dream
of snow, spar
in the park and lie

on the grass, pour
lines of chalk
to keep cockroaches out,
kiss lovers, weld axles,

play Bach on the cello,
remember the war,
kill rivals in a play,
bury them, sing,

fix the leak, weep,
pay off gangsters,
play soccer,
get drunk,

dance in the dark
with flashlights,
hang flags,
bang drums,

toss bombs,
ring bells, parade
for the Virgin,
and fix the leak again.

It’s enough to make me want to do
something like that too.

——————————————————————————–

Regarding
my introduction
to the faculty

Thank you very much for the kind introduction but
you unfortunately neglected to mention to the
committee my rows of sharp regenerating
teeth, my fondness for blood and how
fast I can swim, nor did you remind
my esteemed colleagues that my
most celebrated trait is
the size and shape
of my
lovely
dorsal fin
of which so
much has been
previously written
sail-like, sharp and blue
you might say I’m humbled by
the bounty of attention it’s received
from a cross-cultural community, and
of course all the various awards I’ve been
understandably reluctant to list here but you’ll
find included as background in the attached C.V.

——————————————————————————–

Note to Jeff

The bells are ringing here.
When Americans come they always try
to figure out what they mean
what o’clock it is
what is being celebrated.
They’re just bells, I say.
They sound pretty.

———————————————————————————

How Poets Survive

There’s no business
model that I know.

Who would pay
for free verse or rhyme?

Out of silent air we shape sound
that nobody can understand

except those who happen
to speak our language

and many of those don’t either.
Trying to touch beauty,

we usually fail,
so we better be amusing

or hope people think we would be,
if only they were smarter.

That way we get a bite to eat
and a bed to sleep

and the esteem we’re convinced
we sometimes deserve.

——————————————————————–

One word poem

When your mom said spider
you slid down the tree
and stared up at the branches and leaves
and the sky and the world
changed forever
by what you could neither see
nor forget.

————————————————————————

Keats and you and me

In Dolores Hidalgo, they make pots
glazed with lots of blues and yellows
and upside down hearts with thick-
stemmed plants growing uncomfortably
inside them. No maidens here, the pots
themselves, also shaped like women,
overflow with living flowers. What struggle
to escape! What wild ecstasy! He died
young and my blood burns. The peaks glow
at dusk as they always have. We coast
old shadows and hold hands around
curves crowded with the beautiful
dead. Nothing eternal but the road home.