Poetry
On reading The JRR Tolkien Scrapbook Saturday, 051797
I swallowed a Red Dwarf
when I was a child
and it grew into a quasar
musings became muse
and I wrote poetry.
then
somewhere in time and space
between the music of the spheres
and endless voyages of Star Trek reruns
the silence of a black hole
took form in my middle
mutations became mute
and the vastness inside me
became a universe of silence.
I sit and smoke and stare at this blank computer screen
and think about Tolkien who said
"The children who swallow the stars become the poets"
and i think
maybe i just dreamed
that i once swallowed a star
and maybe it was just the vitamin I choked on
before being tucked into this life.
The Arrogance of Metaphor (September 1997)
her hands dance upon
an invisible piano
composing sense out of silence
she points to the news article
MAYOR BANS LOUD MUSIC
looks at me
rolls her eyes to the ceiling
jiggles her shoulders
in toneless laughter
shrugs and smiles.
She signs
"people who are not deaf say
'I'm so sorry for you'
but deaf people aren't sorry"
her face and her hands and her body
sing a syncopated music
and i try to keep up
tuning my mind to an invisible metronome
and plunking out off-key notes
Eloquent hands
Your eloquent hands echo in my memory
They stroll along the back of my neck
tugging the strands of my hair into braids
Your hands plot the stars' light movements
across the pavement of the universe
they teach me to whittle
and then remove my splinters
with a sharp tip of a pocket knife
and a gentle squeeze of flesh --
never missing like mom with the needle --
Hands of open palms
and hands of closed fists
Yes that memory too
driving me away from you
and now my own lie inert
enduring the ache of never
holding yours again.
AWP Writing Retreat Fall 1997
Daddy
I know where you are
you are strolling through the morning farmyard
toward that sorrel mare
who hunts rabbits better than your hound dogs
you are saddling up to visit your brother
and flirt with his new bride
you will visit my mother
on your way home tonight
and dance with her
on the gravel pavement of the alley
where her parents won't see
I know these stories
these whispered tales that echo
on your sleeping lips
as your life flashes before
the black underlids
of your closed eyes
I know you are in that mauve place
where red and white and blue
become a tranxene waltz of beautiful memories
not the colors that splinter your soul
with memories of blood and bone
and burning skies in Korea
I know you will wake
to argue with your brother
about who takes the prettiest pills
and who has the better doctor
I know when you wake
this enduring ache called life and death
will stretch before you like the sun's glare
on hot gray pavement
and I know when you wake
your hands which
scissor and scissor and scissor away
at this oxygen tube which traps your body here
will lie still.
AWP Writing Retreat Fall 1997
The Religion of Rape
Rape purifies
Rips the id out of self
Biting kicking screaming
Projecting ego into repentant reality
(cleansed in blood)
Rape edifies
Ejaculation of the superego
A razor-blade rocket
Into a universe of numb
(born again)
Rape sanctifies
Baptism of the soul
In a watery penicillin grave
Slowly drowning in the tearful terror of broken dreams
(raised to walk in newness of life)
Rape testifies
But it doesn't forgive
And it doesn't forget
for in the silent night
a misdirected lover's touch
brings back the delirious tremors
of a previous panic prayer
to an un-omni God
Like virtues,
Redemption is always limited.
Tears for Tithonus
In the shower
I trace scars--
a winding white waterway
(dead center, left leg)
forged by fences who denied
right-of-way...
a Cane-marked forehead
that knows the impact
of well-bred, Abel brick walls.
Scars know war stories---
birthings,
rapes,
abortions,
and,
I know myself.
Mister,
as you look on
with fire-eyed fascination,
I know this also:
If I could grant you
a Tithonus wish,
the wish would be wasted--
you can never comprehend
the tides of me.
4/10/88
(no yellow submarines)
We all live in the City of the Dead.
Time's sands etch scars in our too-old faces,
burn in our beds,
cut our children
leaving wounds
that never heal.
(no yellow submarines)
The octopus enfolds us in her embrace,
smothers our pride with tenacious tentacles,
suffocates our cries
beneath a sea of bile green.
Our tears are forgotten
in the current.
(no yellow submarines)
"Loneliness is the Ultimate Poverty"
so says Dear Abby.
...Dear Abby, You Lie.
Loneliness is not our poverty.
We have brothers
in Port-au-Prince,
in Mexico City,
in Skid Row and Main Street,
To share our misery.
We are not lonely
for we are many--
Our name is Legion.
Conscience eroded by time,
Caring drowned in pools of apathy,
Concern strangled by ignorance,
This is our Ultimate Poverty.
This, and
(no yellow submarines)
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