seeing what is

once i smoked a peace pipe for him.  now i ask what

jesus asked: forgive him for he knows not what he

does.  blind though certain of his sight.  deaf though

hearing what he will.  i know inside you wonder if

i am the one blind and deaf; i am not.  god cut my

eyes open and sliced into my ears.  i saw too many

awful things and i heard my wailing in reply.  now i

look down when i pass people on the street and i

stuff cotton batting into my tender ears.  i wanted

it to be enough but god took a sword and thrust it

into my chest.  my hands flew up to eyes to ears to

heart and tried to stanch the flow.  now i hold my 

open palms and see the invisible tattoo that someone 

left behind.  i can not erase the past and undo ever 

having something to forgive.  everything keeps 

breaking open and i keep bleeding out into the light.

Between Two Worlds

I am not saying that salvation is a myth.  I do

not know how to insist.  Some are better at

their dogma than I am anymore.  Here, they say,

take this line and stretch it all the way back and

see.  Proving their lineage and authority makes

them smug in their safety, but I, I am no

longer certain of what I know, no longer sure of

what can be known.  I stretched their line back

to the hurried exodus of three fleeing in the night, 

but still I am not swayed, I do not concede my

doubt.  Once I held faith firmly in my hands, heavy,

a gift, solid matter of visible mass and proof.  When

I let my fingers open, the faith fell out.  I think

maybe the form of it broke open and its essence

escaped into my skin, though, because still, I do 

not concede my faith, either.  I wear a yoke, now, 

hanging wooden over my shoulders, a weight on

either side.  Doubt swings on the left and faith

on the right.  Or the other way around.  Still, I

walk, holding the hand-hewn frame pressing
down on my neck, conscious of the sloshing

water in each pail.  Every day something spills 

out and something seeps in.  Out of and into
me, I mean, out of and into me.  

Saying I Love You

loving comes with the territory of

being me.  remember, you
thought that was lovely once. and
it's not that i had anything to do with it

consciously that i

know of, so in case you

were thinking otherwise, just

stop.  you made me feel like my

loving you was something i 

should be embarrassed to admit.

i had held it in a long time but then susan
urged it out.  confession continues to
be good for her soul i think mostly
because she is deeply loved in return
and there is no price to pay but joy.
for me, confession became a bad habit,
one you have to repent of perpetuating.
accusation of the self ran its course. but
then, my proclamation of love finally out,
it shimmered in the dark december
night, trembling for your relieved embrace.  

confessed and eager, i was like the child 

waiting for the lamplighter to

come posting up the street.  there, 

i said it, i breathed, and my heart flew open

and alive.  i held my chest apart

and grinned at you, offering you

the first fistful of cardiac me.  but

you pretended not to notice, and
fumbling with my tender heart, i

pretended not to matter, pretended
not to care.

or say my love was a 

child waiting at the window for

the headlights up the drive, the garage

door opening, beloved parent home.

safe.  here.  breathe out.  but it was
my imagination to think of you as home.
i did not know but you had taken a
detour out of the concept itself, and
none of the headlights up the drive
were ever yours and no one answers
when i call out your name in the dark. 

Three Little Glimpses

                 

                    ONE

I took all your language and I put

it in a box.  In another room I may

not have needed to go back again

but here I am right now and I

cannot stop looking for what I lost.

Something you said or did not say,

something I did or did not do and I

was once again spinning myself

inside out.  You visit me but you

are mute; I make you stay where I

put you.  Break out of the box, I 

want to say, and come violently after

me, but I never open my mouth.  

                    TWO

Because you would never do that, she 

answered.  I had been trying to make

sense and understand how he could have

done what he did.  Still, I wandered 

into my questions, fervent, dogged, 

asunder.  Rita had a dream when she was

pregnant: her pregnant belly was a clear

plastic bubble and inside she saw her

redhaired baby boy.  When I look inside myself,

everything is lime green and disintegrating

fast.  A disease is eating me away but

I cannot name it or make sense of it

or understand.  Some days, you let the

burden down and decide to not look

back.  Tomorrow you may repent of

your freedom.  The load will be 

waiting for your familiar form, your

returning.

                    THREE

see me captured in the moment
it all came rushing forth.  this body
doubled over toward earth.  one hand
held my body across my waist; it kept
me whole, and the right hand reached 

down for a lissome blade.  it was
summer.  barefoot i reached down and
my universe fell out onto the lawn.  i

watched it spill out and coat each

slender green with clear liquid glass,
each blade now enclosed in a hardened

sheath.  upon my curled back i felt

the stars press down in clusters of

reproach but still i did not turn.  

clarity too late

clarity so late and finally;

mute before the mirror,

regrets have begun the

process of disorganization and

fusion, haphazard paper piles

jutting history now cluttered,

painstakingly illustrated 

moments of insight and 

enumeration of the self,

now hidden among the

folds of a heavier garment,

no longer penetrable by

light or hope, the dismal

exhalation of vision 

distilled across time and 

gender, the immobilization of

desire now falling toward

dust.

Not So Good Friday

Infernal groaning of the spirit.  A certain
loneliness that will not abate, no matter
the guarantee of the talking-to I give
my thoughts.  The birds have once again
made a nest on the porch column.  This
year, a new species has taken possession,
added its own touch, built up a crown of
straw atop the swallows' mud nest. Let
everyone new come and dwell here; let
me leave, let me go elsewhere.  Let me fly
far away.  Let me time travel.  Let me
(try to) reinvent my life.  Let me follow
the path to where I always imagined
going. Let someone ask, when I am
gone, why did she leave so
suddenly.  Some days, I fly far
far away and never leave home.

Weather

Pouring rain I heard it
against the house.  You are
far away and I do not know
what kind of weather you are
having, neither within nor
without.  Sometimes I imagine
you are here and I turn to
look at you and smile and I
am so happy that you are
nearby, that you are with me.
On some days I am certain
you cannot help but love
me just as much as I love
you.  On others I think you
have killed off love
and sold your soul for
accolades from temporary
vapors.

Sleeper

I wanted to say,
well I hope your self absorption keeps you warm
at night and that the two of you
will be very happy with one another,
but instead I said kind things,
things that will never ever
have the potential of waking a
sleeping fool.
Maybe I should have said,
listen for God's sake man
time is running out you had better
pay attention because you
probably won't get another chance
like this one,
but I did not.  Instead I said,
oh, I am sorry to hear about this and
about that and I never said,
Thou Fool.

she stood silent and looking down

behind what you did not see when you

walked by her house

because the x-ray vision glasses

you sent away for had not

yet arrived

behind the bricks and the 

insulation and the sheetrock and

plaster and paint

other atoms vibrated huddled 

into one body of woman

each molecule shivering against the other

sidling up to the hobo's meek fire

asking what happened here

a cold spring afternoon with a dwindling sun

here is where i found her

kneeling on the sand at the edge of

the pond and cupping the water into her hands

and it ran out through her fingers

the same way love ran out

fleeing hurrying disappearing 

mixing itself into the crowd of molecules

hydrogen and oxygen

each one clamoring for the other.

morbid curiosity i call it

today i was thinking of poets and divorce

and wondering how a poet's marriage

falls apart. maybe over time he
no longer saw her tender beauty.
maybe over time she was not moved by
his touch or his kiss.  maybe over time
he no longer noticed her enigmatic
mystery.  maybe over time she quit
thinking of him during the day. 

i wonder which of them finally capitulated
to leaving, which of them stopped thinking
god forbid about divorce and crossed over
for good.  i wonder which one was
taken by surprise that this was waiting
in the wings all along in life, which one finally
had no more words.

i imagine the doppler effect, the rising sound of poets
falling in love, and then years later a descending

tone of divorcing, their marriages falling apart,
pieces all over the floor

where they must walk, gingerly, 

over jagged shards of history and

hope, the echoes of their injury bouncing off
the ceiling and walls and into the night.

poetic divorce

i had not known that even
famous poets divorce,
but they do.
i was thinking how

billy collins
must have felt when
it happened to him

and how louise gluck
must have felt

when it finally truly ended

poetic divorce,

i thought,

is different from regular divorce

because in poetic divorce

you are being torn asunder
flayed alive

and spoons become forks

and mythical greek children write
about their parents' failures.

you force yourself to

keep on breathing in and out;

each day you wake up quickly
so that you can hurry the earth around
itself faster than usual, faster than usual
around the sun, bringing each day
to a premature close, maybe you can get

a little closer to healing with the
scurrying days and interminable nights.

there is an agony of change occurring
as the shadows rise and fall and seasons
come and go. it will take a while

for the new parts to knit

together well enough to be
able to go out in public

and not have people whisper and stare.

when dr. frankenstein's innocent monster

came to life he scared others.
they could not see the tender heart
that lay below the sutured skin.

that is how poets feel when

they look in the mirror and they

are going through a divorce:

no one else can see, but
looking back at them from the glass

is a certain kind of scariness with

a broken heart.

regular divorce is bad

whereas poetic divorce
cannot be explained with
words.