Poemunity — your poem community

for Gary Snyder “I think I’ll be the Buddha of this place” and sat himself down 1. It’s a real rock (believe this first) Resting on actual sand at the surf’s edge: Muir Beach, California (like everything else I have somebody showed it to me and I found it by myself) Hard common stone Size of the largest haystack It moves when hit by waves Actually shudders (even a good gust of wind will do it if you sit real still and keep your mouth shut) Notched to certain center it Yields and then comes back to it: Wobbly tons 2. Sitting here you look below to other rocks Precisely placed as rocks of Ryoanji: Foam like swept stones (the mind getting it all confused again: “snow like frosting on a cake” “rose so beautiful it don’t look real”) Isn’t there a clear example here Stone garden shown to me by Berkeley painter I never met A thousand books and somebody else’s boatride ROCKS (garden) EYE (nearly empty despite this clutter-image all the opposites cancelling out a CIRCULAR process:Frosting-snow) Or think of the monks who made it 4 hundred 50 years ago Lugged the boulders from the sea Swept to foam original gravelstone from sea (first saw it, even then, when finally they all looked up the instant AFTER it was made) And now all rocks are different and All the spaces in between (which includes about everything) The instant After it is made 3. I have been in many shapes before I attained congenial form All those years on the beach, lifetimes . . . When I was a boy I used to watch the Pelican: It always seemed his wings broke And he dropped, like scissors, in the sea . . . Night fire flicking the shale cliff Balls tight as a cat after the cold swim Her young snatch sandy . . . I have travelled I have made a circuit I have lived in 14 cities I have been a word in a book I have been a book originally Dychymig Dychymig:(riddle me a riddle) Waves and the sea. If you take away the sea Tell me what it is 4. Yesterday the weather was nice there were lots of people Today it rains, the only other figure is far up the beach (by the curve of his body I know he leans against the tug of his fishingline: there is no separation) Yesterday they gathered and broke gathered and broke like Feeding swallows dipped down to pick up something ran back to Show it And a young girl with jeans rolled to mid-thigh ran Splashing in the rain creek “They’re all so damned happy— why can’t they admit it?” Easy enough until a little rain shuts beaches down . . . Did it mean nothing to you Animal that turns this Planet to a smoky rock? Back among your quarrels How can I remind you of your gentleness? Jeans are washed Shells all lost or broken Driftwood sits in shadow boxes on a tracthouse wall Like swallows you were, gathering Like people I wish for . . . cannot even tell this to that fisherman 5. 3 of us in a boat the size of a bathtub   .   pitching in slow waves   .   fish poles over the side   .   oars We rounded a point of rock and entered a small cove Below us: fronds of kelp fish crustaceans eels Then us then rocks at the cliff’s base starfish (hundreds of them sunning themselves) final starfish on the highest rock then Cliff 4 feet up the cliff a flower grass further up more grass grass over the cliff’s edge branch of pine then Far up the sky a hawk Clutching to our chip we are jittering in a spectrum Hung in the film of this narrow band Green to our eyes only 6. On a trail not far from here Walking in meditation We entered a dark grove And I lost all separation in step with the Eucalyptus as the trail walked back beneath me Does it need to be that dark or is Darkness only its occasion Finding it by ourselves knowing Of course Somebody else was there before . . . I like playing that game Standing on a high rock looking way out over it all: “I think I’ll call it the Pacific” Wind water Wave rock Sea sand (there is no separation) Wind that wets my lips is salt Sea breaking within me balanced as the Sea that floods these rocks. Rock Returning to the sea, easily, as Sea once rose from it. It Is a sea rock (easily) I am Rocked by the sea

It was hardly war, the hardliest of wars. Hardly, hardly. It occurred to me that this particular war was hardly war because of kids, more kids, those poor kids. The kids were hungry until we GIs fed them. We dusted them with DDT. Hardly done. Reha- bilitation of Korea, that is. It needs chemical fertilizer from the States, power to build things like a country. In the end it was the hardliest of wars made up of bubble gum, which GIs had to show those kids how to chew. In no circumstance whatever can man be comfortable without art. They don’t want everlasting charity, and we are not giving it to them. We are just lending them a hand until they can stand on their own two feet. A novel idea. This is why it occurred to me that this particular war was hardly war, the hardliest of wars. My father was hardly himself during the war, then I was born during the era that hardly existed, and, therefore, I hardly existed without DDT. Beauty is pleasure re- garded as the quality of a thing. I prefer a paper closet with real paper dresses in it. To be born hardly, hardly after the hardliest of wars, is a matter of debate. Still going forward. We are, that is. Napalm again. This is THE BIG PICTURE. War and its masses. War and its men. War and its machines. Together we form THE BIG PIC- TURE. From Korea to Germany, from Alaska to Puerto Rico. All over the world, the US Army is on the alert to defend our country, you the people, against aggression. This is THE BIG PICTURE, an official television report to the nation from the army. This is Korea! Is one thing better than another? These South Koreans are all right. Woe is you, woe is war, hardly war, woe is me, woe are you? My father is still alive, and this is how I came to prefer a paper closet with real paper dresses in it. Well, it’s morning in Korea. The most violently mountainous place on Earth. Every- one has been dusted, existence hardly done, whereas beauty has been regarded as the quality of a thing. At Uncle Dann’s Huddle doughnuts and coffee are free and in case there are any, for there are many, the unescorted ladies are not permitted. The decision has been made in Tokyo for the hardliest of wars, an old soldier made it. The situation in Korea is so critical that we the Navy must give the Eighth Army prac- tical support. Do you remember how you began this day? How did you spend this morning? Woe are you? Well, pinecones fall every day. So why do we fail? Miles and miles of homeless refugees set adrift by the Red scourge.

—in borrowed language in honor and memory of Bill Ice Like a horse’s tail so thick, black down past his waist beautiful.    Wanyaka. Chemotherapy— white man’s man-made cancer . . . doesn’t distinguish between good or bad cells . . . just kills. The spirit is connected to the hair at the crown—pahin hocoka. The hair falls the spirit goes, the will is connected no more. Leukemia— cancer of the White Blood Cell. Lakota wicasa Oglala wica Ha Luta Oyate    wicozani sni Kuja, unsika Canku Wakan o mani ma wanagi o mani wasigla ceya wokiksuye wokiksuye wopilamaye miksuya Canku Luta o mani Canku Waste o mani wohitika iyomakpi, iyomakpi ake—anpetu anpetu waste I knew him well.

A wolf is at the Laundromat, it's not a wary stare-wolf, it's short and fat, it tips its hat, unlike a scary glare-wolf. It combs its hair, it clips its toes, it is a fairly rare wolf, that's only there to clean its clothes— it is a wash-and-wear-wolf.

Leave it to the street vendors of NYC to improvise a shrine from whatever they find, setting a place at their table for animal and divine nature symbolically joined with color-coded floral candelabras.

It was the week of asking. Asking to watch her eat. Asking if she understood the doctors’ questions. Asking her to explain the difference between wanting to die right now, and dying later. The tumor making certain answers unquestionable. I watched her point to the incense dish from which someone swept all the ashes up. Asking if she recognized us. Because that is what the living want: thinking it is a sign we have been loved. But the answer was a summer drive, a mountain, piles of leaves beneath which a wolf slept, suckling her cubs. Some deaths are good and it makes them hard to grieve. She was, at times, in great pain. We wanted her to die, too. That was important. But first we wanted her to remember. From the bed, a finger pressed into a pile of leaves. Gray haunch, unmovable ashes.I didn’t want to disturb their tableau

at night while the dogs were barking Baby Gauge and I crawled under the fence with knives we made out like the rattlesnake melons were men we didn’t like the new moon ones were wolves I would cut a belly this way he would cut a belly that way the flies came around the sweet juice it was blood to us we tasted it we licked it off the blades we decided not to kill the wolves we wanted to be wolves we stuck the knives in the ground the moon shined on them we turned the pilot caps inside out so the fur would show that way when we crawled under the bob wire a little piece would get caught we wouldn’t though we wanted to leave trails but no scents we tore the melons open we licked the blood off our paws we wanted to be wolves and in the morning all those dead men with their hearts eat out

They listen to the myna birds dicker in the grass. The child’s blue shoes are caked with garden dirt. When he runs, she sees the antics of a pair of wrens. She works the garden, a pot of rusting gardenias has given off its ales and infused the danker germinations of her grief. She watches her son chase pigeons, kick at the leaves piled high. Now, a magpie adds to his cascades of laughter as he runs with the hose, pours a fine spray, happy to be giving to the grass this silver courtship. She sighs, watches the drops settle in. Today, who can explain the sadness she feels. Surely this day is to be treasured: the sun out, the breeze like a cat’s tongue licking a moon of milk; her son expending himself in small, public bursts, happy among clover where bees hover, and unfold centrefolds of nectar. Today, who can explain the heaviness in her head, as if all her worries were tomes toward a larger work, one she knows she will never finish, but to which she must keep adding, thought by thought. She sweeps the petals, smells their russet imprint. Soon dusk will come with an envoy of smoke and her son outlast her patience by a rose. Already he is tiring, puling at the flowers. It won’t be long before they’ll go in, listen to the jug purr comfort. He’ll sleep and she’ll lie back, or get up to unhook the cry of her cat from the wire door. Now, a few cicadas are idling, giving each other the gun and a cockatoo calls, a haughty felon. She sighs, knowing she won’t escape her mood today, the turned earth or its rank persuasions; her child’s petulance flaring like an orchid, or a cockatoo’s unruly crest. Today, she knows she will need to consider her unhappiness, of what she is a prisoner – if not the loss of hope’s particulars. Her son soaks the path, rinses the sky of its featureless blue. He is giving that water, now, to everything.

I. The Chihuahua Desert I rose early to wash the desert grime, watch the unearthly flight of doves, the way pigeons were poisoned incorrectly or how an elephant was beaten with a stick. This is the way of beginnings, women charmed by fits of language, the cadence of bees around garbage cans, the laughter of grackles, hot sun baking Coca-Cola to sidewalks. Tumbleweeds and arroyos hush day-long trips through barrios. I am sand. My eyes grainy, tears brown, and what of the different tones of bees or flies, how a sting can kill us? I’m speaking the language of smokers, lung-full and wary, breathing a refinery chore, my eyes black pits, Historically I was fruit, voluptuous and campy, some might say exotic, cheekbones native, my hips swaying. II. The Rio Grande I grew into the silence of third person, a landscape, a mesa. I flew hard into the silence of gray smog, my chest burning, my throat dry with the songs of women with sagging faces, children strapped to their bent backs. They have become a river metaphor, a border, a soulless chant to believers. Maquiladora workers slain and buried in shallow graves. My palms refuse to fold in prayer and god giggles in my red ears. Sand pecks my skin like a drum roll in the hot wind. The march of children, their backpacks plastic, the way they see color a mystery, a dance, the shapes of clouds, an elephant, a dove, a long-lost dog. They sing song their way past the factory-circus. III. The Potomac Years later I loved a blank-faced man in tweed who drank espresso and ate bagels in a deli outside Washington D.C. His pale face mirrored in the glass at a video-store where he grumbled artless and unfilled by the hurried ache of cicadas. His first and last job in the world of mundane labor. He was all red hair; his voice bellowed. Was it the seventh or tenth year he dubbed my language, subtitled my screens? Windows on the metro metalled sand tunneled. I lost the desert dance of blood, half-forgot the closed copper mine, the way the border’s earth is lead-filled and sullen. IV. The Vlatva Awed by cathedrals in Paris, then Prague, I was the archangel of rage with my book-bag, a wordless hum. I began to speak with my hands, my eyes Slavic dark, searching. I worshipped fat swans along the thick river taking in the green wondering why I had been blessed by such beauty. I sensed him in a snowdrift of words historically divine. And what was he or I in this world? I didn’t see the gold specks in his eyes, the way poetry became his glory, full of fan-fare and the strife of strip malls. And here, envying his pristine days, the way the books never cover his mouth, our hearts pump separately to the rhythm of loss.

The saris go by me from the embassies. Cloth from the moon. Cloth from another planet. They look back at the leopard like the leopard. And I.... this print of mine, that has kept its color Alive through so many cleanings; this dull null Navy I wear to work, and wear from work, and so To my bed, so to my grave, with no Complaints, no comment: neither from my chief, The Deputy Chief Assistant, nor his chief— Only I complain.... this serviceable Body that no sunlight dyes, no hand suffuses But, dome-shadowed, withering among columns, Wavy beneath fountains—small, far-off, shining In the eyes of animals, these beings trapped As I am trapped but not, themselves, the trap, Aging, but without knowledge of their age, Kept safe here, knowing not of death, for death— Oh, bars of my own body, open, open! The world goes by my cage and never sees me. And there come not to me, as come to these, The wild beasts, sparrows pecking the llamas’ grain, Pigeons settling on the bears’ bread, buzzards Tearing the meat the flies have clouded.... Vulture, When you come for the white rat that the foxes left, Take off the red helmet of your head, the black Wings that have shadowed me, and step to me as man: The wild brother at whose feet the white wolves fawn, To whose hand of power the great lioness Stalks, purring.... You know what I was, You see what I am: change me, change me!