Poemunity — your poem community

Let us gather in a flourishing way with sunluz grains abriendo los cantos que cargamos cada día en el young pasto nuestro cuerpo para regalar y dar feliz perlas pearls of corn flowing árboles de vida en las cuatro esquinas let us gather in a flourishing way contentos llenos de fuerza to vida giving nacimientos to fragrant ríos dulces frescos verdes turquoise strong carne de nuestros hijos rainbows let us gather in a flourishing way en la luz y en la carne of our heart to toil tranquilos in fields of blossoms juntos to stretch los brazos tranquilos with the rain en la mañana temprana estrella on our forehead cielo de calor and wisdom to meet us where we toil siempre in the garden of our struggle and joy let us offer our hearts a saludar our águila rising freedom a celebrar woven brazos branches ramas piedras nopales plumas piercing bursting figs and aguacates ripe mariposa fields and mares claros of our face to breathe todos en el camino blessing seeds to give to grow maiztlán en las manos de nuestro amor

When I was little I cut off the heads of many lords. I can’t count on the energy that took to rise in me at will, but I’ve strengthened my ability to make a stand-firm surface. A steady gaze will drive conflicted information away, back to the abyss from whence it came, but I’ll be right here the morning after, wracked in a private shame too awful to admit and of no consequence at all. I work very hard not to let myself go. Any channel can tell. Due process appears in beauty and misgiving at once; an agility borne from creative malice, a benign insecurity. The plain truth: I forget the curtains are open sometimes and the hands wander. The room stares back from its things: They understand the end of the world, will not waste time feeling your pain, and every- thing tragic in between need not be known. I don’t want love or remorse to follow I want them in the way, things to burst through corollaries to be roped and tackled by surprise, get killed, and thank you. One fate transforms into another, but I won’t touch that bandaged story. I won’t belong to this scripted conversation, though I may play along. Identity theft accepting renewal orders, copycat pre-emptive attacks an obscure murder string on the public glide by sight, the victim a John doughnut pining for leadership from the passenger seat. The threat of meaning reassures: I know it’s being made for me. Am I supposed to believe we’re receiving information? Can I defect back to curiosity in the moonlight, stone rabbit? Hit on by Echo, I go cold for the love of my own exile, and while I hope, my flesh explodes into an arrangement of stars pestered by darkness. Those aren’t birds you hear, just their corresponding holes in the sky. All the bottled water isn’t fooling anyone.

It smiles to see me Still in my bathrobe. It sits in my lap And will not let me rise. Now it is kissing my eyes. Arms enfold me, arms Pale with a thick down. It seems I am falling asleep To the sound of a story Being read me. This is the story. Weeks have passed Since first I lifted my hand To set it down.

But the buried walls and our mouths of fragments, no us but the snow staring at us. . . And you Mr. Ground-of_what, Mr. Text, Mr. Is-Was, can you calculate the ratio between wire and window, between tone and row, copula and carnival and can you reassemble light from the future-past in its parabolic nest or recite an entire winter’s words, its liberties and psuedo-elegies, the shell of a street-car in mid-turn or scattered fires in the great hall I would say not-I here I’d say The Book of Knots I’d say undertows and currents and waterspouts, streaks of phosphorus and rivervine winds Dear Z, I’d say it’s time, it’s nearly time, it’s almost, it’s just about, it’s long past time now time now for the vex- for the vox- for the voices of shadows, time for the prism letters, trinkets and shrouds, for a whirl in gauzy scarves around the wrecked piazza Messieurs-Dames, Meine Herren und Damen, our word-ballon, you will note, is slowly rising over the parched city, its catacombs, hospitals and experimental gardens, its toll-gates, ghettos and ring-roads, narcoleptics and therapists and stray cats Ladies and Gentleen, our menu for this flight, due to temporary shortages, will be an alpha-omega soup, Bactrian hump, and nun’s farts As we enter the seventh sphere, you will discover a thin layer of ice just beginning to form on your limbs Do not be alarmed, this is normal You will experience difficulty breathing, this is normal The breathing you experience is difficulty, this is normal Dear Z, Should I say space constructed of echoes, rifts, mirrors, a strange year for touring the interior Should I say double dance, Horn, axis and wheel Dear A, Scuttled ships are clogging the harbors and their cargoes lie rotting on the piers Prepare executions and transfusions Put on your latest gear

Me—a book in the attic. Maybe some covenant or hymnal. Or a chapter from the Kama Sutra, or a spell for intimate afflictions. But then it seems I am none of these. (If I were, someone would have read me.) Apparently at an assembly of revolutionaries they passed a resolution, and I am a longhand copy of it. It has the police’s stamp on it and was never successfully enforced. It is preserved only for the sake of procedure. And now only some sparrows come, straw in their beaks, and sit on my body and worry about the next generation. (How wonderful to worry about the next generation!) Sparrows have wings on them, but resolutions have no wings (or resolutions have no second generation). Sometimes I think to catch the scent— what lies in my future? Worry makes my binding come off. Whenever I try to smell, just some fumes of bird shit. O my earth, your future! Me—your current state.

The letter A is awesome! It simply is the best. Without an A, you could not get an A+ on a test. You’d never see an acrobat or eat an apple pie. You couldn’t be an astronaut or kiss your aunt goodbye. An antelope would not exist. An ape would be unknown. You’d never hear a person say “Afraid” or “All Alone”. The A’s in avocado would completely disappear and certain words would be forgot like “ankle”, “arm”, and “ear”. Without the A, you couldn’t aim an arrow in the air. You wouldn’t ask for apricots or almonds at a fair. Aruba and Australia would be missing from a map. You’d never use an ATM, an apron, or an app. The arctic fox and aardvark would be absent from the zoo, and vowels, as you know them, would be E, I, O, and U. There wouldn’t be an A chord on the instruments you play. Let’s appreciate, admire, and applaud the letter A!

I tell her I love her like not killing or ten minutes of sleep beneath the low rooftop wall on which my rifle rests. I tell her in a letter that will stink, when she opens it, of bolt oil and burned powder and the things it says. I tell her how Pvt. Bartle says, offhand, that war is just us making little pieces of metal pass through each other.

The dogs barked, the dogs scratched, the dogs got wet, the dogs shook, the dogs circled, the dogs slept, the dogs ate, the dogs barked; the rain fell down, the leaves fell down, the eggs fell down and cracked on the floor; the dust settled, the wood floors were scratched, the cabinets sat without doors, the trim without paint, the stuff piled up; I loaded the dishwasher, I unloaded the dishwasher, I raked the leaves, I did the laundry, I took out the garbage, I took out the recycling, I took out the yard waste.  There was a bed, it was soft, there was a blanket, it was warm, there were dreams, they were good. The corn grew, the eggplant grew, the tomatoes grew, the lettuce grew, the strawberries grew, the blackberries grew; the tea kettle screamed, the computer keys clicked, the radio roared, the TV spoke. “Will they ever come home?” “Can’t I take a break?” “How do others keep their house clean?” “Will I remember this day in fifty years?” The sweet tea slipped down my throat, the brownies melted in my mouth. My mother cooked, the apple tree bloomed, the lilac bloomed, the mimosa bloomed, I bloomed.

The island’s dark tonight. The radio crackles with static, news of a blackout, the voice coming through first loud, then soft, as if a storm were moving to cut all lifelines off. My one-room cabin has a bed, a table, a chair. Living this way, I understand better that scene by an anonymous illuminator: a row of monks eating at a rough table, diagonals of light slicing across the room to fall, as if by accident, on their simple meal. The black and white tiles on the floor a symbol of the formal repetitions of the simplest life, or maybe an oblique allusion to a paradox of theology: the complementary nature of good and evil. Is evil possible here where everyone lives so individually and nature appears to be neutral toward everything but itself? Some mornings I wake too suddenly, the light on the wall brilliant and unfamiliar, and wonder for a moment, where am I? I answer myself, my disembodied voice high and far off like what I imagine saints and martyrs heard in moments of ecstasy: Swan’s Island. Lightheaded, I rise, make coffee, settling into the simple ceremony of another morning. Outside the sea birds pick the clam flats clean, fly off, returning late in the afternoon looking for more to scavenge. Good days, I swim in the quarry, sun myself on the rocks, and plan a diary. One entry: I feel this place to be a rough approximation of heaven, the heaven of the lost ...

Two feet of snow at my parents’ place, in another season. Here, the cicadas sing like Christian women’s choirs in a disused cotton mill. Belief is a kind of weather. I haven’t seen proper snow for three years. The new urban forest for native plants and birds will be splendid if the local cats don’t kill the birds. The problem is, all my sympathies are with the cats. The friendly disturbers are more endearing than what they disturb. A trimaran called 3rd Degree spinning around its cable in the channel: that’s how love is here and should be everywhere. It seems so unserious or contentedly ironic; it’s the kind of thing you either look through or ignore. But you’d be wrong. The question isn’t: Why is love so strange here? It’s: Why did it feel normal somewhere else? In quiet places, the present is just gossip about the past. The future is a critique of that. All my best.