341 Grief poems

On the other end of the line he sounds like my brother but is my father telling me about Coony who is fat. His whole body like a stomach round all round, fat even on his head. Eighty and heavy. How he joked Coony about his weight, joking him about a tow truck he’d need to haul him out of the tub like an old sunken ship pulled out of the gulf of blues, leaving whirlpools in the porcelain. “Quit all that eating and drinking,” my daddy say he said to him. “Quit pointing in that garden and reach down to get it.” My daddy say he joked him, ribbed him good. (And I know my daddy laughed gap-toothed, his mouth, throat, chest, and gut wide open for the signifying jest. His gray hair striking back time.) He sounds like my brother when he was a little boy, digging in the encyclopedia for the cause of something obscure, occult, trying to figure out how old Coony slipped in the bathtub that was always there and died like that. Baby Sister called to tell it first and she wasn’t joking after all like my daddy thought she was, Death a sad trick children pull. On the other end of the line my father sounds like my brother now. I know how Dying, bitter or tender, is the dark water that keeps us young. And this gulf of blues, deep and shiny, the only place to be between Time and Eternity.

Had death not had me in tears I would have seen the barges on life's stream sail. I would have heard sorrow songs in groves where the road was lost long where men foot prints mix with other men foot prints By the road I wait "death is better, death is better" came the song I am by the roadside looking for the road death is better, death is much better Had death not had me in tears I would have seen the barges I would have found the road and heard the sorrow songs. The land wreathes in rhythm with your soul, caressed by history and cruel geography landscape ineffable yet screaming eloquent resonant like the drums of after harvests. We pile rocks on terracing love Carry the pithy cloth to cover the hearths of our mother. Come now, you lucky ones come to the festival of corn and lamb to the finest feast of this land come, now, your lovers have unfurled their cloths their thighs glistening like golden knives ready for the plunging, for the plentiful loving time. To whom shall I turn to what shall I tell my woes ? My kinsmen, the desert tree denied us sustenance long before the drought. To whom shall I turn to whom shall I tell my woes? Some say tell the mother goat she too is my kinswoman elemental sister of your clan But I cannot tell the mother goat for she is not here.

as the early morning light reflected off leaves against my window I called you to say I was moving back and I cried so deeply the way I cried for weeks after I moved losing my breath hovering between waking and sleep on the day I left I stood on your balcony facing the Pacific Ocean watching the sea stretch past a gauze of power lines into a green horizon this summer I began to awaken with my body covered in a cold sweat a whippoorwill calling from beyond the ramshackle fence kept me calm through the darkness and earlier this spring my dear friend Charlie had mysteriously died and like so many secrets we shared he loved to tan turning a tone the color of a young Toni Tennille he loved to dance he loved to pray every night I lie and recite the Act of Contrition to settle my head I am sorry for my sins with all my heart in choosing to do wrong and failing to do good I have sinned against you whom I should love above all things and almost every night I’ve dreamt of Charlie reading by candlelight he is old his skin sags like the arms of a tulip tree how easy it is to listen to his voice I cradle my chin into his neck our beards brush together now as you answer the phone I hear the discordant steam of cargo ships murmur in the distance there is no reason to lie to you I have been dying since we met

i was left out i was chosen second & then left out i was left handed  i was left to fend for myself   i was the second in command  the second in line   i came without direction * i want the milk  i want my first pick  i want choice   & all its implications  there was a * residue of scar between us  it chafed when we rubbed our chests together * hello, brother, hello? hello in there, brother, can you hear me?  it's a long tunnel to the grave    speak you were my first god  i was rapt in your coming (mother better eat her vegetables, she better chew) choo choo what's bitter between us * i want the milk  i need it for my teeth  they're soft  the gums bleed  there's the evidence on my toothbrush  i got the second draft  i need calcium to make up  i got a job & left i don't know where you're buried * what do you need?  what will make you happy?  what do you want?  the dead do have mouths & appetites  suck it up   there's plenty in the ice box   more where that came from * if somebody asked me what's next  i wouldn't know  i took my hands off her like something hot  or fragile   or in pain  i was aghast  at suffering how you can feed & feed it & it's never full * there's a separation between us  a suppuration  there's just the space of an idea  i don't know what's missing  it's a blind spot  sometimes my left eye focuses & it's like looking at both of us through a window * i'm telling you the facts of life for you haven't been told you're in your late fifties  you're dis- eased or disinterested  a queer unable to come out of the casket  OK * you live this life  i'll live the next  she only has enough milk for one baby  i'll go around this time  you come the next  that time you'll have a better mother i promise you that

The house felt like the opera, the audience in their seats, hushed, ready, but the cast not yet arrived. And if I said anything to try to appease the anxious air, my words would hang alone like the single chandelier waiting to dim the auditorium, but still too huge, too prominent, too bright, its light announcing only itself, bringing more emptiness into the emptiness.

My brother is dying and I am not. I drag him behind me like a spiritless balloon, like the first robot, like the last clown-car clown, his ridiculous Fiat, his lot to be crushed, left for dead, covered in snot, his puffy hands, his outsized shoes, his flower pot, like Virgil Earp, Clanton-ganged, at the Not OK Corral, un-brothered, gutshot, like the night without sleep in Turandot. From the get-go I have always sought to know (what,what?) if this is all I’ve got, to show up in a vestibule, all bothered and hot, like silver-fingered Iscariot, like the smiling highwayman,tlot-tlot, tlot-tlot, while all about me are consigned to slather and rot. I drink to my faith, to what I am not, to all who’ve come before me, every rutty Lancelot, every Huguenot, every hotsy-totsy hot to trot, every Dylan, besot, who doesn’t have the strength to get up and take another shot. I know my Morse, code blue,dot-dot-dot, dit-dit-dit, dot-dot-dot. I know what God hath wrought.

for Charles You have lived six decades     and you have lived none You have loved many     and you have loved no one You wedded three wives       but you lie in your cold bed alone You sired four children     but they cannot forgive you Knock at emptiness    a house without your love Strike the pine box     no answer    all hollow You planted plums near the gate     but they bear no fruit You raised herbs in the veranda     fresh and savory I cry for you     but no sound wells up in my throat I sing for you     but my tears have dried in my gullet Walk the old dog     give the budgies a cool bath Cut a tender melon     let it bleed into memory The robe you washed     hangs like a carcass flayed The mug you loved       is stained with old coffee Your toothbrush is silent        grease mums your comb Something's lost        something's made strong Around the corner    a new prince yearns to be loved A fresh turn of phrase       a bad strophe erased A random image       crafts itself into a poem A sleepless Taipei night       a mosquito's symphony Who will cry for you    me and your sister Colette Who will cry for you    me and your Algerian sister You were a rich man    but you held on to your poverty You were a poor man    who loved gold over dignity I sit near your body bag       and sing you a last song I sit near your body bag      and chant your final sutra What's our place on earth?     nada       nada       nada What's our destiny?       war     grief     maggots     nada Arms      cheeks    cock     femur    eyelids    nada Cowl     ox      lamb     vellum    marrow    nada Vulva      nada     semen    nada    ovum    nada Eternity     nada       heaven    nada    void    nada Birth and death the same blackened womb Birth and death the same white body bag Detach     detach we enter the world alone Detach     detach we leave the world bone lonely If we can't believe in god       we must believe in love We must believe in love       we must believe in love And they zip you up        in your white body bag White body bag        white    white     body       bag

A day without tears is a rare occurrence culpable absent-mindedness practically an episode • when men still wore starched collars, and stuffed cotton wool between their toes hobbled about in pain, pedicure hadn’t been invented, but you would see faces that were worth a second look those were years when something whispered

Your friend has died, with whom You roamed the streets, At all hours, talking philosophy. So, today you went alone, Stopping often to change places With your imaginary companion, And argue back against yourself On the subject of appearances: The world we see in our heads And the world we see daily, So difficult to tell apart When grief and sorrow bow us over. You two often got so carried away You found yourselves in strange neighborhoods Lost among unfriendly folk, Having to ask for directions While on the verge of a supreme insight, Repeating your question To an old woman or a child Both of whom may have been deaf and dumb. What was that fragment of Heraclitus You were trying to remember As you stepped on the butcher’s cat? Meantime, you yourself were lost Between someone’s new black shoe Left on the sidewalk And the sudden terror and exhilaration At the sight of a girl Dressed up for a night of dancing Speeding by on roller skates.

Incurable and unbelieving in any truth but the truth of grieving, I saw a tree inside a tree rise kaleidoscopically as if the leaves had livelier ghosts. I pressed my face as close to the pane as I could get to watch that fitful, fluent spirit that seemed a single being undefined or countless beings of one mind haul its strange cohesion beyond the limits of my vision over the house heavenwards. Of course I knew those leaves were birds. Of course that old tree stood exactly as it had and would (but why should it seem fuller now?) and though a man's mind might endow even a tree with some excess of life to which a man seems witness, that life is not the life of men. And that is where the joy came in.