In the Office

For no sentimental reason,
clichés hang on tongues' clothesline,
and deals begin with
a phone call for "moneys to be made."
The boss, a walking talking gunner
with a blind bat's shot in the dark. Still,
his romance with greed and
rhythm--cool as lemonade on a hot day,
he calls it-- is feeding on a small scale,
while the steno, cracking her knuckles,
wonders who started the jam sessions
for the management or if the experience
of the tar-dipped character was ever tested.
A message obscure: "Don't allude
to what‘s there; play your hand right."
Familiar faces stacked behind
computer screens wish to unravel
duplicity's skein, but they can only shift,
drift, and dream of five o'clock, hoping
the ogre does not short their wiring as
the steno grieves the waste of
her thirty-sixth summer.

 

In the Kitchen

In the kitchen, Mira
--my friend from India--
soaks tamarind,
balancing homesickness
with cooking and poetry.
Hard working, efficient,
she rises and falls again
like the dough or the pain
of searching for the best
paprika in the market, beating
the eggs and simmering her opinions.
Her cravings widen the dance
of my thoughts and send them
spiraling to other people like
my grandmother, aunts, women
from all over the globe who
distill memories in
cups, spoons, torte pans, gadgets,
Pyrex pans, non-stick roasters
that stick to recall as they
are towed to the island
in the middle of the kitchen.
They interpret recipes and
trying moments
they've allowed to marinate,
and I fluff up to take in
all their aches and memories,
tasting, trusting
the soft, wise voices
gifted with metaphor.


 

Jensen Beach, April 21

Crowded at the beach today,
--on a Monday, no less--
sun building webs of light
for pieces of dreams
jobs in the offing,
world's untreated scars,
and ripples of sea like butter knives
spreading salt on the sand
and on the wounds of people
who try to connect with
the birds overlapping the sky
as if in a drifting trance,
studiously ignoring
the sad face of the economy.

================

Revised version:

Jensen Beach

Crowded at the beach today...
The sun's building webs of light
to add to the drama of sloth,
jobs in the offing, and
world's untreated scars
as ripples like butter knives
spread salt on the sand,
the wounds of people, and pelicans
in a drifting trance, ignoring
the sad face of the economy.

 

The People before Us

In the summer of
the World's Fair, 1939,
when the "compass rose
pointing in all directions,"
the people before us
danced the rumba,
extending the conga line
from the docks to
Manhattan for the unknown
to be discovered; the sea
of people, in wide parades,
reached the pavilions
that promised world peace
for the umpteenth time,
like the end of a long,
miserable drought.

Useless!
Now, the rain
spits down our shame,
tasting of ashes.
The splitting ice,
the ebbing earth
the missing sky
bind us to guilt
of shortened time.
This vile display
from the brink of yesterday,
can it hit upon a spiral
to uncoil again from
the "Futurama Ride"?



 

His Handwriting

Not on tablets
or in charcoal,
but with ink on paper,
unleashed I thought
his attention to detail
through patchiness.
In the way his letters curved
faithful to high loops
on top of the lines
like hands clapping and
the deep dark ink
-a symbol of strength-
could be hooking for
someone to hold,
but then, I got
the whole thing wrong,
not noticing the distribution
of empty spaces or the
flair of smudges and streaks.
Maybe because I am
a speed reader, and I
never could read in
between the lines.


 

Sunset Beach

The surf comes in like a train
with soft choo choo sounds,
swelling first, far over the ocean,
where sunset begins.
The sun burns its spinning wheel,
to sweep later the ashes
into gliding clouds as its light
pulls up anchor,
and sea foam fizzles down
to dampness on sand.
Then comes my refusal
to walk barefoot on
this beach, for
particles of far-away sands
are already glued
under my toes.
 

Ye Olde Yarn Shoppe (prose-poem)

Fixation, Merino, Worsted, Alpaca, hand-dyed Sierra. I could sing the poetry of yarns on Open-Mic Night at Bulls and Frogs. That might have been before Debbie Macomber's passionate books and you bought me a set of crochet hooks. Then they burned down Grace's Ye Olde Yarn Shoppe on Revelation Avenue, and you sent her red roses for comfort. Her consolation, you said. Her consolation, my demise; for I was never worldly wise. So I named all the savage weeds in my yard after the two of you, and yanked them out of the soil one by one: Poison ivy, Knotweed, Crabgrass, Sodom's Apples, Carrot Wood, Buckthorn, Fire Tree, Goosefoot, all tangled up together, held down by the crochet hooks in a thrash bag. Now, I buy all knitted things, ready-made, from Macy's.



 

Art

                    For a painting a friend sent me.

Old friend, you paint, so sad and sweet...
Why, those colors say everything, like silent reminders
on canvas, engraving my life, brushstroke by brushstroke,
to hint at what is lost, what no one sees.

If only your colors had a body I could dwell in...
one you could touch with your eyes as if
our skins could touch, like the day when I told you
I woke up from untamed dreams of childhood.

Yet, what came out of my lips has vanished
in the murky rush of years, and now, I find
my way with half-blinded eyes through your art,
and you hold my hand in remembrance.

When the real you reaches through in understanding,
I detect, in this icy life, some instrumentalist
drove us together to huddle around the only flame left,
not to chant nonsense but to pray for deeper perception.





 

This Dark Thing

                   "I am terrified by this dark thing"
                                       Sylvia Plath

Dark weaves its web
at the center of the earth,
celebrating a black light
of a certain glow, not so kind,
changing plain stones to stars
--all mystery and splendor--
then to black holes, like a fierce ascetic
sending vibes, drilling holes in
your life to turn all your words
into shrieks, for you lived
worshiping shadows with
future diminishing and
a steel wind in a haste;
still unfinished,
you hold up a lamp with
the flame of your oracle eyes.


 

Missing

What is it I am searching
for who-knows-what confused reason
and cannot find?
Hitchhiking on poetry's freeway
without missing a beat in doodle time,
I've seen houses on wheels, but
I cannot turn my knotted wood
into planks for my stationary hut.
Does some other material exist?
So I search for more.
Maybe I know the answer, but it
eludes me and no one can tell me it,
because the question is mine.
What is it that is missing
like a door from a wall
or a sock from the pair?


 

Selling Knives

                   to whom it may concern

I don't mean to change the subject
from your fun activities like hunting deer or
candidates or Italian villa rentals to
dramatic dismay, and I know it hurts too much
to talk about the war, homelessness,
dead children, where we are headed,
bloodletting, and suffering.
Instead, I pick on the knife industry
that advertises its wares with words like,
"Lifetime supply of incredibly sharp edges."
I pick on the phrase lifetime supply,
I pick on the sharpness virus,
the cutting, the preemptive anything,
the rubble we lost ourselves in,
while not letting seeds regenerate under
the ground to feed the entire planet.
I pick on this one ad, because trifles
veil reality; trifles console me.




 

Beggar Girl

People change their paths
to avoid you as if granting you
a favor, making you recall the blood
inside your worn-out shoes
and the purple veins creep up
your forehead. Your footpads
like tropical fruit -akin to papaya, mango-
were not made for panhandling
in Port Authority.
Still, you wade through
the passengers with your own pliant style,
and purring, prowling, prancing, adrift
on tiptoe, you bend your voice to
this cranky climate.
I watch you bounce about like
a child playing with flashes of sunlight,
and I question myself with a tone
I do not recognize. Then,
as you whisper some meaningless words,
I slip a dollar in your hand,
only because my ego needs
the grace of your smile.




 

At Lunch

When we enter the cave of
Duffy's Sport Grill,
waitresses in green confess
their powers of devotion,
commissioned to our orders,
as the din of thousand TV
screens meddle with our
conversation. This deal--
supposedly business--will
take a strange zigzag, for
with mirth and abandon,
beer flows, the holy water
of whooping laughter.
In the opposite booth, the woman
with the navy paisley shirt
and moxie pinches sugar packets
like hunted Easter eggs
into her bag. Our looks cross;
she smiles, so self-assured
her gray eyes that I feel like
offering her my job.



 

Emulation haibun

I still don't know all the answers this late, and it is April once more. The earth heaves with life. White ibises, imitating catwalk models, stroll on their thin stilts, to feed on languid salamanders.

Circling round and round,
cannot come up dry for lunch
tall birds poised, intent.

Returning from the grocery store, I wave at my elderly neighbor outside, who stands still with the newspaper in his hand. He stares at the bushes, fascinated. Something in his stare makes me shudder. I walk up to him.

Brain, the dimming bulb,
threading on a string of years,
refuses amends.

Gesturing toward the bird, my neighbor whispers: "Hush! My wife is out to get them. Smart lizards are in hiding." His wife died last year.
I withdraw, walking backwards into the house, to hide from the dread of my own years lying in wait.

Hello and good-bye.
Can you leave anything here?
Just sweep up the dust.

 

In the Clouds

I'll be a cloud diviner
like the aloof man from China
I once met at the foot
of the Golden Gate Bridge.
He sat on a rock, facing
the clouds at dusk with
reverence, "For mortality; yet,
for immortality," he said.

But, I'll be a seer unlike him.
Unlike him, I'll breathe fire,
I'll fatten up the clouds to
slide on for dancing the tango,
my tango nuevo, for kicking the air
with my shapely legs, and I'll
wear my red bolero and red
stilettos with ankle straps;
then I'll take my brushes up
to paint the clouds in dazzling colors.

Next, the show-off that I am,
with my ceremonial hands,
I'll put bee-hives in my clouds
for the bees to pollinate life
again, for I'll plant flowers on
all continents that no one can
trample. But first, I'll ask
the clouds this, about me.
This yearning for another realm,
will it ever go away?




 

Pettiness

I am sabotaged by memory.
An internal tantrum
is about to descend
to cut big in shark bites.
To reciprocate the betrayal,
I breathe in, breathe out,
in deep, long mantra-puffs,
and my recall returns like
the ivory inlay on a box
after a good scrub.
What if I find
what I tried to remember
is of no consequence!






 

What is not said…

Auntie Em, at eighty-two, with damp
white hair and pale face, talks of
her life in ceaseless thirst: the bliss
of her childhood when she rode
in the rumble seat of Model A Ford;
the hands of a pianist, her first
love; how she fell into marriage like
a meek doppelganger with icy eyes;
how she gathered sea shells and
kelp from the sea foam on sand
on her wedding day; the child that
never was; her immigrant neighbor’s
swearing like an anarchist in rage;
her husband’s ashes in the urn
one day she’ll throw in the sea
as she promised him, just not yet.

Auntie Em talks of the town council,
Orchard Drive’s traffic, old fashions,
pinwheels, her barmaid sister-in-law,
her cane, bean soup and prophecies,
crabapple trees, caraway seeds,
pineapple upside-down cakes, tarts,
éclairs, weather vanes, night sweats,
rheumatoid arthritis, backaches, but
she never talks of the cancer,
gnawing her within, gruesome, aslant,
and in between her voice
and my nodding, what is not said
encrypts itself into how similar we are,
in holding back our shivering
inside word clouds, as if
paying homage to life.



 

Hmmmm…

What was it like
when I saw the first light…
the first light coming in from
the afternoon sun on faces,
smiles, tears, beds, chairs, sky,
cats, cigarettes, puddles,
my own hands and toes,
a crack on the wall,
an ant hanging on to the curtain
that boogied with the wind?

Then, when the hush of the evening
dropped in, did I think
the darkness blew away
the sights and the sounds?
Was it then when I fell in love
with words and fiction
people uttered, ignoring
what I could hear?

After all the years, after
my majestic performance
when I take a bow and
the real darkness tumbles down,
will it be the words
I’ll miss the most,
all because I was never
too fond of reason?



 

Watch Where You’re Going

“Watch where you’re going!”
Don’t spill the brew
with a dark espresso gurgle,
swirling like a black hole.
How quickly we forgot the warning!

We darted, climbed,
plunged, as years whirled--
the same, anew--into
caffeine-filled avenues,
and we despaired
the same oracular S.O.S.
“Watch where you’re going!”
on slippery roads
in solitary nights with
stinging thorns.

Two little girls in
dark rooms, we bounced
on coiled mattresses
like coffee jiggling in a cup.
“Watch where you are going!”
Who’d know someday
we’d run into doors
we could not open?

 

Soft Soap

Soft Soap with soothing
Aloe Vera, the strip club
of genuine dirt.

I dig up my grime from
the ditches of memorabilia
while rummaging the junk
drawer when I handle
trinkets of no value from
my once-upon-a-time wars.

So I lather and rinse, vowing
to keep my sticky hands
off that rough stuff.


--------------------------------

*Lady Macbeth comes to mind.*