We do not replay errors
or hide inside a bubble under water.
We do not dine in candlelight
or dry ourselves with designer towels,
but we make love to our memories
locked inside our poetry in a hutch
that opens to a desk that opens
us to each other. Then,
we pass the nights, back and forth,
as if sipping beer
from the same mug,
rejoicing in how
we built our family house.

 

Your childhood
you were so frightened
to face
has never left you
invisible though it may be,
grasping the distance of the years
curtained in itself, by itself.
It taps on your shoulder and you think
it serenely plots to destroy you
whereas it only means to say,
“Look at me; hear me out;
weed me out.”
Your childhood, an angel so terrifying!

 

The recliners are senior style
reconciling comfort and survival,
with covers getting weather-worn
under the sun, while they wait by
the side of the curb.
Do they discuss atherosclerosis,
kidney stones, flabby arms, arthritis,
and prostate enlargement, and tease
the credenzas and the mahogany table
with the unsteady leg?
Probably, they all exchange woes
with each other, comparing
pains and people, who used them up
and threw them out; however,
they seem resigned as they prepare
for the Goodwill truck to pick them up
for lesser homes, like those people
who grow old to perfection,
then melt away in forlorn places.


 

                   After hearing Sarah McLachlan on Jay Leno last night, which was Nov.13, 2008

You run in the middle of the traffic to ditch
men with heads of frogs, refusing to own
yourself and what went wrong; although,
you’ll outlive your pain and the
just-too-damn-difficult forgiving of
the distances in between. Then,
when you come back,
you’ll still be covered with scars.
and you’ll still sprint to ditch
the carcasses on the black earth,
as Sarah McLachlan sings:
clueless and so high!





 

Everything grows on me, growing up.
To begin with, those story ideas--
shedding their chrysalis,
thoughts that sigh--finding no solution.
Then, the little boy next door
who is a man now, the population
of this town bringing poetry
and repulsion, and the tyranny
of shadows from each day
of so many years. My reflection
in the glass…so funny!
Who bent that many lines
on my face
like buried tributaries and
made moments flee
like obscene gestures?
Hard to believe…
Today, even Google turned ten.




 

The ant in the milk
didn’t go in there
by chance. Dissatisfied
with its lot, it
focused on the spilling
universe of white
in the glass. How paltry
that desire seems now,
when the ant is fighting
for breath?
Luckily, a wooden pick
comes to its rescue,
from the hand of one
who seeks nothing
after a thousand or more
such drownings.


 

Fickle moon
feeds the aloneness in you,
shining on flower beds, creeks,
waterfalls, springs,
hills, crypts, and boulders
to make everything sparkle
only to lose them
in an instant
to their shadows.

Proud though on its own,
just a rock thrust in heavens
by titans spuming fire,
it lulls you with night breezes
to make you shimmer
inside what you are not.

 

The way you twirled the wine
and sniffed, with a hint of prophecy,
reminded me of a man
I once loved, as if
I smelt the brine from a wave.
Then a fog covered my eyes
and I docked my boat
of antique recollections
with an absurd longing.
By the time you took a sip
and nodded, I was already
back in your presence,
back from an ocean
thrashing and swelling
without forgiveness.



 

He stands at the podium and lectures:
“Follow the poem; let the poem lead.
Love it so, with awe, so it becomes you.”

Then, he asks: “Are you all strangers or ghosts
that you don’t know who murdered poetry?"
And he points with his index finger:
"Was it you? You? Or you?"

His gaze rests on me and I cringe.




 

Summer mountains,
wild flowers circling their necks
like glittering gems,
conjure up splendor
and my aspirations.
While sunbeams ripple
in clear light strains,
I sense a mountain's soft breath
surrounding me, for I never
lost the wonder
for the mountain winds' songs
chiming against the blue patches of sky
when the peaks, with rhythm,
whisper revelations to
something deep inside me:
“Take nothing with you;
come to me as you are,
uncluttered and complete
in your aloneness.”

 

You were there with me
when we started, so strong and insistent,
but, now, you are nowhere in sight.
I search for you under rocks,
wear bones and feathers, and do the dance
so you come down again like the rains
or like the light that shines through the clouds.
Yet, you have the shape of the wind
and the grit to run away
and leave me stranded, locking
my fingers on the keys.
There is nothing I can do now, but let you go
for I don’t know how to trap speed.
So I collapse and inflate with distaste
as if I am hanging from my feet,
unseen against the pages.



Prompt from "Poets' Practice Pad"  : Write a poem about a good idea getting away from you.




 

Two beasts allege my dreams are their territory.
One howls, the other horrifies.
One runs after me with its revolting pleas,
the other whines with unrelenting complaints.
They darken my nights with their neediness,
one with inexplicable desires,
the other with rowdy demands.
One beast is my ego,
the other my expectations,
both stark and sturdy
with no justification.


 

          "The streets of heaven are far too crowded with angels"

Angels left, clicking
their bones,
their smiles dancing
in the memory,
angels ignored far too long
like the disease with no mercy,
like an oily turpentine spill,
instead of the cheer they
attempted to paint.
Angels tall and thin,
angels with yellowed skin
angels of patience,
looking for the moon, but
finding heaven in
music's colors,
angels sculpting
a strange art of sparks
that coalesce into
stars with long
hyacinth wings.
Angels gave me
magic ears, so I
can still hear them
singing.


Prompt 48 from "Poets' Practice Pad" 
 

Roaming

What is it that makes us
leap into adventures when
our legs refuse to move and
our bodies have long given up?
Is it because we still like
to duel with life and deal with
eerie, elusive things like
getting lost in countless
upstate highways when
the setting sun blurs
the highway sign and
we miss the only exit?
What is it in us that
makes the heart follow
the feet and then clamor
with the tongue of gypsies?


 

Down below

From just under the clouds,
the scenery on the ground
is full of tiny playthings:
toy roads, toy houses,
toy cars, toy trees,
like Lionel train-towns.
Everything is so small
you don't see the people
the weeds, the garbage,
the apathy, the foolishness.
Looking from the top,
from your window seat in
US Air, flight 1868,
you wonder who plays
with all those toys
down below.




 

Synchronization

Today, spring intones in
a soft soprano voice.
There's singing inside
the new grass, in sprouting
happy green, and in the rhythm
of rivulets meandering
on the window pane.
The tune of the first rose,
so perfect, one can hardly believe
it was hiding inside the bud,
and I am too afraid
to move away from the window,
lest I lose the song.


 

The Pain of Packing

To conjure up happy unions
between unmatched pieces,
I go through my closet
my eyes like searchlights.
          Will it rain, will it shine?
          Darn this season of changes!
          I cannot be hot; I cannot be cold.
You'd think I'm getting ready
for the end of the earth or
a trip to Neptune. Folding this,
wrapping that, my body twitches
in anticipation, and I'm
a sniveling worm, which cannot
conceive there's a life
out of its cocoon. Disgusted
with indecision, just anything
I dump in the bag as if
fingering amulets that strip
my fingers. Finally!
I am a woman,
and this is not death.
 

When Old Friends Call

Their voices rearrange me,
invasive with long arms
but not counterfeit,
so I open my shutters
to drag in their freshness.
They spoon me up like honey
like the tonic they thought
I was, galaxies away, but now
I hide me. I hide how dried up,
how spread-too-thin I am,
and I hope, beating around
the inflections, my tone
will go unnoticed. My palm
sweats with the taste of
the receiver, and chitchat fills
empty spaces, trickling in
juicy morsels, healing
what eyes don't see,
following me into good-byes.
A temporary merger, yet
what's derailed is
back on track.

 

Watching the Current

The riverbank has swollen
to drown the wayward vine,
creeping into its territory,
as the end of spring
renovates the skin of the earth.
A brown scaly branch
bounces downstream to meet
its insignificant decay,
taking with it a memory
of the mother tree, and I,
with a book on my lap,
watch the water pour
over the boulders, savoring
the flow without an attitude
or a yearning. If there could be
a moment in life in which
I could stay forever,
this would be it.
.
 

Snapshots

Bedazzled, I took a few snapshots
of a dignified queen palm today,
thinking, come late fall, it may
not be here, for lack of roots
causes tall things to fall when
hurricanes arrive, leaving
only shadows to tuck away grief
for what is lost, inside the eyes.
So, in this accidental world,
a well-tended tree waving its arms
to the golden sun
deserved my faint awareness and
lukewarm clicks of the camera, even if
a storm is a wind in vain
like an ephemeral madness and
one may assume some things
can be replaced afterwards.