FEATURED POEMS

My keyboard faces a window;

everywhere I can see is sky.

Sky, make me believe in beauty.

Sky, make me believe I am writing

poems rather than beating the shit

out of words that may have had just

an atom of meaning before

I began hacking away at them.

The man next door practices

his guitar—hot, electric, loud.

Here’s a thought: If either of us

got pushed over our balconies,

we might be saved by hanging on

to the sky. I love this building;

no one complains about anyone

else. In the next building, a man

creates a symphony of cans

and bottles emptying into

a recycle bin, a sound which

lets me believe that a little

heavenly guidance and a drink

with each other just might save us

in a way that politics and

diplomacy have not. Maybe,

if we all grew geraniums

near our African Woodbine,

or conquered pain by going rump

to belly with friends, known and un

known…maybe if we named our babies

*Melantha, Yonina, or Almasi,

then we could manage our worlds

without armor or fear. The sky

flows over my keyboard. It speaks

of chimera, of costs, of prayer.

The great nations will remain unmoved

by these words. Oh, I can write them:

Books

Hands

Lips

Legs,

but I can only imagine

that such words might arm us, stain us

with a sense of our own audacity.

Deliverance floods Hollywood

Boulevard, I hear it rush by.

Shroud me, Sky! I’m sitting here

In my earrings and my sweet scent

Waiting for peace and perfection.

SADIE TELLS THE STORY OF HER LOST LOVE

TO HER LOST LOVE

In the morning after the storm, I walked

to the place where the swans stoically

protected the lake’s dark water.

The masks they wore hid their

true selves. I could not see their

wickedness but I knew it was there.

Royal White Mutes, Coscorabas,

Trumpeters and Bewicks—each of these

inclined to bite, to bloody an arm or ankle

with a hurtful kiss. I sat on a bench,

facing them and remembering…

trying to remember what beauty felt like,

what it was to be so lovely that

the eye’s sclera was graced with its intensity—

an almost violence, that sort of beauty;

a beauty that can be forgiven nearly

anything. Oh, I could not make

that memory fit myself though I tried.

Our maculate love was long past as was

the bud and blossom of my attraction.

We floated, dipped, flew only a little.

When we left the water, I saw you

working the grass, mouth slightly open

and ready to snap, body readying…

A shakedown, a preening, a low sound

as you intertwined your fingers with mine.

They wander off to the destinations

they missed while alive. Their tears are

traces of obsidian, nearly invisible at night

except for the glints they gather

from the stars.They emerge from the

trickle of water in the Los Angeles river,

TALMUD

She tried to sleep. Loneliness

covered her and,

when she closed her eyes,

all she could see was his mouth

coming toward her mouth,

then stopping just short

of the kiss she craved.

Through the curtain

of silence that was night,

there was a sound

like the knocking stick

of some monk outside

on the sidewalk.

So, she got up.

Out on the patio,

she weighed the night sky,

the clouded wink and flash

of smog-sticky stars

as if studying a soul

or the Talmud

or Sumerian tablets.

She was learning nothing,

she thought

Once again,

she told herself,

I’ve been thrown out

of The Garden;

(eighty-sixed) from

the best gig in town.

Ah well…

Back in bed,

she curled into sleep

and dreamed of red lipstick

she saw on a poster

in the subway,

and of age

slouching toward her

across a field somewhere.

STOPLIGHT

Standing at a stoplight

I watch the old woman

piss in a doorway.

Her hair is dirty.

Her clothes are dirty.

Her feet are cracked.

Someone passes,

drops a dollar bill

at the hem of her skirt

and moves on, whistling,

headphones firmly anchored

on his ears.

A block away,

the banner on the front

of the Methodist Church

announces,

ALL ARE WELCOME HERE.

It sports the rainbow symbol.

The air is heavy and

smells of gasoline.

I am standing at a stoplight

On Hollywood Boulevard.

I’ve ever known such happiness.

VOODOO

See your life as allegory, as discourse.

Though you are not right in your mind,

the innocence of your childhood is evident.

The rosy redness of the atom bomb was

not your fault. Pull your coat close

around you to keep out the chill of reason.

Keep gloves on at all times to resist

sanity’s frostbite. There is no earthly place

to receive you now. All that you fear

will come true. Marie LaVeau predicted it.

She stood at the edge of Bayou St. John,

sang, “As the nails of the dead

continue to grow, so will whatever love

you leave behind you.” Keep yourself clear

of sophistication. Keep clear of cool.

That shit will envelope your life—

your life as allegory, as discourse.

Do you know that anything easily discerned

can be easily destroyed? It’s true.

Walk your milk-white body

down to the end of the driveway.

Stare into the cloudless sunset

and you’ll soon greet the Four Horsemen,

come for the Rapture:

Data (palomino),

Fast Food (dark bay),

Global Warming (chestnut),

And Cacophony (pinto).

There will be revelations. There will be

distortions of revelations. But you—

you must continue to gather

the splinters of yourself and see

the end product: a life, your life,

as allegory, as discourse.

MID-FEBRUARY LATE AT NIGHT

Intimidated by the glass,

I reach to touch a near-full moon

suspended on a near-black string.

It strays across tonight as I

have wandered across blank paper,

decorum over and done with.

The strange bones of my hands find their

own way (hasn’t always been so).

Outdoors, the moon lights up the dirt,

hides behind clouds that start to spill

rain. The environment reeks of

failure and I, unmoved by its

intent, start to despise the rain.

I have stood in this place a long

time waiting for shame to produce

the wild, tender thoughts I’ve called up

in the past. Where is the book I’ve

not written? Where is the house and

the barn I saw when I slept then

wrote about when I woke? Where are

the lumbering animals that

will find their way back home and the

farm wife in her wrinkled jeans and

patterned apron? Maybe they’ve been

cast upward into God’s shadows.

I reach to touch a sky that has

filled my life with false promises.

The old olive tree looks so cold.

Soon it will be Spring: warm, blameless.

I, who was careful about my figure

most of the time

cartwheeled past the 15th floor,

mourning my days

without chocolates or ice cream.

Oh, I made toasts with the best of them,

but it was with Lite Beer.

A slim figure

counts for something,

don’t you think?

The air was cool from the

open window, the view spectacular—

TriBeCa stretching out and around,

lit only for me.

Why should I not want to own those lights

and reach out to stuff them into my eyes

and mouth (as if they were

champagne truffles)

as I tipped over and over in the dark?

Like a one-ton piece of chalk,

I tumbled, watched as windows passed,

and wondered if I was in a dream,

would wake on the couch

when I came to the bottom.

But it was a bookstore roof

that stopped me,

not a couch or a friend shaking

my shoulder, laughing at my

beer-y breath.

I heard the rustling of pages

as my smudged mascara

and Exces de Rouge lipstick

found the 5th floor,

told myself

maybe someone

is writing about this.

The sliver of glass,

the sun so white, it thinks

itself a moon, this haze

that smells of a desert wind:

all these tell that

Fall is here.

They ask

“Are you ready for death?”

My mother said no,

said neither would I be.

I smiled at her. “O,” I said

“but you have not seen me

silent as stone, poised,

a tongue of fire over my head—

waiting for the Pentecost.”

.

Where were you when you heard the news?

I was at the grocery store buying tomatoes and wheat macaroni and reduced-fat shredded cheese. You see the implications here…

I was near the pool, drinking a gin and tonic, waiting for the moon

to rise. When it didn’t, I went inside.

She cooked for them in the evening: green peas

and squash, some kind of meat and hard rolls.

A ritual of hands and eyes and

movements. Outside, the dark held up

the leaves of the camphor tree

like a silhouette artist about to begin cutting.

She thought of how much she wanted rain

and how much sweeter things would be if only

she could hear water dripping from the eaves.

In the kitchen, no one crowded around her.

The wine was the color of a river bed;

she thought of trout, of pebbles, everything

shining, everything wet. She watched her hands

setting the table. Something whispered,

“This is real. Quickly, save yourself!”

***************************************

I do not wish to be whole alone

knowing who I am but all by myself;

to say, “Is anyone here?” when I

come home and know

that no one is. I can’t revise myself.

I mean, it is a fine t hing to know

my own broken branches.

A fine thing. But not alone,

no please, not that. Current thinking

declares my passions null.

All vows are off it says.

You may be cold and cowardly,

but you, by God, know yourself.

Go grab the patent on that one.

***************************************