the soup

trust me.
there are layers in this mist
shades of, shades of gray
not the layers of a skin; tangible,
dissectible or solid
but rather, the undulating fog.
the fingers of clouds touching my tender folds
teasing, even

opacity is thrilling, not knowing the way
not seeing the very next little step.
there is bliss in that uncertainty. Wanting
one more clue.
catch me. as I will catch you
should we trip up
upon each other
in all this
soup.

-----

my teeth

gleaming
on the screen—somewhere in Guam
via satellite.
“That man on TV sure has nice, white teeth.”
pause.
big smile.
“They’re caps.”
click.

-----

in this life

“So when you call up that shrink in Beverly Hills, you know the one, Dr. Everything'll-Be-All-right, instead of asking him how much of your time is left, ask him how much of your mind, baby. 'Cause in this life, things are much harder than in the afterworld.' In this life you're on your own.”

-Let’s Go Crazy- Prince

We don’t treat strokes with
tough love. No ‘slaps in faces’
-- please -- for the sick?

mercy.
for cancer. Parkinson's, ALS, Traumatic Brain Injury. Leukemia.

Or depression? Yes. Depression.

(wounds, injuries, accidents)

We sweep our own stoops
We rescue our fallen -- the poor --
Above all; We do no harm.

In this life, (my) defender is me.
For who else will advocate?

(I was a fool to assume, incorrectly)

Who else will step up
for the man who washed
his hands to bloody digits?

bathed in television lighting -- painted
like a clown. the make-believe newsman.
the ‘limp’ is hidden. stoic for the red light.

OCD monster. (thankfully now crippled)

(memories, so long past)

What protection might I expect
with clouds of mist and whispers;
the obfuscation of reality? The lethal
edge so near.

Step up.

I will step up; and fight
like hell. For myself.
For who else would?

-----

cat

my foot is still dragging, almost a month after I fell on my head,
in the middle of the night.
my thumb is dead numb.
fortunately, the MRI is clean, just a pinched nerve. I'm relieved.

my mouth is under construction,
two implants sit waiting for the final crowns.
the little caps are being made right now at a lab, somewhere.

but my gut aches, and that's not an actual physical malady,

at least not truly in my gut.
I have OCD; a big secret I hide from almost everyone.

this is my coming-out poem,
a debutante ball for my soul. a cotillion.

in my poetry brain,
OCD is an animal. (a cat?)
much of its time is spent in the now; feline stalking prey,
once caught, the prey is tormented still alive, sometimes released.

I have been pawed by the cat since I was a child,

and crippled in varying degrees, over time.
it's strange that I limp now because of something unrelated.

if someone were to ask me about my OCD, I'd say, go read about it,

that's why we have the Internet.

-----

pinhead (all of my angels caught dancing)

the first-class red-eye to the sanest stretch of night’s crossing;
lounging, sleeping, melting

a halo of beloved cats.

“Boze, it’s my favorite time of the day!”

these inward travels—laying here—fetal—suffuse with color
—opioid, nearly.
dance me all the way to some orange edge.

—show me joy!

-----

treasure

somewhere
across frozen, anonymous, blankness
ice and ice and ice
nature keeps a secret
exquisite
away from all human eyes
equally hidden and discoverable
(as secrets are)

December knows
and has discovered
the stones
which lead to ice, blank sky
and the mystery -- the
one
flower.

nature knows its
beauty

by name.

-----

Aurora Borealis

Often
I have traveled with you in my mind
to the north; me the student. you the teacher, forever.

many times

together on the floes,
above
the land of Eskimos.

you know the way
the ocean becomes clotted with ice the way pudding refuses to
separate, under-stirred. the way the seal-hunters only acknowledge our presence,
indignant; respectful?

together on the floes,
above
the land of Eskimos.

But, the Inuit teach us nothing about survival we
(you especially) have not known for years. we turn away
laughing, knowing we are the hunted;
laughing, still.

you, with the bad heart
me flailing all the way, of course.

what have we left, at best, on this speck of white ice
or green,
twenty years? If that.

and we are laughing, even crying
crying, because we know this is as far as we can travel
to the north; at least safely.

It is as far as we can travel alive.

-----

epiphany; sea change

and softly we arrive each year (back like the swallows)
stinking of the fear journey; carrying all the tchotchkes (collected nefariously. sad!)
and so, roiling, the “I know” fingers do their magic, invisibly from behind.
you are there again, speaking in eternity voice
(God, it can be overwhelming, thrilling)
not only scent alerts the blind-deaf self,
but touch
from behind
a chilblain, hypothermia, a body death rattle;
cannot tame what has been loosed.
you and I wander, but with a surgeon’s precision, into the ether.
together.
lock-step.

----

moon (January 1998)

That old girl won't run anymore
and it breaks my heart.

Moon, I see you forever
in one orange second on that beach.
Not even the Pacific is as blue
as your eyes.

The sea swallows huge gulps of air

But you dance on the edge of dreams
twitching in your legs

You know the way to eternity.

-----

tons of thunder

1.)

always the legend of what I wanted life to be, embellished constantly with myth.

(it could have happened, but doubtful) the gospel.

when Julia was alive, anything was possible, practically speaking in tongues- all the superlatives, over the top, and so many of us will remember it and you, and the cancer, and the charisma so unadulterated, appealing; all the seduction, the career that never was, the death; stolen from us at the zenith of your influence. Jesus!

O God bring back the dead ones, all of them. Julia, the great, bright light; and father Lowell, the ultimate teacher and giver of love, (the God-alive man) we had waited thousands of years for your lessons carried to earth (no mistaking messiahs), in reality, this is mortal flesh with a too-soon expiry, only finite years and words finding threads to be woven through generations, (seen now, very much alive, in comet eyes) red giant too close; too soon gone; you were the birth giver, once removed, now a soul-mate who lives on, with your passing, exquisite, only in memory.

grief subsides but will not pass.

and we are all still waving goodbye.


2.)

strong grandmother enigma, you cannot be disfigured by time, your Eastern European face won’t go to ether, nor will your reality be defined by the living, even by those with your flesh; it is obviously pure legend, descending directly from mystery, questions met only with a polite change of subject, a change in focus, a mirror suddenly turned to expose what? we are forced to look another direction, the moment before is lost to an ocean of time, swimming away barely missed, a shimmer and some familiar notion at the very root of it all. (in the pit of my stomach) and there you are a beautiful little girl, now long since passed and only beginning to live in some of the descendants.

how your eyes still blink in this world.


3.)

sugar beet fields are certainly a part of my legend, backbreaking work behind a mule, only imagined as your reality, but that is accurate, in truth, there is part of me that dripped as sweat in those fields; no one can take that away from me, it is where I existed first, before this. and who could have known then you would die before my very eyes? face blue, death eyes (all the many years later, clear, bright, the same) ;
my own father trying to save your fast fleeting life, only to falter himself in some divine mimicry (genes, oh sure), a serene European golf course his eternity door and the electric foreshadowing; a 1970’s bathroom floor. shuffle on out, shuffle away, but we are still watching, all of us in the house, we see you (no true escape from legacy); father of my father, it rolls off my tongue, and will like poetry.


4.)

dead ones, I will not stop resurrecting you for my sanity.
bring me the Jews. bring me the Christians, the nonbelievers from all birth lands, bring all, and not just the memories, but flesh, bits of bone, sinewy decomposition; we can embrace any truth! we stand for it. detail the sea you loved, the waters you fished as the near-ultimate pleasure, the San Francisco Bay, the Mediterranean, the Dead Sea? what did you feel the first time you heard you would see another generation? (not knowing, of course, so many would follow- so many blood descendants), the boys with your face, destined to carry the other features, easily recognized as yours, and your laugh is tons of thunder- your jowls and belly seize, certain to span the lives, shooting through other decades and bodies-so like yours, big as the blood mixes/ retaining science (unchangeable: no amount of prayer will alter a double helix. that is fact) and you are with me this moment.


5.)

bring me jars of jelly from the Colorado plains, pickles, sweet and straight from the dirt to your earthy-smelling basement. balance? your absence leaves me with blank canvasses on which I can hope to dream, there are so many questions to ask you, if only face to face, can you give me one afternoon? (busy as you are in eternity) I would look you straight in the eye, humbled though I am by your knowledge, corpses don’t often talk, but I have higher expectations of your once attached soul. we share a secret, don’t we? there are not enough hours for me to contemplate you, and the rest; explore all the music history, family tree, photos and my many questions for your other world wisdom. are the traits I most dislike in others those I cannot tolerate in myself? how do my dreams materialize from black holes? imagination’s sperm and egg; always the aggrandizement becomes reality, that is the mystery only you will explain, though not now. in the end, aren’t we, individually, alone, each a tiny floating vessel of chaos? (the underlying goal is interconnectedness, but that is the exception, the rarity.) in the end, the loss of you (the collective) is beyond all the oversimplified self-help. oh words. (oh, all the great power we assign; it is our mistake) it’s over. I’ll find the shaman on some other soil, to fill my veins with food, but not here, not in some highly compared, criticized, unimportant farce. (not in public, please)


6.)

and

in the end, isn’t this world just an excuse for potential’s half-open purse?

one imagines so.

but your voice from the grave is hope for the alive world.

we are rapt.

-----

evidence

you don’t fear
the old man in the mirror
speaking
while your lips move,
time chasing you down
as prey,
shaking you in folds of your former self.

how could you see your own ebullience?
glowing on the soft gel of youth
while the old man
watches,
a certain chasm,
a gulping ocean,
a black hole,

for you.

-----

following new stars

in hiding—in danger-
abusing analogies; time to move to a new room,
we look at the larger picture.
weekends mean music, no robots.
the shine (shave) of my youth long gone,
reality is finally visible through life cycles, repeating.
(are you questioning the Book of Mark? “I don’t believe in it”
Star of David) the photographs arrive electronically. I’m holding
the little mother. Angel mother is holding the legacy, moving
forward in plain view; we passively witness
the divine win limited notice. ho-hum. Thy Kingdom come.

are you really going to just give up? (not what I would have
expected from a true, full blood descendant.)

on to Israel, where Italian planes bombed Tel Aviv and Haifa
during the war. (the war’s Jews slaughtered with the queers.
gas ovens.)

Aliyah is the secret word. Hashem.
so, the spotlight is a cheesy bright, too white light,
dancing in it is the legacy I honestly inherited. birth, blood, genes.
Fred Astaire?
in hiding is the metaphor, Hashem.

in danger? yes.

-----

be mine

Valentines Day—1969.

D.B. in the car. Eleven years old. D.B. dropped-off at the school's front entrance. D.B. still sleepy in the gloomy morning light. Minnesota snow; piles cleared by janitors. Sidewalks and doorways still slick with slush as hundreds of students stomp the grayish muck.

"Have fun at your party, Honey" -- cheerful Mom to little D.B. Of course, he's forgotten all about any party as Mom hands him the basket of cards. (Cards D.B. has signed.) Seventeen of them. BE MINE. LOVE. I'M HAPPY. SWEETHEART. At the party, D.B. is to place a card into an individual basket for each girl. Boys don't put cards into the baskets of other boys.

D.B. is unlikely to read the cards placed in his. But there will be cake!

As Mom's car pulls slowly back into traffic, D.B. clomps toward the front door, slush flying -- basket in hand.

How to know this very moment would forever disturb?

How to know it would change a life?

The noise is from behind. CRIPPLE. GIMP. GET-UP. CAN'T YOU STAND UP?

R_, the girl with a tortured walk, (disability never to be known or understood by D.B.) is down in the slush-glop. She has fallen. R_ is crying. D.B. can see, around her eyes, through coke bottle glasses, the whitish, frozen tears. And there's a crowd; all boys (hyena laughs) kicking the filthy snow onto the girl's red coat. A coat for Valentine's Day? R__'s basket has been kicked from her grasp. The boys are stomping it to shreds, cards are sopping wet, the basket itself now a shapeless wicker form; destroyed. Laughter from the boys pealing through icy air -- the sounds barely muffled by mountains of fresh snow.

Where are the teachers? Why is R__, with the horrific challenge, being taunted? Help her D.B.! She needs you! HELP HER! HELP HER! Suddenly... convulsively... D.B. is also leaking tears. Maybe R__ is calling to him. Help! The surreality of the moment; gloved hands on his ears, D.B. sees his own basket on the ground. Has he dropped it? Has someone knocked it down in the shuffle to the door? The slush and streams of melting ice make rivulets around the edges of the basket. Red coloring leaking into the glop. D.B.'s own cards are wet. HELP HER!

The terrible moment: unrelenting. The awful epithets. The cruel boys. R_ sobbing, unable to make it to her feet.

—D.B. has felt sad for R_ before; not understanding her ordeal.

—D.B. is in the snow too, gathering his own cards. —D.B. is walking toward the door. —D.B. is in the hall. —D.B. is at his locker. —D.B. feels a blast of heat; lockers slamming, teachers smiling. —D.B. no longer crying.

—D.B. walking to class. —D.B. carrying his basket

The day is 'ON.' The bell is ringing. —D.B. takes a seat -- eyes of a cadaver.

-----

street walker

Look into my face

you drunkard street walker,

begging for my money.

do you see

we share the same

beating heart?

We are one -- but you are drunk.

-----

samsung man

movement again below

surging is my heart.

I smell you

lifting my nostrils with guns popping in my brain.

the giant is awake

startled to reality in some deep hunger.

And me?

listening like a little boy.

-----