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.

-----

birth and such

it must be evolutionary simpatico
with the enormous she/ sea turtle—
(the complexity of the mission; the forever danger!)
—on the beach—she plants them
with Darwinian flourish.

a turn.
then back to sea. gone.

simpatico?

even now, in center/ middle-age—
finally beyond my equivalent planting mission.
(deep satisfaction)

a turn,
then—
and then—back
finally back.

-----

the secret of the cotton

cotton ought to sing. (memory’s does)
white-capped monks kneeling in dirt,
song and the alliterative like.

through it all, there are the high notes,
the high point, remember?
the men touching, and then finally,
the truth of it all, at last. my soul. my soul.

God, the euphoria!

-----

Uncle Si

Old Uncle Si
with long legs
and
promising
summit

Now
with the passing of
one moon, one sun
I see his oath to me
as vapor

just clouds in the old man's eye.

-----

the logical case for suicide

this complication is enormous,
and yet appears as ether. the obverse
is the elaborate snowflake under a microscope.
same riddle; not to be solved.
(even passing consideration is a waste,
unless the interest is simply awe)

so, is it fair to introduce an extra layer
of complexity to something barely understood?
it is just a roll of the dice, man,
linked, exquisitely to science.
(genetic code can whisper death and disease
surreptitiously- often does)
don’t underestimate the double helix.

and what of the blood?
limbs ripped at the fleshy anchor.
rape. (not your will, and sullied)
box of chaos. box of comets.
these are not pleasant scenarios.
these are not the Kodak moments.
this is the cancer end of a morphine drip.
this is the intruder set on your dignity, your life.
this is the loss of a child (inconceivably violent goodbye)

where is the bedrock of no hope now?
are you walking on it?
can you feel the solid disbelief?
(that it’s all come to this)

it’s a subtle shift of light.

the gun slides in so easily
(taste of metal, nothing new)
and there are lovely parting gifts.

what’s behind door number one?

-----

guns

Listen
to the pulse code.
It pumps
and talks tomorrow.
Entering fiber through
capillary's path,
ears open now. Important
coded blood pumping
heart open,
somehow.

See,
the muscle holds the secret
steel strong
gunpowder
calm.

Ready as a cannon
lit
cocked; now
the white hot pulse speaks
translates in the mirror
some bulge
in the deltoid
reborn.

Sparks
in clay of flesh
florescent.
Reflections are translations.

Bump
in the fat vein
biceps
bump
bump.
River in clay of flesh.

Muscle is the secret
bedrock shifts.
Oh joy,
The Word
forever pounds the fiber full.

-----

Dan/ 2001

For most of my life.
And until the day you died. You called me Super.
“Super, It’s your Old Man calling.”
“Super, take the High Road.”
“Super, We think you’ve gone off the deep end.”

Did you, over the years—or in the end,
ever think about the origin of that nickname?
That day it all started? Did you block it out? Forget?

Me.

The Little Fat Boy. "SuperGut."

I remember.

Your word (vicious), your son, your choice.

(SuperGut); shortened over time to just plain old "Super."

Harmless. You shortened it.
I grew out of it, and occasionally you even called me
FlatBelly.
But "Super" stuck. I still hear it tripping off your tongue.

“Super, this is your Old Man.”
Sometimes Mike or Tom will call me "Super."
It feels good, and they don’t
remember how it all started.

Me in the kitchen. 12 years old.
I wanted to join the Navy. The Navy!

“Good -- you’re too fucking fat to ever be in the Marine Corps, so go ahead.
Join the Navy. Maybe they’ll take you.”

I hated you for that.
On that day—I wished you dead a thousand times over.

And for so long—I wanted you in a box. Gone.

The years, however, replaced my revulsion for the name
with the deepest longing.

How I crave just one more time—your voice.

“Super, This is your Old Man.”

-----

sigh

Old Uncle Si
with long legs
and
promising
summit

Now
with the passing of
one moon, one sun
I see his oath to me
as vapor

just clouds in the old man's eye.

-----

the opening

you could fly to the top of that building
or the top of a mountain

Providence is moving
Angels calmly watching, just out of sight
and the truth is told in whispers

I can see your soul
in my dream- my face was not my face

-----