Lamentations for Medusa

When can one moment bring you love?
Conversations for one in the hall of whispers,
Among statues of the hated and the loved.
When can one day see a moment of
Rock star ranting into a sea of shiny faces
All looking up for the second
When eyes will link in adoration received.

Pausing before the statue of a beloved maid
Where tears have stained the feet,
Shifting the unimaginable gown
Of an eternity of misunderstandings
Having to pass through an endless gallery
Of sculpted hate, so many, so many,
How could they have never understood me?

Having to measure time with endless disappointment
Having to watch all days progress
From more to less while new names define
The ancient wine as all becomes
A passing truck of two buck chuck
As grandeur disintegrates before the eyes
In epiphanies to minds much less than wise.

All these are tears if you wish to cry.
Dismembered faces of frequent company
Are always to be seen in the same old light
Focused on the physical and the need to
Not see me as I am – hear my song –
The passage of my mind from sword and spear
To kind act performed unseen to those obsessed with fear.

Rubbing the Lava Lamp

I always feel as if I’m desperate.
Life goes so slowly,
It never seems to do
Something valuable.

I guess its incompatible;
It goes on so it has
Continuity but nothing
Ever seems to go together.

Elliot tells us of his insubstantial
Days of chores and mindless tasks;
We hope to see some change
But all we have is familiarity.

Life undulates through my hands sensuously
But never seems to escape the lamp.

Walking dreams

(For Luis Benitez)

In the dark morning of ritual,
in the mirror of the unacceptable,
is an imperfection
of the imagination
which must be cut and bled,
must be the elaborate object of sacrifice.

Mirrors must be foggy, steamy,
a universal mystery lives there.
Wash the corpse, bathe it with fragrance,
prepare it for the life to come,
meeting with other corpses
in the pretend world,
a world not to be entered simply,
a world opened only by ritual
and entered only by those who
have begun to dream a dead sleep.

Mending the dead is solitary work,
all flaws must be imagined in new ways –
cut, trim. Sharp objects, soaps, tools
of rubber and chrome must be ready
before the cadaver can be
surveyed dispassionately,
bending close to the mirror,
with the feel of cold ceramics
against bare thighs.

The transformation comes in
slow, sure strokes,
dull skin begins to shine,
untidy patches no longer
are a part of the living.
Water, lots of water rinses away
all signs of life, imperfection.

Imagining a world
where this corpse
walks with other such dead
doesn’t prepare us for
the chance meeting
with the living and dying –
the shock of broken things assaults us,
leaving staring bodies
with blank eyes
marring ritual perfection.

Khadisha and I stop for a picture at a rare moment when the Language Center isn't packed with students.  

Drops

1.
It is a tooth in a cloth
not small like a child’s treasure
but large, sharp and white,
hunting for the hunger
it has lost.

2.
It is the anger you wake to
after a flood of emotion
pours through your dream –
it has no object and
seems to float in the room
above the bed, punishing the walls.

3.
It is a grey sky that’s suddenly a sagging,
ponderous, black cloud paunch

(It’s me without an umbrella, missing you).

The Date

Ainura’s beautiful face
was brick hard
when she stepped
out the apartment door.

On the stairs down it
softened the way clouds
cover the sun.

The apartment above
started to float
and blew away
as if a wisp of fog.

The future sparkled like black glass,
the coded door opened in an adoring gasp and
she stepped out in the huge mansion of the night.

Test pilot

I live in a world
pretty much alone.
Sometimes, its true,
I take to the sky
and fly with Neruda.
Or I can be with Ashberry
as the character of a river.
Buk takes me to the bar
or better, to New Orleans
for the antidote to painful.

But most of the time
it is just little old me
floating above, through
and outside life
as everybody
knows it.

Sometimes with Ferlinghetti
I put on graceful shoes,
I love the tight rope
but I walk high above
using an old wound
for a balance bar.

child’s riddle

cleanliness is an intention

paragraph is an indention

what am I?