What If

 

Mary Oliver spent her days lying in the blueberry patch staring into the river and marveling (again) at the small stones

 

What if her wife stayed home, a sink full of dishes, a dead car battery, a pile of bills on the kitchen counter

 

Returning home ‘I’ve written ten more sentences — mostly I’m happy with 3 of them’

 

The wife, overwhelmed, hands on hips

 

'Well then', she says, 'that's good I suppose'. 

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Pray God I Remember This

 

A full belly, music from my youth, a favored pen from Turkey (though I’ve never been) 

 

a heart light with love for Mary, now gone, Bruce Springsteen on the overhead speaker mixed with energetic spanish

 

a small cafe, perfect for this writer, reader, wonderer

 

with only 1 small prayer — 

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pray God I remember this

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if only later tonight, perhaps tomorrow

 

a slight distraction from the day

 

as if I needed one. 

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After Reading Patti Smith

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I sat for long hours

reading her M Train

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strong black coffee her only nutrition

sparse words

'a spillover from her japanese poets' I told Eli 

 

She traveled to lands I can't find on a map

to wash headstones of poets I can't pronounce

leaving stones collected at prisons a lifetime away

 

Is that the wrong word —

lifetime

 

Should I choose something else?  

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Poetry's only commodity is words

I don't want to fuck it up

we have the japanese to consider.

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Life as Punctuation

 

There are days

I want to live my life in italics,

softly slanted.

 

Other times

Bold

 

More likely an ellipses…

 

And always, no matter the feeling the day the weather

always my beloved dash —

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Poetry Of Course 

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Alone near the pond
a warm cup of coffee
days before my 56th birthday 

is it melancholy I feel
or worse

hopelessness

If I could I’d throw it in the pond, drown it 

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But that would poison the well 

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Did I tell you?

it’s early morning
this part of the world soaked from a storm — hail and rain last night
thunder I believe 

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Poetry of course, helps. 

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For George 

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And then to have a distraught child — angry, addictive, argumentative, adopted 

how long do you love? 

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is there a time when you say I’m done I don’t love you anymore 

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or the extreme — 

I’ll love you forever, no matter what

 

your face and heart bruised like a soldier 

no medal of honor, only

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battle fatigue 

open wounds

a sickness in the stomach 

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Parenthood. 

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Demands 

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I sit here most mornings, crossed legged, beige couch, dogs and quiet.

Word after word on the page.

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No need for full thought. 

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Just one word, simple, direct, then the next. I have no demands of words.

______ 

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Earlier ‘I have no demands of words’ and today that feels untrue. I do have demands —

 

make me whole
complete me

comfort my suffering
seek out my incompleteness 

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That’s all I ask 

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And it’s worked.

 

Hundreds of times words have healed me 

and they will again. 

 

Demand is a strong word, instead 

open

allowing

surrendering

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to the healing power of words. 

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God

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Tell me everything you know

of those you've loved

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I will then tell God.

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Gift

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Where does a poem come from

word after word.

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A gift, no doubt, from the gods.

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Tonight

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We haven't cum together in forever,

until tonight

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it was sublime

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After, this poem.

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Beings

 

Teach me all you know of love

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for your Self

others

nature

sentient beings

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and I will show you your Life.

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Stones 

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I remember using my muscles to climb the path

kicking up dust beside the raging waterfalls,

photographing tiny flowers (I never bothered to learn their names) 

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I remember working at Assisi House on Red Hill Road

summers I'd spend weeding at the other house (I don't remember the name)

sneaking into the nuns' rooms when the heat became too much

 

Until

 

'they don't want you in there'

'you won't be going back' 

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Shame 

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thinking 'I did wrong' or 'I shouldn't have done that'

I was am forever will be 

stupid wrong or worse unlovable

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I remember feeling unlovable

carrying that around

like a weight of stones, boulders maybe

too heavy to lift my leg

the boulders in my front pocket

(did I forget to tell you that) 

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and now, Monday morning, mid August beside the presa

daring to take out one stone

throw it in the water

 

tomorrow or Wednesday or next week

another stone

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to be called heartache

or loss

or god forbid

loneliness

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name it (I won't forget to name it) and toss it in

let the water remember for awhile —

I'm tired

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I will carry you no longer.

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Linger

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Death comes in a few minutes

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now how will you spend life?

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What will you do with that breath you just breathed, now gone

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it cannot linger

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neither can I, you.

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Lineage

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To have poetry in my veins like inherited blood

who else in the lineage wrote or spoke or sang or danced?

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Is there a poet among us? Who was she, and where are her words?

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a part of me longs to hear her speak in rhymes

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where did this yearning come from? Was it passed down like a favored casserole dish 

or blue eyes

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if so, who do I have to thank? 

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Let me thank all — 

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brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, family as far back as ireland and england 

and the sioux indians according to Grandpa Bennett

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Thank you all.

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I Will Miss

 

I will miss the taste of coffee, how it warms my mouth early in the morning, mixed with quiet and meditation. 

 

I will miss diving deeply into my dogs' fur, their ears, kissing them over and over, Luna moaning (I suppose with love, but she’s an odd duck so who knows what she’s saying). 

 

I will miss words — the ones that are printed and spoken and sung and sprayed across billboards and sent in texts and emails. 

 

I will miss Eli of course, and how he is the very essence of me.

 

Our bodies and worlds and words and food and sleep flow into one another, not knowing where one stops or begins. 

 

We are, most days, one.

 

I will miss that. 

 

I will miss the afternoon sky, how it’s mostly full of huge fluffy clouds here in México, huge expanses of blue. 

 

I will miss my fantasies — the sexual ones and the fame ones and the ones where I have glorious sabbaticals in distant cities and eat at delis and invite strangers to eat with me and strike up surprising conversations. 

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I will miss surprising conversations.

 

I will miss friendships, both the tried and true ones, and the new, just-out-of-the-gate ones, where it feels like intimacy is free-flowing right there at the buffet table at the neighborhood potluck. Those times when a stranger feels like a long lost pal —

 

I could love you forever I whisper under my breath.

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I will miss that. 

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Wait

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Here, minutes before the storm

tiny ripples in the pond

a hummingbird sits for seconds

before diving into the bright orange llamarada flowers 

the clouds dark grey, mixed with light

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(the perfect setting for a poem)

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I wait 

then write

then wait —

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It rains.

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The Sea

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A part of me thinks

I can't be a real writer

a great poet

this far from the Sea

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the air

the waves

the magnificence of it.

 _____

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I am in the desert,

a neck full of pain, a broken pen, cheap coffee — 

where is the poetry there? 

 ______

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If I'm missing, you'll find me on a bus, heading south

smiling. 

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Sharing

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There's something inside, a longing perhaps

to play smaller —

I can't compete with the others

they're beautiful well traveled well heeled

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Me: a battered t-shirt, sagging neck wounded ego and knee and arm and skull

so much is broken down

a huge void

don't look don't notice

I'm almost not even here.

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I need to eat. 

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>> Please subscribe to my youtube channel, where you can watch videos of me reading my words. 

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