Never enough time

Never enough time to be a mother
Never enough time to be a father
Never enough time for a child
Who grows out of itself by tomorrow

The child will be gone
Replaced by a woman
Replaced by a man
Replaced by a stranger 
Come tomorrow

Never enough time to be wife
Never enough to be husband
To be lover 
To be child
To be constant
Come tomorrow

Come tomorrow
Come stranger

Who does not fear tomorrow?

life as lived

Posted a photo of the wild ones in the water--the loved dogs
in their eternal summer. The photo is all 
bright and light and shore and water
and too easy laughter,
it does not tell all.

sezon deszczowy

I bought cigarettes at a corner store because 
it was late because I wanted to wait awhile longer 
till (maybe) she'll come around because her messages 
had said situations because her new lover left 
and her old meddled and her father half a world away
are simultaneously happening into a bad place 

because in nearly seven years since we met at Gerry's 
she had not talked about bad places except very briefly 
and in passing the time her mother passed on 
and she did not return home and I did not ask because 
she did not tell why because once she said who wants to 

listen about bad places because people care about funny 
and she had worked herself funny because she did
not want to tell about lonely because it was clear because 
it need not need any telling because it was bright as day 
the alcohol and the series of lovers because she insisted

staying in this country because when i asked why there was 
no clear answer because something was lost or someone was 
because she was slurring when she called 
describing how to move the night because she was still 
in transit but wanted drinks because I've taken rain checks 

because our hours rarely meet because she comes when 
she comes and who else was. 
I sent her a message saying I was

coming over because there was really no need for her to bother 
bringing the buckwheat and the wines to my place when I could 
because it was always easier for me to leave than for me to ask 
her to because hours could get so late like the time it was already
morning and my head had become a blast because she comes 

when she comes because I wanted none of it because we've known 
each other seven years now because it had always been good 
distance because there were bad places that need not telling 
because they were bright and clear because it was always

in keeping of spaces she remained quiet while I waited 
outside her door this rainy evening in this rain-est season of the year 
because it was (always) proper to wait for a woman's invitation 
to be let in because no matter the bad places described by phone 
into an invitation to share a certain loss because her door

never opened after knocking and five cigarettes one after another 
because the weathermen predicted rain because she did not stay 
sober enough for an umbrella, story, or train.

what happened to icarus

ICARUS


Only the feathers floating around the hat
Showed that anything more spectacular had occurred
Than the usual drowning. The police preferred to ignore
The confusing aspects of the case,
And the witnesses ran off to a gang war.
So the report filed and forgotten in the archives read simply
“Drowned,” but it was wrong: Icarus
Had swum away, coming at last to the city
Where he rented a house and tended the garden.

“That nice Mr. Hicks” the neighbors called,
Never dreaming that the gray, respectable suit
Concealed arms that had controlled huge wings
Nor that those sad, defeated eyes had once
Compelled the sun. And had he told them
They would have answered with a shocked,
uncomprehending stare.
No, he could not disturb their neat front yards;
Yet all his books insisted that this was a horrible mistake:
What was he doing aging in a suburb?
Can the genius of the hero fall
To the middling stature of the merely talented?

And nightly Icarus probes his wound
And daily in his workshop, curtains carefully drawn,
Constructs small wings and tries to fly
To the lighting fixture on the ceiling:
Fails every time and hates himself for trying.
He had thought himself a hero, had acted heroically,
And dreamt of his fall, the tragic fall of the hero;
But now rides commuter trains,

Serves on various committees,
And wishes he had drowned.




~ Edward Field

talking about truth

for G. Lloren



Thursday on a week that has the weight of years
you leave the office past seven.
Outside, the dark says both 
the day is old and the night young.
The crisp breeze blows the leaves a promise.

At the convention last night
everyone wrangled
about the word you summoned
afraid of its presence 
in midst of a tagline.

The word was a beast
giant and a phosphorescent green
reptilian and curled, 
legged and tailed.
"Too spiritual," someone said.

"Too dragooning," another said.
They all tried to poke it away.

You hail a cab and look for coffee
there are bills to pay.
And you are now past forty.
How the strange beast, last night
was queried by fools. 

"Is it sectarian?" someone asked.
"Measurable?" asked another.
"Vendible?"
"And does it fly?"

when half of the rest is asleep

always, when half of the rest is still asleep and the world as is known is quiet, with only shades of light in hues of blue and gray, the nip in the air still brings with it traces of the origins of sleep.  always, it is the best time, i think, to wander and wonder what is it in this world we all have to so joyously suffer.  one's perceptions so limited no matter how the travel and empathy.  not a few times did i wonder if it is better not to know a good number of things, including that one can only know so little.  perhaps it is better to be asleep like the rest and the others who sleep joyfully, fitfully in unknowing...

geminid meteor shower

when was the last time you really took time to look at stars?  look up and stare at the night sky and wonder about those lights.  so many light years away.  a literal seeing of the past in the form of a speck of light.  when i was in third grade, every night i would lay on my back and watch the clear night sky for hours, figure out constellations, memorize star-speck positions, wondering about Big Bang, black holes and the actual size of the universe; all the while hoping to discover a new star the scientists must have missed.  i made charts and diagrams, drawing positions of constellations as seen from an angle, made notes on how they "move" by the hour.  a kid dreaming.                                      why did i stop? when it dawned that nobody i knew knew how to be an astronaut.  

when was the last time you really took time to look at stars?  

this friday night (december 13-14), many of the stars will fall.  the geminid meteor shower.

the ephemeral

there is constant death one undergoes every waking moment.  a death and a rebirth happening in nuances, so that one changes, ever so subtly.  noticeable only after a certain time has elapsed, a certain event has happened to mark a kind of ritual.  even though the constancy is there.  every waking moment.  or even when one sleeps, in dreams.

the self, then, is always an ephemeral state.  always in transit, in passing.  and all the thoughts it bears, and by bearing the thoughts i mean both the carrying of it and the giving birth to it, are fleeting.  formless.  weightless, except when they are forged into form.  and by forging, i mean to wield it, to wrought it into shape.  be it action, or art, or word.

the word as a vessel for the ephemeral, else, the abyss of nothingness.  or is the latter really?  sometimes, when it is late like this, the hour that is both very very late at night of now and very very early in the morning of now, i remember Plato's immaterial world.

the day begins early

the day begins early, as it always does.  the body clock in time with the dogs' and dawn.  some times, it even wakes itself before anything, that while the eyes adjust in the just faintly light sky that peeks through the curtains, the wrist with its indiglo watch, like a blind automaton, brings itself close to the eyes.  check the hour.  still dark.  still not halfway through the beginnings of morning.  but the body stands itself from the bed, feet feeling for the room slippers, movement.  the house still asleep.  the dogs each open half an eye, half an ear.

                                                                                        

remains of the beginning of day

3 slices of toast
3 slices of ripe papaya
2 kinds of cheese
half a bottle of lemon concentrate
coffee, dregs
some thin slices of carrots
half a glass of water
two dogs, pretending to go back to sleep
the quiet of the morning
faint imaginary sounds of birds
sound of a leaving plane
occasional sound of rain drop on some roof
a faraway dog bark
















 
 

ferris wheel

you've never been in a ferris wheel.  and so one night we stopped at a quaint carnival in a pocket in the city and i said let's take a ride.  you were scared, and i pretended not to.  not because i was afraid of heights, but because the carnival was old, all the rides, rusty.  risky.  not unlikely that any moment something would break, people would fall.  always a third world phenomenon.  but that night, we must have been feeling brave.  you held my hand as we stepped into a cage.  the cage was closed and it felt what pigeons must feel as the wheel began to be turned and the cage was raised.  there were sounds of old machinery, sore, arthritic, beyond retirement.  still, the wheel turned and turned, faster and faster, and we saw only glimpses of stars and parts of the city made strange.  and as you held my hand conquering your fear, i try not to think of metals rods breaking, the bones of the wheel collapsing under the weight of young lovers' dreams.

there is a street

i ask her to read a piece of the new work, the work about a city, re-imagined, not appearing the way it is, appearing translucent, unreal.  she is a local, in many ways, i am not.  i think i see the city only now, even though, have seen it many times in dreams, in re-imaginings.  there are many things i have missed, many things not known.  she used to take me to the streets and show the alleys, the secret corners of Chinese men and herb women, among others.  streets for textiles only, streets for glass, streets for cutflowers, streets for these, and streets for that.  streets for motor bolts, for rubber slippers, for half starving children, for pet fish, for castoff rags, for fiber ropes, for stolen goods, for dogs, for women, for fruits, including the seasonal.  also including the dark and darker stories i can only imagine under the naked bright noon.  she had spent fragments of childhood in these streets, their eccentricities.  i had spent hours with her, held by hand lest i get lost.  the streets, the entire city, always a novelty.  i ask her to read a piece of the new work, the work about a city, re-imagined, not appearing the way it is, appearing translucent.  this is unreal, she says on the piece about the infamous red light street.  i ask why: is it because you want realism?  she cannot make up her mind. 

on essentialism and selves

possibly not the same person who takes the foil and the épée and point at another's chest to kill.  for sport.  a physical version of another involving the killing of hundreds and millions in several stages until one's own pawn becomes greater than another's king.  plans for war.  kill time while sharping the mind.  possibly 

not the same person who tends the basil, the tarragon, the wild mint, the parsley, the dill.  who takes time to watch the sunrise glow and dreams of sea.  not 

the same person, angry and a vise, who throws without regret, lines, lives.  not the same one who collects.  memories and serenity, joys in souvenirs.  the one who sings with a guitar and writes

the world as it is as is, and life as is, it is. 

why an ocean cannot be crossed

the vikings knew it.  although some say
long before boats there were ice bridges

what resembled men had walked 
crossing continents and oceans.

what they found we will never know.
can only surmise 

such vastness
such minuteness.

on relative "reality"

if one holds a cup here, now, long enough, one sees how the cup dissolves into something else, how the here, the now, turns into a something a somewhere else between spaces and places and things.  a kind of non sequitur.  how do we resolve the fluid contradition that is also known as real?  perhaps the surrealists have it right:  how we live separately and simultaneously in liquid dreams and reals; two or more mirrors facing each other creating more worlds; the strangeness of being one same person and different to different persons.  

such nuances; such fine, fine thread; such attempt--no matter how inevitably futile-- to climb the height of the ladder in attempt to see the worlds.
























    

copenhagen

Copenhagen is not a real city, he says, reviewing the number of murders and theft, the number of people that is less 

than the population of stricken children in the humid city where we were 
eating eggs benedict in a place that smelled of vanilla.  A waiter named Denmark 

came to pour water.  The name on the tag on the crisp white shirt.  Only in this country, he adds, noticing the name.  I only thought what a happenstance--having known 

such penchant for first names:  a Xhemei, an Angus, a Lucy Pearl, a Lefer, a Lady Goddess,  
a Lady Macbeth, a Sir Lord, a Phil.Mighty, a Douglas McArthur, an Avril Lavigne.

Copenhagen is not a real city, he says again, pointing at more cities and stopping, perhaps
not without a touch, the cities in his Italy.  The man missing his home.

to make sense of the world,

some resort to words and the trouble (and pains) of definitions: this is
what is, and therefore, that is not.  in other words, this is

the drawing of lines.  the making of differences,  the pointing
of marked territories, otherwise known as concepts.  

or boundaries.  whichever is deemed closest  to or farthest from
the perceived real ("real", of course, being a construct

which no one says, unless...)  Simone says
"One is not born---

but becomes one" which sums the efforts of many who trouble 
(and pain) with definitions:  what we think we know

we may not really know.






*the full text by Simone de Beauvoir is "One is not born a woman, but becomes one."


















 
  

looking into the well: pessimism and hope

imagine a deep well.  deep and dark, a surface world of dark water, unmoving as it mirrors: a circular piece of sky, clouds, a moon, a firefly, a hint of shimmering light.  

imagine what lies beneath the waters stone cold.  imagine what lies underneath the ground.  imagine the pull, the calling, the fall.  

sometimes

in unguarded moments, we see ourselves, looking up at us from down the well.

the roles we play

Linda, who said she can't leave New York there's just so much theater there, said I see her when I could, when she's back, there, or here, or wherever it is she is referring to, as home.  

She said why do I not leave this place.  I said why do you return.  I did not ask do you feel like a stranger here?  I do.  Every time I return, the place has something new.  And I get lost:  the streets

have a habit of changing names.  The landmarks have the habit of changing faces.  Old places disappear, always something new.  When I first saw Linda, she was not 

the picture of the name in mind.  She was otherwise; and warm and bubbly; meticulous about each step of the process.  I was not surprised.  Long years in the theater have a way of creeping

itself into the skin.  In a workshop she tells the participants the cliche among us they may not yet know:  we're all actors playing our lives in roles.  Linda says we are friends, we are lovers, we are

wives, we are children, we are mothers.  One time she whispered I am feeling cold: I think I might be sick.  She asked for a pill and I gave her a glass of lukewarm water with it.  She curled herself 

on the couch, like a fetus.  I turned off the lights and closed the door.
What are we when we are alone?  What role do we play in front of the wall?

the versions of our selves (after south part 2)

1
I remember R--.  It was many years ago.  I was young, although at the time, stopping to look at posts on the board, I didn't know.  I was about to leave, waiting for papers that shuffled themselves behind office doors, and he passed to stopped by.  R--, visual artist, sculptor, art historian, saxophone player, postmodern-renaissance man.  Stood behind me; and we looked at posts and he said without cue "don't let them take you".  Of course, this wasn't how he said it, except this was how I remember it.  Many years ago.  I was young, although at the time, stopping to look at posts on the board, I didn't know.  And I didn't understand what he meant.

2
I came back a good time after.  A version of a previous self, although this time, stopping occasionally to look at posts on boards and everything in everywhere else, sometimes I forgot to know.  Wondering why every thing felt the same and felt different, yes.  Some people were gone.  The air breathed a different feel.  There had been a great tumult, political, factional.  Palpable in the air.  Papers had shuffled, committees, courts, arenas.  A country I did not know.  R--, too, was gone, in self-imposed exile.

3
In company that night J--  began his retelling of 76.  Geographically away from everything else, every one in company of stiff drinks and beer.  In the background, large grey waves hit the pebbled shore.  Somewhere else, news said there was storm.  But the waiter served us three pizzas complements from the house.  And how the stories of near hits and near misses rolled.  One time we were stuck in a cabin, in the middle of a fish farm, in the middle of a thunderstorm.  One time we were invited to a wedding and we didn't know.  One time... A roll was passed around.  And the stories turned to a driveway of angel trumpets, happy brownies, Mary Janes.  And R--, he said how he tried a certain mushroom once.  It made the world aglow and angels sing, and plunged you into depths into certainty of death.  "Completes the process before it lets you go. Like a spiritual experience," he said.  "Although if you ask me would I take it again, I wouldn't."  


4
We all went to see a certain architecture. Presumably 16th century, coral stones fortified by egg whites and goat dung, 8 feet to 9 feet tall in some areas.  An hourglass on top of a skull on top of an arched entryway.  Presumably, a church for innocents (children who died before baptism).  For centuries, it was buried and when finally unearthed, the walls were found to be have become filled with bees, the coral stones were bleeding honey.