where stars are

Soon, he knows, he will start writing about stars
the sky being a single dome under where they all are.
Not very original, in the same way at one time
someone wrote it is the same sea where they were
wading their feet together merely few hundred miles apart.
He doubts writing about stars would help.
He doubts poetry helps.
Suspicious of words now, finding them out
self-entitled ants proclaiming able to make anything 
better: soul, world, future. Who listens to them, poets?
The heart has finer than fine a multitude of strings

Does poetry even matter against the literal onslaughts
to the body? Real bills, real houselessness, real hunger.
He doubts poetry;
doubts himself, a fool.
But the stars were, are, will still be there. Themselves
mocking the ephemeral fears of his temporal body.

To whom are we writing for

Possibly the sense is the same: all of these--
Us writing on a wall: millennials and those 
Past who scribbled their names on slates 
If only to say "I was here". Or "Joni was here".
Some form of validation knowing our own passing.
Finite, are we not
Deliberate to leave a trace of ourselves here?
Evidence of existence; fossil of memories...

(I have only sung alone in public once:
holding a guitar borrowed from Music Majors;
in the middle of a kiosk, love then had audacity
to call everyone's attention as introduction:
"Hi everyone, listen"--did I say it that way
I can no longer remember--"I have a song for..."
The girl blushed but remained on her seat--
I think now, it was probably out of confusion
or public embarrassment--to endure

Such shameless proclamation. THEN a string 
Strummed SNAPPED.) Who can remember that 
On their own? Recall names, retell the story,
Laugh at appropriate moments in the telling?
It has been years before this: This
Writing on the wall about it.

a very long wait

I think it is not fear of death itself as much as
Fear of dying; death is a given, the psyche
Attuned to it since time beyond memory: all 

Archetypes of travel (companions, fellow solo
sojourners, boats, terminals, stop-overs...) 
Everyday, departures are what have come to be 

known like the pace of one's own breathing--
But who can tell of true arrivals?
Everyone has ideas, some more convincing

Than others; what may be more fearful is 
Living: that very long wait, so long 
We become desperate lovers of life itself.














  

a close kind of distance

What must one feel seeing you, beautiful
the pictures that mean your life in blossom, by sea.
With you the dogs, sun, yukelele. 
You on bare feet singing with the wind
orange skirt catching orange skies.
What must one feel seeing you, beautiful
in love, in life, in blossom, by sea

when one must say nothing
must say nothing
must say nothing.

Fate

When you meet a gypsy, on the road you begin to wonder
at your own rootedness, the way you have chosen to 
never stray at the straw path the maps gestured at with the stars.
They sometimes call it destiny.
Although whether it is the meeting her or the crossroad 
you may never know, standing at the foot of some bridge
you have constructed in mind. Fate

has a way of being many things at once strange and familiar
an open face of someone once dreamed about.
She has a tambourine, a ukelele, and a stray dog.
You have a compass, a dream, and a fear.

When you meet a gypsy, you wonder 
at your own rootedness. They sometimes call it
destiny.

For a colleague, on his passing

The next day everything else remain in place.
No single death can move a sheet of paper 
held by paperweight on your table, waiting for your signature. 
It is a common enough thing such tangible patience
steady and all of us passing.  We sing anyway 
as much to ourselves as to you who must be amused by now.

father's eyes

tonight the dark sky murmurs thunder.
sometimes there is a brief light.
my brother-in-law asked 
me this afternoon, was i not coming 
to family dinner.  i said no
while helping load his truck
some things i was sending away.
i have been away too often too long
lately, i need quiet alone in the garden.
hours later, staying in with the dogs
and watching massacre in a game
of thrones, i remember the day.

and maybe it is good i did not come
for dinner.  some things are better
unresolved.  best unremembered, 
even though not forgotten.  these days,
in spite of trying, i am becoming
in a number of ways like the man.

white picket fence

it will take all of daylight to mend the fence.  a number of things has got to be moved away, like folders of paperwork calling from an upstairs tabletop.  but the sun is warm and inviting. the sky never been bluer 

for days.  the nip in the wind reminds of kite flying and childhood home.  where there was guitar and Sunday, eternal-hours and no talk of god.  the really big things we are resigned to ungrasp.  a praying 

mantis somewhere is in company with a newt.  and all is well in other worlds.  who will fix the fence and who will need mending.  who can keep company with the grass, the wind, the chimes, the open palmed

bush with its white jasmin flowers.

how do you divide time

do you read every day? a beginning writer asks by way of conversation.

i try, i say.  not telling him of the three books on the bedside table, the five on the next tabletop, the new one in my bag i am just beginning to read the introduction.

*

how do you write? i once asked a friend, who was a mother, a wife, a lawyer, a writer, a graduate student.
i've forgotten her reply.















 
 

a kind of be-ing

shouldn't we try, at least, every day, to keep a pace apart from the clocks of the world?  

see the things must to do, all the people to meet, the things due.  how they never run out
how they always manage to outrun.  everyone. 

it is a kind of be-ing.  to keep still.  to watch:  the world running around, chasing
its own mad tail.




























 

inside a pub

1. inside the pub with its dim warm yellow lights, J played host and made everyone sit and called a waiter and asked everyone's order.  beer, juice, coffee.  i asked beer.  J, coffee.  which surprised me seeing how the night had just started, how the night was still young, and how familiar he was of the place, the people.  his idea to bring everyone in the acoustics pub.  

J, indie filmmaker, sanguine, nomad.  he'd said let's everyone go to the pub, near the terminal, this and that.  leftover of his adrenalin rush, maybe.  how he had performed spontaneity and masturbation, a kind of physical self-love, at the shop an hour earlier and publicly showed the audience his arse.  he got the free dinner for two.

2. inside the pub with its dim warm yellow lights, ours was a table of odds.  septuagenarians and national artists,  political activists, union organizers, young writers gay, realist, and YA, and J, filmmaker, sanguine, nomad.

the band decided to change the last songs in their set.  played their tribal-and-mountain-tribute songs instead.  i sat beside C, who does psychology, and F.  and all of us we all pretended not to know that J had stealthily crossed to the next table.

3.  inside the pub with its dim warm yellow lights.  

4.  inside the pub with its dim warm yellow lights.

5.  i thought of a scene in mind.  you, the chill, the night.