Poetry
I am sorry,
but I have filled
your bathroom sink
with wildflowers.
You cannot use it
to wash away your
eyeshadow and blush
and certainly not
to brush the evening
from your teeth,
but you may,
if it please you,
pick one or two –
orange poppy,
purple lemon mint,
white yarrow, perhaps,
to take with you
to bed.
Today, I walked out to the river,
took off my shoes and my socks,
and sat with my ankles in the water.
I watched a maple leaf
float by, bobbing like a ship
on its way to the sea,
and thought of joining it.
How easy to would be
to slip into that water
and ride it into the ocean,
so far out the sun has
to come down and drown behind it.
I.
These staring trees know more about you
than I have ever known. I know you
only by a name, a photo, memories
gleaned second-hand from mutual friends
who knew you when I did not.
But I have this for you: I wish you
sincere peace. I wish you comfort songs
and grace songs and songs to gently crack
the egg of your new life. I wish you bright
bursting-forth into new life.
II.
I cannot look at these old cedar men
without thinking of you. Why did you
choose this place? Did the storm and
the dark fuel you? I fancy this a place
of serenity for you, as it has been for me,
but I do not know if that thought holds
any truth, I do not know. I have only
this for you: I wish you all that you
sought and could not find. I wish you
a compass light and a fine path to
bring you to the pouring waters that
could not in life fill you up.
III.
I expected the whimsy grins of these
strange trees to sour in your wake,
but they did not: the sun is bright,
the air is clear, and birds are filling
the trees with songs, perhaps because
you have endowed your talents to them:
I am told you had a gift for music.
So I have this for you: I wish you
the knowledge that those you loved
and who loved you will continue to
bloom, that they will embrace you
when they embrace the sun, the air,
the melodies of songbirds singing,
that the new journey you have
embarked upon will bring you back
to them in ways you and they have
not yet imagined.
In memoriam Allen Matthew Barber
Suppose He hung the fruit
on the highest thorny branch.
Ascetic, stripped
of its rind
by Heaven’s gustings,
its stained-glass flesh
denuded and mateless.
Unbuttressed save
its tenuous stem,
do you think it still would long
to taste the lips of
virgin genesis?
Of course it would.
Had He not said
Be fruitful and multiply?
The serpent was merely a matchmaker.
After the rain passes,
lay out on the wet grass.
Feel your clothes soak:
seat of your pants,
back of your thighs,
shoulderblades pressed
into the damp earth.
Hold your palms over
the blades of grass
re-greening, newly sharp,
prickles of the ground
washed clean of the dust.
Breathe the scrubbed air,
forget smog haze and
runoff sheen, lay out
on the wet grass
and feel the Earth
healing herself.
What can I say about your bones?
Your collarbones are empty bookshelves,
your visible ribs a pair of ladders
abandoned against a wall.
Hip bones like door knobs,
legs and arms like naked curtain rods.
Brittle fingernails like broken paving stones
leading up to the rickety porch of your mouth.
Your hair a tangle of desiccated ivy,
creeping along the trellis of your shoulders,
and, my god, this skin like fading flaking paint.
Moving past, I can’t help but slow
and peer in wonder at you.
A house not kept full soon falls into ruin,
but I know it’s not too late to restore you,
if only you would let anyone in your
locked and creaking door.
I wish I could
climb these
red ladders,
climb every story
behind every cut,
and find you
at the top of your
tower of pain.
I wish I could
bring you the
smallest gem
of bright and
ardent peace.
Tiny,
but
bright.
I want to enter your lips
doors of crushed red fruit
and crush your lush lips
against me.
Your hips beneath my hand
crush the red mattress,
your hips, flushed
like your lips and your lips,
move for me,
moan for me,
gush from the crush of your lips,
rosy waves on a velvet sea
for me, for me.
Korean DMZ, 1964
The line runs straight
through the middle of the room.
It is marked out on the walls,
through the tiles of the floor,
through a painted line
that divides the table in half.
Stone-faced men sit on one side
staring at stone-faced men
on the other. Ostensibly,
they are negotiating,
but no one says anything.
A junior aide fidgets,
carelessly allows his pen
to roll across the table.
Everyone stares it.
After a silence, someone
makes a joke about defection.
No one laughs. No one laughs,
and the aide never dares
to retrieve his pen.
Conjoined twins, once separated,
often remark of phantom pains
running the length of the scar.
Here is what you must do:
Sleep with lions
and sleep with whales.
Part seas.
Part these
duo-mothered sons.
Shear your empowering locks.
Tear blocks from Jericho’s walls.
Slay giants.
Don’t look back.
Don’t look back.
Pluck fruit from the tree
and crack your paling Eden:
I have paved the road with thorns
and laid brambles for your
soul.