Wednesday, March 28, 2012

Shalom

May peace which comes
in the middle of the night
with a thundering at the door,
with a phone call from a number
you don't recognized anymore,
with a coldness over the edge of your skin
with a house with all its lights on
or a room completely dark
May it come to you
like lightning in a drought
a cough from a child
a shaking head with no answer
a car missing from the driveway.
May the peace that passes understanding
reach you and take hold.
May it grant sleep and silence
a path with a light
grace and comfort.


Sunday, March 18, 2012

Temptress.

Hunger is a thing
next to starvation
that sits the way the dog
paces alongside a coyote
scrawny and sharp
the sand coated shadow
that rises at evening and strikes
hollow howl in the dark.
The tracks are the same
broad padded marks
across the desert.
Once it's gone who can say
one was not the other.
The sweep of the tail
says little but the teeth
and the wail against the whimper
explain the fear of the night.
The dog will sit and be satiated
some stolen treat satisfies.
The sullen coyote skulks
skin stretched over skull
and starvation raging inside
his shaking bones.

To look at you
is to hunger.
To love
is to starve.

Wednesday, March 7, 2012

Not Just Dessert: Pheonix 2012

It is important to note

I did not know he was sick.
He did not tell me.
There was no polite cough or
suggestion of weakness.
He ate well and
we argued over the check
and threatened
to explode
or at least to burst
a button or two.
I told him
that if he went first
I wouldn't bother cleaning up after
and he said that I'd
better up the tip then.
We laughed about
a service charge
for such an event.
Enough laughter
to leave
you breathless
purple faced and
collapsed.

Monday, March 5, 2012

She Is Not A Tourist Attraction.

The exchange rate is up
and shopping is the cheapest
form of therapy these days
although drinking local beer
is a close second.
The leather purse is nice
one of the best knock-offs I've seen
in at least a week- from Itally
it's marked and I wonder if my mother
would notice the typo error.
Probably not.
Four thousand baht the shopkeep insists.
I would do the math
but it's not worth the time.
Perhaps instead a jade ring
or another one of those
kitschy elephants that acts as massager
and centerpiece at the same time.
Too bad teak is endangered.
It would look bad if someone noticed
I brought that sort of thing
home.
A massage though, would be nice
the kind you can get here
without the back alleys, or questions.
Language barriers make it all
much easier when it comes to questions.
Just "how much" and "how young".
Easier than most souvenirs
and of course, no need to take up room
in the suitcase back.
That one over there, and do you take Visa?

Just cash? Mai ben rai.
Thirty baht for thirty minutes
and then I'll go tour the temple downtown.
Thailand is just full of attractions.

Thursday, March 1, 2012

notes on grief

the ivy on my house

is trying to get into the window

small hands

creeping around the glass

and throwing themselves into the crack

the valiant soldiers that fall

in the trenches

and the wet wax flows

quick down the pane

clear blood streaking the glass

they told me it was only raining

I walk hand and hand

With my sea monster

Liquid and cold

She wraps herself around my arm

And sometimes I find I stumble

In this shifting sand

Slipping on these slivers

Silver glass amidst the grey

And in falling I find

That she

My sea monster

Is no longer at my side

She’s slipped through the slits in my skin

And is stripping her way

Through my veins

Burning with her salt granules

That trace new wounds

In spirals around my soul

And suddenly I’m a seatossed flotsam

A figurehead

To a sunken ship

My sea monster stands beside me again

Wearing a familar face

For every swing of the clock

Pendulum pendulum

Drop again

Slice me in pieces

Once twice thrice

And then she’s gone again

Here I am

Panting and broken

A mermaid with legs

A womanly soul

On this wide expanse of sand

And I am alone

I am peeling off your handholds

With each breath

I find each exhalation

Is a little play of death

Sidewalk chalk

To Sistine grace

But a portion nonetheless

The sand in our sheets

That calls to the sea

And still it slides past the glass

In solemn lines of tan

A military funeral

Through this narrow channel

To the marching beat

Tick tock tick tock

And I am letting go of cold

Erasing the fingerprints

You have left on my skin

Even if this means

Raw edges and red lines

I am peeling off your handholds

In a freefall to the sea.

I would like to stab myself

With this electric current

Slit my skin

And watch the sparks pour in

Golden and blue

Small spikes of something else

I can’t control

And maybe this is the answer

Lock the door

That leads to my mansion

Of prison cells

Close the book of unhappy endings

And burn the library down

Watch the stream of spindled needles

Slide up and down my outline

I watch my shadow shrink

Under the pointed attack

And I think I will stay standing here

A shock of golden wheat

Heavy and swollen

And ready to fall back into the ground

These glittering lines gather and surround

These flexing drops of me

And my face is beaded in its glow

I never knew salt shone so bright

So here will I be

Great and golden

Frozen to the light socket

Till you want to try love again.