Writer's Block Fibs

Not
so
very
amazing,
is it?—You have no
idea what to write today.

Some
days
you sit
down with no
clue, no reminder
(a line in another poem?)

that
prompts
you (so
quietly!)
to speak a thought in
line and stanza, musical strains—

Why
not
write it,
when the urge
moves with such stillness?
You can shut up and let God speak.

Far
far
better
when you have
no words in your mind
to distract, deflect you away.

You
find
there can
be not a
worry, not a care—
just go ahead and scrawl your screed!

Then

know—
marvel!—
at what a
clueless, vacant-brained,
silly-assed dumb fuck you can be!

Love

Living electric dynamos,
that’s what we animals are—
wires tripping at a touch.

Watching myself wait—an innocent
whose tender nerves were never scorched
by the amperage overload of love?

No! I shorted out on love fifty years ago—
I beeped and flashed
like a stuck garage-door opener.

And here I am again, voltage primed

to jump, as if Love had never shot
their phlogiston arrow in my heart.

Religion in the Souls of Their Feet

I. Reclining on My Cedar Deck

Sunlight warming my naked limbs.
My own prettiness warming
my eyes and soul.

My own prettiness making
the naked limbs of my soul glow—
arms, hands, feet—

giving them an alluring smell,
animal-clean. Just every now and then,
a bracing whiff of rot.

II. My GIDEONS

I put my GIDEONS
in the left back pocket of my jeans shorts.
Tiny, shamrock-green. Some

smiling guys in suits were handing them out by Macalister College.
I smiled right back: “I love 

the New Testament! Sweet!” I said, as I caught the man’s eye.

Showed my GIDEONS

at my discussion group today. Beth had used religion to refer
to the legal-inquisitorial

aspects of a creed, opposing it to faith and core belief.
This seemed fine,
but I was never one to say, “I’m spiritual not religious.”

Wanting to stand
up for what religion means to me, I
sang—

          Lord, I
          want more religion, Lord, I
          want more religion, Lord, I 

          want more religion, 
          to get me on to God.
          Religion makes me happy and then I

          want to go,
          to leave this world of trials and
          troubles here below—

Baptist song remembered by a white
Arkansas man, who learned it eighty years ago standing outside
an African-American church. People were probably

embarrassed by my singing, but
it came naturally. Turned out, Beth agreed with me.
“That’s completely different!” she said.

III. My religion

My relgion is my beautiful feet.
Everything about my energy,
my optimism,

my sexiness—
that which will still exist when I am gone—
is in my lovely feet.

Come, for the 

səʊls
around you beat!

October 2015

Villanelle: Words and Stones

                   the stones they threw at your heart
            Grew soft on you and gifted with hearing. Rilke, Sonnets to Orpheus

You say I’m nothing but a great big flirt,
(Lordy Land-a-Goshen-sakes alive!),
but the stones you’re throwing at my heart don’t hurt.

My heart melts to a chocolate-tort dessert,
my pulse-rate quickens into overdrive,
when I see a likely chance to be a flirt.

You stole my pants, so now please take my shirt!
I’m trained to work my flirt from nine to five.
That’s why the stones you’re throwing at my heart don’t hurt.

Only Jesus can the vengeful will avert
of those who want to stone the girl alive
who dares one time to be too big a flirt.

And dodging rocks is what jolts me alert,
and makes me seize the day and strain and strive,
and keeps it so your stony heart can’t hurt.

I want to be where you are. I’ll assert,

that one who lives apart from all can't thrive.
I’ll say I’m nothing but a great big flirt,
with my feather-down-soft heart. I can be hurt.

Haiku Typed on Lori Centineo's Daily Haiku Page

*

pieces that don't go
together, ducks not flying
with the other ducks

*

dead bird on the ground
bounced off invisible fast
power-windmill blade

*

duck flying at night
fast-extinguished spark from a
perseid shower

*

walky-talky cans
voice at the other end can’t
pull the string tighter

*

life sweet as honey
when rude "news" assaults run run
hide you in the rock!

*

as far as can be
seen windmills, sunflowers, clouds
chopped sky particles

*
vain to try to save
night’s little haiku forays
or desert manna

Performance Anxiety

the day before

Yesterday I got up and what?

why can’t I remember
what I had for breakfast?

but now I do remember.
I’d forgotten Dave
was coming over to play songs

so half a banana
but we had fun playing
and then we went out for Pho

so then the day was half over
before it started
1:30, minutes racing

with all those poems to read
it’s unusual
but I didn’t write one myself

instead I typed and posted
a poem that’s in my head
from writing it back in high school

I was sixteen or barely
seventeen and I titled it Amnesia
and posted it on my pages

but then again later
feeling beaten up by various other things
including a lot of worry about our performance 

at the Evening-of-Torment event
at the Poken Sword tomorrow
I deleted it

just as I would burn
all the poems I wrote in high school
in a cement incinerator in the back yard

even though it had accumulated
one appreciative comment
I don’t know

why I deleted it.
I was experiencing stress
I can’t really talk about it

the day of

so what did I do?
I couldn’t sleep,
because my wife and I were having a fight

about some online flirtations of mine
that offend her
rightly

a picture of a curvy dark-haired girl
in a cherry dress—hardly a dress,
a broken shell

photo from ChicMe
ChicMe Chickme so good!
so there was a discussion on the thread

about pictures—it’s fine
except for the ChicMe adds that show up 

on my page now all the time

oh well I got through the day
and I got a haircut
and practiced the songs

and I even slept

for about ten minutes
at about five o’clock

the performance was fun

lively and wild
we were all happy about it

the day after

and now it’s the next day.
so ask me about my stress levels now
and I’ll say

everything feels serener since
we played that set
at The Poken Sword—still

I feel like that Jim Thomson midget
contract killer, not only
having to wear

platform shoes
but having to keep several
fairly ravenous women entertained—

one having a perfectly-formed
dwarf foot—how could I forget
that detail? turned out

he thought he was supposed to kill some guy
but the contract was actually on him—
first getting locked in a meat freezer

then getting a hypo 
from a killer in a doctor suit

and death was there

and he 
smelled 
good

Thank You, Joe

For David Dean Wenstrom

My father loved the movies. He remembered all
the old screen actors from the ‘30’s and ‘40’s—
the era of his youth.
When we saw Mary Poppins together in Pueblo fifty years ago,
he was brought to ecstasy by Jane Darwell’s
cameo as the little old bird woman calling, “Come.
Come buy my bags full of crumbs.”

He took Victor and me to a screening of Quo
Vadis in the office of a colleague of his.
I don’t remember the
romance between Robert Taylor and Debra Kerr—just Peter Ustinov’s
funny and charming depiction of Nero,
and my sick feeling when the Christians were crucified—
St. Peter hung upside down.

Lots of other movies—Grapes of Wrath, Roshomon,
I Am a Camera. I saw Monterey Pop
with him in Denver. I
can’t help thinking it must have been his idea to go, as I doubt if
I would have initiated the trip. I
don’t know what he thought of Hendrix burning his guitar, but
Ball and Chain blew him away.

Earlier, we saw Don’t Look Back at the Lagoon
on Colfax Ave. He’d heard my Highway 61
Revisited album,
with (in Phillip Larkin’s words) Dylan’s “cawing voice” and “possibly half-baked
lyrics.” But my father was impressed by Bob’s
presence.  “He doesn’t give a damn about the camera,
so the camera loves him.”

During my dreadful second year in Boulder I
saw two movies three times each: Satyricon and
the Frank Zappa movie,
200 Motels. My father watched 200 Motels with me at the
Boulder Theater—Zappa played by Ringo
Starr—psychedelic cinematography—redneck bar—
obscene vacuum cleaner sex.

His favorite actress—Garbo, but I never

saw Ninotchka or Anna Karenina with
him. He told a story
of Garbo wearing sneakers in a shoot, asking, “Are the feet in?” He was
shocked by Chinatown—world irretrievably
in the clutches of corrupt capitalism. Slap. “She’s
my sister and my daughter!”

Not sure what movies he saw in Fergus Falls
in the ‘20’s. Joe Buck and Ratso Rizzo on
the pitiless New York
streets—trolling for tricks that never pay—not even taking the poor gay boy’s
watch—finally boarding the bus to paradise,
Rat helped by Joe to change clothes after he pisses himself—
last whispering, “Thank you, Joe.”

November, 2013

My Joy

There’s a song—something about
my pride, my soul,
my hurt-so-good, my juice.

But it wasn’t any of those—
my fancy, my homeland,
my favorite dish.

You can’t take, they can’t take away
my belly button,
my tits.

They can’t scorch or kill,
can’t void or erase
my julip, my Daisy Mae,

my goodness sakes alive—
can’t smash under their boots
and bury in the ground

my pickles, my kitschy pet snake,
my leaping tongue,
my dancing feet.

None of any of these can they take away from me
(even though I still can’t remember
what the exact word was).

Say the word and you'll be free.
Say the word
The word is Joy

Purple Colorado Evening

One evening the plum tree was filled with starlings.

The reason was, the leaves were choked with worms,

which made my mother anxious. For this job birds

were not the ticket. We needed cats

to eat the starlings. Later through a porch screen

in Illinois, I used to watch the fireflies

flit about the bird bath where I kept my frogs,

one a sturdy tadpole, growing legs.

The blackbirds got my frogs. I've forgiven my great aunt,

who died soon after. But I dreamed about a fire,

and I couldn't save my sister from a river –

but awoke, retaining nothing but a puzzle.

My father sprayed the worms. What happened to the starlings,

their uncanny manna gone, I sometimes wonder.

A Memory

One afternoon, riding home from the prairie,
Russell and I saw some huge ripe sunflower blossoms,
but when we told Russell's older sister Karen, she lost all patience.—
"Go get them and bring them back here!" she told us.

Once, in a rage, Karen broke Russell's bat
by beating it against the ground.—"My bat! My bat!" Russell cried.
Once, in charge of a hike, Karen designated my canteen strap
as a tourniquet for snake bites.

The first time I saw Karen dressed up, I could hardly look at her—
"Haven't you ever seen a girl in a dress before?" she asked pleasantly.
Once with a train coming she ran into the corrugated drainage tunnel under
      the railroad tracks
to prove that the train roar wouldn't break her ear drums.

Life-long memory! I would have grudged you my canteen strap,
but when we returned the sunflowers were gone.

The day was peaceful, Rosalia de Castro

The day was peaceful
And calm the atmosphere,
And it was raining, it was raining
Quietly and meekly;
And in the silence I cried and I moaned,
My child, tender pink
Sleeping he died.
When someone flees the world, what peace on their forehead!
When I saw him go away, what a storm in mine!

Earth on the unburied corpse
Before it begins to corrupt ...
Earth!
The hole has already been covered, calm down,
Very soon in the clods removed
Green and thriving will grow the grass.

What are you looking for around the tombs,
Tormented your look, clouded your thought?
Don’t keep taking care of what returns to dust! ...
Nothing is left of the one who rests in the grave
To return to love or offend you.
Never! Is it true that everything
Is already finished forever?
No, impossible to finish what is eternal,
Nor can immensity end.

You left forever; but my soul
Awaits you with loving care,
And I will come or I will go, good of my life,
Where we have to meet.

Something has remained yours in my guts
That death will be no more,
And that God, because just and good,
Never intends to disunite.
In heaven, on earth, in the unfathomable
I will find you and you will find me.
No, impossible to finish what is eternal,
Nor can immensity end.

More ... it's true, he’s gone,
Never to return.
There is nothing eternal for humanity, guest
Of a day in this earthly world,
Where one is born, lives and finally dies.
Everything here is born, lives, and dies.

Era apacible el día, Rosalia de Castro

Era apacible el día
Y templado el ambiente,
Y llovía, llovía
Callada y mansamente;
Y mientras silenciosa
Lloraba y yo gemía,
Mi niño, tierna rosa
Durmiendo se moría.
Al huir de este mundo, ¡qué sosiego en su frente!
Al verle yo alejarse, ¡qué borrasca en la mía!

Tierra sobre el cadáver insepulto
Antes que empiece a corromp-erse... ¡tierra!
Ya el hoyo se ha cubierto, sosegaos,
Bien pronto en los terrones removidos
Verde y pujante crecerá la yerba.

¿Qué andáis buscando en torno de las tumbas,
Torvo el mirar, nublado el pensamiento?
¡No os ocupéis de lo que al polvo vuelve!...
Jamás el que descansa en el sepulcro
Ha de tornar a amaros ni a ofenderos
¡Jamás! ¿Es verdad que todo
Para siempre acabó ya?
No, no puede acabar lo que es eterno,
Ni puede tener fin la inmensidad.

Tú te fuiste por siempre; mas mi alma
Te espera aún con amoroso afán,
Y vendrá o iré yo, bien de mi vida,
Allí donde nos hemos de encontrar.

Algo ha quedado tuyo en mis entrañas
Que no morirá jamás,
Y que Dios, porque es justo y porque es bueno,
A desunir ya nunca volverá.
En el cielo, en la tierra, en lo insondable
Yo te hallaré y me hallarás.
No, no puede acabar lo que es eterno,
Ni puede tener fin la inmensidad.

Mas... es verdad, ha partido
Para nunca más tornar.
Nada hay eterno para el hombre, huésped
De un día en este mundo terrenal,
En donde nace, vive y al fin muere
Cual todo nace, vive y muere acá.

They say that plants don’t speak, Rosalia de Castro

They say that plants don't speak, nor fountains, nor birds, 

Nor the waves with their complaining, nor with their brightness the stars,
They say it, but it's not true, because always when I pass,
They gossip about me and exclaim:
There goes that crazy dreamer
With the eternal spring of life and the wild camps,
And soon, good and soon, she will have gray hair,
And go shaking, frozen, covering the meadow with frost.

—There are gray hairs on my head, there are frost meadows,
But I just dream the more, poor, incurable sleepwalker,
With the eternal spring of life burned out,
And the perennial freshness of the wild camps and the souls,
Though these are gone and those burn.

Stars and fountains and flowers, don’t  complain about my dreams,
Without them, how can I admire you? How can you live without them?

Dicen que no hablan las plantas, Rosalia de Castro

Dicen que no hablan las plantas, ni las fuentes, ni los pájaros,
Ni el onda con sus rumores, ni con su brillo los astros,
Lo dicen, pero no es cierto, pues siempre cuando yo paso,
De mí murmuran y exclaman:
—Ahí va la loca soñando
Con la eterna primavera de la vida y de los campos,
Y ya bien pronto, bien pronto, tendrá los cabellos canos,
Y ve temblando, aterida, que cubre la escarcha el prado.

—Hay canas en mi cabeza, hay en los prados escarcha,
Mas yo prosigo soñando, pobre, incurable sonámbula,
Con la eterna primavera de la vida que se apaga
Y la perenne frescura de los campos y las almas,
Aunque los unos se agostan y aunque las otras se abrasan.

Astros y fuentes y flores, no murmuréis de mis sueños,
Sin ellos, ¿cómo admiraros ni cómo vivir sin ellos?

As Long as We’re Going for Broke

I am not a finger,
irritating by probling
the surface of some body.

I do not make holes for my glorification
or intrude
where holes are already.

I wrote that when I was a senior in high school
and sent it to The Saturday Review.
Maybe they still have it.

I don’t care about the part of the poem
that I can’t remember—
something about a master mind—fuck that!

So why constrain my finger,
which, symbolically,
is the same as my tongue?

Because I myself am primarily a body,
and on my surface
is a deep hole that needs to be filled.

I try to get my finger
to quit pointing at things.
It's rude!

My tongue does go on talking, though.
Maybe it can bring you to Jesus,
but I think it’s just singing.

So when you sing,
is it your tongue
that does it?

The tongue enunciates
the words, but the song comes from the belly
and heart.

Don’t worry about the words,
Jesus said.
The Spirit will provide them.

So what’s the Spirit, then?
Something other than the belly?
No.

The Spirit is the air
heated in the belly,
breathed by the heart

when

you
sing.

Ear

All day yesterday

I wanted to write a poem
about being an ear.

To be an ear,
like the great sea snail,
with its sticky brown foot!

(Not good if you’re Hamlet’s father, right?—
the poison that
into the portals of his ear did pour...)

I wasn’t sure how
to write it. The ear
has whorls,

whorls like the inaccessible interiors
of conch shells, in which you can hear
the sea—

its mighty roar—
That’s what being an ear
should be like, I think!

But the whorls of the ear
are like the petals
of a rose—

like one of Georgia O’Keefe’s—
her roses
are vaginas, right?—

presenting themselves as beautiful
pink pussies,
vulva and clitoris.

And, of course, you worry about the bees,
but all those bees
are sweet, fun girls—

those who want to trade
sticky warm
pollen with me.

To be an ear— 
a hum-bucket,
as it were.

. . .

I am my compost hole—
colorful pit in the yard,
engulfing everything I bring it.

I dug it this summer, feed it
every day, and, when no one’s looking,
I step into it barefoot.

My pussy-ear is amazingly strong,

because of everything it can do,
and everything it puts into me.

Poor Chicken

A                 G           F
One day a month or two ago
My baby called me on the phone.
She said she’d cook us a chicken up.
She didn’t want to spend the night alone.
E            D         C]
I took a bus on over to her place
And she let me in with a smile.
We just stood there in the doorway
[Bb                                 C-G-A]
And hugged and kissed a while.

Well, I took the chicken out of the sack
After making sure my hands were clean.
I said it was the biggest chicken
That I had ever seen.
And then we put that chicken
In a big brass pot with a cover.
Every once in a while between slugs of gin
We’d go and turn it over.

We just sat there in that kitchen.
It didn’t matter what we said.
I loved the way my baby’s hair
Twined around her head.
And then we played some music.
It didn’t matter what we played.
And then we took the chicken out
And we sat down and ate.

I woke up late next morning.
My baby was a little sad.
She wanted to save the bones for soup,
Cause that was all we had.
But we left that chicken out all night,
And I guess it got too hot.
And my baby said that it had gone bad and that we
Had to throw it out.

Next time I saw my baby

She was looking just a little pale.
We couldn’t seem to talk too much.
The words just seemed to fail.
She looked so white and shriveled up,
I said, “Is my baby dead?” [She looked to be half dead]
But I still loved the way her hair
Twined around her head.

1978? for my band 7Hz, with Stephen Phelps

On the Banks of the Sar, Rosalia de Castro

The rustling of the evergreen foliage

Stirs strange rumors,

And on a sea of undulating green

(Loving mansion of the birds),

From my window I see

The temple I wanted so.

The temple I so wanted . . .

Well, I don’t know how to say if I want

What in this rude turbulence without truce
Lacerates my thoughts.

I doubt if grim resentment

Can live with love united in my breast.

Orillas Del Sar, Rosalia de Castro

A través del follaje perenne

Que oír deja rumores extraños,

Y entre un mar de ondulante verdura,

Amorosa mansión de los pájaros,

Desde mis ventanas veo

El templo que quise tanto.

El templo que tanto quise...

Pues no sé decir ya si le quiero,

Que en el rudo vaivén que sin tregua

Se agitan mis pensamientos,

Dudo si el rencor adusto

Vive unido al amor en mi pecho.

The Milk of Paradise

The shadow of the dome of pleasure
Floated midway on the waves
                    ST Coleridge, Kubla Khan

One of my clearest memories of you
comes from the years when I was living at home,
attending college at the University of Colorado, Denver Branch,
after crashing and burning at Boulder.
I remember our guess-the-poet game
using the Untermeyer Treasury book
that we played during drinks before dinner.
Often now when I read a poem I like
I instinctively think of you
and feel a lack because you are no longer here
to share it with me.

You and my father had similar views on poets.
Oddly, you both disliked Elizabeth Bishop.
You must have read “The Fish” and “Roosters”
in the late ‘40’s when North and South made its splash
and decided you didn’t like them for some reason.
I wish I could read you “Crusoe in England” now
(as you read me an abridged Robinson Crusoe when I was a child,
along with The Odyssey for Young People
and so many other works
that became the basis of my literary education),
and see you purse your lips and crinkle your eyes
at the turtles hissing like teakettles.

These days, I like to imagine you
aspiring to be like Elizabeth Bishop –
an alcoholic lesbian living with Lota
de Macedo Soares in the Imperial City of Brazil,
writing a few perfect poems and making
translations from Portuguese
(you yourself taught romance languages and later had a job
translating Portuguese union correspondence) –
instead of living a thwarted life
with a narcissistic husband for whom you had no respect,
and to whose career needs you subordinated your own.
No wonder you terrified me repeatedly when I was eight
by storming out of the house
and disappearing for a day or more,
always returning, to my great relief,
chastened and resigned.

Although my father finally became an English professor,
it was really you who fostered my poetic interests.
You gave me my Signet Keats,
it was your collected Yeats
that I appropriated when I was in high school,
and you were the one,
when I once showed you my self-preoccupied poems,
who gave me the best advice I ever received:
“You should write about human relationships,” you said.

Another poet with whom I try
to identify you is Stevie Smith,
living with her Aunt Lion most of her life
in their House of Mercy,
their house of female habitation,
working as executive secretary for a publishing firm,
and investing her money very wisely.
I especially wish you could share with me her poem,
“The Person from Porlock”:

Coleridge received the Person from Porlock
And ever after called him a curse.
Then why did he hurry to let him in?
He could have hid in the house.

It was not right of Coleridge, in fact it was wrong
(But often we all do wrong)
As the truth is I think that he was already stuck
With Kubla Khan.

I’m sure you would have appreciated
the rapier justice of these verses
slashing through the Great Man’s shabby pretension.
I can see you pursing your lips and crinkling your eyes
as you lie on your couch at cocktail time
in one of those loose-fitting muumuu smocks  you liked to wear,
legs crossed, right big toe pointing forward and then back,
your martini and chesterfields on the
round wooden coffee table beside you . . .

the way I remember you.

December, 2012

The Rebuke

                                      The breasts of Hecuba, 
      When she did suckle Hector, look'd not lovelier 
      Than Hector's forehead when it spit forth blood. 

My mother was an avid gardener.
But when cocktail hour arrived, delivering
the first of the four martinis she’d imbibe
before dinner, she didn’t sit
out in the sunset admiring her bleeding hearts,
her rhubarb, endive, asparagus, but reclined
on a shabby divan in the dim rec room
in the east end of the house.

After my father died, it often happened
that dinnertime never came, and she would drink
til she couldn’t walk to the kitchen anymore. She once set fire
to the divan with a Lucky Strike. She never bothered
to replace the divan mattress but simply covered
the big burned spot with a raggy quilt she had.

So it continued until cancer stopped her. I came
to dispose of her affairs, to settle her in hospice
care, and to hear her final words to me:
You have never in your life
shown your dear mother any courtesy,
when she, poor hen, caring for you alone,
has clucked you to the wars and home again,
loaded with honor. Then she turned
her face to the wall.

June 2014

Someone, Jorge Luis Borges

A man worked by time,
a man who does not even wait for death
(the proofs of death are statistics
and there is no one who does not run the risk
of being the first immortal),
a man who has learned to thank
the modest alms of the days:
the dream, the routine, the taste of water,
an unsuspected etymology,
a Latin or Saxon verse,
the memory of a woman who abandoned him
so many years ago
that today he can remember her without bitterness,
a man who does not forget that the present
is already the future and forgotten,
a man who has been untrue
and to whom others have been untrue,
can suddenly feel, when crossing the street,
a mysterious happiness
that does not come from the side of hope
but from an old innocence,
from its own root, or from a scattered god.

He knows that he should not look at it closely,
because there are reasons more terrible than tigers
that will demonstrate his duty
to be destitute,
but humbly receives
this happiness, this remnant.

Maybe in death we will be forever, 

when dust is dust,
that indecipherable root
that will grow forever,
kind or cruel,
our lonely heaven or hell.

Alguien, Jorge Luis Borges

Un hombre trabajado por el tiempo,
un hombe que ni siquiera espera la muerte
(las pruebas de la muerte son estadísticas
y nadie hay que no corra el albur
de ser el primer inmortal),
un hombre que ha aprendido a agradecer
las modestas limosnas de los días:
el sueño, la rutina, el sabor del agua,
una no sospechada etimología,
un verso latino o sajón,
la memoria de una mujer que lo ha abandonado
hace ya tantos años
que hoy puede recordarla sin amargura,
un hombre que no ignora que el presente
ya es el porvenir y el olvido,
un hombre que ha sido desleal
y con el que fueron desleales,
puede sentir de pronto, al cruzar la calle,
una misteriosa felicidad
que no viene del lado del la esperanza
sino de una antigua inocencia,
de su propia raíz o de un dios disperso.

Sabe que no debe mirarla de cerca,
porque hay razones mas terribles que tigres
que le demonstarán su obligacion
de ser un desdichado,
pero humildemente recibe
esa felicidad, esa ráfaga.

Quizá en la muerte para siempre seremos,
cuando el polvo sea polvo,
esa indescrifrable raíz,
de la cual para siempre crecerá,
ecuánime o atroz,
nuestro solitario cielo o infierno.

Myself

I’ve heard that there are African bush people
who carry their souls with
in little bags.

Waiting for the tub to fill,
working on internet business
in my bathrobe,

shall I say
that what I preeminently am
is a pretty animal,

myself
my one 

best fetish?

Performance Yoga

It’s hard to write about others
without crossing discretion boundaries.
Can I even write about myself without apology?

If I want to seduce
you, reader, with my pen,
I’ll at least have to be fun to watch!

Went up to my attic
and did my yoga just now,
first laying out my amulets—

ceramic female meditating figure;
rose-quartz sharp-nosed ID (I mean Latin for Thing);
amethyst Satva not really a superego, more

like all those fallen knights at the end
of Childe Roland;
orange feldspar Dhamma fronting the deeps;

green topaz Buddha resting
sometimes on their back with their feet in the air,
sometimes on their side or forehead.

Start Child pose, usually—asshole
and feet aligned, touching the mat
with the bone between my nose and brow that

a punch would break.
Up to Downward Dog, then walking
my hands to my right foot,

left foot high behind. And now I lift
with my whole hip till my hands are above my head
and I’m balanced,

left foot pressed to my right knee. And now I bend
slightly and bring my left foot back
so that I can hold it in my hand like

a tender bird, a turtle dove,
chuckling and cooing and trembling against my fingers.
Two arms full of fluffy chicken!

And now I let go and do the same drill
on the other foot. Next, I press my 10-lb barbells
from below waist to above head twenty times—

surprisingly difficult, even after all this time!
I usually finish with Sun Salutations,
each ending with putting my anus on one heel

and stretching both hands to the opposite foot.
Happy Baby, on my back, grasping feet, rocking.
Bridge, groin high, letting my butt down slowly.

last ten breaths in Corpse—
each breath lasting
forever

Villanelle: Just Write It!

When you write, don’t worry about saving face.
All your embarrassing experiences are grist for your hopper.
There are worse things than being a literary disgrace.

You can struggle every morning at a frenzied pace
scribbling confessions that may be deemed improper,
when you don’t worry about saving face.

You can write about the time you kept your ace
when the queen was on the board, and you let another take her.
There are worse things than being a literary disgrace.

So you want a part in Arsenic and Old Lace?
So you put bird seed in the popcorn popper?
So don’t you worry about saving face!

And you’ll never disappear without a trace
if you get to be known as the world’s biggest moper.
That's the advantage of being a literary disgrace.

And maybe you will win the poet race

and be considered really super-duper,
if you don’t worry about saving face.
There are worse things than being a literary disgrace.

More Skeleton Platonism

                   *
Most of the skeletons you see
are just ghosts pretending
to be skeletons.

                   *
You worry about being attacked by an army of skeletons,
but there can really be only one Skeleton,
just as there can be only one Rose in Borges’s shadow world.

Meating the Beatles

You have to get right to the meat
when you talk about the Beatles.
My friend Tony

had Meet the Beatles
and Introducing the Beatles
in his basement.

We had sessions after school
we called “rehearsals,” singing along to them
with ukulele and tennis racket props.

Tony was a tall, blond, diabetic kid,
the center on the 6^th-grade basketball team
I was on sort of by his sufferance.

The Beatles' sound was so fresh!—
miraculous fusion of English country music
(which many even in England had probably never heard before)

and American blues mixolydian.
“We’re done,” said Ian Tyson when he heard the screams
in When I Saw Her Standing There.

Their long hair broke the arctic ice plate—
not just disrespectable, but disgraceful—
but we embarked on that perilous road.

Tony would invite me to sleep over,
and we’d sing and drink a kind of strawberry kool aid
he made made with fizzy pellets in a glass pitcher.

Like me, Tony had a foot phobia.
I remember the hatred in his older sister’s eyes
when he ordered her to get her feet off his bed.

The night I remember, we didn't
sleep in Tony’s bed,
but in a larger bed, in another basement room.

We played Boy & Girl, of course.
Tony was the boy, mostly. I remember the hard feel
of his groin against my hip.

It was easier to be the girl. Tony
generously offered me my turn to be the boy,
but I liked just lying there better.

One night there was an unpleasantness—
I had eaten a few peanuts I saw in a jar on the coffee table,
and he remarked on it when he smelled them on my breath.

I didn’t feel like admitting I had eaten them.

I was being an asshole, and Tony wouldn’t let it go.
Later, Tony was the bass player in my band, The Trojanz.

The Eleusinian Mysteries

All my life, I’ve had a mystical bent,
but I’ve never really had mystical experiences of any
kind. In my early college days,

I tried to study ancient Greek religion—
including the Dionysian cults—always eager
to look into the smoking cauldron. What was it

they had you stare into at Eleusis? Some strange
mirror? Somehow, you beheld the mystery.
Don’t tell anyone—it’s a secret!

Now join the others outside, shouting Mystics to the sea!
Now run down to the beach for some kind of
salty baptism ceremony! That’s all

I’ve ever been able to gather about
the Eleusinian Mysteries, which are also just one more thing
you have to recollect when you’re chasing down

the myriad beads of the big glob of mercury that was dropped
when you were marooned here—
the heavy head of Orpheus himself

floating down the river Styx singing
the pieces of you—
the people you meet, and the people you make.

I always felt that if I could inhabit the hearts
of the initiates at Eleusis, all my problems
would vanish, and I would be saved somehow,

but the anthropologists say nothing is known
about the Mysteries and exactly what
people experienced at them, preoccupied

as they were with their work, health, spouses, and kids—

some moment of clarity, presumably. But not just that.
They received eternal life!

The Young Night, Jorge Luis Borges

Already the lustral waters of night absolve me
of all colors and forms.
And in the garden the birds and stars proclaim
the longed-for return to the ancient norms
of sleep and of shadow. Already shadow has sealed
the mirrors that write the fiction of things.
Goethe said it better: What’s near removes itself.
Those four words cypher all twilight.
In the rose garden the roses stop being roses
and want to be the Rose.

La Joven Noche, Jorge Luis Borges

Ya las lustales aguas de la noche me absuelen

de los muchos colores y de las muchas formas.
Ya en el jardín las aves y los astros exaltan
el regreso anhelado de las antiguas normas
del sueño y de la sombra. Ya la sombra ha sellado
los espejos que copian la ficcion de las cosas.
Mejor lo dijo Goethe: Lo cercan se aleja.
Esas cuatro palabras cifran todo el crepúsculo.
En el jardín las rosas dejan de ser las rosas
y quieren ser la Rosa.

Satipatthana Skeleton

not man
not woman
only bones

not human
not animal
just calcium dust

I Am in Such a Good Mood, Goethe

I am in such a good mood,
I feel so happy and clear,
that if I made a mistake,
it wouldn't be an error.


From a Spanish blog that contains Spanish translations of Goethe poems. I haven't found the German text yet.

Estoy de tan buen humor,
me siento tan alegre y puro,
que si cometiera un error,
no sería error alguno.

http://rescatadosdelfuego.blogspot.com/2013/07/seleccion-de-poemas-johann-wolfgang-von.html

Adam Is Your Ashes, Jorge Luis Borges

The sword will die like the grain.
The crystal, not more brittle than the rock.
All things, your future of dust.
Iron is rust. Voice, echo.
Adam, the young father, is your ashes.
The last garden will be the first.
The nightingale and Pindar are voices.
The aurora is the reflection of the sunset.
Mycenae, the mask of gold.
The high wall, the raped ruin.
Urquiza, what the daggers leave behind.
The face that looks in a mirror
Is not yesterday's face. The night has worn it.
The soft weather chisels us.

What joy to be the indestructible water 

That runs in the parable of Heraclitus,
or the devious fire, but here,
In this long day that never passes,
I feel both lasting and derelict.

Pretty-Legs!

sixth grade boys' basketball team I was on
bunch of girls
feet dangling from the stage at the far
end of the gym—
all becoming possessed
by the hilarity
of my beautiful legs
Pretty-Legs!
they kept yelling

ringleader Kathy from Louisiana
tangy drawl
always sweet on
playing tether ball after school
barefoot
and when the rope had wound all the way around
and the ball got stuck
she shimmied up the pole

or in the public swimming pool
she pulled my trunks out
from my belly and put 

her face down in the water to look

hearing Kathy shout Pretty-Legs! 

was both flattering and embarrassing
I certainly couldn’t prevent her from doing it
and I have to say that even now all these years later
I feel changed

The Pest (First Day of Catholic First Grade)

We’d just arrived and were putting our stuff away,
when I noticed a pleasant-looking brown-haired girl
who had the same lunch box as me.
Overcome by what I think was an impulse of generosity—
I can share something with someone in this forsaken place!—
I approached and showed the girl my lunch box, but she
was not impressed in the tiniest, slightest least,
and cut me to the heart.

The Dream, Jorge Luis Borges

While the midnight clocks are wasting
abundant time,
I will go further than the shipmates of Ulysses
Into the dream region, inaccessible
To human memory,
Salvaged from an immersed region
That I can’t plumb:
Botanical simples,
Strange animals,
Dialogues with the dead,
Faces that are actually masks,
Words of very old languages,
And sometimes a horror incomparable
to anything the day can give.
I will be everyone or no one. I will be the other
I am without knowing, the one who has watched
This other dream, my waking. He
assesses it, resigned and smiling.

Crazy-DAZE

The beach is a place where you can feel
You're the only soul in the world that's real.
Well I see a face coming through the haze,
I remember you from those crazy days. The Who

What the heck is Crazy-DAZE?

Some kind of wet-tee-shirt festival?—
the kind of deal where you get dunked
when someone hits the bull’s eye
with a well-flung jonathan.

But it’s cold hard
winter now, can’t lounge
around half-naked on the porch.
Can’t really go,
outside at all!

But the reason why
I even thought of Crazy-DAZE
was because someone sent me a link
to Days ‘N Daze, "Day Gaunts,"
from Rogue Taxidermy.

Swarm-of-katydids rhythm.
Suds in the kitchen and
mold in the sink. What do we
do tomorrow?
I also like

"Misanthropic Drunken Loner,"
which speaks to me on a lot of levels, starting
with, My breakfast is right out of the medicine cabinet,
a remedy for the aftermath of my habit, sometimes
it’s the ones who try to help who hurt the most.

I’m gonna hide away
on the top of a mountain,
so no one has to deal with me.
Sorry I just like myself
better than I like you.

And their "Post-Party Depression" video,
with the nice washboard shot at 0.53, and a cool
fight between the blue-haired trumpet-playing girl
and a tall skinny guy at about 2.30.—
Sooner or later

this party gets busted

and your friends all stumble back home.
You never know what you’ve got till it’s gone.
Tell me when the fire dies down
what the fuck will you do?