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Posts Tagged ‘knowing’

Lessons in Impermanence

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on May 17, 2013| 2 Comments »

This feeling
this tattered net
this piece of cake
this morning
this poem
this broken yolk
this dandelion
this warning
this girl
and her friend
and the song
they are singing
this scent of green
this in between
this longing
this knowing.

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The End

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on December 27, 2012| 2 Comments »

Dusting the heads
of dead animals,
I think of how much
my father cherishes
this antelope, this duck,
this winged thing I cannot name,
and I understand that it is not
the thing itself that still
thrills him and makes
him want to keep it on the wall,
but the memory of the thing,
how alive it was, how alive
he was in the killing of it.

*

Over tempura, Pam tells me
of the time that she went
to a man’s home, and there
on the couch was his rich wife,
stuffed, her hand stretched out
in eternal greeting. It had been
in her will, the taxidermic clause
stating that he would lose everything
if he buried her. I sip my sake
and laugh, perhaps because
it is funny, perhaps because
I do not know what to say.

*

Though it is snowing
the room is filled with slant sunshine
and the light does what light does,
it seeks out the darkness.
I feel how what I think I know
has become something dead,
though once it greeted me
with open hands. Though once
I was ripe with it.

*

If we’re made of dust
what is doing the breathing?

*

Not that I want
an answer to that.
Only to be a vehicle
for asking.

*

In the parking lot,
the sound of geese.
No one could say
it is beautiful,
the strangled song
slicing the cold, clear air.
But they’re singing,
my god, they are singing.

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When Rachel Asked Her a Question

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , on September 7, 2012| 5 Comments »

She did not know how
to articulate the existential risks
in a world of immortals, but

she did know she wanted
hot chocolate. She did know
the white lights strung across Larimer Street

reminded her of, well, she didn’t quite know what,
but she liked them, she liked them tonight
with the cup of hot chocolate (too much milk

and not enough cayenne) warm in her hands.
Scent of exhaust and urine and trash like the city
always has in the summer. And the sound of a man

plunking away on his guitar, his voice
not perhaps what she had hoped, but he was
after all singing. Yes, she though, if I were

alive forever, I would sing. And kiss. And sleep.
She could not say what was changing, but
she knew that it was, that it had been changing

since yesterday, since early last year, since her birth, since before that.
“It’s alright,” she said, to no one, “It’s alright if
tonight we do nothing,.” But something

was already happening, It had something
to do with emptiness. It had something
to do with night. Her shoes were lost

beneath the street. She knew she could not keep
the dawn from coming.
She didn’t even try.

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And Still Some Part of Me Reaches for a Legend, a Ruler, a Fact

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on May 17, 2012| 6 Comments »

You can’t solve being human. We will have this affliction till the day we die.
—Jeannie Zandi

I tried to know it,
catch it, show it,
to splay its wings
and pin them—
to chart it, graph it,
plot it, map it,
quantify and reckon,
I tried to stuff it,
box it, pack it,
leash it to a pole,
I wanted answers,
wanted keys,
I wanted oracles,
and in came tamarisk,
rodents, dust,
whole rooms
of I don’t know,
a screaming child,
my milk dried up,
my fear devoured me whole.
Splintered, rumpled,
rankled, crumpled,
my all collapsed,
unplastered.
Undone, released,
exposed, relieved,
I flowered
utterly mastered.

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seven

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , on January 13, 2012| 1 Comment »

first the stars
then all the space between the stars
slipped into my tea

*

dried and dead
I leave them in the vase
the naked tulips

*

winter
every cloud
a love letter

*

hey poet
get out of the way
said the poem

*

bird on the wire
for a few moments
we both stop singing

*

the weeds gone to seed—
and who is this one
who thinks they are weeds

*

another door,
another door, another wall
becomes a door

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