feeding

we eat our own bread

but stir someone else's soup -
hearts in our mouths
and ears to the door.

grown up before your eyes a city

a black and white photo of Ponce takes its place

elsewhere or if not trees my ficus will come with me.

some ties just will not tie (before we leave)

a paper rose twisted, smelling of lavender, coming undone.

the day I carried it home on my lap. atlanta

a self-portrait. your reds, yellows and browns

dream in turquoise hoping. everything will happen

public and private

the doors were open. were dusty.

you had already squeaked your way back through the mud.
with the others. with your instruments.

lamp-light from the street outside. a lone chair.
a cello. I closed my eyes.

whatever you heard, you heard from the proper distance -
(perhaps walking away) and it was me as I am. 

not everything else.

and these,

though they were not mine,
became Mt. Tam and every
other lost landscape.

every time I close my heart I make a purchase

in my faith there is

a crack large enough to fit
any peddlers boot.

I went to the circus

and was ashamed.

There was this one act -
a couple who dangled from silks;

I couldn't watch their
love-making.

Suspended, they kept each other
from what I could not.

Apology for Want

I can't accept I

had nothing to do with it,
therefore, I apologize
for having been loved.

I slow down to look 
at wrecks on the interstate.
Some I even love.

Left

there was this one time. yes, we were in the mountains. that old antebellum bed and breakfast with the two great oaks out front. it was damp the evening we drove in. and cold. I could see your breath and you could see mine. we brought up your cd player. mississippi john hurt in the low-light. candy man. stepping on each-other's feet. we woke that morning. two mugs of coffee settled into rocking chairs. drops of water on the tin roof. looking out, we sensed a rightness. in everything. accepted what it offered. the left hand of the future not yet having pointed us away.

D.

at some point he stopped seeing me, if he saw me at all, and I stopped understanding how one could be both caring and uncaring at the same time. to me it was clear how one prevailed over the other.

his show was last Friday. I was there, but not there. ghost-like. a trail grown cold. a memory one goes to less and less. his affection was perfunctory, without recognition. as though we had shared nothing. this is what hurts and what I can't understand, what makes the whole thing feel eerily unreal. imaginary. worthless, yet hard to put down. had it been anything, guilt maybe convenience. want. all in passing.

archeology

He produced a rock from his pocket.
He, his wife and two children each got one -
to show that they're still a family.

I understood at once.

At home, two rings are knotted together
one on top of the other -
to show that we're still a couple.

I ran into an old customer at the Perk today. Pain is unmistakable. We recognized it in each other. Our meeting wasn't comfortable, but it was comforting - not to be scorned for being ourselves, for not pretending. I wanted to hug him. Sometimes when you need a hug the most, it's practically impossible to get. People treat sadness as though it were contagious. They see it in you and run the other way. They're protective, scared, stingy, accusatory. God help you if you show your feelings in public. Well, I don't care. I'm strong and sad. I'm alive. I'm not ashamed.

tattoo for both palms

We were introduced in tulip fall,
in tulips, after all.
We were introduced
at a salmon cannery
in Scotland. Our hands
were numb and we wanted to die.
You wouldn’t stop talking.

The Viewing

His nose hadn’t been that big. His face had been round,
not sallow and oval. His hands alone were recognizable;
their rough strength had known the way of the soil

And also the Gardener’s secret: casement broken,
the seed is the sapling is the tree is the blossom is the apple
is a glass of spiced cider or Nana’s last jar of preserves.

Of these nothing is lost but, it’s not understood.
We step forward, unsure, are unconvinced by the makeup.
Of the two, death is the greater deceit.

shutters on the fifth floor

Out the window a man sits on the roof of a tall building in downtown Atlanta. He smokes a cigarette, fidgets, stands up, puts his hands in his pockets, sits back down again. A MARTA train slides past in the distance. Grady Hospital. Clouds in the sky. He looks around.

What does the heart see?
What does it tell itself?

It paces. Shifts its weight, listlessly, from one foot to the other. Believes itself alone.

memories

come and go on the air. smell of oyster water or jasmine. ripen and rot. are fluid and sometimes dissolvable. broken down with the body. grown from the mind as weeds, as holly and oak. are cut down and recycled. shaved off. swept away or let go of. a ring tost into the ocean. a handkerchief. are crippling. chronic. meaningless and undesirable. are electric. holographic. stacks of yellowed newspapers and teacup collections. are alcoholic. addictive. fuel burnt for warmth, for knowledge. for regret. are movies we've seen before and know the ending to. cast us as heroes, villains, scapegoats, revolutionaries, romanticists, whores, great and poor musicians. wear khakis and have hair like your mother. reek of mothballs. of Chanel #1. are dizzying. explosive and unexpected as land-mines. attach as appendages. obstructions. apply makeup before going out. allow the fingers to remember where second position is on the cello and all ten digits of my first love's phone number.

for touching:

I'm a prickle pear. a pineapple. a caterpillar with feelers all extended. I feel everything and you can't stop me. abuse me if you must but feeling I keep on. the fingers of my heart open to receive. chest bleeding. is heaving. my stomach hurts like hell. all is well and I hurt. all is well and I keep keeping. all is well.

touching: your mouth opened. your heart and nothing broke that wasn't built to break. let us not be afraid. release our untouchables. to touch each other. even though they walk our streets disguised as fears. masquerade as our fathers. wreak havoc. set us to spinning. to building. to hiding.

It doesn't seem right that the world should go on.

My fingernails continue to grow.
Books, t-shirts, CDs are settling into
different shelves, oblivious.
To them it was a move like any other.

When disaster strikes
(the eruption of Mount Vesuvius)
it doesn’t seem right that the world go on-

the expression on the face of our hearts should remain
unchanged from the moment it happened,
our hands still busy with the washing of the day.

thankfulness.

fullness of Love that makes me wonder how I could continue another moment. how my day to day life could survive the explosion. the heat. the gravity. how one could experience divine providence, even for a moment, and ever resume the task of living. pick up a pen or let words pass, any of them. makes you regret the moment it does. presses tears from the eyes. from your gut strings and heart pearls. from the part of you that beats and is still living. to remind you you're living. the string left unbroken. the possibility of arriving still intact.

sentences

We pay for our words. Once uttered, they live forever; a string of vibrations from my mouth, my tongue, my teeth, my lips, which extend infinitely throughout space. For as many of these as I regret (those dark tapestries of misshapen syllables knotted, inextricably, by time and pain), there are those whose delicacy and light originated from the kindest, most sincere node of my black heart. And as those silvery words (of love) circle and snake their way across the globe, I hope they find you again, and again, and yet again - even if I don't.

on a bus in Chile

Pet Your Confusion

You set bowls of milk out as offering.
It eats, then curls up in your chest.

Every moment I spent in Chile was stolen. Stolen from a life I was trying to hold onto at home. A non-life, really, as the only thing that was missing from it was my self. David, my boyfriend at the time, basically forbade me from going. His jealousy, fully manifesting itself in our relationship at that point, punctured any happiness I had once felt and kept him in a state of suspicion. He had abandoned himself to his suspicion, actually. Our evening phone calls (they were really interrogations) while I was in Chile left me crumpled, wet, and ruined.

Ruined, but free. There's something liberating about being in a different hemisphere from the source of your pain and self-loathing. Especially when you've been swept from the throws of Winter into beautiful, Chilean Spring. Those ten short days abroad were some of the best of my life. I was mopey and alone. I separated myself from the group every chance I got. I picked flowers and prompted a spontaneous daisy picnic. I was so alienated that any openness or happiness I experienced, was an unexpected gift. Was an experience of Grace. Chile was indescribably beautiful and our cello choir concerts, intense.

There was the concert in the rose garden in Santiago, with white banners streaming. The concert in the ruins of Mora(?) Island, where I had those amazing cherry pastries (there were cherry orchards on the island), saw the school-house and its flowers, and got rained on. The stray mutt I left on the banks whose fate was mine, the black volcanic sand of the beach, and our 18 cellos bobbing up and down in dingy boats across the water - some bizarre procession. Eighteen casualties - our instruments in their black caskets.

There was also the concert in the Catholic church in Valdivia, which was magical. We made sacred music there. Music that was careful not to break the silence too completely. And then there was the unforgettable bus ride along the shores of Valparaiso. Window open, knees wedged between my seat and the one in front of me, hair flying, blue skies, water that stretched from rock to horizon.

Moments like those make you beg whatever higher power exists to kill you, right then and there, because it doesn't get better.

I've experienced other moments of joy like that, and gratitude, when my heart asked to lift itself clear of my chest and join itself with whatever lies beyond.