When I met Robert Bly at Harvard
And we spoke of death and Jesus
And he dedicated a poem to me.
His was the renaissance bard’s attire
Red velvet vest, a sideways turned
Bard or clowns cap
He looked like he was secretly working
In the French courts of years ago.
But he also had this infectious twinkle in his eye.
He was a charmer.
And loved what he was reading-mostly his own poems
But also other’s. He read them both with the same fervor
And pitch of nearly glee.
He was a poets poet.
And I’d only met Ginsberg
And Kinnel and Philipe Levine up to that point.
He was more playful than them
And more performing his life as he lived it.
I’ve come to emulate that aspect of him.

Brubeck pressing tenderly towards for us all!
Davis gliding in glory and wet lament
Coltrane making new worlds for them all.
All worlds of the week, collide in confluence
On Saturdays
We need each part of day and night
To make it through.

Tree empathy, after cleaning up many tree limbs today:

After a storm
Trees lament
Our loses. After being iced,
Trees have their own releasing
Sigh, worth listening too well
As we scurry to clean them up
For our own sake mostly,
And keep them praising heavenward.
The roses, though persnickety, ironically
Made it through with no complaints.
Beauty is tenacious like that.
But we need the trees’s raised limbs
To remember where we are
And how to bow well.

Baptism

Growing up church
Christ haunted
Steeples already leaning
Like lightening towers
Impaling and protruding from my gut.

I wanted what it was hiding.
The church was surely a billboard for something.-what
Was it advertising?

Still,
my life was nearly baptized before I got here
I nearly drowned in the water of my grandmother prayers
Before I was here.

Womb waters like mercy. The womb like love of God called Mercy
Was where my contours formed, I’m sure. But I needed water
To go under something. I needed to nearly drown to know.
The tadpole me knew. That much Yet,
I was up to my neck before I realized
The Name of water, even.
Much less my own.
And then, the Jordan River. The warm sinking
Into ancient memory mineralized liquid
Where Jesus went under the first time,
And was recognized…
And, just then, my young nubile body, along with the nibbling fishes
On my knees, skin tingling in desert warmth,
Knew it was loved by something, and so bowed down under something
Bigger than buildings or languages, or the tender hand of my father
Who sent me under. More like
How a baby looks at your face
In babbling wonder when it first comes out.
Or a thousand sermons
Compressed into one haiku of you, one
You can actually listen to-a homily
Of immersion into Love’s sweet wetness…
Before you know Comfort’s kind naming
Or the great dunking, drowning yes to life.
One has to die to know their name.
We submerge to emerge in baptism.

Religion is a supermarket
The clerks have fled the registers
The manager quit last week
And people are grabbing avocadoes
Like they never had one
The echo of the sacred
Is barely heard.
The phosphorescent lights are blinking
In the inorganic section.
An old lady
In a wheelchair is praying
Silently to herself,
On aisle three.
I announce
Over this
Loud speaker
Dangling as it is
For any old voice
To say
At least
Something
Of value.
I had to speak
Before it’s all
Gone.

The merrymakers sigh
The wine won’t make happy
The tambourines have fallen from the dancer’s hands
Each stone is cursed
And the falcon is dizzy
The steeple has fallen
A host of god run the streets
Like greek gang members
Jesus never left
He’s just obscured
And hangs at the corner car wash
Waiting for extra change.

//
After 911
Life was heavy
Traveling wasn’t as innocent
It got serious fast.
The pretty girls left the party early
The morning birds waited til noon to sing
Less and fear, more depression
Swept the elections. And
The earth groaned
And us merrymakers
Sighed.

Train whistle blows on cold night
All those friends caught inside;
Owl and hawk diving unseen but felt tangibly outside.
I just see my grandfather’s kind hands-
Palmed and ribbed for kindness, and endlessly open
Even in his own casket,
As the mouse and moles scurry
Towards their own homes
Tonight.

Train whistle blows on cold night
All those friends caught inside;
Owl and hawk diving unseen but felt outside.
I just see my grandfather’s kind hands,
As the mouse and moles scurry
Towards their own homes.

“Good art never settles”

Heidegger’s a fool
To sit and think so long
But Buber went to pubs
And invited him to come along.
Martin talked to everyone’s thous
While Heidegger read the room.
A metaphysician’s bar is transparent
People see light through glasses
Hegel never came in, dead by then.
But at least those first two
Had a nice dialogue.
One had their own experience
The other was floating round the room
Like a Chagall painting
Where nothing ever
Is settled.
//

//
We come to this bar
For our own reasons
Me to learn love
Or be loved or both
Some to escape boredom
Some to actually be alone
But we come each day
And somehow make this home.
Playing trivia, doing crosswords
And watching jeopardy
Or even playing chess in passing,
Beside an enormous unseen fireplace
Where everyone is welcomed
To gather each day.
Maybe someone will bring pizza today
Or a new puzzle, or a car wreck will happen
Or something. We all come here
For something.
Perhaps, as well
A place to keep life’s pulse each day
To make sure we are all ok.

//
Next door,
The mother and daughter
Live together alone.
They look like one another, by now
Aside from bones and age
They both smile kindly
While raking, reading or
Today going to the doctor.
She has taken a fall backwards
She awoke and thought she was a little girl
Her daughter holds her hand
And tells her they are going
To a play lot today.
The mother walks slowly through each new door
Hoping to meet an old boyfriend (or even Jesus)
On the play lot’s long slide.
//

//

A Priest’s complaint

Writing and prayer take time
You can’t turn the soul on a dime.
If you want me to prayer for you,
You gotta let me step outside time.
Don’t worry, I will stay aware of it, my dear.
I’ve never fallen off the Wire, but when I do
There’s always a safety net.
And besides, God doesn’t need my prayers anyway.
It just lets us talk.

//
Wheel-chaired by the end
My friend
Still dyes her hair red for life,
Wears cool hats for costume,
And keeps it funky.
Her body hurts worse these days
But she refuses
Style to leave her yet
And her wheelchair
Is just another prop
In her theater of life.
When my mom lost her hair
She immediately remembered her theater days
And the wonder of wigs.
It’s all about how thankful
You are for your hand
How you are enabled to respond
And not just become react-
That is, how everything is potential performance art!

Even death is an art.

//
I told them everything I knew thus far
The story was as I said. Relentless Love
Defiantly breaking in despite all performances.

//
Spider’s gossamer strands in evening glow
Are enough to know and see through shimmer,
And remember
Forever, in tremble

our endlessly glorious networks.

//
The origins of water.
First a sound, even
Before the light
A sound in the dark
Then one enormous drip
And everything was born.
//
I just want to sneak off
Back to Vermont or those kettle ponds on Nan Tucket
Or her body that day slowly sinking into gold light…
Or Albuquerque during hatch season
Or Jerusalem on any roof at sunset
I just want to sneak off
To Flannery OConnor peacock farm
To Carl Jung estate in Switzerland
Or to a bare cabin the alps
Or to any of their bodies exposed
In their particular glories
To stone star skin again Jemez Hot Springs
At night with just bodies silence and crouching wolves unseen
Or elks stampeded above
Or angels wings which kept touching us
I just want to sneak off back into myself
Back when I could say life well by merely being
Me, a great idea of God to see through
Me wearing a suit of chimes in my dreams
And just walking in slight breeze
Just enough to be a good sound in other’s hearts.
Me living in parks and under bridges
In women’s homes around the world
In churches, and synagogues and whoever would shelter
A sound which sneaks off just after you hear it fully.
//
I wrote on everything
Receipts, gum wrappers
Even underwear, whatever
Was bare
A tabula rosa all around me everywhere
And each time I wrote again
I felt eternity. That is near myself.
So, I wrote on everything.
//
I was in films
Back before everything
Was seen.
I was writing novels
When they became obsolete.
I was taking photos in my sleep.
And every day was performance art
A cinema to see
When I could barely walk
When I could still be me.
//
Take three from,
The editing rooms

There are no more takes today
That’s a wrap. So let’s survey, edit
Redact and cut where necessary.
Life was a short comedy animation, and
No scene was as I saw it
But some still shone some light
Like an endless hall of keyholes
Behind which are only rooms made of light.
For the end is the beginning of the eternal editing process.
And the projection room is where it all goes down.
//
And I ended like a Muse
In the meantime
I was an amusement park-en-styled as,
An electric carousel in Paris in the 40s
With children and beautiful women
Going up and down all night.
Where I stop on a bridge on the way home
To help a man not jump. Instead I invite him
To the park to watch with me
The circular delights of carnival life
As they pump like an excited heart in the dark.
//
You have a lot of pressure
To do something remarkable
Important, with impact.
The pressure keeps you
From doing so, but also
Forces you not to.
//
Everything is about what you do
While in the waiting room.
It’s never about seeing the Doctor
But being healed while you wait.
//

What is the one thing you can’t not do?
And don’t tell me it’s women or smoking.
Tell me something true.
What is the one thing you can’t not do?
Don’t tell me its travel
Cause that’s just what you do.
What is the one thing you can’t not do?
To Express is closest without further adieu
//