Wet

I was born wet
as were you
drunk on our mother
her belly, her
eyes, lips, nipples
her guts, her brave

and then the air came
light crinkled us
then as now wrinkles us
as we squeeze in, ex
hale means healthy
but still wet
but how many are still
couer

It was in a movie
we found her
heart
a wet mouthed
twenty seconds of courage
I'll forget
tomorrow

today
I'll toast
being all wet and air
finding courage
every twenty
every seconds

Three

They say memory is three
quarters smell
so for every remembered touch
for each ringing note, fallen silent
three scents must be attached.

All these photos must have changed things.
All these images must have taken
up the space where my nose would have stored
yesterday. Maybe it's only my brain
that forgets, maybe everyone else's works

that way. I had pneumonia at 19
and couldn't smell anything for a year
I didn't know if it had gone on holiday
or moved to another country
without so much as a Dear John letter

until, like a scratch-and-sniff postcard
walking past a street person on Telegraph Avenue
the pungent stench of ammonia startled me, for weeks
I stuck my nose into roses and bougainvillea
but got only thorns for my trouble.

Suddenly, acrid eucalyptus from the wildfire
fresh cut onions, frying
fresh baked bread
espresso
smell had returned.

I hope he had fun on vacation
and sauteed mushroom butter, rolled in rose petals,
cranked peppercorns, stomped grapes at harvest
all with his eyes closed
and his ears shut.

Maybe it's not memory
but imagination, and that's why there's no scent.
Were I to lose sense again
not fairness, or balance, or curiosity
and definitely not imagination

so even if I forget what love smells like
I can fill up the rest
with my eyes closed
and I'll still remember
you

From above

You have a girl
you have a boy
you have another boy.
She's an angel
whose wings get regular dustings
and every so often a prayer.
Meantime her brothers groan
from growing bones

so you keep getting reminded
there aren't many days left
until their eyes count
your gray hairs
from above.

He grew two inches taller this summer
with a darkening upper lip
revealing an ephemeral baritone whenever he speaks
to an adult or orders take-out
but when he bosses his brother around
a teen tenor.

He took up fishing, now
tying knots and devouring fish
books while throwing back the catch
patiently casting and trolling
often reeling in nothing
but smiles.

Their eyes count
tears still, though, sometimes
from a load of homework, more often fists or taunts
and every once from missing

her

Dirt

Beneath, dirt
and in the air, in the water,
dirt.
We're mud, wet moving ash,
temporary bone.
Time will crawl
circles around us
with our closed eyes
so let's build into the air
clatter up the stairs
in our fleshed skeletons
fashion words from ancient trees
and rasp through lips while we can
before the leaves crisp, and crumble.

The sun will still beat us
tear out every color until only bleach remains
leach supple skin, brittle
yet that seed, poke a hole
tend tenderly, moisten, wait,
wait, wait until green snaps sun
into waiting veins
as though flowing sap, or blood
means anything in itself.

It doesn't
matter, only
love comes
from dirt

Creek

The bed is cement
a flood control channel
keeping the stick houses that crowd the banks safe
except where floods broke the walls
and they brought boulders to fill in
where ever the relentless wet pounding had torn it apart.
But most of the year it's just thin
a meander through accreted silt and sand, tires and junk
as reeds strain to drink the sun
or feed the sturdy and opportunistic egrets and ducks,
gulls and crows, swallows and coots. Each spring wings
and beaks lay claim to another nest
which must be hidden in the warm.

There's no place to drop a line in the water
no overhanging trees to give shade
it's not deep or clean enough to swim
no surprising bends, no flats
an 11 year old can cast in,
and the beaks don't really make much sound.
But they will stalk what little fish scurry, float
the fluff chicks - a tiny, downy fleet -
whose whitening shells still litter.
In a few months the nests will wash away
when whichever caretaker rain god
concludes his pact with Ceres' lineage
and brings down heaven.

It's then the creek remembers
what it's like to pulse and growl
free, for a bit, to muddy the bed
and not just lay silent in a civic collar.

Surface

It began as tension
swirling on the surface
of a soap bubble
a thesaurus of blues
pinks that might make a flamingo green
with envy, purple majesty
the shade of mountains at dusk and thistle at noon
a cascade of yellow like my heaven star
red as a branding iron

I was the skin of a planet
in orbit around your heat
plates shifting, center magma cooling
so quickly I had to wrap myself
in burning oil
when you took your sun to another universe

I learned to carve
runes and scars with fine tipped
words, ever more intricate
a symphony of cuts, incisions that sang
so high that dolphins and bats replied
echolocating is a human skill
you find every nerve
responding if you slice finely enough

I took out thread and needle more fine than flaxen hair
sewing nimbly, looping colors like magnetic solar flares
like a medieval tapestry weaver, patient as a beetle
focused as a lens
when the welts finally heal
and you slide fingertips like reading braille
along the textured surface of each story woven
into my skin

will you remember when I was every color
your eyes ever wanted to drink in?

Spin

Yesterday Jax and Lang ran
laughing all the way into my gut again
catching and throwing a frisbee in the park.
When the grass is fresh cut, it lays down in clumps
and poofs into the air with each step
releasing that green scent
the one that smells like summer.
Folks walking dogs stop to chat
about the coyotes who live in the scrub
and the occasional poster for a "missing cat"
that never goes found. We step among rabbit pellets
but it's too small a park for deer.

It's my favorite part of the day
(except for the skeeters)
lining orange cones 5 yards apart, putting them
through the paces to teach them Ultimate Frisbee.
They only grumble a bit at the sit-ups and pushups
lunges and footwork, more so at the sprints.
I'll be the Pied Piper with plastic discs
paid in smiles and watching them grow
knowing how that spins back the dark
mine,
theirs, setting goals and scoring them.

One dad paused, wanting to bring his own 13 year old
home-schooled boy to join, and maybe ask the new boys
who just moved in, maybe the soccer girls next door,
all of them to gallop like meteors across the sky
and flash teeth like suns. He doesn't get out
much to socialize, maybe it'd be good
for him to meet other kids his age
he suggests. I encourage, Bring him, them,
next time, it'll be good.

Maybe it'll be enough to keep
the roughest part of growing up
from spinning out of control
maybe it'll keep them
from pictures on a poster that's never found

Embarcadero

That time, missing the last BART train leaving
me in the Embarcadero at night, no cab fare:
tire treads grew speakers, every window melted
into a speeding mirror, and footsteps
are never Swiss in the dark.

Even with slit eyes
I wasn't the brave cat, I didn't have fangs
or a cape and my Doc Marten's were half
a size too big to slink with stealth.

Shades and voices grew
inversely to my belly
or somewhere lower
and I was too indecisive
should I stay standing beneath the streetlamp
or scamper into a dark doorway
before they came into view:
spiked hair, four knee high boots, leather motorcycle jackets,
stepping into the light beneath the lamp
laughing at something I didn't make out
and then, stopping, two
girls with shining eyes, the shorter one
casually looping her arm round the other's waist
and inclining her face, kissing
as though nothing else mattered

not the pending bus ride across the bay bridge
or the skinny geek, or other throats echoing, or the cadence
of passing cars thump-thumping down the street,
not harsh yellow light or sharp long shadows
or tomorrow or yesterday or the tangy salty smell
barreling down Market - nothing intruded
and suddenly the dark felt warmer,
though I didn't step closer
they made the night feel safe.

Spark

So with 7 billion souls
in the rear view mirror
what happens to the population
of angels?

Or how about tuna? Or tigers. And corn.
Now there are 14 billion grasping hands
(minus a couple) with 70 billion fingers
(counting the thumbs) so how many plots
need digging when we finish
the last bit of breath and toast
before this life spark that comes from

where does it come from, again?
that spark - was it pulsing in some earthworm
tunneling rich loam in support of a french fry?

I haven't crumbled moist soil between my fingers
for years we haven't played in mud
preferring starry hotels to dirty hands
and the drive-up window to ninety nights
waiting for harvest. We let others dig for us
out of sight, pulling the spark from land
without putting it back, much
but that still doesn't answer where extra angels come from;
haven't heard from mine, at least
I should try digging, maybe
they're stretched thin, covering so many people.

Or maybe there's an asteroid where they grow, somewhere
in the heavens there's a crop waiting for the spark
to keep growing fingers instead of fins
but when I was ten and already falling
away from the church in part because I knew
contrary to what I was told, dogs *do* have souls,
don't they have guardians, too?
So maybe we raided their angel supply
which explains what happened to the last Javanese rhino
and all the elephants.

Search

When I learn to forgive
myself I'll post the answer online
so I can search
and search and maybe find
a thread to stitch it back together.

Identity is like a circus car
all those painted-on smiles spilling out without end
here's the smile you want
no, here it is
dressed up in fancy big shoes
a new red nose, a new blue 'do,
some striped duds that fell off
the last issue of GQ
if GQ was written by clowns

I can never forgive myself
for not being the coolest clown

so if you figure that out
please offer it for cheap on ebay
we'll sell a million copies make a million bucks
I can buy new face paint
scrape my chin blue
maybe that'll make me a clown
memorable enough to never forgive
and not just forgotten

Belong

We all belong
to the dead
soon enough, dear
but until then
gargle that red
pulse, eat black
as though cancer
is anything more
than an expressway

Oh, murder you
say? Of what
kindness, of health
or innocence kept
at the end
of a leash
or a whip
like in beauty
magazines that don't

forget the jealous
and the frightened
who clothe us
in their hatred
of anything different
as though demons
planted in childhood
grew full flower
grown up mouths
filled with poison

But also remember
cool green mornings
an orange sunset
how blue arms
hold up heaven
remember open doors
kind encouraging words
smooth brown banisters
and one smile
just the one
time is all
when you belong
to the living

Yard

Open my front door, cross the crab-grass lawn and narrow street,

Crest Avenue, as though it was the edge of the living world,

hop the chain link fence beneath dark green cypress,

scamper over the broad emerald meadows

then called the 17th and 11th fairways

and there we'd find piles of extra dirt that no longer fit 

into freshly dug graves.

Games to play: dirt clod wars (with the occasional pebble or chunk

of sod); find the oldest gravemarker (something from the 1880's);

jump across a newly interned resident; hide and seek; peek-a-BOO.

Golfers frequently shanked 4 irons into the graveyard;

we'd find the dimpled white balls on our explorations and pretend

they were eggs from some alien creature

or maybe a seagull

before polishing them up like alabaster gems

to try to sell them back to the notorious cheapskates who strode the fairways

in awful tartan slacks and the reek of cigars.

Especially as dusk snuck in with the rolling fog 

and the fog horn lowed its sonorous warning 

like a giant metronome, every minute,

to meandering ships that might wander too close to the hidden shore,

we'd stare upwards as the tip of the flagpole disappeared, 

and nearby the sodium lampposts would flare a futile yellow into the gloom,

while pigeons cooed their lost love songs

amid the old, dripping wet, grey pines. There

above the bones and cherry wood coffins

our voices might drop into silence 

but we could still breathe and laugh

as though tomorrow held no meaning

which, come to think of it,

it didn't much. On occasion we'd vacate 

while the hearse circled the road and women

in black strode clutching bouquets, kneeling, falling away.

We didn't have tomorrow

to worry about, even when the marker

didn't go past a month: Here Lies

someone we didn't know

gone before tomorrow

as though it never happened.