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beginning with 2013 National Poetry Writing Month (NaPoWriMo)

Six letters

Empty bags, liters, lines
on your brow, smaller numbers
reading across the scale, six letters
make up the four-letter word
then five more
and now three
years later, more than a thousand
days since those words scrubbed
each other onto your face
into your heart and everyone
pretends that normal
is the new six letters.

The others don't
know what this means
when they see you
now; the wigs are bagged up
skin and bone
clothes grace the closet
haunting is not the word
one might say, or gaunt
when looking at your cheeks
now, again, pink not white.
The others don't
really want to know
what the six letters are
unless they spell normal
or common or health
since looking at you
is indistinguishable from seeing roses,
or pumpkins, or the sea.

Sea. C. There's the scary letter
only now it's a different six, a new
beginning, a b, a beauty
so those six, those
will be the ones we know you by
leaving the others behind.

Thinner

Grandmom kept receipts, invoices, statements, bills,
bundled with now-decayed rubber bands,
placed there carefully by her gnarled hands,
stacked and boxed, 1992 Home Savings,
1952, here's a Valentine's Card from her children
and a letter from her sons in the orphanage
where she kept them, being too poor
to house them at home with their sisters,
now tiny black and white contact prints
from negatives so rich from silver
dimes practically spill out of them -
Mom at 10 months like every other baby
in the lineage, squint eyes and dark hair
held at a distance by her unsmiling father.

And here is another: Pete The Greek, Grandmom's step-dad,
his only photo, saved perhaps because his wife is in it too,
plus the laminated prayer card announcing his funeral,
Mary Mother of God on one side, his life in two sentences
on the other, only it doesn't say what she always called him
"that son of a bitch" with the calumny that can only come
from close acquaintance.

Here they are together in bathing suits at the beach, Grandmom and Grandfather
   (though it doesn't sound right, Grandfather, he never returned
   after the war, stayed in Hong Kong far from his children, Mom
   didn't say much the day he died, just sobbed into her hands
   for the only time I ever remember her crying)
their arms around each other, Joe tall and handsome, Jean nearly as tall
showing her legs, the sand blaring, and on the reverse, August 3, 1935,
and I count
which means this photo was pretty
much taken when Mom was conceived
which also explains why Grandmom's smile
was the widest in any of the images
until the one captured the day her baby
graduated from University.

Our days are thinner now.
Images don't count
as much as when 90 cents for a packet of photos
cost a day's labor, and the one-inch-square memory
tucked away in an old envelope
next to a child's scrawled note, kept safe for 60 years
sustained imagination and memory
and eyes thick with living

Hearing

Most mornings I awake thinking
of you sleeping, breathing
rhythmically as a metronome,
the bass beneath a melody,
eyelids closed moons, eyebrows
two hovering clouds
above the day yet to unfold.

I imagine you embarking
into consciousness: they say the last
sense before death is hearing
but isn't it too the first before life, hearing
an alarm, or if you're lucky
in the spring finches whose yellow
or red breast feathers might grace
the pine needles just outside the window
or when I was lucky, your rhythm.
Maybe your brow lightly purses, or a sigh
escapes like air being let from a dream balloon
before you open fully to the light.
The music changes in your breath
at least, that's how I remember hearing it
though you don't play that tune
for me anymore.

Most mornings I awake with words
that might be poems on my lips
rather than kisses on your cheekbones

Maybe it's scent that's last to go
cinnamon, or vanilla, or you


...........


edit: original post 3.16.13.
posted to imaginary garden with real toads June 17 Open Links

Tracks

You left tracks like seaweed
dragged across wet sand
we sat for a pulse

and when we walked, the waves
washed them away.
My head in your lap

blue sky white clouds
the murmur of water retreating
into the next urgent swell arriving

Hafiz, from my lips to your ears.
We didn't kiss that day
nor in the parking lot

before you drove off into your secret
future, always looking to your left
dipping your chin, biting your lip

like someone was whispering
or kissing you there already
except those few times you smiled

like a lily, like freshly fallen snow on a split rail,
like the crescent moon
and as far

Happy birthday

Spine taller
voice lower
but scratchy
feet longer
jeans skinnier
four and
ten years
my son.

Eyelids crinkle
brows narrow
lips turn
up one
side only
until no
containment possible
laughter leaps
treetop high.

Valentines day
is his
no stupid
cards, no
forced love
just heart
every year
the same
love only
much bigger.

Conspiracy

All the conspiracies
are true:
guilty as sin, as an apple
hitting Newton's head
or water finding the easiest path

which if you've seen a riverbed isn't
straight until the Army Corps
paves it that way.
Forget evidence
or long thinking

forget anything which challenges
complexity. After all Occam's razor
cuts out all the difficulty
leaving only the simplest behind
so it must be true

that the weather isn't any more wacky
than we are used to
and that 6000 revolutions of the earth about the sun
are all the years passed since Genesis.
And faggots will cause society to crumble

just like the niggers did, like the kikes did, like
the nips and towel heads and micks and wops
the wetbacks and feminazis and viet cong, commies
and unions and journalists and and and
everyone who won't support what's right

it's a god damned conspiracy
that I can't find the remote
the price of beef went up
the government won't pay my doctor bill
and when I step on the gas now it don't go fast

like when I was 17
could see my feet
bluejays and redbirds fought for seeds at the feeder
not these black crows and gray pigeons
and I didn't need a pill to be a man

ice

I'm certain
you're not
the only one
to hear the crinkle of broken ice
underfoot, after a night freeze,
like laughter through a window
or the tug of tumbling stones
broken over and over
by incoming waves.

Have you ever stared at sepals
pursed tighter than a scowl
patiently waiting past
setting and rising suns
certain they'll open
more sure than the sweet tang of ice cream
that your reward
is just
moments, a minute, just a minute

then the sound
maybe only your imagination
and you glance away
but in that instant you weren't attentive
then
that's when

the clink and crash of ice underfoot
sounds like a broken promise.

E

My first favorite letter
must be E
for exuberance. For effort. For the first big animal
the elephant on a flash card, its arm of a nose
like a trumpet made of laughter, and E
gets to be big and loud and different and noisy.

You're past the slow beginnings, but it's still early, 7:15
on a sunny morning, when steam rises off grass
like a gassy promise, the alphabet has so much future
and here come the big words, exultation,
electric, ecstatic. Here is the rest
of the day ahead, the year, the life before us,
it's turning 12
and knowing your A-B-C's is commonplace
but now you get to the meat, the heart, the future of life
and little words haven't crawled up
to weigh you down, words haven't emptied you out
leaving you exhausted, waiting for the end.

E isn't like that. Not in the morning. It carries
the future. It's in everything, it's everywhere
it follows love and makes it complete,
it's even in absence

which is why I can spell sons
without it
and still know my favorites are in there.

for D. and A.

All the big
words don't matter
much in the quiet

days following the final exhale.
The beautiful woman whose gossamer garments
filled up moments
colors bright as a butterfly swarm
with lives just as short

her fingers empty of fingers

coolly inhaling, still
heart still beating

and none of the words matter.

13

He wears his shoulders higher
so much so mine no longer drape
and must climb a bit

while he gravels his voice
and places foot astride my shoe
apprising how soon

he'll be lord
though in practice
he manages his minion brother to distraction

in the frozen section at the market
the same spot I once leaned over
his feet dangling from the carrier

squirming at the cold
so the kind lady reached in
handed the box

to him, cooing, both
smiling
completely

unlike today, brothers bickering
like a murder
of crows

Crows

14 crows perch on the neck
and shoulders of the middle-aged pine
squabbling no doubt over whose is
the blowing wrapper lifted from the bins

and whose is the too-much-so-toss-it
lettuce shreds, corn-fed cow bits
all a-splat, HFCS ketchup bleeding everywhere
from hideously smooth buns.

If they preen my eyes can't discern
but for a flash of sallow beak against black feather.
It's said that crows have voracious memories
and will pester anyone who disturbs them

remembering faces for years, memories
of ancient wrongs they've been storing
in the clouds far longer than any computer
so I studiously avoid shooing them

just measuring the 14 steps from my door to the ground
and 32 paces around the bend to my silver car
sometimes wondering where the color
in birds went, and where went their songs

Re/Solution

The first one didn't quite
solve so gotta redo
gonna re-solve
a re/solution
this new year.

First, write.
Check.
Second, solve.
Second again, re/solve.
Third, learn
to count.

Imma gonna make a list
makes me a makealist
sorta like a realist
but not really.

On that list everything I won't eat
exercises not to do
people not to see
music not to listen
thoughts not to think
the first time
only the second, the re/solve

complete, the second time around.

Bait

After it rained the other night
getting in the car
taking the boys to school
stepping from curb to street
over the gutter with water still flowing
Lang noticed several worms
squiggling like fish squirming
as if asking to be bait
which he wanted to collect them for
save them in a jar
Where would you keep them
in the fridge
until Saturday and then
to the jetty.

But we had to go
get bagel sandwiches before the bell rang
and Jax scoffed at the fridge idea
said Come ON Lang let's GO
so the boys scuffed into their seats
crossed their chests
safety belts like a talisman, a blessing
to keep them safe
until they get to school

where everyone is safe

Meanwhile those worms
probably didn't make it back up to the lawn
since the waiting crows
winged down in my rear view mirror
from perches closer to heaven
black in the treetops
patient as night
whispering as they descended
with open beaks

it's never safe

Kiliminjaro

I'm going to stumble through
all the tense verbs, imperfect
simple future present past

There, floating, hanging
like ducks in Chinatown, every word
dead, waiting to be chewed, spit, shit

Sometimes I turn on the foreign language channels
to see if I can lip read
any better

It rained no it didn't
so much as cascade, proverbial buckets,
adjectives, nouns, adverbs insufficient for the torrent
on Kiliminjaro's flanks
post-climb, all 20 miles down from the highest huts
where I'd left my red guts
back to base camp in a single running descent
to keep the jelly in my skull from exploding.
We walked beneath the canopy, all I remember
is brown mud, brown bark, slate wet, a green leaf wall,
black shadow, tan thatch, charcoal shadowed doorways
silence silken as falling water
(learning that Gore-tex was no match for this rain)

and then a hand reached out
beckoning us out of the deluge
into the smoky cool beneath a thatch cone
while on the brazier fire, sized like an old Folgers' can
fire is the wrong word, it was much more efficient
a pot, a ladle, some words
they were speaking some words
perhaps Swahili. Jeannette tried French
once English got the head shake
and a bowl was offered, accepted.
We sipped. How many faces were there?

If there is shame, it's that I don't recall
who these people were, how many, their names and faces,
we were the strangers with shoes
and coats that cost a year's pay locally
but still couldn't keep out the rain
yet still swept in, sustained with a smile,
shared with

they would not accept our paper money
as the sky slipped away.

5, 10, 15

It's this
week again, where we lose
time and people
every year the same
loss

5, 10, 15:

the 5th was Roberto spinning off the earth
into the ditch when the square inch of bike tire
no longer hugged the road
and his brother Carl's arms
couldn't hug life in

the 10th was Caleigh not quite seeing light
stuck as she was by the midwife's needle
when we trusted not knowing Lori
kept fear loaded in the syringe

she would have been 15 this year
maybe she's wearing a quinceanera dress
decked out in rhinestone
stars pulled from heaven

I don't quite know what to do
with the quiet
echo of his laugh
and the hanging moment
when the doppler was silent
5, 10, 15 seconds, no heartbeats

no heartbeats after

Thunder haikus

Kisses on eyelids
like raindrops, more, many more
kisses like wet stars


The sky groans, so long
since last released, dripping wet
flashing everyone


After the rain, who falls?
Gods, men, angels and devils?
What grows, what comes next?


She moves off, thunder
in the far, like god or love
faint ghostly echoes


Today, someone leaves
to thunder, arcs light the way
while others arrive


If thunder brought you
kisses like yesterday's rain
would you recall me?


Lightning rainbow pure
white fills the sky, letting loose
liquid thunder tears


The gods roll big dice
close at hand, while the losers
weep for lost chances

Space

I try to imagine all the space
she would have grown into
pink baby shoes, leotards, size 6 heels
the depression
in her chair from sitting
liters of sports drink, drunk post-soccer
hair clips, shampoo bottles, ear plugs

my hands are still
empty, a few seconds of seven pounds
nearly fifteen sun circuits since
and I yet wonder
what words would have filled the space
when I tucked her in at night

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