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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.

Elixir

Poseidon sends foam
lips to kiss my feet each time I visit.

The drops say: watch this! and proceed to grab
bits of stone, pebbles, boulders
when I don't notice
grind them every day
until I look up, or rather down
at the crumbs now sticking to my ankles
to be reminded by the rumbling voice
Here you are.

Sand is a liquid
he says
the elixir of memory
where else do you remember
the blinding glint
the scent of coconut and salt
your love's hand
clenching at the snap of a wave
when else do you face eternity
(he ignores Zeus and all the stars at night, of course
and Hades' freshly dug dirt)

He makes me smile when he talks that way
mouthy wet sand
memory sticking to my waist band
and irritating when least expected
but which, when finally washed clear
still returns
here you are

Wigs

G can choose from six wigs
though now, a year post-chemo, mostly it's her own hair
she lets fly in the wind.

There's the blond bob and five shades of brunette
all short compared to R
but a couple lace down to mid-back.

She says there were days she had to find some way to rise
and feed her kids during three hundred days of treatment
so she did, wig or not.

She says her skin, like her clothes, sloughed off her hips.
Photos show her staring at the camera, daring it
to say she looks anything but alive.

Vitiligo developed across her upper chest and back and face
but somehow a heart appeared on her right shoulder blade
about the size of nearly touching your thumb to ring finger

it's still there
although the heart that grew on her face faded.
I think she grew extra because she has more heart than most

anyone I know. So now when she wears spaghetti strap shirts
and the sun comes out if she forgets it turns the pale heart pink
which seems appropriate, if risky, for a cancer survivor.

Still, she smiles when I trace my index finger on the perimeter
like tracking a route on a map of her heart
while her own hair smells of coconut shampoo.

She says she loves Halloween
so maybe the wigs will come in handy then
when she can hide amidst everyone from D.

Memory

If I make a sound
it's an accident
like the rustle of leaves on a sidewalk.

My voice croaks like a toad in reverse
unfurling its long tongue and letting go
a king.

We're petals and wings, we are
bits of color unfolded from the black
self-made origami
excited utterances
that slip back into hiding
whenever the light burns too strong
only to re-emerge, pushed out of the dark
by a breath.

We're dirt-encrusted seeds
secret turns that one by one become leaves, pistils, stamens, flowers,
and seed again
while seed memory - a flower, a heart - flirts with hovering flies
enticing with sweet exhales
until one alights to be stealth painted in pollen
freeloading to the next seed memory.

That's all there is
when the air arrives to lift a wing into flight
or brushes petal lips to catch a scented kiss:
where you once had eyes for me
there is only memory.

One small step

He passed the gate today.
Neil Armstrong soared and we followed, when we could
though so many cage ourselves in
rather than see what might lie beyond.

I didn't see the moon or the earth as he did
a fragile blue-green dot peeping through the starry black
or maybe I do since we learned
(some of us)
that the universe is much bigger than a few hairless apes.

We can peer through the bars.
We can see the birds
still attached by gravity but able to, for a while, leap and cavort.
Maybe that's what he did: allowed our spirits to fly
even though we know the inevitable.

Do you know what field expands on the other side?
What lingers in the fog?
When will we be brave enough to close our predictions
pass through the gate
and let the cool, green scent of grass guide us?