How Long Must I Wait - A poem

How Long Must I Wait

“Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.”
From the Four Great Bodhisattva Vow

You would think we’d grow tired of it:
this need to murder
in the desert
and then lament
those who have died.

Yet, when faced with
the twisted sinews
of the mind, frayed
and torn by so many years of –
is it neglect? misuse?
the wrong path taken again and again?
whatever it is,

I run straight to the temple
looking for answers,
to the question
of my suffering

as if that were the issue,
the thing that is
at stake,

How long must I wait?

Even the question
being asked,
keeps taking me further
from the truth.

How Long Must I Wait - A poem

How Long Must I Wait

“Delusions are inexhaustible; I vow to end them.”
From the Four Great Bodhisattva Vow

You would think we’d grow tired of it:
this need to murder
in the desert
and then lament
those who have died.

Yet, when faced with
the twisted sinews
of the mind, frayed
and torn by so many years of –
is it neglect? misuse?
the wrong path taken again and again?
whatever it is,

I run straight to the temple
looking for answers,
to the question
of my suffering

as if that were the issue,
the thing that is
at stake,

How long must I wait?

Even the question
being asked,
keeps taking me further
from the truth.

Annexed by Desire - A poem

Annexed by Desire
“To fill a Gap
Insert the Thing that caused it-“
Emily Dickinson


But you can’t
Fall again - in love -
not like this,
with the red and yellow leaves
crackling beneath our feet
we shouldn’t be
holding so close
together

up from the ground,
as if to show us
exactly where we are,
a slowly oozing mud,
while halfway around the world,
an opening of hatches,
military aircraft
resuming their assaults
on terrorists.

Whatever caused us to believe
these stories about happiness we tell?

Even the sparrows
don’t care to stay and look,
as my hands slide down
your back,
quickly,
into enemy territory.

My Lover, Monsanto - A Poem

My Lover, monsanto


My lover, monsanto,
who owns the garden,
who does me well by choosing
the seeds the food will grow by,
is out in the fields as we speak,
sweeping the dead away
so that our love can grow some more.

Who owns the garden?
my lover monsanto,
who is out in the fields
wrenching the soil
for the food the new body
of food needs to grow.

Who does me well by choosing
but my lover monsanto
who is out in the fields
as I lie here on a bed of food
waiting for the August winds
to blow in the harvest
of September.

“The seeds the food will grow by,”
my lover monsanto tells me,
“take the soil by force
and clear the fields
like a fresh sheet
clears the air after love.”

My lover, monsanto, is out in the fields as we speak,
and I cannot wait much longer
for the seeds the food grow by
to come in and make themselves at home.

“Sweeping the dead away,”
my lover Monsanto tells me,
“is easier after the sun has
cooked the bodies down
to a skin so light that
even the slightest wind
can come and take it away.”

“So that our love can grow some more,”
my lover Monsanto tells me,
feeding me the tomato
that ran over all the others,
“So that our love can grow some more,”
I hear, as I eat the corn
that cleared the fields
of all the flowers
and quieted the skies above them
by sweeping away,
ever so softly,
the loud, loud monarchs.

Image/Her-Story - a poem

Image/Her-Story


Bent over a bowl, her
hands froze in water.

Lost: the life that came
before, and after

she was disrobed
and set before us.

As it is, she appears
to be traditional:

White, orderly, slightly
rough but modest.

This is what we see
at least, but then again

there is that rumor,
the one about the maker

Mary Cassatt
and that painter of ballerinas,

a trifling little thing,
or maybe not

but in any case,
not usually part of

her story, or history,
just like the life

of the woman
she set before us.

The Language of Home as it Stood in 1984 - A poem

The Language of Home as it Stood in 1984

“I have my own place and live there alone.
In some ways we shape each other perhaps.”

William Bronk “The House That Doesn’t House”

Our’s was a home
that gained no intimacy in winter.

While the snow outside
washed away the grammar
of the previous year's suffering,
the high ceilings
and hardwood floors
held on to the cold
we produced tightly.

Ours was a grammar
of five word sentences
and silent,
restrained gestures.

It was nothing short
of a religion,
agitated psalms falling
from the haunted attic
to the crumbling basement,
where the adopted cat lived,
making its own grammar
out of the leftovers.

What it built
was a lexicon
without a built in warning,
so, that, when the cat
sank it's teeth
into the calves
of each of our legs,
we could have taken that
as the missing signal,
but instead chose to maintain
our own places,
and send the cat packing instead.


*Note - the majority of this poem comes from a series of poems I wrote in 2001.

Happiness Begrudges An Interview - A poem

Happiness Begrudges An Interview

Before you ask
Yes
It is cold out
and
No
I will not be staying,
not with you like this,
having to be
like a doll for you
to dress up and parade
down one street after another.

No! I will not
be doing that again,
nor will I
be handing out
directions
to my house.

If you want
to find me,
you’ll have to stop
all that incessant chatter,
call and then listen,
call and then listen…

Any questions?