A Cargo of Green Hearts
~POEMS~
All manner of tears
sparkle on my table each day of my life has been a dreadful awakening beneath the centrifuge in my backyard there's a tree that refuses to give up the least of its terrible fall luminosity and clings in wrinkled leaves all winter even the acid rain can't profane it. Thirty years ago I asked where, what sad cup of the body keeps the soul. Today, they are dragging my neighbor's immigrant daughter away in a Wal Mart uniform to work at Wal Mart the gigantic bees of headlights corral in my suburb nightly I am alone at maximum sheep density dear Sasha, everything is wrong; everything caves in my face and pockets the moon creaks ungainly on the highway we have forced it on Emma couldn't answer me I was hugging that tree in my backyard again the light, oh the light through the trees is so beautiful it burns my throat like helium; it wants to lift me even now I do not wish for children to take trombone practice the tree sways its leaves swim in place, green stars I stretch my body thin, lullaby thin brown-dirty as dirt my neighbors daughter her braces, she marionettes like Brittney Spears in the Wal Mart uniform; but I am in love with her fifty years hence when she has grown fierce and penitent as a reborn Emma Goldman. I am looking for something to love fiercely she calls back from her future parking lot dredging the hardtop with hair like a weeping willow Where in the soul is the earth kept? asks the tree to me the night swarms with its reverse light the spring peepers rage against the insult of electrical progress one last time I, too, have grown into a bad prophet I tell them I have forgotten like so many of you. . my heart breaks every time I touch the sea.
all these comings and goings, the tides with their silver breath, the many-doored fog in which all directions are one the long sunrises that evaporate night. the sound of gulls penduluming the air chip all my memories into little pieces. I will throw that glass into the waves. the brine of saltmarsh leans inland to touch my nose with the tip of its dense tongue. it tastes like the sex of primitive gods. the tidepool is full of secrets. starfish are stitching this fragile earth together. if you meet me here, anything could happen. we could get lost in it. a hundred thousand years ago the ancestors of whales returned to the sea. they never came back. their voices lengthened, their word for yes stretched into hours, so long so quiet you could lie down on it. imagine that the body
of a thing is inhabited by the spirit of another thing and this is true for all things― for snow plows and socks bridges and elephants kazoos and staplers. for instance the body of a snowplow is inhabited by the spirit of a parrot the body of a birthday cake inhabited by a typewriter the socks, spirit of a discarded bowling trophy and one day the snowplow decides it is a parrot and will not push snow until the highway department man paints its beak bright orange, yellow and black and one day you see your socks snake away from your miserable feet and leap for the top of the bookcase for even the watermelon has its own green ghost, its true love. people, too are misinhabited are lonely their spirits not their own eventually they get the wish to be something else a doormat, a spider a hurricane, a child’s doll a slashed tire, a river in Antarctica but imagine: for some of us spirits come and go as if we were carpentered of shutters or the sea everything staggers through us like a drunken uncle slamming eyelids & doors our whole life shakes for no reason or smokes like a burning sofa or erupts with gills and fins we mutilate the clocks of our heads we shoot holes in aquariums we baa or grunt or nail ourselves to matchsticks we bathe in kerosene but maybe a few so very few so precious few startled by our bodies, our own sweet apples find the heart isn’t a container but a channel through which all earth pebbles through and our loneliness where is our loneliness? . I.
this is what I have learned from being a bear: that I will move toward the trap every time, even after the mangled foot like a broken star the buckshot-stung leg the scarified nose a taste of honey is irresistible. the instinct is this: to roar like a tuba to bite the trap to rip off the offending paw and leave it as a dark fuck you to the hunter. I have learned this as a bear. I have also learned why there are no three legged bears. II. one would think, so the mind now human slippery and clever avoid the trap, bargain with the hunter or disappear into the forest of wild honey and shadows that close like wombs around the old hunger or seek out the red stag that will drive its tines in my flesh for why not at least meat, rich, red, is worth the suffering honey will not quench. this is what I have learned from being human. I have also learned that at the end of running and struggle I will look into the glass of my brown eyes and see a three legged bear. III. there is more, if you can stand the thought of it. wait a moment. settle down into the long winter of your thoughts digest the fat of your longing go deep into the slow dreams that will teach you. wait. listen to the snowflakes touch their small sensitive feet on this quiet earth. IV. and now, if I am at last awake and ready: I will admit finally how every square inch of earth is honey how every square inch of earth is trap how the two love each other like salsa dancers love hips. there is no escape that is escaping enough there is no bargaining that is bargain enough there is no anger shattering enough there is no sorrow drowning enough to wash this pattern away. what then knowing this I put it to you my trap, my honey and I yours: what will we be to each other now sad-eyed bears or clever human beings or something else. to enter the trap willingly not drugged or howling to move as quiet as oil through the rust on its mechanism together parts of a whole. there is no greater love no shattering more complete. V. a constellation was placed in the sky to lead us beyond forgetting when we have forgotten. a bear, a hunter. to see it as two parts is to become lost. the pattern was carpentered of light by the Makers of Light. in the end there is no pattern and the light, the blessed light, is everything. in the dream I rode slumped and dozing
bareback on the elephant. how I got there feels beside the point: the skin like an old warm glove heart thumping in my ear a sound like a basketball dribbled in an empty gymnasium. how light the burden of my body which I could barely carry from room to room day to day without dragging gouges through the carpet leaving an unfinished array in my wake. and perhaps you too have been lifted once or twice when your feet evaporated and your heart melted like salt and if so did you ever like I think how everything all of it kneels to lift everything the way the sun stoops on the horizon and hoists the blue blanket sky over us all sans complaint sigh did you ever think how everything bows to everything each link in chain borne by the next right down to atoms covalent in their love for bearing carrying the form absolute on their pinpoint electron zithered backs and so when next the elephant arrives for you respiring with lungs like a moon-sized drums will you wonder how silly how foolish it is to stand on your pride when the mountain itself exalts in stooping? |
Poetry LogPoems are posted here when I'm ready to share them. I often don't title my poems. The date you see above the poem may be the date it was posted here and not necessarily the date it was created. To see more, click on the Archives below. Archives
January 2020
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