naked bicyclists ride past

with

shouts

and horns.

the mouse

 we have no agreement to meet

but we do

as

some nights

wandering into lit rooms

she pauses staring,

starting when I'm startled but

she never runs. Turning and walking away

she's resigned to my presence.

I've become part of her

search for food.

I like this mouse

and cannot fault her for

her bravery

or desperation.

 

She arrived just in time

for my final days in this home,

around the time my anxiety was highest,

waiting for a visa.

 

I think of her as a companion,

searching  

as we both are 

for something

to sustain us.

 too much

he said

time 

to unpack

edit

pack again

herbarium

 boneset

comfrey

dead nettle

 

crysanthemums seeping through the baseboard

 

don't let the dogs near tansy, foxglove

 

 

 

For the last season of its life

a sumac glen

makes 

rabbits again

while nearby, 

young plums,

some removed for future fruit,

now wonder how

they'll survive.

 

 

september garden

common valerian's

pure white,

as the goat's beard,

now skeletal,

rises

aloft

far from

soft

wild phlox, 

still

sweet.

 

At phlox feet,

creeping bellwort,

returning.

 

Learning that the

New England aster,

purple haloes

bursting through,

mark the

pin cherry's brutal death 

earlier this year.

Clearly, 

hedge bindweed 

has its

heart set on

calico aster.

 

Slowing

bees

lay stunned

under

goldenrod

rigida and canadensis

as an autumnal

spiderwort of

bluest blue

cursively

creeps

into

the cooling night

 

singing

 lined out hymnody

Gaelic Back singing

Isle of Lewis Free Church

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S3XDunMj2Y

 

schadenfreude  

epicaricacy 

loitering envy

precarious

antonyms

for

Mitgefühl

compassion

sudden German

 grommet

(grumbles)

 

__________________

reisenmeer

(clear skies)

______________________

Gestaltblatt

(leaf seas)

______________________

 

 

 

Flow

Floe 

Floo

Flew

 Locust tree

Frigate bid

Conic planthopper

 

another reel

ハチドリ (hachidori, hummingbird)

or

Oosukashiba

hummingbird hawk moth

 

then drawn

 

red lozenged on stone

crosshatch on bone

 

kept

and counted

though 

little-known

 

 to pare

so spare

that

this

life

becomes

translucent

 late summer

sunflowers

blueberries

so

many

bees

 the vehicle 

a mouse

in the house

removing obstacles

If approval doesn't come

one must

consider

nomadic 90 days

stays in Portugal

and UK

or

more importantly 

back to Asia

There is no ease

no please

that will open doors on what

or

with what

luck

 Neptune southeast

on the horizon

a blue room

between solstice and equinox

moonlit

 

2 dreams summer 1993

1

I passed a dilapidated Victorian, grime-smeared, sprayed with graffiti.

The street level shop windows were boarded, the upper windows broken. I approached the building and touched it lightly. The entire building crumbled into a fine and beautiful dust. 

Trees, growing in dirt squares surrounded by sidewalk, began to snicker. 

2

Mozart's Ah Tutti Contenti

from the Marriage of Figaro,

finely spun!

A pond appeared

where turtles sung.

Maria Robusti (1993)

Maria Robusti

What would you have thought

of a still damp drawing of a pregnant mare?

Lifting your eyes, as I did,

would you have felt

a shiver of recognition, a sudden nearness

to that long-dead artist?

Would you have left Rouffignac

with that graceful image

embedded in your bones?

1993

 This is for you, my dear

who in that year

could have filled your

umeployment forms out

in ancient greek

or very poetic French.

It was frustrating to watch you

write letter after letter

seeking work

when you had enough work

(filled the rest of your days).

What really were you after

but a little money to get by on?

 

You told me then, and I hear you now, say the future has no hold on us,

we're too close to the present, and we gain nothing from desire,

however enticing, without this god damn struggle just to stay alive,

to create.

dreams

 1

of chicory, and a vision

snow blown from a tree

fruit blossoms falling

it's a cherry tree, too

2

near a dark lake

deer have eaten

all the hyacinth -

their spring asparagus

 3

pileated woodpeckers

over a foot high

are eating suet

an arm's length away

4

I am able to see tiny creatures 

feeding on my skin

molting exoskeletons 

or

5

a cornfield

lit by thousands

of tiny abdomens

 

 

 

 

 

 

1997

january 21st

Dad had his operation last night. The doctors found tumors in his colon, lesions in his

large and small intestines, skin tumors, bone cancer. His body's crumbling. The cancers will reach a large organ, the brain, in months not years. 

We send flowers with sweet smelling lilies. Mary and Maureen cry a lot. Paula thank god she's so damn efficient and fair, clear thinking.

Dad did it. He lived long enough to take care of mother.

Hope Dad lives to see spring, Paula says.

 

march 4th

Dad's in very recent chemo

may give him unhoped-for months

Mare and maureen there

and Mom comes home

lots of busy

wears mom and dad out

a good thing

a long straight sleep rare for them these days

the guilt

have we done enough?

as many answers as family

but I suspect

always in the negative

cannot be otherwise

living through dying is full of surprises

love. separation.

bittersweet ordinary.

 

 

 

april 17

 warm spring smell

trees prickly with roundthorned buds

 

we've overwintered another year here

today we walk to the river

 

downy woodpecker, nuthatches, geese 

and lovesick gulls

holding hands

I know we

are formed first by love -

his patience, suffering

shuts me up

a lucky woman

to have such a  graceful partner

savor joy

it is not forever

 

 

 a flexible form

a vocabulary of "wave"

as

non-specific meditative signifier

for example

a buffalo cow

seen through

human height Silphium 

or

an old trout

in a water glen

of aspen

morning

 the heat

will come 

this street

wide and open

a crooked cross

there 

is n't 

enough

time

for 

too

much

august birds

1

goldfinch

flew through

strewn tansy 

 

2

august heat

completes

swallow-altering

air

 

3

female finch's

lament

hawk-quickened 

spent

 

 

the beds

Women held you 

as you passed 

from one world to another

on pale iron beds

white as moons

in rooms of skin 

and tulips.

You, purpling between sheets, 

breathing first

a cry

or

at the end

a sigh

of transcendence.

 

 

 

walks

ought to, every day,

walk.

A walk

that ought

but wasn't

doesn't mean

you'll

never ever

have

another.

the small boat (o pequeno barco)

bilge water

bow -

how

below 

I know 

charts

the course

cussed

 then

again

swear

where

we 

prose or poemed

regenerate

compost

into

love.

God's names.

Mother's.

Sacrifice.

Lust.

Cussed into and out of us -

because

we weren't

we are never

enough.

 

 

I have regained 

my love of

sleeping,

and my head is oh so clear.

But, my dear,

ataraxia

has its limits.

prescience

 (undated 2017)

pour  place  pathos  pursuit  plague

 

plague.

 die ewige Wiederkehr (des Gleichen) [Nietzsche]

the endless return of the same

ataraxia - a state of serene (inner) calmness [Epictitus]

 
καταστηματικός - (katastēmatikós)

The term 'ataraxia' is used in Epicurean philosophy to refer to a type of katastematic pleasure that is engendered by a complete freedom from mental disturbances and worries.

the pleasure of equilibrium and balance

_______________________________

ancient thought on conservation or matter [Epicurus. Lucretius]

"seeds" generate things, things are composed of invisibly small particles which

seemed to argue against Zeno's paradox that "you cannot deconstruct anything

beyond a certain point"

modus tollens

the rule of logic stating that if a conditional statement (“if p then q ”) is accepted, and the consequent does not hold ( not-q ), then the negation of the antecedent ( not-p ) can be inferred. 

if P, then Q, But not -Q,  therefore not -P 

are the number of atomic shapes infinite?

review Epicurean 

 

 

numbers poem (undated winter 2013- 2014)

12  26

There is no reason to fear what isn't

or what is going to happen

13  25

is there?

14  24

light is so many darks

is

infinite

is, is

15  23

there is no formula for happiness

16  22

carving out a niche

a channel

a cove

17  21

illum...

an unintellig...

wor...

is

18  20

light came from the horizon I knew

19  19

the direction was up

20  18

eyes dim as the illness progresses

21  17 

death is not an illness

22  16

terminus

that mysterious illuminata that

23  15

survivor of myth

24  14

my daughter my son

and their children's children

have eyes

25  13

what will they see?

26  12

thirty-four generations ago

you placed a mirror

27  11

in my grave

and it's still there

28  10

shooting stars showers and 

twenty-eight

29  9

even the first lens was lit here

30  8

distance?

forward

backward

an illusion 

31  7

evolving around a fiery star

32  6

in the distance?

surely you see

33  5

lights don't clock

but age

34  4

age ago

and again

and afterward

often all at once

35  3 you

too

you too!

36  2

read

forward backward

up and down

37  1 

direct your gaze to the stars

 

observation poems and prose 1986 - 2014

12.4.86

     to remember: the idea of place:

the twilight landscape w/ dreams/ experiences

I think my heart is in the art of painting "lies',

in mingling myths and real events with

the sky and the land.

     Stars as moving spirits in the sky,

Ingrid Washinawatoc's red sign

in the sky, twins the fog over

the wall, the white blurred sun in the sky.

     You must keep the painting fresh, 

learn the way to stow and return, start fresh

each thing. many moments paintings 

seem to have lives of their own. 

12.9.86

sometimes you need the cool greenness of this land

as surely as you need bread and water. you need to

hear the land, no matter the muffling it takes in a city park.

sometimes I want to cry out loud, curse my foggy brain.

I've tried too hard to fit in, not take life seriously,

but life is a beautiful, serious to me. I want to

live awake, not in this dulled state where true things slip

slowly and quietly away. There is a fencing feeling.a pent up sorrow 

for lost things too early,  far too early in life. What good is health

if your heart is not in living?

Have to pray a long, long way to hear my voice clear again.

 

4.30. 87

THE FIRES OF BELTANE - green, purple, red in the night sky

BADLANDS - S. Dak. fossils of 3-toed horses, saber-toothed cats, a type of camel no larger than a dog

in a land now sparsely populated by rock wrens and coyotes.

MYTH

To the Yuki  (N. Cal tribe), the creator was Taikómol, the solitude walker

The Plains   view of the buffalo reminds me of Aaron and Moses and the Mt. of God.

 

5.5.87

I feel as if  was caught up in a tangled net, the sum of my mixed emotions for those I loved.

(childhood)

green things making food by eating the sun 

Seek a philosophy that grows out of the lives of......

8.29.87

things to remember:

 the small orange butterfly in the green, green grass 

sound of raking leaves

the trees

3:00 and fog is coming in, greying (above).

The lower things still very bright and clear.

-fog-

- yellow light, clear blue sky, earlier 2 kinds of cloud

- saw a striped cat in the middle of Laguna Honda lawn

pounce on s/t unseen.

- remembrance and the eye - vision w/ spirit

 

8.31.87

3   -  a sphere  the wind  a wave

Q: Does this recurrent preoccupation w/ a 

spiritual significance in nos. bespeak

my Catholic background? Or is it

s/t found in most religions, a basic desire

to join 2 disparate mental processes?

9.14.87

the trees remember

Bonaventure  

1 LUX: "light in itself"

motion and inner earth energy =

"minerals" (genes) + "seeds" of life

2 LUMEN: "light that travels through

space, borne by a transparent medium"

3 COLOR + 4 SPLENDOR: c = "light

of terrestial bodies", s = "luminous bodies"

both reflective light

idea of "deeper significance in ordinary things...AN

INDEFINITE FEELING WHICH MAY BE CALLED UP
AT ANY MOMENT."

Saint Paul

VIDEMUS NUNC PER SPECULUM IN AENIGMATE, TUNC AUTEM FACIE
AD FACIEM. 

We see through a glass darkly, but then face to the face.

theophany - a visible manifestation to humankind of God or a god 

hylomorphism - the doctrine that physical objects result from the combination of matter and form.

undated 1987, 1988

My dad, he wanted to sing beautiful songs for a living, he wanted to dream.

Instead he helped Grandpa, a mean man, and often groaned in his sleep. 

Why so hard to follow your calling and still love your family?

My friend Julie used to drive out to meadows and run naked, alone, through them.

I used to think it mad but now no more mad than seeking special hills 

or seeing a bird in a man, as other friends do. We each need to plant our peace

in a part of the land, a reassurance of our mutual wonder and respect.

There is a kind of resistance, a wrestling that thanklessly conspires 

to create you in a different way. 

1.21.88

Last night (beach)

early eve - 121.88 (1.22.88)

exceptional mils weather,

warm, lite wind.    (sand bar)

 

Twilight. clds [clouds], rooftop

reflected in dark pool, trees

 

8.8.89

light coming out of the darkeness - an idea of "touch"

(please touch) of an art that reaches yet remains at rest 

(solitude) quietly accessible, truthful.

Language of the interior (the eye) is moved by thought,

thought is the form of thing removed from sight

and remembered.

This is a way to cull s/t essential in painting.

This is a partial path. Always the sense of the nature

of the object remains, reminding the painter of her role. 

 

10.8.92

On rocks:

in them, traces of exhilaration,

movements betraying their glacial origin. 

Standing stones, human-laid, are also

marked by arrested movement.

The "stillness" of stone:

a kind of necessary touch,

we humans need to place things w/in 

the impermanence that surrounds us. 

November 17 1996

what she wishes for is a prayer 

that hasn not lost its power to

consume the spiritin god's fire-

she longs for the separation to end

but realizes the futility of her dream. 

 

I had a dream last night.

Looking down and across a white-capped sea, I saw a pod of whales 

ALL OF A DIFFERENCE

belugas, great blue, barnacled, humpback, 

breaching, spouting, singing.

 

Today I saw a stuccoed wall that appeared to show the worn

labor of a thousand handprints.

 

compassion for all living things

suffering is real and ever-present

life is

(whether or not we are aware of it)

following a course through life that is full and right...

How small I seem when I read the poets and naturalists, 

and yet as vital to all as the smallest creature....

 

2004

Die Prinzen

Hamlet

Medina Azahara

Einstürzende Neubauten

Collapsing new buildings

 

we are inundated

you call out but the waters have stilled your voice

you are between flood and sky, and your world sinks around you

you climb to the highest place,

but nothing will save you from the rising waters

 

1 Dec 2007

entanglements

In my darker moments, there is no Holy Family of humanity,

only isolation, injury, insensitivity .

A lover's word, a husband's kiss, does not unite but accents

the loneliness of the soul. It's worse to anticipate,

then one excites one-sided expectations. better to

return to the slow painful practice of disallusion,

better to make the supreme effort to love all but not one better others.

Will detachment surrender to joy?   

 

21 March 2011

 

bright day, dry

when is being remembered, as dark and light...

it's so many things...

i n t e r f e r e n c e

ghosts  dirt  memory  the body

h o r i z o n          s h o r e (s e a)

                            s h i f t  to

                            b a n k (r i v e r)

                            g r a s s  l e d g e (c u l v e r t) 

l i n e s                w a v e

                            d i r e c t i o n  o f   f l o w

                            t i l l e d  e a r t h

what is this, stilled?

liquid  solid  air

an exercise in breath

breath: let go, distill

______________

enten glements (arrangements)

d i a m o n d   s u t r a

 

7. 24. 2017

as a child

afraid of the dark

 

Rikyu black

 

perhaps even blackness

or an extract of blackness

can survive the walls of our rooms

 

To witness blackness

my be the closest we can come to the preent,

that is

"to a pure limit between the past and the present"

 

わび -

"depth" of the object

the material it is made from becomes secondary

to the image the completed object presents to the eye"

(Lafayette DeMente)

tanka

poetry writing contributes to self-discipline...appreciation

of the beauty of nature and life... finally tranquility."

(ibid.)

 

Bear Butte 

cloth string tobacco prayer -

american windhorses

 

Deganahwida

the great white pine

a canoe of white stone

 

Gernika

lumo, oak

 

these trees  - oak  ash  pine  fig

5 pure lights

Yggdrasil

green ash tree - 9 worlds

the fates (Norns) place a rooster each morning atop Yggrasil.

It's bragging wakes humans and gods.

The Norns water Yggrasil daily.

An eagle and a dragon have their emnity enflamed by a

gossiping squirrel (sladder egern)

Lif a man and Liftraser a woman

will hide in the branches of Yggdrasil during Ragnarock.

emerging after to repopulate the world. 

Huginn and Munin - will they survive Ragnarock?

AHIMSA
SATYAGRAHA
ADUMBRATIVE

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

what

 what is sun, sky

but the present I sublimated?

Between us and them 

a light apparent

(non-binding, not blinding).

Life lived in gratitude isn't absolution.

Warm sun, wind - my graces.

Once wandress (wondrous),

the cypress, the funeral tree's

among the

first unfound.

Altered lives grounded in pilgrimage.

seis stemmed,

are that char, that chair outside, laid earth, dirt.

Of all dictions, the done one wins,

Bogged in, begin

by loving all who they were.

Sing among western mesas

among dry places.

Shout, we are here

to raze museums!

to praise libraries!

The libraries

That is where the there is, the theys are also,

the we, youse

and me.

 sit

mind unflitting

sits outside

as

heart

rests within

short poems for others

 1

I thought of your wax feet

while eating turmeric and cauliflower.

These hollow feet speak

as books, looking earthward,

then when placed upon a wall,

their golden hollows

whisper in mother tongues.

 

2

A legacy arrives -

you at 63,

and me, now 63 too.

It's taken 7 years

to draw this circle 

and close it, love. 

 

It is not possible to plum words.

This poem

is for those told

to "come down a peg",

stay silent, or leave.

Snakes eat strawberries,

shed skin, leave marks.

Departure.

Abandoned seeds can still grow trees.

Needs?

Reduced by age and light?

In flight 

somehow, yet,

manage to speak.

 

 

This stone shell knows me well.

One, not two.

You or me,

unaccompanied.

thrown

 today all the boughs

and sticks

pitched overboard

unstored, unstoried.

Believe in Bamboo,

sharpened, burnt,

hurt.

I couldn't understand,

yet I persisted.

blue sky

white cumuli and grey

white building 

green things

robin

cardinal 

white gull

white car

wide street

meets

another

at the bottom of

at the bottom

of

 "While minds create things, things also create minds..." 136

what they left became buried in talcum fine loess., crushed rock dust blown from 

advancing glaciers hundreds of kilometers away  146

Kindred, Sykes

In 1970, a Japanese robotics researcher named Masahiro Mori posited a complex phenomenon known as the uncanny valley. His basic theory was that we respond positively to a robot as it becomes more human in look but only up to a certain point. And then suddenly, we are strongly repelled by it.

What does it mean to create, become part of, a functional multi-cultural me?

My world is small, with big silences. My world is noisy, a city-dwelling diaspora of people, plants, and animals.

I am not rich. In America, I am poor, more so in money than spirit. 

The color of my skin sometimes staves me. There's plenty of pre-judging to go around. "They should have killed you all in the war." Which one? " You're not...." Fill in the blank. " Go home!" Pull apart a genetic history. Where is the singular root place I should return to?

Living together with you, me, are the pieces of us. Just look around. We're fractured, crystallized, beautifully dark, resplendent.

Notes, stanzas, loosed music.

I take up space for better and worse, a source of emissions. Am I soluable? I don't want to be.

Silences. Then the witness sounds of red winged black birds, the robin's reaching into first light, the ever present calls of cardinals, the beating of hearts, the breathing of trees.

How to distinguish a muskrat from a beaver kit swimming in the river - two tales, two bodies in water.

When I was young, I was altered, left my body to survive. I've lived a lifetime of putting my soul back into this aging flesh. Failure is a part of love. Above, below, around me, ghosts remain, unreconciled. 

How many tales does it take to make us whole again?

I cannot swim well. The love of my life sunk, couldn't float. We flunked a life lesson, needed a boat.

In Wisconsin, the ark is a canoe, I wrote. The boat of both the best and the worst, of those first, and remainders like me, who put to sea, found themselves here,  alive, but wounded and wound into others.

I'd like to be on friendlier terms with the sea, that transported multi-cultural me, which extends still, to the horizon, and into families.

Silences can be navigational, hold a boat afloat.  

Between quiet, I write notes from the voyage. Record songs.

 

 

 

 

 

 

the past

what is less than

tomorrow

wedding flutes

Threw two glass flutes away. 

Drank from them our wedding day.

Engraved on one:

Kevin 

November 5, 1993

And the other:

Marsha

November 5,  1993

 

Both mothers were alive then, my father too.

Dad died, then Mom, Inez.

You:

Kevin 

February 4, 2014

 

Mary lost Damon February 6,  2021. 

She got a tattoo on her forearm today, 

a rose and heart, her name, his,

the words Always & Forever.

 

I let it go - glass, silver stemmed,

a lily, my heart, the past.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Days feeling overwhelmed. 

Leaving years of things brings no tears. 

These things I know go with or without me.

Dad's burying suit laid on the bed said 

"I knew this day would come".

 

I pray to become still more sibyl-like,

leaving lighter footprints

in the snow.

Why keep some friends

if the ends are so worn,

sore?

That

you understand

land moves

proves

you can understand

your heart moves too.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We as a draft -

martin, mallard, goose,

loosed things fly away

say to them,

"sail "

 Cardinal -

book length version.

Screes.

See our cities loping forward and back,

Our exoskeletons, our built stone bones.

Most stone things loess.

Us?

Pangolin, pond and diamond,

rare connections, anchor ice.

Overhead, instead of sky,

I am the young gull, crow-culled,

dying in this tree.

Contrary

 Today,

is it okay?

大丈夫ですか?

Daijōbudesuka?

Yannai.

I gave my dog friend

surimi.

Yes,

he

ate

eight,

though barking, 

said no.

 

I am a minimalist,

delighted by the lucid yellow of a new toothbrush

placed just so

on the cream Corian, near chrome,

a small round mirror above.

That line of sun running out the window.

No bilge, no bulge -

refulgence.

 

for Damon

all the minutes in a year

here you're

one among them

or a star

so far we cannot see you

marias

 "For myself I want nothing from you."

"You are wise in that. I never grant favors."

-Ozma of Oz by Frank Baum

"asked for nothing, expected nothing

no reason for coming except curiosity."

Walking out

into the woods of Vermont 

reminded me things have stood 

longer than necessary,

past expiration.

In Lourinhã

a window seat in the sun

stunned me

into emailing a stranger.

Is there danger in that, reaching out into the unknown?

I sink my heart

into an airborne stone,

find a bedstead below the Fatima Lady,

and Sadie in Vermont,

sleeping,

her old dog bones

glucosamined.

Up the road from your Cabot home

I met a farmstead shrine to Maria.

Is it still there?

I heard curses

Flamenco of one brother, three.

One broke his heel

two threw off their shoes,

all spun round

a box drum.

Outside the dance,

the street tamps down 

brown men.

Should something happen, 

someone always cleans up the mess.

The cormorant's frills made of rabbit tufts

enough white around the eyes to shoot

and kill.

The blue gulf inside the bill,

now rich with

fish and blood.

Flood colonies with oil, spoil nests.

The smell!

Tell the birds. 

Should something happen, 

someone always cleans up the mess.

Without helmets

they stood

under metal rain.

Broken bones,

lost fingers, 

so much pain. 

are we at war again?

Should something happen, 

someone always cleans up the mess.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

nurse and cactus

 

night flight

At night
Cormorant
Flying
Under the ice

夜に
鵜
飛行
氷の下で

Yoru ni u hikō kōri no shita de

 

un cuenco roto

 

 un cuenco roto

mi cuñado murió hoy

algo se ha derramado

alguien ha desaparecido

______________________

壊れたボウル

私の義理の兄は今日亡くなりました

何かがこぼれた

誰かが空になりました

Kowareta bōru watashi no giri no ani wa kyō nakunarimashita nanika ga koboreta darekaga sora ni narimashita

__________________________

Broken bowl

My brother-in-law died today

Something spilled

Someone is empty 

winter food

                                                                           

In winter,

to anchor health, 

eat beetroot,

soak groats.

Some thaw meat.

Her father did,

gave us

venison.

sign base, upper paleolithic

https://www.signbase.org/

 https://www.nature.com/articles/s41597-020-00704-x

sounds

Heard a bird before light -

a winter wren.

Then

a bus in snow, slow-

hammered

shifts,

drifts

into

the day's first find -

a footprint.

snow (morning)

Falling now,

great flakes,

wind slant, 

sidelong

swoon.

 

A room,

a window,

slightly ajar.

Where you are -

in a cold place,

in a warm room,

under your skin.

Thrombocytopenia

 Can you live without him?

remnants, waterfall 2020

 

if

if I read the numbers

if I plead with gods

if I take pills to sleep

if I despair

if I don't understand why this disease

furiously fights for him

if I cannot speak

if he grows weaker, then rebounds

if he lives through this

if he dies

if again and again

we'll have more

weeks up and down 

if the grandchildren look at their great uncle

eyes wide and cry  

Papa? Papa? 

as if their word for you, 

worried,

homeless,  

might find him instead

if I cannot say dead

if I cannot say cured

if I have too many words

but never enough

 

 

Cicada

 

蝉 Semi  Cigarra  الزيز alziz         매미 maemi  cikade  greier  zikadak 

蝉 Chán               సికాడా Sikāḍā सिकाडा sikaada ሲካዳ sīkada

1. cicada disaaweshiinh+yag 2. cicada meminaabawijiisi+wag 3. cicada meminaabawijiisii+g

https://cicada.world/partners/indigenous-groups/anishinaabe/

http://www.fonozoo.com/quartau/index_eng.php

https://www.cicadamania.com/cicadas/category/locations/europe-continent/

https://www.theportugalnews.com/news/scientists-ask-for-help-to-record-cicada-song/50846#:~:text=According%20to%20the%20most%20recent,central%2C%20Alentejo%20and%20Algarve%20regions.&text=Experts%20estimate%20that%20there%20are,mainly%20in%20the%20subtropical%20regions.

https://www.japan-experience.com/to-know/understanding-japan/cicadas

lie

Dark roast, no milk. 

Careful. Sorrow distracts, causes overfill, spillage.

This wake's within. We knew you knew not to come, cried alone,

but wouldn't hide what died among the stones.

Conversations after funerals, measured by mug size. Black water reflects another lie:

one who championed gender-neutral rules of law

because she hates the use of the word mother

Thank you so much for your support. Beat me with your flag.  

Call me nigger fifteen times. 

I am black, and I am blue. My life, to you, doesn't matter.

 

I hadn't slept much the night before, anxiously waiting for Georgia's results - little time to celebrate.

 

Found a priest to give Last Rites. She died last night, my mother, mother, mother.

 

    Εν μόνον αγαθόν είναι, την επιστήμην, και εν μόνον κακόν, την αμαθίαν. 

        There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance. 

                                                                                          (Socrates)

What we have learned! Many, many people in this country will kill for a lie.

 

Ropes aren't tropes.

 

Liars leave gallows to break things, then take flight. What falls from the sky as they flee?

 

I tend to small truths, wounded, bleeding.

 

Liars have dropped them, tweeting, on stones. 

 

Ousted liars call their wives, then disappear, clear out, travel south. 

 

Drink your coffee in silence.