Sunday, February 26, 2017

Living alone, sleeping alone, traveling alone,
and resolute, alone, self-disciplined.
One should take pleasure in living in the forest.

- Dhammapada 21.305


Perhaps there is an aperture one squeezes through afterwards.
Now there is this, solid as a stone. Perhaps.
There are stone days that split, opening hollows
revealing remnants.
Don't anticipate, don't .
It could happen.
Or not.


Monday, February 20, 2017

bo ri
bo ra
cha
cha
cha

barley and sunflower
tea and car
are dancing

Be forewarned.




a f t e r w a r d s

Others may not understand that we must practice self-control.... but quarreling dies away in those who do understand...
6.1.Dhammapada





This is an American inflammation,
a thrush.
She's silenced in the last quarter of February.
Remarkably attentive.
Still.
Observe.

She writes:
cannot speak
make poems
...listening.


Afterwards, remains a record.


Wednesday, February 8, 2017

c a r r i e r

I was thinking of you, sister,
for thirty years driving a rural route.
You had a stick to check mailboxes for snakes.
Watching cows, horses, coyotes through 4 seasons of dry.

Before and after the casino, you drove the reservation.
Everybody, including you, loved the medicine man.
He often waved uproad, came to the box to collect his mail,
have a chat, compare local news.
It was your business to know, the both of you.
He's dead now, but there's a mountain where he worked.
Do you sometimes passing, pause there to remember him?
He'd be pleased your son now works for the tribe.

I once went with you to the grocery to get milk, a five minute drive.
It took us an hour and a half.
You found out about new babies, sick horses, break-ins, beauty tips,
gas prices, birthdays, feuds, expectations,
assumptions, jokes.
I needed to be introduced, again and again and again.
You apologized.
"There's no quick out here."

Now
your broken back keeps you in a chair,
a room, far into the city,
listening to demands and complaints.
The callers don't know you're the one
who laughed with the lonely or
brought daughter's letters.

You memorized roads, children, faces, dogs,
remembered the history of houses, the fires,
and detours. It's all inside you, drift,
among the donuts, curses, and strangers.

Three more years to go, you tell me.

I think of you, sister,
car carrying you up the shaman's mountain.
You're looking out,
lingering in the length it took to get there.














anger at
doesn't go
though

Saturday, February 4, 2017

DNA

I began forty percent unknown.
I've gradually grown north, and whiter.
Inside there's more Neanderthal than
Ashkenazi
or Lebanese.

My stories, tested, have folded into European winter.
The mix of
sister's skin and hair and eye
as much singular
in one color as in many.

Letting go
lifts up.
My hand,
grandmother,
still belongs in yours,
yours in mine.



It's here, the end of you,
three years after.

What is it you would remember, could you?















the word order as it stands today -

waiting for

such words
gripped
to slip.

it's all
going
to come out
afterwards.



Friday, February 3, 2017

Inarch can save a fruit tree with a weak graft.

Two living limbs-
slice off bark.
What matters is the blending of the vascular.
It takes twine, screws, sealed skin, a year.

The stronger union of sucker and bough
will grey into sturdy production



Wednesday, February 1, 2017

two weeks in.

mel (ania) (odious)
(sound problems)!
I can't hear you in any of your five languages.

populi tumuli?
no!
inundate with
a will, witnessed and signed.
our native culture rises first.
we
(aves resuscitatum)
(won't go to the dogs)
come to!

stand by -

aesthetics
religion
work.

stop slurring labor.
art isn't drudgery.

resist
(dis) (new world) order
and
this

bragging
bragging
brash
man
smashing
HOLES in lives.

found thoughts

fold / holes.

tie / thread.

make garlands.

_______








A life is so much paper -
notes, reminders, remittances.
The internet is invisible paper,
stuffed with obsolete bills, calendars.
We've buried ourselves in an organizing principle rooted still in stick and earth,
stylus and tablet.
Like those massive waste islands midsea,
now cyberspace is adrift with our detritus.


What was life like before the flood?