bravery

the bravest thing
i have ever done
was to sit down
and look you in the eye
and tell you that
i'm sorry, but
i love you.

(#11)

a nunnery for little animals,
their dimly lit, sparse rooms and brown felt blankets.

not really timeless, not quite in touch,
comfortable and heartbroken, with windows open to clean, damp air.

I’ll go back in time
If you ask me to
Balance over
Spider web stories
Over-talk this
Private life
And then what
Will be left?

---

Anyone Could Be A Killer In A Car

This is my most announced thought
Life as dying
Or life as
Loving
Or life as just
Speeding, slowing and
Carrying through.

---

I tell everybody I’ve moved
‘back to where I’m from’
La Esquina, I say
Though I never think of it
That way

Good Thing (too much of a)

It falls in fits
Graying the already short days,
and landing with a musical pluck
into the standing puddles of water in my garden.

My bike kicks up tsunamis
The roof is always drumming.
Its rhythm sings to me at night,
and I sleep deeply.
I dream of dancing sculptures
and of sleeping through my friend's wedding and missing all the cake.

This morning, I tiptoed through the muddy garden to pick some parsley
and found that its stems had turned to green muck.
The plant was rotting in the ground, sunk in a puddle.
Some of its leaves were still fresh and crisp
and I combed through the mess,
taking what I could save
I shredded it for a Tuscan Bean salad
that my lover took to the studio today.
I left what remained of the parsley
reaching up out of its puddle,
struggling to stand upright in the face of so many falling drops.

What can you expect of a Mediterranean plant, after all?
It was meant to grow in places that are bathed in hours of sun,
in dry, cracked soil, summer-split into the mesas of a desert.
Under the harshest of conditions, it would live out its life
eking out one drop of water after another
and saving them in its veins like a most precious jewel.

But this long rainy winter
warm as it is
has drowned this desert plant with too much wealth.
While my gray and soaking city
is ready to overflow
with such a blessing.

Fez

I think still of the heartbeat I heard in a bathtub in Morroco.
The call to prayer mixed in.
The lines of me carving into the water.
That there was no one in the room next door.
Smell of milk kisses not far off.

TWENTY-FIVE

There were some protests
we sometimes baked bread for.
Danny and I debated the troop increase
in the bleachers at Shea Stadium.
And when Omar got home
from two years in Iraq
we went with his daughter
to the Museum of Modern Art.
The waterlilies were breathtaking,
but the Pollocks fell flat.
I tried to concentrate on
the sanctity of every human life,
searching the faces
of children, shopkeepers, and neighbors.
These are the living,
I thought, just like me.
But who could I shout that to?
I did what most folks I knew
tried to do -
live a good life
in a time of war.

the first one.

we'll play a game of UNO, sipping on whiskey and ginger
then watch HOOK in those red iron chairs
sit up straight and make no attempt to cuddle
hands folded on your lap, elbows off the glass table
what's that smell? is it onions? my armpits?
i would have taken a shower but only the cold water works
and the bathroom's just too tiny and i'm oh so claustrophobic
hmm, i'm feeling kinda saggy
peee eeew, pardon me, uh, i'll be right back
slap on some deodorant and a lacy bra that better supports my rack
your butt probably feels like it was injected with anesthetic,
from the chairs! here put a pillow under that
no, it's still bad, ah crap
then i guess we'll have to go to the bedroom cause there's no where else to lay back
unless we pull out the floor pillow, but i only have one, well, shit
and the living room/kitchen is really cold
and it seems less romantic to wear mittens, a hoodie and 2 pairs of pants
let's see, the cot in the spare bedroom is covered in cat hair... are you allergic?
and with that Babar blanket it's somewhat embarrassing
oh, but my room I don't know
the bed is kinda shaky and squeaky and most likely will collapse
maybe we should go to your place
would you be bothered if when we get there, first i just took a quick bath?

I should clarify about the resort in Thailand.
It friended me on facebook. I started to get
the idea when I saw that it had posted
groundplans as photos of itself. Physical limits

are no kind of thing, and virtual limits extend
as far as matter can support them.
What's possible now is relationships
between people and things which are not people.
Forces act upon us. Friday night

I blasted a chunk of earwax
one-third the size of but otherwise identical to
the Samarian Spinel from my left ear canal.
Then, tonight, the barbell fell out.

I couldn't get it to go back so I put in one of those things
I got to put in it when I got it pierced in the first place
a year and five months ago, which is a while,
but I had been planning switch in my own time.
Now my body is different in two ways, one I planned

for and one I didn't, and I feel a little
like that time when the dentist told me I had
a cavity and gave me a filling: now it's there forever.
Damn. Forces act. What's internal becomes

like what's external and the other way around
but entropy is not reached. I still feel nervous around you
all. I don't know how to fall in love but I want it so badly.

People want what isn't good. I worry too much. Objectively.
Maybe some people don't. I assume that they're fakers.
But Jesus. If some little kid with a ukelele can do it, so can I.