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I
really have to stop listening to the news
on
the radio every twenty minutes they’re with this SWAT
team
busting drug dealers. This one is a mother
with a
housefull of kids. You can hear the baby crying
to be
held, the TV blasting commercials, a teenage girl
screaming over and over Mommy don’t Mommy and the
cops
bark you just know they got guns drawn and held two
handed
in front of their crouched chests and the reporter
gives
a hushed whispery account and then the background:
spring
the street the ice cream trunk da-da da da-da da da da
da
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Internal
Medicine
I
am hoping to read my genes
and find my Native
American
grandmothers; they will speak
with you, oh, my
African people,
and you, Celt, warrior woman
I saw fly and
crack her blue hands
over the frozen crust of the pole
and
breathe sweet nectar to all
my children from the cold
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Is
laughter always about pain?
Sick
on a journey-
Over parched fields
Dreams wander
on
Basho’s
death poem 1694
a
boy named Nadir
a baby girl named Pinochet
a woman named
Vendetta
What is death? How can you help
a
patient prepare to die?
Atlantic
City 2004
--open
the window--
don’t you want to see if its dark
or
light?
--here, lets pack your suitcase--
maybe
you should open
those presents
now
--dessert?--
--wine?--
--satin
sheets?
(we laugh, delighted,
it isn’t our
bruise
our cracked writst
out dementia
our
incontinence
our hacking breath)
and Basho?
'Learn about a pine tree from a pine tree,
and about a
bamboo stalk from a bamboo stalk.”
May my
death be a laughing
poem.
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It
is September 11th
and
I am driving
in a liminal space
I have a homemade map
I
follow streetsigns
the setting sun out past
the airport
in a place
of blasted tarmac
weed and marsh
flocks
take flight
I pass their cries
fill my air I have
written the directions
wrong all I wanted
was the
words
I ordered all I needed
was to be on time
the
radio is listing danger
my gas gauge
is on empty
I
might as well be
driving into the end
the world only
thorns
mudflats ancient birds
see me go
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I
trusted you
to care for me
as
I heard you’d cared
for your father
to
carry me
into the shower
hold me
under its
warmth
tuck me in
sing to me
keep me clean
and dry
if I wandered shoeless
into the night
to feed me
listen
even if I
sang rage
to think it a blessing
to have this
time
foolish me
I did not know
how
little my little love was worth
how little I’d
deserve
its return
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