Fatigue
Anything that can’t
go on forever
won’t.
It feels like a crisis
until you burn out
the part that worries.
When babies grow up,
old dreamcatchers, too full,
are buried,
and while their former owners sleep
grow into rainbow snails
whose shells spiral outward, not in.
Summer
Sweet black clouds blow in
over the tall heads
of grain.
We seize the moment, you and I,
to gather berries, our fingers
stained and wet.
We wash in the river, and downstream
we see bears, napping now among the fish,
having eaten too many.
We stay up past the sun,
and by the light of cooling embers,
hold hands and wish
for nothing else.
Process can be boring. I pretend to hear my stomach growl
and look for easy crumbs to keep the boredom at bay,
but in desperation, like sea turtles eating plastic bags,
I turn to distraction
snacking on short forms that fill
my head like packing peanuts.
I allow all my thoughts to evaporate,
drift away, and in their time, dissipate.
I sit in the sun, and let the crash of the waves
keep my head full of nothing.
I wait. And listen. To the waves, saying
shhhhh over and over.
I get bored. I’ve forgotten that I can get this bored.
I try to trust the process. (I do not.)
I let the boredom settle. It coats the bottom of my mind.
At length, it tempers my concentration. And when it does,
the clouds come back, my thoughts rain down
and I collect them in a silver basin,
which I can gaze into and see myself looking back.
Graffiti
A tree was cut to make the shaft.
A tree was tapped to make the rubber.
A tree’s grave was mined to make the graphite.
Creation is destruction, of the tree,
the paper, the paint.
Possibility must give way to presence.
Destruction is creation. I will create a world
where humans are only
treated like people.
Creation is destruction. Destruction is creation.
I grasp the great current and shape it.
I imagine a better world and even if it isn’t real
I create it
and if it spreads to your imagination
then it becomes real.
I imagine a world that is fair.
I imagine a world without hunger.
I imagine a world of bizarre beauty.
I imagine a world
I imagine
Imagine
Just because your roots have been
pulled from the ground
washed clean and rubbed smooth
doesn’t mean they aren’t still green.
Freedom’s just another
way of saying you made someone mad
you’re the witch,
made to live in the forest’s edge,
out of sight but close enough to find
when they need your frightening knowledge.
Grow your hair, grow wings,
draw a pale map in the night
and follow it until you can’t
go a furlong farther
and there, in the air, create a space
where rainbows embrace
like snakes on a staff of restoration.
Wilderness blues
In these woods for half a year
I try to take my small flame to
every dark corner, to explore
the rot in every cave and stump.
I need to prepare, I repeat.
I need to see all the forkings ahead.
After losing so many moons looking in the dirt
it becomes hard to see anything else.
Everything looks like mud or danger.
But doesn’t every leaf have two faces –
The rough one with countless mouths
and the green one seeking light?
If you always seek the worst, you told me,
then by definition you discard everything else.
I grow more eyes to see
by darkness, by other light, predators, beauty.
Let’s curb optimism and fatalism, you repeat.
There has to be another way.
These woods are vast and dark. I will find
a way out one day, to fields of corn and apples.
And for now, I will live here, I will survive
on rainwater and wild strawberries.
funerals are for coming together
and acknowledging a loss.
make sure you go. hug and cry.
something important has been taken from us
and it is worthwhile to see the corpse
to wash it
to dress it
until it kills all denial.
there is no back, only forward.
but all wounds must seal and scab to heal.
once the loss scars
we can pick up shovels
and hammers and go on the move.
Is evil something inevitable?
Something that must have its time,
like the darkness of the moon?
There will always be evil doers.
Power will always have its own gravity.
Some will always take lucre to tolerate horror.
The arc of the universe appears to bend
toward abundance. But that same can mask
totalizing power until it’s too late to overcome.
And yet, this has happened before.
And been defeated before.
Evil, like a candle in a jar, strangles itself.
We know we can do better.
We see others do better, as they see us
doing better.
And so
inevitably
we do
the work
the time
the struggle
the tears
the association
the building
necessary
to bend history
toward justice –
to give evil a smaller jar.
deletun zabaanetun-e, zabaanetun shehr-e
your heart is your language, your language is a poem
My soul. I say. How is your health?
It is not raining rain, you reply.
My heart is restless, you say.
Mine too, I admit. I have been blue all day.
Did your heart not want peace? you ask.
The heart did, I say, the mouth wanted something else.
We don’t send our best to lead us, I say.
From heart to heart, there is a path, you agree.
I am without words. I conclude:
I hope that this will end without more suffering.
May my place be green, you say.
May my place be green, I respond.
You might think to make yourself small.
They’ll make you feel ashamed
for sharing colorful ideas.
But when the rains begin to fall,
they’ll come asking for you.
You might feel the need to stay silent.
Trust is a luxury and yours
has been spent
on lottery tickets for someone else.
But when the rains fall
and the floodwaters begin to roll in,
they’ll come asking for you.
You might have to hide.
Draw little eyes on ping pong balls
so they think you never sleep
and draw a little mouth
that makes the same sounds they do.
But when the rains fall
and the floodwaters roll in
and the sea begins to lick at their feet,
they’ll come asking for you.
You might feel you need to run.
That things aren’t tolerable
any longer and it’s better to take
a chance on parts unknown
than to risk another minute
on this freight train ouroborus.
And when the rains fall
and the floodwaters roll in
and the sea swallows them
and they begin to feel the weight
of their chains in the icy depths,
they’ll wonder
how you could have forsaken them.
