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Ode to Schmoo
I met you in a "Lucky" parking lot
I could not see you
Only your glowing pink eyes in the moonless shadows
I had many of your sisters "ordering" me to take them
As you did that night
I never listened, just moving on
Something about you was so very different
Struck my heart, disturbing my harmony
I didn't understand what was happening
As I bent down to extend my fingers
For your sniff
You placed your two paws on each knee
I knew then I had to have you
I was afraid of you, of your untamed claws
I never imagined living with a cat before
I didn't want to lose you, I was afraid of lifting you
I left hurriedly, putting my groceries in the car
I willed you not to go, willed you to stay on that very spot
You waited for me in the parking lot
I took you home knowing nothing about you
I named you "Adja", a suffix meaning "friend"
You we're so beautiful in the bright living room light
The most beautiful cat I have ever, ever seen
You slept with us and crept into our dreams
Your real name revealed to us, Schmoo
We sang love songs, replacing "you" with "Schmoo"
We danced with you and played every night
You were our only child
You taught us to open our hearts
In a way we had never imagined
You are now gone, my friend
Though you still arrive in our dreams
You died between our laps, as we held you
Drowning your delicate fur in our tears
We will never, ever forget you
And in your honor, we are cat-people for life
And
And all
Around the night
It swung, the fiery star
And held upon the corpse of day
And swung
Penumbra
A fold in time
Where folds are blankets
A hot gray country
Where blankets are not needed
An underground room
Is cold with blankets
And cloaked in time
Dirt Road
A clear cool rise
Of gathering land, rolling thin stars
Strip gravity’s hum
The falling road dawn
fell free from it’s haze
Numb air pressed hard…
Blue trees loom black, fall leaves
Spill down
Young scents rise with a
Clear earth-wind
A dome-sheltered town
floats low far away…
So half-lighted hush
Fills eye swollen sky
Glass daylight strains up--
toward previous moon
The dust in the wind
Sifts down to the road
The Road
Smelt
Swelt incense such falling air
Sky distant, hanging, patchy
Clear looming black fir tree
Back settled Black Crows, swelled Over
Rustled three, and four times
Cold house yellow dreamed
My legs walked on
The Foreign
The foreign
field
of death
lay panting
out of
breath
Two stars were
born
one night
one morn
Wind
She waddled upright like a worm on the night
The dark dwindled out like a pin
A rain dazzled tar-summoning mists from afar
The dull feather house smelled of tin
Leaves float warm like a cork on a storm
Smoke-streams spray crystal to ice
A wind spends out strings and flashes dew rings
Another shy dream to entice
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Gray shadows draw slowly
afternoon,
or afterthought?
who…
leaves tangle a dimming earth
dimmer sky,
chill winds cool my spine
one eye feeds
my mirror-
shifting to do the same.
Moonlight reflects stone
Flecks of silver splay in grayness.
Black, the drawn curtains float
neon pinpoints woven in fabric.
I float
so softly
down
no hush
no sound
I am pause…earth bowels shine placidly
In nearness this moment leaves.
Sunlight shocks hand traces, thin translucent
each finger wavers-
tilting face Upward
Pit Suns
Two Horizons spread wide
Forever…
With closed lashes
Too close to bear!
Faces tumble down
Waiting…fall turns to winter
cloud closing
night reaching
beads of Dew
forming
hush…
Assessment
Methodically careless
What is sure
A road, a measure lift of unending, alleviate the eye and brow
Pain
Memory fallen, lips as teeth as
feet as volition simultaneous picture-artistry-image
Unfolding shard past of scrubbed knee
Fingernail of gravity’s reliance
A fat sparrow digs feathers through a window
ten o’clock tea and counting drunk, is the mirrorless
Critique, as pages stack
As dreams flicker
Endlessly mind
Loping, like a lazy horse.
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Floating downward, my memory seethes and swells,
then flurries, glides, becomes strict, falls faster
knocking against inanimate objects
From Space back to Earth
And there it dwells in some darkened crevice
Like an old war criminal
Thin, blind, groping for self-survival
Mumbling all the names
Hidden in atomic dreams
Seeping into cellular molecules
Decay, strata, ghosts of every shape
Fat tears that dry, evaporate, mute, fragment
Color the desert of my eternal need
Everywhere
I sit, among the folds at dawn. And wish to speak-
“I won’t stay long.” Guarded propensity, back flash wet
Your lung breath perennial, my two legs dangle,
Wait, muteness, ah, the blankets warm
In that place where my lover
Used to lie.
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The road steeps upward
Sidewall –
Bricks of wet pink.
Low branches splatter with
dew eyelash I run.
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Light
Pale rootshanging
Small rocks of soil
White shoots
Pale, dry,
Shifting beads-
Birds in air
Flap
Grey strain
Soil sifting
Shadows turn pallid
Muted
Dim Orange Suns
steady
cold
distinct leaf
patterns in circle
Dew
No Title
I gazed
After
A stream of souls
And shouted of their numbers, Why?
They marched a circle round my goals,
And merging, rumored of a spy
Number Three War
Art, too.
White calves and grass, a breeze
Or no breeze, the trial of (no)
Black Sun. I am twenty
Two blinks-
Stairs up, down, the ship-down me (mine)
Black Sun
Dance,
Leap upward under clouds thunderous, the morning-gray sky
Wet, black leaf, clinging to her ankle
Dew breeze, outline (life!) blaze jump quar-dance
Sway moan of many trees
Breeze of grass roll, left up political rallies
Tallies of moans
“ooooan “ barks tree wind
creaking
Seeking
Black, white, photograph
Thunder-paper-taper lead of
LOOM OF
War
Art, too.
Summertime
(If only we were able)
If only he were able, he would sit beside me.
Touch the browning leaves, insects merrily dancing
A silver eye to splint his sudden laugh
A suite of sacrament, the roping thick of
Coddle memory, windy past
Bobbing lank grass in fat rain
The thundershower awakes us,
An oak moans – there he is gone,
Silently breathing in another plane,
Drinking black coffee, smoking, thinking
Lives waging wars in distant spheres, the tangle –
The native webs pull his orbit South,
Away.
I feel a presence, echo of a beautiful dream.
If only I were able.
Dear Judas
Space, moment of gain past saw-toothed mass
And I am sure to be “begotten” er fore’ I am begun
Echo of the sound room, screech of tabbed chair,
Feel of hard wood. All precious to him, whom
Of I sit here apart, gazing, inward-prancing –
His spotlight-blind lust, for me, for my native
Soil, as I, muted, mute hungrily, waiting…
Voices rise, the actors cued, cubits of stop/fast/action
Grind, morning breathlip-clinging, breath again quietly drawing
Attuned…listening (feel shuffle)
“Here…for the whole cast, yes,
but broken, so as not to appear to your audience
as a line…” Triangular shadows shift – my
seat’s shadow slides by – the tangible mirth. “You
All must gather for this scene, you here, no just
A bit more tilted…the actor draws his simple robe
Upward, scratching the knees…the Black One shines
A flashlight in the gray theatre, empty, but I in
My corner “safe.” Read this article! He is now exclaiming,
Sneezing and passes cakes of paper…read this…I
Think it quite good. Read this.” His voice prism-
Speckled, in a dozen brighter hues…(Who is that girl,
The other whispers, pointing hidden, to my shadow).
“I am a passionate man---“ then running –
“The overwhelming reality of life,” the hospital-bed rhetoric, my
seeming fellow, the trained response-
Wall springing, afterward, Judas had felt my air
“Was I crazy enough?” I suck my air, demure, all three of us
stand ready. “Do you…know anyone here?”
Inside the university library, I pause, expanding
My chest bilaterally, lingering…”The overwhelming reality…feeling
Of being alive!” Happy, since the long heart surgery, loving
All people. I am safe.
“No,” I answered, aware the shaved, tilted jaw-line.
“No.”. The lights were now perfect, stage ready,
actors rehearsed. My own leg bed-twinge, remembering.
“Since my heart surgery, I have learned…” The Blind
Spotlight clicked off for a night. “A tremendous
Confusion” – the dust mottled down,
My secure shadow dissipated.
“yes, I’ll be there.” Bereaved, the two settled me –
the last words, assuring my ticket.
One poet, from one distance, and a certain light.
I ran into the warm night air, to the insanely bright
Spring stars.
“Yes,” I thought, “once secure in your un-spotted chair, you are now
to live with all people – all people seem beautiful to you now.”
February Poem
Hey, does he appreciate art?
How ‘bout MY art? What am I
Supposed to do, shove
It down his throat because we’ve
Shared better in bed?
He says my art is so abstract, he
Couldn’t help seeing the piece in
My
Living room, I tried to splay it
Over my chair like cloth on a
Mannequin:
He only notices the naked curves underneath. The intimacy seems
Urgent, like a dead Egyptian’s
Mummy in swaddling clothes,
No dancing here. No cats, no fish,
No help, no wide eyed stares.
Gray blues settle like saxophones
Easing windows between my eyes and
Thoughts,
I hope we gain an intimacy deeper
My red nails are drying , sunglasses
Beam shadows onto his world. He
Yawns into my phone answering
Device.
Until Now
I wanted to say something real intense:
I wanted to be drunk though I knew it would make me sick.
So I called you angry with my body aching, mylegs
Felt like cement in a mixer
I called you and you seemed a bit too willing and polite…
The picture I had painted was different,…
I did all the talking and you only listened and silently agreed that
Yes,
You were an asshole who’d Done Me Wrong…
You did not respond with how you needed to spare my feelings for
Your growth
See you Had Not Spared the last one’s…
Inwardly I laughted whaat a typiCAL male why couldn’t you be DiReCt
WHAT AN EMOTIONAL GIRL you sighed, the part of you still back in
New York fishing peacefully near the lake when I had first called
Seeped in like oil from the sand…
The whole thing seemed greasy, all of a sudden, a slipperyplace you did
Not want to be…
You are interrupting, you are such an EmoTioNal GiRl
AndAllYouDidwas show up my dinner I knew I had you figured out
then…Asked you questions you were staring at some girls BUM…
The something which prevented a love unnameable, linking a dream future
With a déjà vu past…
Lissen, boy, you really want to piss someone off, Do what you did to
me. Show up a dinner, don’t answer questions,
Stare off into the 17th dimension and become a Sphitzer Bush.
I was driving down a beach, I mean a road…
The time is static round me, I am not moving, the scenery is moving
And the sun will never leave this eternal moment…
The music has hung on one note, playing endlessly, and NO MAN WILL
EVER care(y) for me…
(Caroline says always keep them 2nd in your life and tell them without ever saying it)
The Beach I mean Road becomes endless sky and we are drifting upward, dead, become like them souls they teach about in church all drifting like that Munch painting screaming and drifting forever upward…
A lyrical picture, a Spanish guitar, a restless wind, a fresh breeze in the mountains
In space and time these things exist, and with them, you will be SANE once again.
The motion of the waves, the texture of the cloudy midnight sky…
The 4th grade feeling of running up a mountain unknown Where You Are…
I think I must have dreamed this (arms stretching upward) it was just
Too Too Good…
The colors, the way you kissed me, the chiaroscuro we made with
our hearts…I can never leave this moment, no never again.
Pillows feel so soft against my skin, I will remember it is a new day & I am a
Human being, so beautiful, opposing thumb synaptic nexus
WHAT ON EARTH AM I HERE FOR? WHEN IS THIS GOING TO END/BEGIN? How
Many times do I have to view the same thing overandoverandover
Andover Andover again…
THIS IS IT, I say to myself, nooneelsetotalktoatthemoment
I wish
Iwant
IWANTiWISHIWISHTOWANT whawhat the Hell Do I want?
SOMEday my prince will aCome, and I shall be mightyREADY for that
Damned event.
DO you Need much intelligence to slide?
Outdoors it smells like firs and rocks, it is cold and so am I, in a
Stylistic, rendezvous sense where you come into yourself and know you
Were always the star your Genes could not help it…
And dancing is the only alternative, Dancing, stretching limbs,
Ligaments, muscles, nerves…toes stretching, thumbs opposing, LIFE-AS-
A-TEENAGER-FOREVERnever!
The dance was naked, and was never seen,
Westwood accepts for Plastic Orders, and you died a 50’s 60’s 70’s 80’s
Child; and no one ever Knew or Thought about you in a
Painting.
Until Now.