praise: on jumping

I found this in a journal from the month Paul and I were about to get married. It has been translated from French. For all who have thought of taking a risk. 

The boat is leaving for an adventure.

The crew is preparing.

Each member has a life jacket,

a rope, a raincoat.

One sailor doesn’t have everything he needs.

The others tell him

there will be enough to share. 

He doesn’t know if he can count on this,

thinks he needs to be able to cover up

in the cold, to swim if the boat overturns,

to provide for himself if he is lost;

after all, that is what he has been taught.

The others have more experience.

They have understood what they need.

Some of them have had everything

for a long time.

Others have just finished

to pack their bags.

Adventure runs through the sailor’s heart.

He wants so much to do, try, and discover.

He sets off to find a lifejacket, a rope,

and a rain coat.

Someone calls.

“The boat is leaving early!” says the voice,

“are you coming or not?”

He doesn’t know what to say.

The hour of departure approaches.

The store that sells life jackets is open.

He finds one. It fits him well.

He feels more prepared.

Then, he finds the rope

he was going to take is no longer

where it was. He still has no rain coat.

He doesn’t know what to do.

“We’re leaving!” cries the boat.

“But I have no rain coat!” he replies.

“And I can’t find my rope.

It will take time to find them.”

He doesn’t want to slow down the crew.

He doesn’t want to be cold.

He doesn’t want to find himself

in a situation that would be simple…

if only he had the right tool.

“Are you coming or staying?”

asks the crew,

“we’ll make do with what we have!”

He holds very still.

It is perhaps the last boat

for adventure this week, this year, this decade.

He could wait for them to return, 

he could wait for the next one, or- 

he’s doesn’t know.

Deep in his core, a tiny spark tells him

to trust – in the adventure, the boat, the crew.

He jumps, holding hope.

My love, do we know what we have

in our hands?

praise: a good poem

a good poem

catches you off guard

and skims the edge of you like a 

finger traces the outline of your knee,

hits you like the whiff of 

electricity before a storm,

hunts you with pheromones, 

strikes while you aren't looking

isn't complete

until you fall away exhausted 

and satisfied, 

wouldn't exist without 

the dance of two elements:

the object of your desire, admiration, rage 

and you, bewildered and reaching

holds your face in its hands

and stares at you, unflinching

as if to take it all in, naked and 

unobstructed

unabashed, unafraid.

praise: through a pinhole

through a pinhole

There were eggs all year in my childhood. 

Passover red, Easter blue ornaments, 

yolk blown through a pinhole, 

omelets sunrise yellow, ochre point. 

Now you, so tiny 

you fit under my thumb. 

You will be a melon

fecund and hard, 

painful, precocious, 

with your round red mouth. 

Crouched, you prepare

for the gape of breath. 

praise: echocardiography

Microvalve, a Sort of Ode

The music of the heart, amplified, makes sense;

a song I knew somewhere to be true but had never

sung aloud.

Today I saw inside it, and heard.

Made of fleshy chambers it is round, robust as a gourd,

a beautiful thing. Shadows and folds mostly,

it sports some pixilated bursts of light

to stand for blood.

Then, the sound magnified, its echo fills the dark room.

The left valve becomes a whistle above a thick, muddy rumble,

the aorta crisp, swooping to a tick.

The microvalve does a soft-footed dance,

and closes with an extra bounce.

Abstruse cadence, tempo, pulse, throb, swing.

In its cavern it takes life from the liver and lungs

in a free fall through so many delicate strands

and with each player, churns out the flowering

bursts of its rhythm.

That extra bounce. What does it mean?

Does it say something about my temperament?

Is it brought on by overindulgence in fluttering,

worrying, or chocolate? Is it the cartwheels?

The kind-eyed, wand-wielding technician assures me

It has more to do with my inherited height.

This body is absurd business,

random and miraculous.

praise: No-See-Ums

i haven 't written of you, james.

i would like to praise the night of the wild violin

and  you, rabsrabble angle of arms and legs

swinging out of a saloon on the isle of skye

a dent in your forehead where a fight had 

spread a dark blue stain.

we brushed away the no-see-ums on our own hill,

and waited  for the midnight sun to leave the sky

as boats rocked together in the harbor, 

dew formed on the ruins of fortresses around us, and

the bugs came and bit and went.

you explained how the gnats worked their way around

in a cyclone wisp and bit harder than expected

how there was no remedy but patience. 

you invited me to stay, to meet your mother,

but i left in the morning

my clothes still damp from dew,

my head buzzing with talk.

you sent me a drawing of a sad-eyed dog

and asked when i'd return. 

i, the ungrateful traveler,  

never wrote back,

never returned to that light-

and damp-soaked island

where some chromosonal twist

hummed in loamy recognition.

i just sat here, ten years later

and stuck you in praise to a page. 

 

praise: meeting

what is it with me, i think as i slosh through a puddle 

and the sole of my foot squishes around on the rubber of my shoe,

that i can't just sit down with a poet and have a drink? 

what is it with me, that it is an all or nothing affair, 

that it has to be a stay up all night, knock down, 

cigarette after cigarette, three whiskey glass flirt 

that ends with me tumbling over myself 

in infatuation, all unreasonable and premature, without formalities? 

is it that my favorite ones wear their heart out on a straight pin too? 

tonight it was frank ohara. 

he didn't have to talk for long.

and i thought

frank, frank, perhaps i knew you in a former life. 

maybe we admired rauschenburg and pollock and 

deconstructed raspberries and drank limeade together frank, or maybe

maybe i just read your palm some night when you were out 

on a late-night whim, under a blue neon sign i read your palm 

and told you about the color purple, how it would 

tinge the corners of your poems

told you of your strange nostalgia for paris, and of the looming shadow

of a man to carry you over bridges

and said you are right, frank, yes, it is all beautiful,

the aspirin, the jujubes, and a scrap of sky is enough

maybe i skipped the part about your untimely end

and just shot the breeze, 

handed you a glass of brandy

or a flower on a pin, 

and told you to stay a few minutes longer,

stay out of the rain a little while. 

waste:from a caffeine rush

in my mind's eye

 my own body falls

 to the ground under

medeival daggers

 in a hypnotic rush, 

the same way on the darkest and most exhausted days, 

slipping under a subway car feels like it would be a relief.

this mind's eye business is scary indeed

and the sidewalk beaten, 

the asphalt long, 

the coffee thick and dark and sultry, 

the tingling necessary, 

the chirping late spring ironic

and all of it, all of it meaningless, 

the high over in an instant,

the city indifferent and wailing.

praise: Harper Lee

Sometimes you get to revisit scintillating, scathing, or ground-breaking prose. And this time you get to see it clearly, for what it is. 

Harper Lee influenced generations who have grown up on the crisp and intelligent prose of her one novel. 

And yet she has remained completely modest, in the shadows, and barely published again.

 Instead of giving an acceptance speech for the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007, she said, "It is better to remain silent than to be a fool." 

If only the fools remained silent, the wise women spoke, and the rest of us listened. 

waste: shedding my grandmother, again

death in the family

ribcage of coat hangers

breasts a metal cage

head a fuse pulled dry, a tired socket

hallway of repeated gestures

android of fatigue

wire bird

on an empty feeder

the city opens

a deck of cards

streetlamps stretch

in long cords

pigeon, sentinel

huddles in an oily corner

I think of

longing

as a wire bird.

you die

in the afternoon

i‘m caught up in wires

you come to the window

get up, you say

in the cold air

of elation/pain

of electric/void

put on an old tune

wires of dry tendon move

and I shuffle.

for weeks I seek your messages

in low-flying birds

and nurse the empty hallways

of my bones.

praise: Saint Francis and Boo Radley

I am married to the reincarnation of Saint Francis.

Paul just talks to the animals. He leans in, takes one look, and pronounces a completely logical and coherent expression of the animal’s emotions or needs. And every time it makes sense.

I don’t get it.

Sunday we walked down through Central Park from 90^th to the bottom and then hoofed it over asphalt to MOMA. We spent a good long time ogling at the design exhibit, and then holding pretty objects in our hands at the store. As we left past the glassy walls of the main entrance, my eye caught a yellow spot on the ground. It was a beautiful olive green, yellow, and black bird, lying lifeless on the sidewalk. Whether it had fallen from a nest or taken one in the noggin against the glass, I expected to see gore. Things of nature are so rare here, I thought. So unfortunate when they are dead.

Paul took one look, bent down, and gently placed one finger next to the bird’s side. The bird stirred, partially woke, and ambled aboard. Paul took off down the sidewalk, his dapper black New York trench flowing behind him, his new charge perched on his finger, like it wasn’t no thang.

Holy shit, I thought. He’s Saint Francis.

This isn’t the first time he’s talked to the animals. I’ve seen him perform surgery on injured parakeets and toads. But it had been a while since we had lived anywhere with a garden, since we had been in a place where one encounters species other than humans that aren’t manicured and dressed to match their owners.

We tried to release him in a safe place in the Park, but he wouldn’t leave Paul. This was no domestic bird, mind you, but he was badly stunned. Paul hiked that bird back across town to the subway in a Nalgene pressed against his chest. “He’s in bad shape,” St. Francis intoned. “He needs sleep.” We got him a little cage, some fluff and some food, and for sixteen hours he slept. At six the next morning, Paul woke up on instinct, and I heard the bird flapping around and chirping. “He’s awake,” said St. Francis, “But not strong enough yet to go out.” Like it wasn’t no thang.

You know the rescue tale. The animal becomes more lively, more animated, eats and drinks a bit, skids across the floor, poops on the Buddha statue, knocks over the sunflowers, explores nook and cranny, experiments with flying through computer screens. He had taken over the kitchen by the time I left for work and was nothing short of chipper when I got home to plow through and prep To Kill a Mockingbird.

I named him Boo, for his Zorro mask, and for the fact that he was officially being held indoors against his will. I think what got to him, besides needing more space to fly, was that I gave him a name. I also started hunting him with my camera. I knew we weren’t going to keep him, but I was trying to keep a part – a trace of him. Proof. I tried to be really, really subtle about both, ( taking a picture from all the way across the room without moving), but I think the capturing just went a little too far. He was wild. He was not for names. He was not posing. So I left him alone to twitter and flutter about, and just as I was tucking into Chapter 2 of Mockingbird, the silence in the house lasted a little longer than the usual ten minutes before play time, and he was gone.

Without getting too precious, I was startled by how I knew Boo had left. Yes, his pattern hadn’t repeated. But I also remarked how I just knew that his presence had left. This reminded me of other recent departures, grandmothers and zygotes, and how you just sense the departure of something. Boo was so light he couldn’t bend the leaf of an orchid standing at its tip. And yet when he was gone he was just gone.

I felt like a homing device as I look for him, making the ridiculous clucking noise I had used to try to imitate his little tick/chirp, desperately craning my neck to see if he was in a nearby tree. I stood by the refrigerator clucking and listening to be absolutely sure he hadn’t somehow slipped behind it. I felt like some kind of electronic mother hen, clucking t my fridge. A few minutes later I saw out my window, as a result of all the craning, a bright, rusty cardinal making a mess in the air of the dried seeds pods and looking around smugly with his impressive crown. Maybe they’re common here, but being new here, I was impressed.

Then Paul got home, and he appeared, twittering and skidding across the floor, out of nowhere. For two days he bounced across the furniture, swung from the mobile, ate and drank and pooped. He was a fun, fun wild little yellow Zorro-masked distraction. 

Boo was quite a beautiful little fluster.

You never know what kind of effect a wayward bird is going to cause.

And if you ever need a Bird Whisperer, I know a good one.

Welcome Travelers

This space is intended for waste+praise, poetry, works in progress, and narratives.

Let's talk about the ruddy cracks between the sidewalks of cities that hold scraps of beauty, about the ties that bind us, about your uncle's hairdresser, about the rust and the wires and the sky. 

Please do read on...