and i have a dream

what’s the difference between the dark brown and white speckled ones?

ambiguity.

generic names.

dark brown, oval seed,

 

lotus bead eyes.

we sacred, perennial, we aquatic and pure. 

we sprang from the divine

navel. 

and this earth is the pedestal on which we sit

or stand.  heaven birthed, we are the

eyes of creative force  

and will live in mud for hundreds of years.

counting while reciting our mantras.

follow enough tangents and

seeing comes, loving comes

bubbling to the surface hard and 

dense.  with small holed  

moons and tiny black stars.

high density as resin and wood textured,

a solid and dense we.

we is the mystery

solved

he had a dream

and i see a school principal raising her babies alone because her family wants
better things, a love separated

for 13 years, and reunited when finally

the money is enough and the legal path is cleared, and six months of together later,

dad is dead of an American heart attack and mom

is working the Wendy’s window and cleaning offices at night and i see the three

boys from El Salvador, that the other kids calls taco, sleeping on chairs in the living room

and raising themselves with a one bedroom roof over their heads and a soccer ball

and no English and no warring and. 

and i see a woman smuggled into the country in a roll of carpet in the back of a truck

to be with her green card holding husband,  a surgeon bagging groceries and
delivering it to online shoppers all day until evening, when he drives uber,

driving drunks home from the Kennedy Center, being called brother

by slow slurring middle aged hipsters who want the music louder and sing

sloppy in the back seat and might vomit at any moment,

one car, one ride at a time toward a better future for his daughter who isn’t allowed

to go outside other than to school and a wife who can't work and ICE breathing down
everyone's necks and.

and i see achievement gaps in top high schools,

statistics mulled over and worried like broken beer bottles

into sea glass by the board of education, and finally

after a year of deliberation

and emergency meetings, steps are taken and these are renamed

opportunity gaps,

and every student receives a new personal computer,

and my students don’t have internet at home and

no one talks about that.

and the children are painstakingly writing out their dreams

with borrowed pencils and borrowed paper and are

chewing gum against hunger and with eyes open

spend a strictly timed 90 minutes writing five paragraphs describing

that with a roof over their heads and no official war, they

will see their dreams of being professional athletes and the
best doctor in history come to pass, after all the sacrifice made

by everyone who is anyone they love dearest, including God,

through prayer and faith and His good grace,

their dreams will come true if they just believe in His power enough, 

because in this worldly place, somehow one thing is sure

they don’t believe in themselves. 

home

clear rain washed concrete,

and seagull feathered air blew.

and mist rolled to land,

in the center of

a sidewalk in a city

of hills, the leaf scent,

green scent of fern and

leaf, of algae and wind, of

the insides of shells.

this is cologne of
outside, streaming from your skin
this is your wild, mine

growing

From crisp summered perfume of dew coming in the screened door

on the early morning breeze and coffee, and scrambled eggs, and
strawberry freezer jam on grandma's warm biscuits and

marijuana plants growing tall outside the window, behind
the bearded iris and behind the rainbow of gladiolas and
before the sunflowers, with their sunshinepie faces trembling down
on us, banks of flowers with secrets, and

a fort under the skirt of the Japanese maple where we could read
about Betty and Veronica in the shade and occasionally glance
through the weepfall branches at the strange people

who were our relatives wondering at the figs fattening on a branch, and
plucking sprigs of basil from great green pillows of it, and
plucking raspberries from the vine, and sucking whole eggs in and out
of the slender necks of liter bottles to amuse the children,

and the scandal of the aunts who didn't wear bras under their t-shirts, and
Mount Rainier was in the background, and the sky was
the clearest bright blue of all of our eyes, to afternoons with

prostitutes appearing from beside scarlet rhododendron hedges 
on the side of the road, cars weaving through the rain and
slowly near and stopping, red lights flashing quick and then white and
disappearing again and we didn't understand where they went,

what they did, who they were, and then you.  That crystalline
night I pushed your car over the ice to the nearest service station and
advised you call the police for help,

stupid youth, stupid me, with those tracks up your beige arms
and I took you from under the stars to the hospital instead and
I held your hand, and they lanced your abscess, and I fainted

stupid youth, stupid me,
dizzy from the bright florescent light and
the stench of this life,

Pinesol saturated the air and
nothing was clean anymore, anyway.

Hisses

you would have been dead a year when

i learned of it, and i did not feel sad and

i did not feel happy.  i feared the

energy that had splashed from your many heads
into the universe,

the ferocious ink and dribble of your soul, vicious
sprung free

you still, my chocolate nightmare

you lurk hydra in my me, you

slither down my back, sneak attack,

a liquid cocoa poison,

oozing wounds 
until i wake

it’s still the same.

and no one there was listening.

so i salt my apple pies and

i iron the pillowcases and i

dream that i can run

from believing.  dream that

relative is a place,

beyond seduction
                    thrust and recoil

and love is a place,

beyond seduction 
                    thrust and recoil 

but all those years i

looked like hell and was
an embarrassment, from you 
i earned one dull black stone
and

you still, my chocolate nightmare

you live hydra in my me, you

swimming down my back, sneak attack,

a liquid cocoa poison,

ooze from my wounds 
until i wake

your long cinnamon breath, your slippers and 
sad eyes, your kindness to everyone around me

rendered

me 

dirt 
and cake my sleep, fear i keep

you still, my chocolate nightmare

you lie hydra in my me, you

trickle down my back, sneak attack,

a liquid cocoa poison,

oozing wounds 
until i wake

and you are still my nightmare

into the all

when i tell you we can live on music and bread,

i mean i want to sit with you on the floor of a room. 

when i tell you we can live on music and bread,

i mean we feel. the poetry, the sound, and

those rhythms.

when i tell you we can read the rhythms to each other
over and around

i mean we will touch divine from the act of it,

from our spines pressed together back to back, and

in those half notes and broken chords we will

enter the all.

and when i tell you this is gratitude,
to those tiny children who, with fingers of rubies, made this music,

who picked through mud into opal dirt, who spun tears into wheat
gold for us and who kneaded this bread before sun came and

combined violins and axes, and who

made instruments into sustenance,

i mean we can live on music and bread.

not at him but with him

 
In Mexico

That dog in his ruffled skirt made me laugh, but

Despite that, he looked tough, with angry eyes screaming

And in his December green sweater, stealing meat

From the vendor, that dog made me laugh

Not at him, but with him

And the murals on the walls reminded me of love and dead babies

And the many ways the living will 
compensate for loss.

futile

at ninety, at old age

she was bitter about sanka without cream

and resented fingerprints on picture glass.

she bathed the cat daily
and it ran away

until still, lilies clotted the lake

epic story of alone

alki beach, stones

and sandy toes,

twist bird in the wind.

there is no one to call when the gas tank is dry.

there is no one to call when the tide moves in
and little gulls thieve from us because

nothing is free

inside a driftwood cage

and the bonfire threatens to burn down the sea.
there is no one to call when there is no water.
standing on the shore and there is no water
and the sandpipers scatter. and

orthotic shoes sit by the towel and

pictures capture the shadows and

nothing is free

honest lies

so i gaze into the sweet

past lavender fields and winter wheat,

coast about in the vee, then jump wake.

into the deep horizon

before velvet cantaloupe with a twist of cloud,

ahead of the banana sun, i know your

bare toes slipping up my summer skirt

and i sing welcome, i have been waiting, 

 

we make such loud and blinding light 
neighbors pound on the door and

strangers ask to come in,  for

bread and coffee, our sea blue walls,

and the music of woodblocks clop,

for the percussion drive, the double bass, and

for the poems said one line at a time,

i love you.

we are midnight.

trips to the vape shop in bathrobes

and we are motorcycle hair and

waterbeds full of swimming salmon,

 

with one peacock on the table and

one goat on the roof,

and shoplifted yellow flowers

in a small silver vase.

so i gaze into the sweet 
punch through chocolate pudding skin and

doing the hustle in the basement with the bee gees on blast.

please scratch my back softly hard,

and i’ll bend past it all, recall the spells of

lust and love and know that

the fables that instruct us are the

beads with holes too small for the thread,

slip knots and spoons

folding finger by finger, as

you translate the lyrics from the portuguese and finally,

i understand why the sound is muffled

from behind the mirror.

we are whitened wood masks and

blown glass bowls, we are bamboo leaves, and

a certain shade of turquoise.  sugar baby,

sugar face,

you with the perfect

german ch,

you concussed me with your no.

unknown regions

can you say impeach

can you say the snow

can you say cerulean and
wavering azure,

can you say the quality

of light.  no?

then say ships at sea in

unknown regions, say steer on.

past cyclops and siren those

waters deep cut through, say sail.

say

this is the heroine’s quest,

say, the universe is pressing its

palms together in a

prayer for us

(thank you, nk)

the stage

at the edge of creamy carpet are a woman’s

shoes, stillettos mostly, and one pair that

belongs to a man, untied and placed

next to each other, and as she revisits this

in her mind she wishes she would have

paid attention to the direction the toes of his had pointed, but

has an idea about that even though rewind can never

be hit in this life and if it could it would tell

a different story every time

and two cups with straws

and a drive-thru bag are litter on the table

and on the table too a pair of his pants, a sweater, and

a shirt are folded neatly and stacked by keys, a watch,

and an empty ring, and as she revisits this in her mind she realizes the

implication in her application of the word empty,

but next time,

the story may be different

and in the bedroom a woman’s clothes

are strewn across the floor, tangled

in blankets and floor pillows.  i’m not wearing them

and won’t need them quickly or

any time soon and with our eyes open we face each other,

with my eyes open i watch you, 

listen to you ask, “what about mon--”

and wonder at this weird miracle

of how you can fall asleep mid-sentence, with

such fearlessness, like a kitten asleep with its

belly exposed

and the fan chain dangles and clicks with the

rhythmic swirl of the blades, the sound

suggesting a clock, but not a clock,

and precise time is not the actual moment anyway

which is to say between us only some promises are necessary,

and you will waken soon just as quickly as you slept 

and you will leave, and in each today

the exact present exists just at the inside edge

or maybe just at the outside edge of

enough

basic math

Two apartments.

Two houses.

Two hotels.

Two kitchens

Two offices,

One rolling cart.

One table,

One balcony,

One shower. 

Three living rooms,

Three broken hearts.

One bar stool. Twice.

One broken table,

Three counters,

One desk chair,

One slipper chair,

Two coffee shops,

Five bars.

One tea house.

One broken bed.

Two couches,

One mini van,

Six rides in cars.

Several broken glasses,

Two deaths.

Two nights and 

Two mornings.

Two desks.

Five kids, Two marriages,

One divorce.

One surgery,

One bouquet,

Two sunset eyes

Two sunrise eyes.  Which come first?

We don't want to brake anymore

We don’t want to break anymore

We don’t want to break any more

We don’t want to

No photos

No families

No anniversaries.

paper kisses

what can be done with paper kisses.
they are small seeds accepted because
your legs are not nothing 

you redwood,
deep anchored enormous and
shifting perspective

from eight days away I consider taking the kisses you’ve left propped against the whisky bottle
and folding them into airplanes and sending them off to become pulp in the December rain
because there are many ways to leave and

then you swing through and up close.
but then up close 
next to you I am 

young and I forget everything else because up close everything is 
your thighs, your calves, your knees, your heat.  your stance, your hands, your cypress sap 
my tonic.

what can be done with paper kisses
small seeds of redwood accepted,
bodies of infinite and

I fold those two kisses you’ve left on the counter into fish and they swim up a waterfall
and become dragons in the sky,
free and powerful outside the current.

depression games

He asked me if I would rather
have thirty arms but every time one came near a baby the baby would die
or no arms and babies

I answered thirty arms, to his stricken face, then laughed
and said

JK!  Of course no arms; it would be hard to feed babies with my feet
but we'd make do and he said

JK!  If you had thirty arms and the babies died, then you would die too
but you would only have two arms in your coffin and everyone would think
you were a baby killer for fun.  You would be dead and couldn't defend yourself.
Now what do you choose?

and I said, I picked no arms!  I picked no arms and babies!

and I think of these moments that one afternoon,
and I think and think and can't stop:

You are in there, couched in riddles,
you are asking me to vouch for sacrifice,
to prove my love, to tell you the
exact price I would be willing to pay for you,
and the answers I give you cannot accept right now
and I am frightened by our game.

conversation

two strangers meet

pour,
pain, speak:
a cross burned on your front grass
those sinister dresses and pointed hats
and your dad.

pour,
pain, speak:
my impulse, my heartbeat
is chest-caged and free and I'm
one eyelash beyond amoeba.

sacred one

her eyes describing bloodshot lines,

suspect routes, connection sites
hackjob sutures cross-stitch town

and she checks through space
for the distance between our bodies.

the distance between their bodies
stands solid dark fossilized flow
but for stroking small gestures

midday screentime caresses
her towel dried fingers release

to type
where the fuck you at?
on a tiny keyboard.

two one none

electric stairs

to a pond of heat

crawl up double close and

breathe, breathe. i

inhale, inhale,

flip on, slide through 

so, how long did it take us to meet?
four lifetimes.  maybe three. 

you say in my eyes
you remembered to breathe

and memories braid the

literal, the figurative.

meanings of

two, one, 

none.
 

sacred too

she
glass shell, put to his ear, 

hear smoke whisper samba inside,

come move.

wide sea, carry on carry back,
hear snare drums and surdos inside,

come move.

so sway. quarter beat.

play she lips and he lips

so sway.  quarter beat
pull she to he hips

afternoons slow, the telephone left

on the desk

witness

i hear the geese

this morning and the cooing
of something much closer

the neighbor boy

screeches "Reid!  Catch!"

and then wailing

and with this blanket

wrapped around my legs

the sun has finally come up.

sunday risen.