Poems

Watermelons

Green Buddhas
On the fruit stand.
We eat the smile
And spit out the teeth.

Leap Year

All the years of grown’n up, “leap year,”
Just meant an extra day of cold and grief.
In the gruesome days of February,
Before you could turn a calendar leaf.

For years I’ve always calculated,
Without that extra day in there.
By the time I turned eighty,
I’d be breathing younger air.

Saddled with all the daily ranch work,
I never bothered with the solar spin.
We just had our yearly chores,
That we’d do over and over again.

Back in the early days of grades,
Far out in a country school.
Our teacher taught us a little riddle,
That became a Golden Rule.

That we could use throughout our lives,
To remember each month’s days.
And recite it on command,
Even in our foggiest lackluster haze.

But I’ve always done things my way,
To keep track of days gone by.
They say dyslexics do that,
So here’s my version why.

Thirty days has September,
April, June and November.
All the rest have thirty one,
Except “January,” that on certain long winters has “forty some.”

Fear

I fear the vast dimensions of eternity.
I fear the gap between the platform and the train.
I fear the onset of a murderous campaign.
I fear the palpitations caused by too much tea.

I fear the drawn pistol of a rapparee.
I fear the books will not survive the acid rain.
I fear the ruler and the blackboard and the cane.
I fear the Jabberwock, whatever it might be.

I fear the bad decisions of a referee.
I fear the only recourse is to plead insane.
I fear the implications of a lawyer’s fee.

I fear the gremlins that have colonized my brain.
I fear to read the small print of the guarantee.
And what else do I fear? Let me begin again.

Prayer for My Father as a Child

In the house where he sleeps
let my ears
be the leaves at the window.

Let the bulbs of the lamps
be my eyes
on the animal street.

Let the shadows that harbour
my unborn body
stir when harm is stirring.

I’ll sleep in the drawer
with the knives.
I’ll turn in the locks.

Ozymandias

In Egypt’s sandy silence, all alone,
Stands a gigantic Leg, which far off throws
The only shadow that the Desert knows:—
“I am great OZYMANDIAS,” saith the stone,
“The King of Kings; this mighty City shows
The wonders of my hand.”— The City’s gone,—
Naught but the Leg remaining to disclose
The site of this forgotten Babylon.

We wonder — and some Hunter may express
Wonder like ours, when thro’ the wilderness
Where London stood, holding the Wolf in chace,
He meets some fragment huge, and stops to guess
What powerful but unrecorded race
Once dwelt in that annihilated place.

Loneliness

Loneliness is a town
Where everyone else is dead.
The streets are clean,
The street markets empty,
Suddenly everything's in a true light
Through being deserted -- exactly
The way it was meant to be.
Loneliness is a city
Where it's always snowing
Prodigiously, and no footsteps ever
Profane the layered
Drift of the light.
And you alone, the unsleeping eye
Keeping an eye on the sleepers, you
See, comprehend, and can't have enough
Of a silence so pristine
Nobody fights there,
Nobody's lied to,
And even the tear in the eye
Of the abandoned animals
Is too pure to hurt.
On the border
Between suffering and death,
Loneliness is a happy town.

Fragment 147

someone will remember us
                 I say
                 even in another time

Ozymandias

I met a traveller from an antique land,
Who said—"Two vast and trunkless legs of stone
Stand in the desert. . . . Near them, on the sand,
Half sunk a shattered visage lies, whose frown,
And wrinkled lip, and sneer of cold command,
Tell that its sculptor well those passions read
Which yet survive, stamped on these lifeless things,
The hand that mocked them, and the heart that fed;
And on the pedestal, these words appear:
My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
Nothing beside remains. Round the decay
Of that colossal Wreck, boundless and bare
The lone and level sands stretch far away."

[The house was just twinkling in the moon light]

The house was just twinkling in the moon light,
And inside it twinkling with delight,
Is my baby bright.
Twinkling with delight in the house twinkling
with the moonlight,
Bless my baby bless my baby bright,
Bless my baby twinkling with delight,
In the house twinkling in the moon light,
Her hubby dear loves to cheer when he thinks
and he always thinks when he knows and he always
knows that his blessed baby wifey is all here and he
is all hers, and sticks to her like burrs, blessed baby

The Shortest Day

And so the Shortest Day came and the year died
And everywhere down the centuries of the snow-white world
Came people singing, dancing,
To drive the dark away.
They lighted candles in the winter trees;
They hung their homes with evergreen;
They burned beseeching fires all night long
To keep the year alive.
And when the new year’s sunshine blazed awake
They shouted, revelling.
Through all the frosty ages you can hear them
Echoing behind us – listen!
All the long echoes, sing the same delight,
This Shortest Day,
As promise wakens in the sleeping land:
They carol, feast, give thanks,
And dearly love their friends,
And hope for peace.
And now so do we, here, now,
This year and every year.
Welcome Yule!

Ghosts

Having survived the night of rhetoric and childhood
I'm left with the image of the three of us:
Mother, sister, daughter--an idea of progression--
An idea abandoned at varying distances.
The dream was the story of another way to live.
As the characters assumed uncontrolled postures
There you were among them, knowing what you wanted.

What if the night is a book you must dream
Someone else's dream over and over, each word
A syringe with the job of waking up
Some decreased part. Whose face is at the window?
An old white sheet with cut-out eyes
Held against a face you know, you remember
Someone smiling at you like that, a long time ago.

Once upon a midnight dreary, While I pondered, weak and weary, Over many a quaint and curious Volume of forgotten lore— While I nodded, nearly napping, Suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, Rapping at my chamber door. "'T is some visitor," I muttered, "Tapping at my chamber door Only this and nothing more."

Ah, distinctly I remember, It was in the bleak December, And each separate dying ember Wrought its ghost upon the floor. Eagerly I wished the morrow; Vainly I had sought to borrow From my books surcease of sorrow Sorrow for the lost Lenore— For the rare and radiant maiden Whom the angels name Lenore— Nameless here for evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain Rustling of each purple curtain Thrilled me,—filled me with fantastic Terrors, never felt before; So that now, to still the beating Of my heart, I stood repeating, " 'T is some visitor entreating Entrance at my chamber door Some late visitor entreating Entrance at my chamber door; This it is and nothing more."

Presently my soul grew stronger; Hesitating then no longer, "Sir," said I, "or Madam, truly Your forgiveness I implore; But the fact is I was napping, And so gently you came rapping, And so faintly you came tapping, Tapping at my chamber door, That I scarce was sure I heard you"— Here I opened wide the door; Darkness there and nothing more.

Deep into that darkness peering, Long I stood there, wondering, fearing, Doubting, dreaming dreams no mortals Ever dared to dream before; But the silence was unbroken, And the stillness gave no token, And the only word there spoken Was the whispered word, "Lenore?" This I whispered, and an echo Murmured back the word, "Lenore!"— Merely this and nothing more.

Back into the chamber turning, All my soul within me burning, Soon again I heard a tapping Something louder than before. "Surely," said I, "surely, that is Something at my window lattice; Let me see, then, what thereat is, And this mystery explore— Let my heart be still a moment And this mystery explore;— 'T is the wind and nothing more."

Open here I flung the shutter, When, with many a flirt and flutter, In there stepped a stately Raven Of the saintly days of yore. Not the least obeisance made he; Not a minute stopped or stayed he; But, with mien of lord or lady, Perched above my chamber door— Perched upon a bust of Pallas Just above my chamber door— Perched, and sat, and nothing more.

Then this ebony bird beguiling My sad fancy into smiling, By the grave and stern decorum Of the countenance it wore, "Though thy crest be shorn and shaven, Thou," I said, "art sure no craven, Ghastly, grim, and ancient Raven Wandering from the nightly shore,— Tell me what thy lordly name is On the night's Plutonian shore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

Much I marveled this ungainly Fowl to hear discourse so plainly, Though its answer little meaning— Little relevancy bore; For we cannot help agreeing That no living human being Ever yet was blest with seeing Bird above his chamber door— Bird or beast upon the sculptured Bust above his chamber door, With such name as "Nevermore."

But the Raven, sitting lonely On that placid bust, spoke only That one word, as if his soul in That one word he did outpour. Nothing farther then he uttered; Not a feather then he fluttered— Till I scarcely more than muttered, "Other friends have flown before— On the morrow he will leave me, As my hopes have flown before." Then the bird said, "Nevermore."

Startled at the stillness broken By reply so aptly spoken, "Doubtless," said I, "what it utters Is its only stock and store, Caught from some unhappy master Whom unmerciful Disaster Followed fast and followed faster Till his songs one burden bore— Till the dirges of his Hope that Melancholy burden bore Of 'Never—nevermore.' "

But the Raven still beguiling All my sad soul into smiling, Straight I wheeled a cushioned seat in Front of bird and bust and door; Then, upon the velvet sinking, I betook myself to linking Fancy unto fancy, thinking What this ominous bird of yore— What this grim, ungainly, ghastly, Gaunt, and ominous bird of yore Meant in croaking "Nevermore."

This I sat engaged in guessing, But no syllable expressing To the fowl whose fiery eyes now Burned into my bosom's core; This and more I sat divining, With my head at ease reclining On the cushion's velvet lining That the lamplight gloated o'er, But whose velvet violet lining With the lamplight gloating o'er She shall press, ah, nevermore!

Then, methought, the air grew denser, Perfumed from an unseen censer Swung by Seraphim, whose footfalls Tinkled on the tufted floor. "Wretch," I cried, "thy God hath lent thee— By these angels he hath sent thee Respite—respite and nepenthe[1] From thy memories of Lenore! Quaff, oh quaff this kind nepenthe, And forget this lost Lenore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil!— Prophet still, if bird or devil!— Whether Tempter sent, or whether Tempest tossed thee here ashore, Desolate, yet all undaunted, On this desert land enchanted— On this home by Horror haunted— Tell me truly, I implore— Is there—is there balm in Gilead?— Tell me—tell me, I implore!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Prophet!" said I, "thing of evil,— Prophet still, if bird or devil!— By that heaven that bends above us,— By that God we both adore,— Tell this soul with sorrow laden If, within the distant Aidenn, It shall clasp a sainted maiden Whom the angels name Lenore— Clasp a rare and radiant maiden Whom the angels name Lenore." Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

"Be that word our sign of parting, Bird or fiend," I shrieked, upstarting— "Get thee back into the tempest And the Night's Plutonian shore! Leave no black plume as a token Of that lie thy soul hath spoken! Leave my loneliness unbroken!— Quit the bust above my door! Take thy beak from out my heart, and Take thy form from off my door!" Quoth the Raven, "Nevermore."

And the Raven, never flitting, Still is sitting, still is sitting On the pallid bust of Pallas Just above my chamber door; And his eyes have all the seeming Of a demon's that is dreaming, And the lamplight o'er him streaming Throws his shadow on the floor; And my soul from out that shadow That lies floating on the floor Shall be lifted—nevermore!

The Kraken

Deep beneath the foaming billows
Something suddenly amiss,
As a creature wakes from slumber
In the bottomless abyss.
And a panic fills the ocean,
Every fish and frenzied flea,

For the Kraken has awakened at the bottom of the seas.

It rises to the surface
With an overwhelming noise,
And it hunts for mighty vessels
Which it crushes and destroys.
Then it chokes a great leviathan
With one stupendous squeeze!

Oh, the Kraken has awakened at the bottom of the seas.

How it lashes, how it thrashes,
How it flashes, how it flails,
How it dwarfs the greatest fishes,
Even dwarfs the mighty Wales.
Nothing living in the ocean
Can enjoy a moment’s ease,

For the Kraken has awakened at the bottom of the seas.

INVITATION

If you are a dreamer, come in,
If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar,
A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer ...
If you're a pretender, com sit by my fire
For we have some flax-golden tales to spin.

Come in!
Come in!

Heirloom

Sundown, the day nearly eaten away,

the Boxcar Willies peep. Their
inside-eyes push black and plump

against walls of pumpkin skin. I step
into dying backyard light. Both hands

steal into the swollen summer air,
a blind reach into a blaze of acid,

ghost bloom of nacre & breast.
One Atlantan Cherokee Purple,

two piddling Radiator Charlies
are Lena-Horne lured into the fingers

of my right hand. But I really do love you,
enters my ear like a nest of yellow jackets,

well wedged beneath a two-by-four.

But I really didn't think I would (ever leave),
stings before the ladder hits the ground.

I swat the familiar buzz away.
My good arm arcs and aims.

My elbow cranks a high, hard cradle
and draws a fire. The end of the day's

sweaty air stirs fast in a bowl, the coming
shadows, the very diamond match I need.

One by one, each Blind Willie
takes his turn Pollocking the back

fence, heart pine explodes gold-leafed in
red and brown-eyed ochre. There is practice

for everything in this life. This is how
you throw something perfectly good away.

On First Looking into Chapman's Homer

Much have I travell'd in the realms of gold,
And many goodly states and kingdoms seen;
Round many western islands have I been
Which bards in fealty to Apollo hold.
Oft of one wide expanse had I been told
That deep-brow'd Homer ruled as his demesne;
Yet did I never breathe its pure serene
Till I heard Chapman speak out loud and bold:
Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
Or like stout Cortez when with eagle eyes
He star'd at the Pacific—and all his men
Look'd at each other with a wild surmise—
Silent, upon a peak in Darien.

One Child Has Brown Eyes

One child has brown eyes, one has blue
One slanted, another rounded
One so nearsighted he squints internal
One had her extra epicanthic folds removed
One downcast, one couldn't be bothered
One roams the heavens for a perfect answer
One transfixed like a dead doe, a convex mirror
One shines double-edged like a poisoned dagger
Understand their vision, understand their blindness
Understand their vacuity, understand their mirth

This Talk of Poems

I will tell you this thing,
as I do
(this is the game we play together:
one retracts the half-revealed,
one coaxes out what’s left concealed). This, then,
is what I will say to you,
stumbling over your eyes’ architecture,
a clumsy grasping after words—
I called your eyes cathedrals, was sincere,
and blush to remember how you laughed—
this, then, is what I will say—

no, I can’t. Not yet! Not now,
not when the secret curls and stammers
while you clamour insistence, disbelief—not now,
but later, perhaps, when you don’t expect
a sudden surge of metaphor,
a tidal rush, a rising line of foam and salt
to soak shock into your ankles.

We’re not there yet. Not yet at the place
where I can tell you how I think
of days when you’ll tell some other girl
about this girl who read you poems
thinking you enjoyed them, thinking
you listened to anything more than the sound of her voice,
the funny lilting of her foreign vowels
and her foreign cadence,
mixing syllables and emphases
while longing for yours.

“She even wrote me a poem,” you’ll say,
to this other girl, cool and secure
in her place at the end of your history,
“and it was a bit shit, but what do I know about poetry.”

I won’t tell you this, won’t read you this,
because how could it ever be the time
to tell you I write in self-defence,
to tell you that to write to you
is to think of you hurting me—
to imagine you hurting me
if you haven’t yet—

and to remember that when I said
those poems I wrote for other people
those poems I didn’t write for you
are full of thorns, are healing stings,
are scabbing over wounds—
you said,
you don’t care about me enough
to write a poem—
but meant
you don’t care about me enough
to let me hurt you.

You’ll say this isn’t fair. How could you know
that a poem is a grudge
clutched tight against the liver, bile-steeped,
nursed to savage potency? How could you know
that a poem is catharsis,
is septic in conception, a boil
lanced in execution?

You never listened, after all,
to anything but the sound of my voice.

So I’ll cut you this slack. Here is a poem.
It isn’t pretty, it isn’t built
of honey and spice, isn’t sweet
or savoury, isn’t anything
like what a poem is thought to be.
I won’t call you Green Man, Diamond Jack,
Knight of Coins or Pentacles,
won’t speak of stretching out on graves,
or how the tracery of your irises
might have taught architects to dream
of stained glass.

I certainly won’t tell you I love you.

And maybe once you’ve read it,
to yourself, in quiet,
in your own mind’s voice,
you’ll think twice before asking me
to write you another.

Dos Corazones: After Papo Colo

My second heart got an email
about My First Heart at The Museum of Modern Art.

My first heart tells my second heart
that now is her chance to say something important,

Something for the archives about who she is.
About who her mother never got to be.

My second heart immediately gets to work
on the administrative portion and compiles a list

of possible exhibition titles.
Proud Diasporican. Diasporican Gang.
Lonely Diasporican. Diasporican in Distress.

My first heart is always Diasporican
but never quite knows how to feel about it.

My first heart doesn’t trust museums,
she heard they be stealing people’s hearts.

My second heart tells my first heart that things are different now.
These days they ask the heart for permission.

It’s for educational purposes only.
My first heart tells my second heart she isn’t anybody’s teacher.

She’s still trying to learn her own history.
That’s why my first heart became an anthropologist

and found out she was a rare artifact.
I’m talking wild vintage and shit.

Records trace her back all the way to 1898
but my first heart says that’s bullshit.

My first heart has a memory long as a Yuca root
and she demands you acknowledge that she existed way before that.

My first heart is a complicated machine
that breaks down in multiple languages.

My first heart knows Spanish is a colonized tongue
so she doesn’t feel bad about speaking it terribly.

My first heart knows English is a colonized tongue,
so, for fun, my first heart pisses off strangers by telling them

“In America, we speak Spanglish.”

My first heart knows where she is from
but still asks Puerto Rico for forgiveness for being born in Brooklyn.

My first heart knows where she is from
but still asks Brooklyn for forgiveness for moving to New Jersey.

My first heart can’t afford the rent anywhere,
so my first heart finds home wherever Boricuas are.

Wherever Boricuas have had to be.
My first heart has a plan to birth Boricuas on the moon.

My first heart has big dreams
that involve an avocado tree,

a 15-piece orchestra
and an aluminum tray full of relleno de papa.

My first heart doesn’t tell my second heart
about any of these plans because my second heart

is too busy trying to make it as a poet in America.

Solstice Poem

i
A tree hulks in the living-
room, prickly monster, our hostage
from the wilderness, prelude
to light in this dark space of the year
which turns again toward the sun
today, or at least we hope so.

Outside, a dead tree
swarming with blue and yellow
birds; inside, a living one
that shimmers with hollow silver
planets and wafer faces,
salt and flour, with pearl
teeth, tin angels, a knitted bear.

This is our altar.

ii
Beyond the white hill which maroons us,
out of sight of the white
eye of the pond, geography

is crumbling, the nation
splits like an iceberg, factions
shouting Good riddance from the floes
as they all melt south,
with politics the usual
rats' breakfast.

All politicians are amateurs:
wars bloom in their heads like flowers
on wallpaper, pins strut on their maps.
Power is wine with lunch
and the right pinstripes.

There are no amateur soldiers.
The soldiers grease their holsters,
strap on everything
they need to strap, gobble their dinners.
They travel quickly and light.

The fighting will be local, they know,
and lethal.
Their eyes flick from target
to target: window, belly, child.
The goal is not to get killed.

iii
As for the women, who did not
want to be involved, they are involved.

It's that blood on the snow
which turns out to be not
some bludgeoned or machine-gunned
animal's, but your own
that does it.

Each has a knitting needle
stuck in her abdomen, a red pincushion
heart complete with pins,
a numbed body
with one more entrance than the world finds safe,
and not much money.

Each fears her children sprout
from the killed children of others.
Each is right.

Each has a father.
Each has a mad mother
and a necklace of light blue tears.
Each has a mirror
which when asked replies Not you.

IV
My daughter crackles paper, blows
on the tree to make it live, festoons
herself with silver.
So far she has no use
for gifts.
    What can I give her,
what armor, invincible
sword or magic trick, when that year comes?

How can I teach her some way of being human
that won't destroy her?

I would like to tell her. Love
is enough, I would like to say,
Find shelter in another skin.

I would like to say, Dance
and be happy. Instead I will say
in my crone's voice, Be
ruthless when you have to, tell
the truth when you can, when you can see it.

Iron talismans, and ugly, but
more loyal than mirrors.

STARTLEMENT

It is a forgotten pleasure, the pleasure
  of the unexpected blue-bellied lizard

skittering off his sun spot rock, the flicker
  of an unknown bird by the bus stop.

To think, perhaps, we are not distinguishable
  and therefore no loneliness can exist here.

Species to species in the same blue air, smoke—
  wing flutter buzzing, a car horn coming.

So many unknown languages, to think we have
  only honored this strange human tongue.

If you sit by the riverside, you see a culmination
  of all things upstream. We know now,

we were never at the circle’s center, instead
  all around us something is living or trying to live.

The world says, What we are becoming, we are
  becoming together.

The world says, One type of dream has ended
  and another has just begun.

The world says, Once we were separate,
  and now we must move in unison.

Genius

Two old dancing shoes my grandfather
gave the Christian Ladies,
an unpaid water bill, the rear license
of a dog that messed on your lawn,
a tooth I saved for the good fairy
and which is stained with base metals
and plastic filler. With these images
and your black luck and my bad breath
a bright beginner could make a poem
in fourteen rhyming lines about the purity
of first love or the rose's many thorns
or the dew that won't wait long enough
to stand my little gray wren a drink.

Poet’s work

Grandfather
  advised me:
    Learn a trade

I learned
  to sit at desk
    and condense

No layoff
  from this
    condensery

Another Reason Why I Don't Keep A Gun In The House

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
He is barking the same high, rhythmic bark
that he barks every time they leave the house.
They must switch him on on their way out.

The neighbors' dog will not stop barking.
I close all the windows in the house
and put on a Beethoven symphony full blast
but I can still hear him muffled under the music,
barking, barking, barking,

and now I can see him sitting in the orchestra,
his head raised confidently as if Beethoven
had included a part for barking dog.

When the record finally ends he is still barking,
sitting there in the oboe section barking,
his eyes fixed on the conductor who is
entreating him with his baton

while the other musicians listen in respectful
silence to the famous barking dog solo,
that endless coda that first established
Beethoven as an innovative genius.

my grandfather and home

i

my grandfather used to count the days for return with his fingers
he then used stones to count
not enough
he used the clouds birds people

absence turned out to be too long
thirty six years until he died
for us now it is over seventy years

my grandpa lost his memory
he forgot the numbers the people
he forgot home

ii

i wish i were with you grandpa
i would have taught myself to write you
poems volumes of them and paint our home for you
i would have sewn you from soil
a garment decorated with plants
and trees you had grown
i would have made you
perfume from the oranges
and soap from the skys tears of joy
couldnt think of something purer

iii

i go to the cemetery every day
i look for your grave but in vain
are they sure they buried you
or did you turn into a tree
or perhaps you flew with a bird to the nowhere

iv

i place your photo in an earthenware pot
i water it every monday and thursday at sunset
i was told you used to fast those days
in ramadan i water it every day
for thirty days
or less or more

v

how big do you want our home to be
i can continue to write poems until you are satisfied
if you wish i can annex a neighboring planet or two

vi

for this home i shall not draw boundaries
no punctuation marks