"the unanswered question, the resolute doubt"

” For the Persian poet Rumi, each human life is analogous to a bowl floating on the surface of an infinite ocean. As it moves along, it is slowly filling with the water around it. That’s a metaphor for the acquisition of knowledge. When the water in the bowl finally reaches the same level as the water outside, there is no longer any need for the container, and it drops away as the inner water merges with the outside water. We call this the moment of death. That analogy returns to me over and over as a metaphor for ourselves.”

—Bill Viola

i like my body when it is with your
body.  It is so quite new a thing.
Muscles better and nerves more.
i like your body.  i like what it does,
i like its hows.  i like to feel the spine
of your body and its bones, and the trembling
-firm-smooth ness and which i will
again and again and again
kiss,  i like kissing this and that of you,
i like, slowly stroking the, shocking fuzz
of your electric fur, and what-is-it comes
over parting flesh… And eyes big love-crumbs,

and possibly i like the thrill

of under me you so quite new

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say, stay in there, I’m not going
to let anybody see
you.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I pour whiskey on him and inhale
cigarette smoke
and the whores and the bartenders
and the grocery clerks
never know that
he’s
in there.

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too tough for him,
I say,
stay down, do you want to mess
me up?
you want to screw up the
works?
you want to blow my book sales in
Europe?

there’s a bluebird in my heart that
wants to get out
but I’m too clever, I only let him out
at night sometimes
when everybody’s asleep.
I say, I know that you’re there,
so don’t be
sad.

then I put him back,
but he’s singing a little
in there, I haven’t quite let him
die
and we sleep together like
that
with our
secret pact
and it’s nice enough to
make a man
weep, but I don’t
weep, do
you?

—time is a tree(this life one leaf)

but love is the sky and i am for you

just so long and long enough

excerpt from “as freedom is a breakfast food”; read at my friends wedding this weekend.

I’m helping my kiddies write poetry and re-discovered this poem on my hard drive. It might be my favorite one I’ve ever written; it got published in a national poetry magazine!

Home Videos

My mother is stored

in a box downstairs,

our short life together

saved in two-hour intervals.

Everything I’ve learned of her

(her single dimple, her wavy brown hair, 

   her crooked smile

which I wear like fingerprints)

retained in the time it takes to

fast forward or

rewind a tape.

She’s preserved in the movie reels,

patiently waiting for me to 

press play,

wanting me to meet her,

to learn how my name

sounded on her lips before the

Cancer broke

her voice.

To see how my sleep-heavy

four-year-old frame

fit into her chest before the 

sickness broke

her strength.

My mother,

neatly packaged downstairs,

was hoping

I’d remember these tapes and 

I’d forget my last memories

of the hospital room –

   the paleness,

   the frailness,

   the staleness of it all,

and

I’d erase the moment she realized 

she could be no more than a 

Stranger

leaving the faintest scent of a mother

I would have to track

and discover

on

my

own.

We fell in a field it seems now a thousand summers passed.
When our kite lines first crossed,
we tied them into knots 
and to finally fly apart,
we had to cut them off.

Why should I blame her that she filled my days

With misery, or that she would of late

Have taught to ignorant men most violent ways,

Or hurled the little streets upon the great,

Had they but courage equal to desire?

What could have made her peaceful with a mind

That nobleness made simple as a fire,

With beauty like a tightened bow, a kind

That is not natural in an age like this,

Being high and solitary and most stern?

What, what could she have done, being what she is?

Was there another Troy for her to burn?

—William Butler Yeats, 1910