Many Facets, One Jewel

(1999)

I watch the rain
trickle psychedelic down
our window panes. My husband's
in the next room thinking
he loves me. Thinking
he is married--happily even
perhaps--I don't know.



I do know
by the rain
the flight of leaves
the lean of the silver maple tree
that neither of us knows
not the first thing
about loving. We are
pretending at it. Just like
those who taught us.

(1998)

Miners we are, and blackened by it.

My lamp has burned out, and so I ask that you share your light. And what do you say, love: what do you say? It is the same, every time:

"G'bye." It's "gotta care for my own, gotta love my own."

That which was held is shattered in an instant.

Like it never was, we walk into our separate days, estranged mothers of our own lives. Meanwhile, our toilets fill with load after load of what was never intended to be carried along. The cat cries to come in, for a gaze and a hand: simple reassurance. Then she is quickly off again. In spring, there is no need for her winter coat, so she sheds it.

The ideal palace is what you desire. To Lord over your kingdom with total control. In your kingdom, there is no argument; apology is irrelevant: ideal kingdom.

Orlando Letelier was tortured, put to death, you know, for being himself: a torch for others to walk by. For being clear, visionary, and willing to follow that thrum: to lead. Imagine Paris, turn of the century, and how they all knew the World spun on that axis. The World! Paris: the center of the Universe!

One bears one's own failings and flailing when humility sets in. So even Paris fell to its knees. Bombs on the Metro, a city-wide strike--the opposite of naked: that time was a thick coat of unrest. The cloak heavy, burdensome, was a weight to be shrugged off. And so now Paris is lighter, walking by the flame of its own truths.

How fast it goes, time! Forty years, and maybe 40 more if we're fortunate. How shall we live them, dear? And what might it cost you to share your lamp? Paris lost nothing, really, don't you think?

(2003)

In that corner we lay
mouths hands skin and
that feeling of stay
in the palm of Love
pulsing life for life's sake
one molecule
in one corner
of one white room
for some reason
and I want to say it was
Divine
but you know
now that I think about it
it is enough to say
it was.

(1999)

I sit exhausted in my blue room with fur on my teeth and needing refreshment, but I cannot budge. The days of forcing myself out of these grogs and into motion are over.

There's a toothbrush by the sink, red and clean--that's a comfort, even if I don't use it. The breeze is a caress across my neck. I love the breeze as it loves me.

They call this collapse.

Lucy's brought me the bluebird of happiness in a velvet pouch. She says it's crystal, and it won't ever die. But it's not breathing to begin with, I tell her, and she shakes her head, sorry for me. I am not sorry for me. I am right where I am, which is more than I can say for a lot of folks. They spin through their days like tops, and at the finish, just when they're about to hear something from the inside deeper than "Good morning, how are ya?" or "Got this terrible bug..." they pour a rye and ginger and it's lost.

I am here, right here: two feet solid on collapse, and happily so. There is nothing worse than sawing against the grain. The saw binds, the wood tears--it's a terrible mess. And you can never quite find your groove...