My uncle Bill.
God rest his tired soul.
and I walked through
the summer
and two doors down
an older boy was in his backyard.
I don't know how it started?
Perhaps my uncle Bill,
God rest his tired soul,
in his own way,
the one who smeared butter
on the cigarette burns he caused,
his mohawk hair, old spice shave, white socks, and peanut butter sandwiches
wanting somehow to escape
seven generations of early death,
and I wonder if he was there the day his mother died;
and grandfather always making excuses for his fishing trips;
felt it was time for me to be a man.

But his reach was much longer
and when I got close enough to hit back
he punched me in the stomach
and I couldn't breath
bent over and
my uncle Bill,
God rest his tired soul,
commanded me to fight
like a man
and I couldn't straighten up
and I couldn't breath
and my heart enlarged
like a let go balloon.

and I write
I write you tonight
because I want to stand up
be there
but I can't breath
and I can't stand up
and I know I should stand up
but I've been bent over so long
It just feels like
me, when I'm so twisted, breathless,
looking at the summer grass,
so drifted with snow.
And I didn't even notice how you looked at me this morning
and I saw pale pink light
in that punch
and I thought it was
a girl next door
wondering what happened
to that man,
God rest his tired soul.

I'm remembering her name was Brook and I'm remembering that New Years eve when all the other guests left, and I'm remembering the scented candles she lit in those hours just before twilight and I have loved the water ever since.

 

I climbed Poe Mountain in the summer humid affection, into the hum of the cicada, that song that consumes me and I forget to eat and I forget to sleep and I dance with the wind and she waves her silver fingers at me as she retreats through the trees, enticing me to follow and follow, I am.

 

And the dust swirls in devils in the late afternoon as she waves and smiles from the well, and I can't actually see the smile for the silken veil but only the eyes so filled with her water. A welcome to the water canyon desert, summer buzz and Sufi spinning into evening ecstasy, bridging her dream into mine.

 

It was as if no human had ever been here before, no I was the first, that afternoon after the matinee, down a path into the woods, one that I had never noticed before, but I noticed now how the scent entices still and hidden from view, it was that secret lake waiting for me to ruminate, to salivate, to swallow whole.

 

I drummed on the quiet sand, the pelicans like a string of pearls undulating on the waves of air on waves of fertile water, where the stream falls three times into the sea, where I fall continuously into her stream, into her salt, into her dreams of flight, above below like a sigh of breath and I intuitively know to remove my shoes, and  that place where her water washes upon the earth flesh, is the most sensitive. And the poet birds walk in circles writing her songs in the sand. Songs that none will ever read, because the wind keeps secrets.

 

and this experience of time as being linear, that I can remember, am a memory is not really true. And everything that ever happened or will happen is right now, that the universe is simultaneously splatting out stars to the far reaches of dark matter and imploding back into the tiniest pinprick of firefly light into nothingness and everything is and is not. And the only thing I know is this feeling that I have always known you.

22X14" Watercolor on paper


You know that I am missing you
and how would I know you now
if my world was a perfect sphere where all my little pieces
lined up like we did at Academy Street School
when the morning bell rang
and love is not a thing that we can line up
like children in the hot lunch line

It was up in the Berkeley hills
our children in a room called Mustard Seed
and down the street a summer farmer’s market
and that little nursery where we wandered through the potted trees
He told me I didn't see you, who are you anymore?
That you were invisible to me
and I lied to myself listening to the fear that sat
grave on my shoulder
and so your belly bleeds our lost children
and the fire in your eyes extinguish.

And I see your reflection in the clear water
and sometimes that wavering image I want to hold
and yet I want to be so clear in my intention,
as clear as the water,
as clear as the feelings that rush through me
that I am for your whole life becoming,
that I do not dip this cup to pass the water from my lips to yours,
but lead you here to drink,
with your cupped two hands directly from the stream.
And I speak with her through the thin silken veils of twilight,
where she waits by the well with her earthen vessel
and I hear her last words resonate against the stone walls of the temple as she falls deeper in,
into her life,
into love.
And I am there learning to breath under this water.
Al mei m'nuḥot y'naḥaleini  (He leadeth me beside the still waters)
Cosi r'vayaḥ. (My cup runneth over.)
L'orech yamim. (Forever)
And yet not a single moment slips away,
without me tasting the scent of your colors on the wind.

I’m in you, like skin with soft golden grass laid down

Now so filled with child,

seeing clouds become sublime animas

and for my eyes only

And her sweet breath, wild red rose is my breathing in,

In deeper to fill me

As I fill her

With my fiery inflamed presence,

As I breathe out into her

My moist animal air

And the touches are the dew laden leaves

That brush my bare skin when I walk this path

And the voices of children’s laughter in the wind

As history and tomorrow dissipate into moment

Falling far in Brookside pool

deeper for the pennies from heaven

Shinny and iridescent

 

My energy is a mighty tree growing from the center of Hara

And the roots descend through bedrock

Into the liquid stream beneath all you see

And the vines of lust could strangle

Should they attach with their tendrils of emotional attachment

But love is always free

That is why birds sing in the twilight

And why my dreams are still an unbroken window

 

But maybe, if the tree is strong

Vines can grow around my wrists and my ankles

And you can torture me with craving

Until the birds sing?