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SEPTEMBER 1998
11.
Earth, this year
Lines on paper rush diagonally
To the upper right corner
The vanishing point
In some other continent.
The sun still comes up each morning
And the water-logged moon
Still gazes at me as it did last year
When you and I, Earth,
Held hands.
So much has changed.
I don't know which intimacies
Have driven us apart. Or
What are the distances
Between the departed and
The draped longings left behind.
Having taken measure of things
Vainglorious that I am
I might be bending your patience
By asking for things
Not granted to all.
The named the labeled the filtered
Are of no use to me now.
It's that flick of the wrist
That fashioned the giddy clay vessel
I'm after.
It's that malodorous breath
Clinging to my face
I need to wipe off.
12.
Having said this
I must report that ever since
The moon was walked on
The world is damaged.
The blue is punctured beyond repair
The pitcher of stars has shattered
And you, Earth, are but a speck
In a much grander scheme.
The universe now a Hubble collection
Of nebulae dragons in the making
Insisting on my insignificance.
It has come to this—
The lens in my eye is now
The pin-point where light-years
Intersect—invert—expand this
Whit of cosmic dust to
A universe entirely her own.
In this cosmology
The cavernous mind is scaled
To house the grandest scheme—
It holds an equal expanse but
The peripheries do not fill up
The recede—
Overdosed with expectation
My spirit has taken this to heart—
It hungers to be raw awesome
Spectacular and spendthrift.
It hungers to flaunt
This immense abundance
Never to be filled.
Mother Earth
I confess—
The spirit craves for
What the ancients raved about—
You know
The finger shaking
Thunderous voice
Professing
Benevolent
Ferocious
Ravishing the mind.
13.
I know,
Elemental silences are
Treacherous to mortals.
But new strains of malice are in the air
And in preparation for famine
I hoard sensations of any kind.
No longer looking back
I count the steps scaling
The distance to the sanctuaries
Where lusting for extremes
The spirit speaks in tongues
Flexing the promise of wings.
A megalith chip from Ireland
A tear of amber from the Baltic shore
A gnarled root from Greece
A pigeon's feather from Chartres—
Are familiar with pain and joy
Sprung volcanic
From the ashes of life.
Not a grain of sand or tear
To mediate the two polarities
The space between them
Water tight.
During daylight hours
I soar like a bird of prey
Plummeting toward anything
That moves
Gorging myself on the accidental
The stray the unfamiliar
Most delicious.
To stave off the prying eye
I sleep facing the wall.
Last year
Fire Island was on the map.
This year it's a place where
Latitude (a calamitous divide)
And longitude (sunk in the Atlantic)
And altitude (unfit for normal breathing)
Intersect.
14.
Earth
Talk to me.
..................
Are you there?
Yes?
You know me—
A misfit from the start
First displaced by wars
Then the march of Progress
Paved by Good Intentions.
Courting extremes
I catapulted into fundamental
Inadequacies.
The menu at
The Empire Diner on Tenth Avenue
Was a staple:
Be nice. Don't shout.
Sit up straight.
Everything is good today.
Eat, eat.
Use the silverware.
Use the napkin.
Look how you look.
Stop fidgeting.
So I climbed the espaliers of civilization
So I sprouted the expected upshots
And wild bloodshot yearnings
In between.
The upkeep of artifice
Was a legitimate undertaking
Bittersweet delicacies
The expected fare.
Rumination
My favorite listing in
The catalogue of possibilities
Kept me alive.
For a while.
But then the bedding wore thin
From much twisting at night
And my chatting shadow became
Bothersome company.
Doesn't anyone wonder anymore
Why a kicked stone rolls on
And turning over and over proceeds
From here to there?
Why a shiny bead
Strung on a silver string
Also turns around
But gets nowhere?
—Earth,
What is my destination?
What destination?
Even Basho expected to cross a bridge
Where the ten views ended.
Even he mapped his journey
Posting poems like signposts
For himself and for others.
Celan erased himself in the mapping.
—Earth,
I want to dance in the navel
Of existence where there is
No this for that to bargain with.
Where do I start?
Silence.
—Earth,
Send an earthquake—
I need to depart
In order to arrive
Somewhere.
15.
A child walks by singing
And the angelic voice wakes silences
Long dormant—
In the West
A still life waits to be dusted.
The apple has shriveled,
The pewter dish tarnished.
In the East
A nightingale nests in the cobwebs
Of an empty cupboard.
A window stays open.
In the South
Carnivorous vines suffocate
A side room
The lusty undergrowth
Uninvestigated.
In the North
A clock keeps ticking.
The hands that counted hours
Missing.
These chambers of the heart
Are under alluvial sediment.
Yet when touched
The live wire has
A familiar buzz—
Is it the centipede rippling
Its alphabetic feelers? Or
The dung beetle's ball
In morphosis?
In an Argentinean song
"It's a bird on a stone
In a silver glow
It's not death,
It's a body at rest
It's a little a lone."
Tango anyone?
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