Last Night
I wandered lonely as an old goat in an empty field,
out to the deserted City streets, slick with icy rain,
circled the church garden twice, searching for spring.
Found some Iris swords, green hopes smashed, and
a man in a wheelchair, sleeping under a scaffolding,
his one leg, with it's clown-striped sock, dangling off.
In the chair's boot, two teddy bears watched his back.
This Morning
I had a haunted, worried, distressed sort of a dream:
'The super from decades ago was on my fire escape,
cleaning guano from the rusty iron, protesting angrily.
I hid behind a screen I no longer own, feeling guilty.
Deciding to confront him, not knowing what I'd say,
nor what he. and whoever that was with him, would do,
I was feeling liberated--ready for whatever would be.'
Precisely when I woke--I'd been dredging old rivers then,
in my sleep, listening to real pigeons here, in the now.
I was tapping into the guilt root too, the fear entangled
thing, always available--that constant question of being.
Who has the right to be? Who turns, faces the enigma,
who confronts the ambiguity and wakes from the dream.
Every day a new high wire to cross, keeping in balance.
2 comments:
ah your words remind me of a poem sent to me from a man I rather fancied but the fancy was not returned when I was just dropping out of art school & leaving town 40 years ago...
Too Many Names by Pablo Neruda
Mondays are meshed with Tuesdays
and the week with the whole year.
Time cannot be cut
with your weary scissors,
and all the names of the day
are washed out by the waters of night.
No one can claim the name of Pedro,
nobody is Rosa or Maria,
all of us are dust or sand,
all of us are rain under rain.
They have spoken to me of Venezuelas,
of Chiles and of Paraguays;
I have no idea what they are saying.
I know only the skin of the earth
and I know it is without a name.
When I lived amongst the roots
they pleased me more than flowers did,
and when I spoke to a stone
it rang like a bell.
It is so long, the spring
which goes on all winter.
Time lost its shoes.
A year is four centuries.
When I sleep every night,
what am I called or not called?
And when I wake, who am I
if I was not while I slept?
This means to say that scarcely
have we landed into life
than we come as if new-born;
let us not fill our mouths
with so many faltering names,
with so many sad formallities,
with so many pompous letters,
with so much of yours and mine,
with so much of signing of papers.
I have a mind to confuse things,
unite them, bring them to birth,
mix them up, undress them,
until the light of the world
has the oneness of the ocean,
a generous, vast wholeness,
a crepitant fragrance.
i am so incredibly LUCKY
to know
Michelle of New York City
and
Mo Crow.
unbelievably LUCKY.
oh...i flood you both with love
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