l'shanah tovah

There are no endings Only new beginnings. Carry me with you this night. Hold it all
for as long as you can, as close as you can to your heart.

coco nara

Coals breathe with glowing ferocity

That comes from somewhere I am not.

The wind blows, pages turning,

The tree limbs are lit from beneath

With false light, painted summer for the last few

Days.  I sit out on the roof every night

Trying not to drink. If the day goes by,

an intake, without rain,

then my knees will bend and hurt

As they spin over desolated streets

Beneath skyscrapers. If the night goes by, an

Out, fan churning the creaking scraping rumbling

Of my sleepless foundations grinding down

Into the earth, then we will

get to the next one. What

fills these days of awe? Where

has it poured out?

The schuykill river splashes up

Onto my shoulders and smells of gasoline.

A child is going out on the water for the first time.

His aunt looks silly in a too large yellow life vest,

but she will not take him back to shore.

The coal trains go over the old bridge above our head

And we look at each other, both wondering why suddenly

We are in the flurry crows and the air carries the linden trees

To us, and it is cloudy out. I do not know.

I do not know.

I roll up my sleeves at work,

Cordone off different parts

And smile a sleepy smile

At everyone who wants a sleepy smile.

Women write their numbers on checks

Though I wear my ring on my left hand.

When the old folks come before

Their lecture, all I can think,

Is how miserable they are, only speaking of death

And complaining about the chairs, with so much money

And life left, it isn’t fair. Even now a mystery is whispered

Inside me, I know jake heard it through his blood even

As it went flat; even sid as he called out for help,

a sound I’d never heard , knew it like a bird call,

knew it like a song. “Never let me be that.”

I roll up my sleeves.

My hair is on end with anger at this.

Where has it poured out?

Where have they gone?

The city is built on living ground,

Snagged amongst plants everywhere growing

Everywhere surging up between the lattice of concrete.

Where do you think the roots go to drink?

I am so very thirsty.

thanks for the birthday present

you have given me myself
heavy stone of life
looking out and in looking
fragile, hard and self-encompassing
you beautiful song,
you angel of the present. how
do you know the child
inside me but love the man?
how has you heart clocked
the moments of both our lives
with its unsteady beats?

the house is abuzz
and you are a thousand miles away
this birthday your knowledge feels
a thousand ages old, like the hum of wings
or a spark of light. i have held myself
open a long time to the elements--
for growth, i say, for love,
for unknowing, but a bark has grown,
a course skin covers even the me
below the organizer, the poet,
the lover, but you
have surprised me.
a touch not gentle, not harsh,
but knowing, you knew i would open
even deeper.
i am a terrible storm at 26, blindfolded
in a field of swords, i am looking
out at mountains, i am bringing my hands
from behind my back.

the night calls to me
as i step out in a thin shirt.
my body sparkles with muscle
like concrete over tree roots.

this thing that is me is awake.
i hold a heavy crystal out to the moon.
my life has run beneath the earth
and has known this sky and the lake waters--
it is an offering.
your eyes are closed in the heat,
sweat on your lip--
you have been cruel, but
out of life. you have been scared,
but out of love.  you swallow me
bit by bit like the ocean.
but what you give--
oh what you give.

long day's journey

We roll the lamp shade up

And the city is bigger than

The city is, all blinking lights

And river to water.

We are rocking out there in the waves.

“No sleep, not safe.”

Outside—the humidity mugs

Visitors one by one, turning them

To patients, borrowing moisture

From their eyes.

The lines have been blurred

Since I hopped in the car 3 days ago—booze sleep tears

I hit 120 masturbating to the sunrise--

That night was dark.

My grandfather had a stroke.

Shortest night of the year but couldn't quite

Get through it.

He taught me how to roll a room

With laughter, chew it like

Salt water toffee.

He produced sons who produced songs,

Anti-military, but growing right with

Money, he might have spat them out

His socialist mouth if he still had the energy,

But now it looks like it takes all that's left of his pectorals,

traps, and abs to alternate his

Heart beating and chest blooming.

I can see the muscles breathing heavy.

His eyes do two things: close.

Search for her,

flashing within artificial retinas over

objects without recognition –

undocked and motor running.

Unrecognizable his voice as it cracks

Like something of a shell, but she is there

Leaning close and the words come,

Each its own careful argument:

“Hey. Babe.”

This is the last time I see him.

When he thinks he is alone

He rasps into the phone

“I will beat this.”

And there is nothing to do but go,

because I will not pour my despair

into him. When I wrap my arms around

my grandmother, I can feel her flight,

like a caged bird,

like a woman watching the love of her life

fade. Then she stops and something erodes

for a moment, she releases and crumbles

like a clod of earth breaking loose

and disappearing into the sea—

then she hears it, the first sight of home,

a whisper of land:

hey. babe.

november 7, 2014

“First Words”

~After “after earth as seen from Earth”

~or “back in space once again”

Everything dies ungracefully

The raccoon on the side of the road, hands covering its head which lay between its legs

On the way home from work—

Deer with all four legs together, tongue out, blood splattered yards away—

Cousin suzie sending her daughter out for groceries, then hanging herself in the study—

*******************************

Evening came and it grew dark quickly.

*********************************

I said “I’m afraid of tomorrow. And the next day.”

Sara said, “look at the light.”

The scarred blinds stirred from a wind though there was none.

**********************************

These days I am learning minute by minute

Hour by hour, day by day

How I can feel like I do not need her.

***********************************

Mother tripped while carrying the dog after surgery.

The dark black ooze of the stitches dripped

After ripping across the brick steps.

Mother cried for hours.

We thought codie would die then--

Her huddled skeleton shaved bare and

Every ligament and bone testifying against her life

***********************************

My best whiskey glass covers a bed bug on the floor.

***********************************

In a dream sara asked me to come back over half empty white wine glasses, her whole croation family holding their breath on the couch. And I almost said yes. Until I saw the whole damn script lying in front of me, read my lines there on the page. Then I drunkenly railed. And thank god I did.

And left.

*************************************

I don't want another scratched disk.

*************************************

the ground is diseased with shadow

in moments, appearing to almost slough off

and in others, sitting up,

ragged, but alive,

reminded of sunlight, as if

just awaking from a dream

************************************

Sudden disconnect.

In the middle of a story of

The first time I saw a gun directed at me--

Suddenly realizing there was no one on the other end of the phone.

******************************************

Little sparrow burying its head in a water drop

From the stone cat by the $1000 fish,

Place where gardeners dirtied their hands on my heart,

Place where those who wish to go come to stay.

Like vines growing over a green clay pot

The days fall over and out of the sun.

But survive.

*****************************************

“are you a pusher or are you a puller?”

standing in front of a bright, clear window

looking over early snow-

bed bugs crawling up the walls

and drawn on several bathroom stalls

a small boy crying, squatting

“just go, just go, go”

when it’s late and it closes in

--it comes out both ends.

****************************************

the fall is as good a time as any to begin

putting pieces away.

Wash them out with whiskey.

Hide them beneath bushes on late night walks through dangerous neighborhoods.

It grows cold.

The dead leaves become puzzled pieces of a Pollock pattern

Describing the confusion of sudden emptiness.

A gesture at limbs they just were.

**************************************

The speech of the one whose bowels are eaten by the eagle,

Is of the proximity of his predicament to time.

Though he can do nothing,,it is always so close to over.

And yet his memory is washed out by the sun.

Mornings are difficult.

The state of things burning in

With morning light.

Very cold, shivering,

Then too warm.

And trapped amidst the sheets—

The idea that there is no way to change this process.

That I will wake up like this forever.

******************************************

The morphlings release tethers to shore

And drift.

They then release water,

Then air.

Then the borders of their very selves.

They may someday return,

Even touch the things they once knew,

But nothing stays. This

The morphlings have always known.

****************************************

seven swans beg forgiveness for the harsh reality they confront us with

that sharp god, that precipice

******************************************

Some say time is a circle.

And it is. But it comes back around on itself

Not once.

Once something is lost

It is lost, and even finding it,

It is a thing found that was lost.

And what it was before being lost, will always be lost.

And that is the circle.

*******************************************

The small things come back.

First writing. Then working out.

Sleeping. Meditating.

Little inoculations. Replacements.
How do you learn to replace a part of yourself with yourself once again?

Two years.

The warm feeling of hands on your back,

Rubbing along your pelvis,

Cradling your heart as it struggles.

*****************************************

Love can convince you you do not exist without it.

And though this may end, we never do.

. project.

. vehicle.

. state.

. contract.

. terrible pain.

. shell.

. addiction.

.escape.

. present.

. purpose.

. support.

. blind.

. assurance.

. challenge.

. scream.

.exception.

. rule.

. tomb.

. source.

Love is a home we are leaving.

And like every time leaving home,

It means we forget to remember where we are

and are destined to remember somewhere else,

Completely changed

yet somehow with ourselves once again.

*******************************************

night bloom shadow portrait shadow

dizzy rain shadow bloom

grey grey long shadow bloom

shadow blocks houses blocks shadows

bloom in the night over silence

blooming out of the dead space bloom

shadow bloom shadow bloom bloom rebel

shadow of a poem bloom under my windows bloom

time to do something other than drink shadow of the days when she was here bloom

shadows bloom something will bloom if I can just

water them, not kill them, behind the houses bloom yards, light blooms displaced

by bodies blooming houses blooming homes

love is a home bloom shadows behind bloom

but it is night now

all will bloom

*********************************************

There is something about who we can close our eyes with

*********************************************

At night the city misses the woods the most.

The concrete misses the gargle and spit of the stream.

The gutters --the duff

The struggling streetlights—the branch interrupted stars.

***********************************************

thwarted pastoral

Wawa hoagie I tried to steal--

You've got me trying to feel free in

New ways. didn't know my love

Would incage you like the bird

That builds its nest around itself.

Your roommate drinks

Excessively, but holds open a doorway to feeling

You have sternly shut. Your plants grow in resilience to this fact.

The bare white of your house’s walls are a testament.

What would our city say about us?

What symbols live from our love?

I’ve thrown my hat in for a free business dinner.

But otherwise I’m ready to bide my time.

Don't take your thumb off the flame, just yet.

If the pain is too much, I want to gain at least.

Here I am for the blasted winds to salt my face.

Here is a fertile ground, and thorned brambles

Scrabbling for purchase competing with me,

And I am sorry, but I will win.

That is what we share.

rather than not

When I saw the blue veins of your life

Like blue fish below your translucent skin

Like thin and ancient tributaries supporting

Some city—I could not know it for what it was.

If my flaw is any, it is many--

1. Holding candles against a darkness

I could let my eyes grow used to.

      2. choosing now to stand upon the made sacred

      ground of the I, of the need, when for years

      it has been a mudpit of wrestled giving.

               3. scarfing down the burnt moments of gladness

               to keep them glowing inside, instead of letting oxygen

               and time fan them into a more full body

                             4. for some reason not wanting to give in to you.

This sadness has many names,

Like god.

I am imagining you spiraling out,

Like some growing crystal--

I am imagining you missing me and choosing.

But this is also the ugly sounds frogs make at dusk,

The ones you heard when we walked

Towards the tower in the dark,

It is the loosened railings of my grandfather’s boat still molecularly moving

from your touch,

it is silent drives to unmarked destinations where

love is the only light we made.

it is cutting the power on the bridge and in silence 

letting what come

come.

it is all of my mistakes and my adolescent anger

and the misgivings of a man too smart to learn lessons for too long.

So much is irreconcilable.

I am drinking in an empty house with the memory

Of my hand on your chest about to imitate a star.

You and I should be.

break

We lost this summer

Its sleepy season rigged

Into troughs, narrow dirt beds

Dug By our itching fingers seeking

Grounding like lightning, like storm-

Drains we trickle invisibly toward

The ocean, we are definitely more than one

Direction—but with hope, we are still growing.

I am sitting where we first met

Refusing to budge though my scars

Pucker in the sun and the morning

Crew drowsily goes through shift change.

I have not told a soul

My world is closing

With the breathy murmur of a record

Continuing to spin after the song has ended,

its body still whispering.

You and your puzzle are on my mind,

The drug resistant strain of your sadness,

The scrabbling we do to stay alive

And how we scratch against each other knowing

There’s a keyhole, somewhere

knowing we hold the key.

I do not want to raise the angle

Of your Earth, I do not want

To add my weight to the cross

Of spirit and anger you already carry.

I howl for your wolf body.

I howl for the nights you taught me,

And when that final breeze stirs your cunt,

It fills me with awe and resignation.

Though love is a bridge,

Looking down, I can say,

I am still very much afraid.

You are not of this world, but visit

When you can and always tire

Of this language that translates

Everything but yourself.

We travelled through these seasons

Together, but now summer is coming

Down, and parts of us brown with

Too much light or too little.

The plants you gave me

When you moved away

Are doing fine. I water them

Everyday and wait for

New leaves—they whither—they

Stretch—mostly they stay

The same, looking out my windows

At the wild trees and grass.

We are waiting together

To see what will happen to us

-- the large world moves things in us

that we do not understand.

return voyage

Haven’t heard my voice in months,

Found it singing “eili, eili” over slanted waters,

Found it skimming over dangerous waters

Like a black loon in the sun.

What is it in us that finds itself in the world?

When we cut the engine and float by

The seal colony like an envoy, politic

And distant, all I can hear is cries of pain.

My grandmother is behind me in this boat

And behind her her mother and her mother.

I am watching her face these days—

The awe in it, the surrender that

Time does claim some things

Like a gradual growing tide—

When we buried him she did not cry

But she was ugly for a moment, something

Was tearing her face and then it was gone.

Then she was just watching us shoveling dirt.

“The island doesn't change” I say

and I hope as I bring my love

here to these creaking docks,

these salt stained fields for the first time—

but its borders have shrunk

and the shallow bits covered in broken

shells stretch on now, and even

our hidden bits, the depths untouched

by sun or everyday use, are scarred

by the storms we weather.

Even as I feel the first poem

Coming on like first light

Cutting into a dream--

The fog rolls in, thin and cool,

And we have to wait before

We can go home.

Cuba Poems

5/30/2017

the ladder was a call at work

cancelled future in the server side-

station, it was sharpened rungs

of failure and stagnancy

and failure and self-doubt,

but here I am, sunrise on the wing, metal bouncing

garrulously in the clouds, here

I am flirting with my fate as I ride

Through the deer paths of a military airport.

I am skimming today with my teeth

So that tomorrow is all sweet

And the bitter taste of ring will have

Washed away before I kiss my love.

Beside me she fold her hands

In her lap, gold Bengals jangling

Against “killing jesus,” behind

They are buying homes in Boca

And discussing the suffering of air-conditioning.

We’ve got to hold that sky above

Our heads as we cross these flood waters.

We’ve got to bang the mud from our boots

Before we walk in. I am reading about death

In the house of god, I am

Scratching my toes on vinyl carpers

While a strong wind runs through

The sparkling swamps. Every moment

That brings me her is a prayer. Every

Breath today is full of green and beige grasses,

Dry rasp of sun on concrete,

The thrum of rolling things

Closeby, and water condensing

On leathered skin. My bones

Are coming forth, I am present,

I am here, for the details

Of experience and the hum of history

Growing like a curled fern,

Hineini, I am ready.
**********************************

We are cradled by

the earth’s mistakes, lying

in the cooling shadows

of its puckered scars,

sucking juice from its

swollen vegetation. Santa domingo—

the cabbies all pretend to fear you

for your highs and lows—

you sweep me up in your birthday

processions dow the street,

in the gugrling of rio yaio

far below—your swarms of dragon flies

in gathering dusk do not scare me off,

nor do the clouds of yellow butterflies in your

storm drains. I will gladly

sit any day of my life

eating arroz con pollo with a beer

and my love beside me. I am pressed

to see why we seek else

if earths mistakes are like this.

though you are barren of streetlights

children wander your hills

with flashlights looking

for mischief. What you lack

in wealth is doled out in necessity

-- what else is there

but finishing a day of work, lifting a shirt wet

with sweat off of you

and gathering in the moonlight

to laugh and sing, to eat and dance,

to lay with your love

by a whirring fan and kiss her goodnight?
**********************************

5/31/2017

blurry the day starts

the fans turn off

and she is in a panic

what will we do tomorrow

what will we ever do

in the dark we reach

for each other, I stroke

her hair, we do not have

to hike the mountain,

we can lay in its shadow

by the water, we

can sleep and read and

gaze at each other, there

is no requirement here,

I pull her close

And we sleep.

The morning is green

And the water runs clear,

The cocks cow continually and we

Drink coffee slowly

Before beginning our ascent.
**********************************

Almost at the age—

Everyone wears military green—

The incomprehensible smile across

Language, broken toothed—

30 and one of the oldest—

tall and smug in the sun his face

remains at “ola”—

we remain at the top of the mountain

haggling over ideological clarity—

waiting for Miguel to bring us lunch.

He never does, the river bloats

With rain, browning with silt and the

White mules try in vain to escape.

The stars are here but we know not

There shape—head of a wild dog

Peering out in fear and curiosity

From a thousand years away.

If these mountains stay, they

Will bear our names as we bear

Theirs in the journey, listening

To water for the cue

Of when to stay and go.
**********************************

6/2/2017

the sun sets beyond the mountains

oike a flame behind a veil,

and noone is looking.

We munch ears of corn and

Soft serve ice-cream on the military

Benches, old men stare at the women.

It gets hot before it gets cold,

4 hours streaking across narrow paths,

ritualistically turning towards

 then away from the face.

Every house has electricity.

And every house a school. And

Every person a house. Goodbye carlos,

With your good and evil,

your concocted story to get us to Guantanamo.

Goodbye Troy, with your nervous smile,

Your hand reaching up,

Your warm and fleeing eyes. Goodbye

Barbaro, with your claims of an empty bus

Goodbye Ulysses, with your fresh limes by the river.

Goodbye, goodbye.

My heart is wailing along a racetrack

Far ahead of my body.

It is already missing her browned shoulders,

her hanging breasts,

Her eyes like cracking thunder. I try

To whisper a prayer but

The wind takes it. Today is fast.

I can feel all that is beautiful

Like it is in my hand and slipping

Through my fingers. But it is enough,

I think. We dine on the rooftop,

Lobster and music and English.

I have beer, through we do not have the money.

It is enough to make once cry.

I sit across from her and for a moment,

She is far away, we are far off

From each other in a distant land, alone

In the shadows of el yunque.

But in the dark we make love

And there is music that existed

Before either of us,

 And a feeling that will never die. We lie back

And laugh in the same key

As the ocean. It is enough—

Tomorrow’s sun rises.
***************************************

6/3/2017

who will go with me

into air-conditioned rooms

whose taps you may not touch, through

lampless streets of dust

and volcanic sharpness, across

bridgeless expanses of ocean threaded

with webs of roots, while black holes

spin across the sky?

Will you watch the mountains

Open their dark mouths wide,

The palm trees prideful staring

As the wind sweeps their hair?

Who can stay with this—

The small yellow in a sea of blue,

Conviction collected across the skin

In a freckled solar system, beads of water

Spraying light every which way, a few

Locks let loose of the tail dancing across

Her face, and the many legs of her hand

Walking across my chest like a farmer

Familiar to his land?

The tide has come in now

Water here for all.

On the mountain, solitary lights blink

On at dusk, outside the information,

Children play and the old strum guitars

And they wait for the doors to open.

Water collects in pools

On the harsh surface, they warm and some

Dry up before another tide rolls in.

Can you feel the rat- ttat-tat-t of the cubano

Spilling into the street?

The hunger for more slides it way along gracefully

So we wander, ask for eggs and a beer, linger

Too long, unwittingly make a constellation

We did not choose.

There is more out there but also

More here. Who is ready for inner space

travel, plumbing the depths while the world

watches on in disbelief? What flag shall we plant there?

Come, let us discuss this and more—

We are not the old but the young, not

The buildings but the workers,

Writers and not books, lovers,

Lovers of each other and ourselves

And this beautiful land, lovers

Above all else. Let us be a seed together

In a room or in the jungle. Let us

Cozy and squeeze and be ready

To burst forth.

She wears the necklace that I believe

Is creation, readiness is all.

Every moments asks us:

Are you ready to give all

And know it will come back,?

You may move and grow and love

As the tide in the ocean.
***************************************

6/6/2017

the night tastes of steadily stronger

Havana club, and the city draws in

Towards el yunque as lungs to a heart.

The bay is pacified tonight and we

Have no trouble stepping over rubble

To a lightless vegetarian restaurant.

Things are not mute, they sing to us, call

Out the presence they demand—

Be sacred. Hold us in your heart.

She wakes sick, goes to bed

Sick, the air is thick and i

Wonder how she can breathe. Today

We traverse the mountains in secret.

Today the coffee tastes like red wine.

We spend what we have. He is taking

Wood from the debris for his house—

He who was the premiere photographer

In Baracoa. He smiles. This

Is how we build—piece by piece—

Like this. I have friends, I make love,

I cook, I work. This is my life. And the pals standing

Lonely on the mountains—what of them? What of

The deep purple of the bay

swallowing the fishing boats as night

sweeps in? What of the dancing

legs of the man in a soccer jersey

as he avoids the Barracuda and then

lifts it into the sun?

we are using a different currency. The cock

continually cries to wake us—this dream

is coming to an end. Deep in yumurri

canyon, I could have leapt, could have

cried for death as we pressed

our bodies in the cool water and I saw

myself in her eyes. The green

was so total—plants growing in

the air and the sound of birds

everywhere in the almond trees.

The remembrance will be sweet but

Not so sharp—as coffee late in the day

Or the way my back purses with burn.

I have fallen in love too many times

To count, with her again and again,

with these mornings, with this

land,  with is possibilities

for us. It does not stand quiet

and pretty. Cuba is naked

and defiant in the hot wind,

watching as we depart, its fierce eyes saying

“join me or die alive, asleep.”

We are dreaming now of revolution, arms and

Legs entwined, but she grows sick

And as fruitful as is our love,

We need more to live forever.
***************************************

6/ 8/ 2017

And as we leave there are fever dreams,

Of this islands water

And pleading to the deep eyes of the storm

God. The visitor in me

Has left, and all witnesses from without

Are gone. I am left in the heat.

Travelers will ask much of you

When they see your beauty.

Grow like a rosebush if that is your wish,

Or like an orchid in the underjungle, or like

A dog with small legs trotting off.

There is nothing you must give.

I am in a dirty room unpacking

You with every piece of clothing

And shell. My body has been unpacking itself

For days, shutting down digestion, then the muscles and eyes—

Today I could only speak. I woke up

Vomiting

And still have not eaten.

The world worms its way through to words.

To take out the book

Felt an arduous task.

But you are in a hotel room

In Chicago, and everything that has

Left me is, I trust, with you. And shall

Be returned as the air I breathe

I feel flows past the full moon and into you.

I know, when I open my mouth again,

I will taste you on the breeze.

sorry for the dark

I am raining outside the window,

Gnashing my thunder

And yelling like a gunshot.

It is hard, like wet floorboards,

To be away from the one you love.

It pushes in one way and pulls in others

and makes the space grow.

Where I live, thunder almost caught me on my bicycle

death was all around me,

So I was afraid to raise it up in the darkness

For fear I would be found.

They are looking again,

White cloaked, ready.

My brother said he was not bullied as a child,

While we sat and ate grilled vegetables

And drank white whine and pulled slivers

Of raw fish onto our paper plates.

The whole sky is coming apart tonight.

After the moon eclipsed us,

She said there would be signs

Of the natural order disintegrating.

But I think this is just hard.

The ones I love are gone,

And the world is quiet except for

Bursts of thunder,

Except for the memories of being called “little jew”,

and the taste of dirt.

It is the natural order—things breaking in ways

That will not be put back together.