She attacks public school teachers

dappled hair slightly crooked

boyish grinning muscled thighs dimpled

in sitting she bursts out laughing backing now

some dreadful spin spitting 

propaganda christened self who,

looking plenty good unburdened, wrists thick

cords tanned as tennis pennies polished and angry,

blame stains of greyed out tutors

stupored to the point of bloopers

while her supple song blares and stares

into the sun of misbegotten rungs

public education hung on, desperately

legislated into air and propagated into oblivion-

tax-lacked contrition in cul de sac backed

banks, inundated with peeling paints

exorciated by testing dates and all while

pressed styles of capital still stung tongues

in the house where she was young

i want to tell her

do not blame your teachers

for years of disinvestment,

blessed testaments to times whipped sand

in their squinting still standing

panting punting processes and ignoring hungry stunts these

growling stallions uncouth clopping amidst well-fed prowling

constitutes sure footed daily scowling into planted branches clipped

to creep in granted private trances of prostituted ideals, chances are

you will not make it out or in alone

but better broken blessings bore you

to this place for the children, 

so in good taste,

replace their plastic plates

refill cups with new tough stuff

and waste no more breath

on bombastic bait

loons, are you still out there

I do not intend to be deceived.

It is dusk. The mountains have gone

grey. Everything is drowned by the sound

of crickets, excep semis spewing dust along route 5.

Where are you now?

Whese nights--coming back to 

old hallowed ground-- the ground is just ground,

with tree stumps eaten by grubs

and moss filtering rainwater.

These days, i go to cemeteries 

to feel the wind carry me, 

closer to death than before.

searching.

I howl in some rough approximation of you,

but nothing responds.

A great horned owl. Grand echo.

Have you been hunted?

Did you not come back to see us like this?

Now it is black.

Stars stand in the wings behind

thick clouds, i know, but

mostly the whole world hangs between

the inhale and exhale.

Where shall we put this desire to see each other so clearly?

To play, when so clearly we have war ahead?

What shall happen to our souls if there is no morning,

no great siren keening, cracking the night open?

Shall everything be a bill to be paid?

This week, i worked from the dock,

laptop set and eyes blind to the wild

foraging presence all around me. But then

i came here searching, knowing

i would only have brief moments

above the water to look for you.

The ripples go out and on,

connecting the cold, deep water to the milky way.

We are all swallowed eventually by this,

a place just being a place,

but i wanted to hear again

that someone is crying for what has happened, 

that what we have lost is more than attrition,

that a world pregnant with something warm

thrums just below or above this surface.

Maybe…

Is that you calling? It sounds

more screech than song.

I do not intend be inconsolable

 

falls

oak varieties are turning red first. tannins dye the river. water, 

in slowly, patiently

getting where it must

be, becomes cacophonous

the moment it is allowed. 

the opening is all.

thunder on a cloudless sky.

I know you are weary

and promises of a wind

to carry you seem far off as spring.

bound

 

i want to tell you about the dog in the longwood complex where my grandmother now lives alone, editing her book and cooking chickens from the russian butchery. it knows what floor to get off. we stood in the elevator together, shivering and wet, december, its dopey eyes looking up as if, i thought, in need of guidance. but when the elevator doors opened, it trotted out onto the turquoise carpeting  without hesitation and at the end of the long line of doors i saw one open, a child standing in a blanket with a smile. i don’t know my way home so well.

don’t get too busy to take walks

walking uphill gives you perspective.

walking downhill makes you feel your back, and knees.

walking backwards takes trust.

walking in the street makes you appreciate people who pave. 

walking in the moonlight there is always further.

walking in the starlight can mean you're stuck in love.

walking in the darkness is dangerous but you may

come across a fox.

walking in a city can make you hate people

or see them for the first time.

walking on trails makes you

think about moving stones.

walking on sand makes you grateful for ankles.

walking on water makes you a prophet.

walking on fire makes you quick.

walking through trees makes you

breathe.

walking to figure out problems changes

how you think.

walking without a problem in the world

makes you sing.

walking and singing scares the birds away.

walking and listening to birds reminds you of your grandmother.

walking around your grandmother’s house

is a way of protecting your family.

walking away from your family’s house is hard.

walking to a friend’s house is always easy.

walking at work means 

your feet and eyes have to move at the same time.

walking in Malden, smelling sweet popcorn of cremation, makes you

thankful for places other than Malden.

walking in the snow can give you a fresh start.

walking in the spring makes you want to have children.

walking in the summer means you like to sweat.

walking in the fall can help you accept endings.

walking on Rosh Hashanah, you can see the world for the first time, again.

walking on yom kippur can help you apologize.

walking with your brother makes you

listen to your brother.

walking by yourself makes you

fluctuate between where you are and where you are not.

walking where you are not is hard, let me know when you figure that out.

but walking where you are is something you can always, always do.

the moon outside 152 walnut.

oh god, the moon i said, an old woman

peddled her bicycle closeby and looked up.

there was a red light flashing on her basket.

it’s the frontier, to noone in particular,

where love goes to die. and then comes back.

crazy. massive black borderlands, where no quarter is given,

not air nor water,

where light travels home, where we go

and come back from always.

leaving home on a journey home.

we all have someone whom we wish to show everything.

even if it is just the moon outside 152 walnut.

i wish it were only the moon i long to tie close to me,

blistering cold and bright. it’s so clear tonight.

as the old woman circles back around, she is checking out

what is salvageable in the trash. aluminum glints from a cloth bag

hanging loose off her shoulder.

many things can be seen in the moon tonight.

i have a memory of the moon from inside each of my lover’s rooms

where we used to sleep. i remember rising

as the snow quietly piled in the half light of morning,

looking at her arms coiled around the pillow,

the great darkness of the tattoo on her back and all its corners i would kiss

thinking how lucky i was to rise in these wee hours to wait

the morning’s tables and get drunk off their cheap champagne.

and then come back.

i don’t know what is salvagable or how to get away from love.

planet to planet, gravity pulls. always we are travelling home.

moon in the front yard stop yelling about what we used to feel like

young, confident in love, all the secret writings

we’d leave to remind each other. yelling about the moon

when the fans at night could not keep us cool 

and the noise outside was too much

anyway. hold on there, almost full. so almost empty.

something’s in that trash.

you can’t throw away the moon.

each small thing in my new home brings the past with it.

even if i wanted,

i cannot seem to close the door.

9 nights dreaming

what’s the best way in?

the window as it rains, the legs of it,

dashing this way and that, all over

starting and ending, dazzling, dizzying,

dripping everywhere entering and exiting at once, 

clean and distracting, i,i

rock back and forth holding, shivering,

black cotton cleaving something.

is it joy, finished, crackling,

thunderous stamping, the stampede

of bodies, eager eyes snipping the fabric,

vodka tonic ice, red faces, hands, shoulders,

smiles? one hundred fifty ready to fight, shouting. its so short

sometimes this too. history. i,i 

if i could lay my head down in her lap as the night ends...

when do you know it’s too far,

been too long?

you’ve sat with a cool glass of water

waiting on a meniscus

and the embers beneath have ceased

burning your ass at all, now

it’s a glacier.

drip. drip. drip.

better in a month? a year?

there is no handbook

when they come for the lesbian electrician

with her shaking hands, who struggles, genuinely struggles,

with mental illness-- will it be clear then

through the muffled door, or across a hall of young mothers

just wanting a raise and to go home?

why bother with this?

she would soon retire anyway,

(you think of her dog she used to bring to the office before

they closed her office, black scraggly obviously spoiled and) 

why risk it all you’re 28 and at the beginning

there is no handbook for loss

for the questions, for love of course

i am learning the lesson of sitting with for now--

with at least the grief of want;

with the absence that makes the something grow painfully clear.

but how can it be standing to?

we all must live together, meaning

be kind and be challenged. on one foot,

and as yourself.

when was the last time you did something

you know could cost everything? 

for my love without hands to touch or lips to speak,

for my union sister when the workplace goes quiet and tense:

desperately, fervently, with strength

when we know, we risk it all.