The World from the Perspective of a Piece of Meat

June 29, 2011

I am awakened by the violent itch between my toes at three in the morning. I get up, go and put some cream in the cavity there between pinky toe and its sister. The cream is old; the doctor prescribed it for me a few years ago. I use it anyway, wondering if it will work, if it will kill the thing that is trying to eat me..

Yesterday I was in my yard trimming the rose bushes and I saw that one rose bush has a disease. The disease is such that the roses turn brown before they open. It's a sad thing to cut a rose bud, brown and wilted, before it has bloomed. But there they were in the bucket, those fat buds, brown with ruin, like rotten eggs.

I wonder about people who don't bloom, who walk around with their claws clasping briefcases, who move toward money and little else. What happens to them? Do they die like the rose bud, closed and brown? It's a personal thing, blooming. Who can tell, really, if another is blooming or not. But who can bloom in a world that is trying to eat you, when you are always trying to run from a hungry mouth? It's frustrating to have to always take a pill for this, lather on the cream for that. And then there are the monetary hungry mouths, the bill collectors, the credit card companies, the charities. Just a little piece. Can we have just a little piece?

This is a crappy way of looking at the world, from the perspective of a piece of meat.

Here is a stanza from Bert Stern's poem “Counting Crows”. I find it fitting:

As for me, I take pills to breathe,

pills to be happy, but, still,

spitting venom, snakes rise

from brown paper bags

in my dreams.

So I praise the four crows,

buzzards riding thermals,

squirrel lice, and the squirrel

on the maple limb,

scratching her gold grey haunches in pale sun

with a rear foot that drives like a piston.

I think the point of the last stanza is to accept the buzzards, to let be what is trying to eat you. Why get all upset? You will be eaten by death in the end. Better to go willingly and with a sense of compassion.

The Desire for Tangibility

 I feel like I am part of the ether, drifting a little bit here, a little bit there. It must be the allergies, the fog of microscopic dust that is clogging my head. Everything, these days, seems of the ether. This is what I've realized as of late: I am lacking in tangibility. I work with people whom I know only through the blips of words on the screen. Even my work is hidden away in some electromagnetic cell. That's the thing about these virtual worlds we live in; we start to crave tangibility. I want to feel a page, hold the money in my hand, have my husband hold me, as he did this morning. Even meditation has become ether-like. It's dished out no concrete image I can work with.

Yesterday, while I was tearing the sheets off the bed, I saw a picture of my father and me. I was in the crux of his arm. I was just a baby and he looked like a young Robert DeNiro or Sylvester Stallone. The thought in my mind: he is ether now. Ether, as in wind, as in the pockets of air in the soil, the foam in the sea, a sunbeam. And I wondered, does he miss his body? The healthy body, I mean, with the strong muscles and the beating heart, and the soft lines of wisdom around his eyes. It's okay to be breath, something inside me said. It's easy, the easiest thing in the world. Even Thich Nhat Han said this, to not worry about your loved ones when they die because they will be born into nature as the lily in the pond, or the rainbow of scales on the carp, or the soft wind that caresses your face.

But then there is Anne Sexton, who says in her poem, “Earth”, how God “loafs around in heaven,/ without a shape/ but He would like to smoke His cigar/ or bite His fingernails/and so forth". And I thought, was that why matter was created, because God who is “all soul” would like to “house it in a body/ and come down/ and give it a bath/now and then”?

I believe the spirit of my father set up camp inside my heart, sure. It is easy to feel it close to the nameless mysteries I house inside myself. But I do miss his face. I do miss his strong arms, his wavy black hair. His laughing eyes.

The Poetry of Your Life

What spectacular thing can we say happened on June 12, 2011? Nothing comes to mind except the lifting of a black mood. I want to record something I wrote awhile ago about that thing I sometimes do...meditation. I haven't been able to achieve this thing because my mind has broken through the gate and has run away temporarily. So I must write this to remember what it was like to have my mind in its pen, grazing.

Today I realized there are layers to meditation. When you first sit down, you are faced with an onslaught of arrows; aches, pains, you're not this, you're not that, She's this, He's that, restlessness, the ache in your side, the hopelessness of your spine, the sleepy fluid in your sinuses, the elusive words of the chapter, the sins of your body, etc. etc. But if you face these arrows and breathe, you will descend deeper into a primordial mind ooze, an inchoate place where there is movement, exploding suns, collapsing black holes. This is the place where the images rise. Your back won't hurt anymore, your sins dissolve, your breath deepens. If you wait, you will see them, gopher holes, oven mitts, potted plants, thorns. And these images are the poetry of your life, metaphors for you to turn over, see what's hidden and what, with proper attention, may be explained.

Here are some poems:

48. Let the Genius Spin Gold

Let the genius spin gold, let her writhe

and birth out a red quail with a seraph's eyes.

Let the ship's anchor fall through her throat

in one fell swoop and pummel the acid

tongues in her stomach.

She walks around with a terry cloth towel

absorbing the crystalized thoughts of her

mind. Enough, says a small voice to

the left of her right ear. This voice is a

prayer that unearths the root covered in

fine dirt and happy worms.

Get the fuck out of the house says the

booming drum to the right of her left ear.

Call your mother.

But the washer churns, gurgles and spits

like an infant and there's always something

on the stove and in the oven. Even on one

hundred degree days.

She wants this, to cut a path to the river,

get down on her hands and knees in the

wet sedge, dunk her whole head in at

high tide when the water is shifting

and blessed.

Dunk, yes, her whole head, yes,

come up drenched in stone cold

blessings, swallow nothing, yes,

not a word, nor a thought, nor the salt

on her tongue, yes, nor the air she is

destined to breathe, yes.

49. Worlds

You learn to straddle worlds with a parade of

people at your heels, your own miraculous face

mirrored in the pits of their eyes.

In the first world there is the bathroom sink

with remnants of pearly soap and facial hair.

There are clouds that come to soak the Earth

for days.

There are books, rivers, torrents of symbols

filling the airwaves.

There is a dishwasher with its maw open

waiting for filth; crumbs jammed in crevices

as bothersome as dead flies.

In the streets, there are people who walk sideways

with pincers, hard crust shells, and twitching

black marble eyes.

Sometimes, at night, under a grapevine arbor

with staccato light and arcing stars, there is a

gathering of wits. Laughter.

The door to the second world lies behind

your own beating heart. Here life ripens,

as it should.

People wash your feet, open doors to

elegant rooms where you dance with lovers

who whisper your name among applauding

hands.

In the third world, you have missed the bus.

The keys to your car have turned into

wasps in search of a hive.

The river's one hundred year flood waters

rush under a severed bridge. Attached to the

bridge is a sign for the ferryman, but he

has already gone.

You must do one of two things, swim to the

other side where your loved ones are curled

in their beds like grubs, or wake up.

So you wake up.

The Fruits of Limbo

 

June 2, 2011

We are back from Europe and...what? It's hard to say really. I've scaled time zones, have shifted sleep and eating patterns, have shared with strangers, have spoken exotic words, have eaten the cuisines of the regions, have seen these regions themselves. So there is the wind outside now, a soft hush. I have straddled the world in over eighteen hours. My life here awaits me and yet the wind of limbo, this place of “just having come from” and “not yet entering into” is quiet. I want to fill it immediately with poems and writing and memory. With lessons learned. But there should be a time to just...digest. No? Now all of these new memories will integrate themselves into my life. So, traveling and traversing time zones is good for a fresh perspective. Yes.

I only wonder if it will last.

Here are some new poems:

42. Sojourn to Lucerne

I.

We land here asleep. Logistics, maps

abandoned. We follow the river, sit

where the floodgates have opened,

Drink wine.

At nightfall- the illuminated banks.

The fat troll at the bridge's gate lies

drunk and requires no fee. Above

him, history resides in the rafters.

Death's debonair bones pose with the

fashionable flesh of life.

II.

We ascend above the ramparts, above

the Earth's crook and curve, half veiled.

Within the hour, the last veil falls to

the soft tussle of bells.

We descend through a path in the wood,

flanked by shrines. Someone has left

nosegays at their footings. We murmur

what we remember of our childhood

prayers.

III.

We scale the city's walls. Put our

fingers in the holes of the fortress. Touch

timeless stones.

IV.

We honor the dead masters, wander

their rooms eyeing divine strokes,

pieces of woman, the auburn shift

of light. We weary pilgrims recognize

our own faces

unclothed bodies,

robust hips

manifested in paint.

43. Equanimity

Get up. Walk barefoot to the mat.

Sit cross legged. Ring the bowl.

Pet the dog as her cold nose nudges

your hand. Bow to the array of

leaves. Breathe. Twitch. Stretch.

Greet the first arrow.

44. The Musee d'Unterlinden

Two American teenage boys point

to something wedged between a wall

and the Crucifixion.

A middle aged French woman in a

chemise blanc and a jupe noir, carries

an unraveled coat hanger. She maneuvers

the hook to snatch a petit oiseau. Drags

it across the ancient stone.

Le petit oiseau sits for a moment in the

woman's hand, stupefied.

The woman closes her hands over

the petit oiseau, carries it to an overgrown

shrub in the courtyard. The petit oiseau

hops, falls, flies haphazardly to the

ground. Disappears.

C'est tous! The woman exclaims.

It lives, says one boy.

For now, says the other.

I am left alone with the absent bird.

Thinking of its fledgling's wings,

it's fledgling life.

Of faith.