Cane

I saw a man with a cane at the grocery store. I used to see him quite regularly, but that was before the summer, before he used a cane. And now I can't quite place where it was that I always saw him. But I remember the suede jacket, and I remember he was always alone. I don't remember the swoop of hair brooding over his left eyebrow.

He looked so tired.

I wanted to go with him, tell him I'd push the cart at least.

He looked like an entire universe in one body,
an entire universe of sorrow.

But of course I didn't push the cart,
of course I just said, "Excuse me" and squeezed behind him looking through the spices
(what was he looking for?)

I wonder sometimes why I play by these rules I play by.
I wonder sometimes why I can't say,
"I can never find the cardamom..."
(They're alphabetized, you know.)
"Let's be friends.
I'll push your cart.
What happened to your leg?"

of a Whale and a Swoosh (or On Assuming)

There are not many more things I'd like than you explaining why, me explaining how,
while we wait for the crash of the flagrant surreptitiousness of it all.
There are not many more things that exist
than those days in autumn and the empty hours ahead.
I'd punch my heart into paper with these words again and again:
Let's walk.
Let's walk.
Let's walk.
And you with all your guarded curiosity would let loose the words,
And your eyes so small could see all the world.

Poems, via Google Translate

...in which I take things in other languages, stick them in Google translate, and turn them into a poem. Sometimes I take drastic artistic license. Sometimes I do nothing at all.

Fighting the Current
(Or, The Drowned)

You're going adrift.
(Remember the river!)
And I, running on the shore,
cry back
But slowly you walk away
And in this frantic race,
Patiently
I regain
A little lost ground.

From time to time, you darken 
in the liquid black and moving
Or, brushing some brambles,
You hesitate and wait for me,
Your hiding face
In your gown tucked up,
All shame and regret.

You are no longer a poor wreck 
adrift over water,
And I am yet your slave.
I plunge into the stream,
Halt at the memory,
At oblivion's ocean,
And once more 
smash our hearts and our heads
and never us reunite.

fugitive summer

The summer slipped through my open-hearted fingers, 

but I learned to let go,

and I learned to love the world again.

Today was familiar.

Today was new.

I ate two tacos before ten thirty in the morning,

I seriously considered joining the medieval club on campus,

I sat on my stoop and listened to the thunderstorm and read Thoreau and waited for people to walk by smiling at me on the stoop listening to the thunderstorm and reading Thoreau.

I ate with the family I love,

then drove up the canyon in the rain,

lovelily alone.

(The leaves haven't yet started smelling earthy.)

I talked politics with girls who care about the world and care about others

and I was grateful again that there are still places in this world where people want to sit on park benches, around tables, on living room floors, to talk about politics and morals and lofty ideals and the best within people.

And then under a monster tree we drank our hot chocolate.

Every day seems thus an exercise in gratitude,

when with blessings sweet my life bubbles over the brim.

dream of summer evening

Late summer evenings,

Rocking chair on the porch, white paint peeling

A sticky neck from the day’s humidity

And storm clouds on the horizon.

The big old maple tree out back

Where we played when we were kids.

Heavy with our secrets

Heavy with our stories,

And our lonely secret summer love.

Rain on the roof above

Beneath the red and navy quilt,

Squares soft like skin

We had a dock.

It was summer.

very small pink blossoms

Today I have seen the most beautiful things--
a boy reading atop a hill of white tiny blossoms,
two girls umbrellaed under a tree burst out with new green leaves,
the grass patterns like lace of the sun through the trees.

On the walk to class on this my last day, the air was pink-blossom-perfumed
and the breeze was cool and it swirled around me.
And the warmth on the breeze and its sweetness...

I was overcome by the patient delicate beauty of it all, so I sat beneath a tree,
read my book about French culture,
on a hill haloed with this lacy blossom-air.

And when I walked home this afternoon, the breeze had become a gust,
and I walked through a corridor of milk-white trees,
and the gust coaxed the blossompetals off their buds
and through the shaded, covered, secret corridor air.

No picture could say what I felt,
surrounded by tiny blossoms milk white like tiny fairies,
all whispering, "Spring!"

fancy dinner

(song: "blood" by the middle east)

there's something to be said--something beautiful to be said--about the quiet satisfaction,
the toasty-warm tranquility that comes from a slow evening with a few close friends--
the kind of evening where conversations, sensations, imaginations have room to grow.

our lives revolve at breakneck speeds around a sun of achievement and instant communication--
what "to-do's" can i check off today?
how many phone calls can i return?
the sun of facebook
the sun of email
the sun of 160-character text messages

but there's more than 160 characters inside of me.
character.
since when was such a thing quantifiable?
cramming all this character into that little box has been leaving me harried and thin.

we vaporize the most important parts of our being when we live at such breakneck speeds,
fueling distraction and feeding anxiety
when we could be cultivating togetherness, incubating creativity,
nurturing, nourishing.

and so we call it "fancy dinner":

friday night, five friends, five courses,
each carefully planned and tenderly prepared,
each enjoyed over four beautiful hours of talking, laughing, storytelling.

the food:

caprese & baguette

beets with citrus and fennel

pasta with shrimp

beans with almonds and bacon
balsamic asparagus

english trifle

the sole purpose of the evening was to enjoy the tastes of the table we'd spread,
to enjoy the people whose company we love,

an evening where we could close the whole world outside.
i champion small, heartfelt gatherings.
they remind me about the abundance of this wonderful world without and within each of us.

you the greenhouse of my humming

he stocked geraniums.

she borrowed men foolish.

he the perfect gentleman,

she a light-hearted threat 

to civilization.

in the greenhouse of his humming 

she glowed.

that humming!

a breezy menace

to the impulse of her scowl

wanna play?

remember in elementary school when you'd have a saturday and you'd call your friend in the morning and say, "wanna come play at my house?"

it's been a while since i've gotten to see tucker, one of my favorite people and favorite friends.  so he came over to my house and we played.

first we made crepes (ever had a bacon+avocado crepe?  try it--they're amazing.  or blackberries, bulbous and pulverized, purple all over the little pancake) and then we did some art--they're blackout poems inspired by artist tom phillips' "HUMUMENT".  it goes like this: you take a page from an old book, then find a poem in it, then make art with the words you're not using.

love poem

Divining if you do or no
is like a Puritan seeking signs of her election.
I turn to a witch.

The forest of your heart, sylvan & cedar,
exculpates this wandering.
The birds are echoes.

Then, as if in rewind, the leaves float
up on back to their branches,
reattach by nubs, grow green & young.

This heart to valley,
I am still.

sweet parie!, my favorite day of all

i hear this song and i am carried to paris, rue du renard, the city rainy and sparkling,
and floating through the mirror sidewalks
to an art museum
and a man behind a crepe stove
to a bubble man
and a bicycle crowd
and shimmering my way through the three-fourths melody
sweet like the streets
and the crepes,
papillon,
winding the melody
and this morning
and this day
into my dreams.

saturday morning adventure: fly fishing

the flirtatious tugs
perhaps just
the hook dragging the riverbottom rocks
the late summer glacier's final run down the mountain before a new snowcap
pull pull pull against the line

parabola-curved (whisk whisk)
mach's-number-straight (click click click)

one little baby
meant for catch
& release

the swan part 2

kid,

i wish i could put you in a bottle,

so i could remember the things you say,

the expression on your face when you are being funny,

your sincerity

the easiness, the comfortableness, the naturalness

that i feel when i talk to you.

kid,

you sparkle.

and if i had you in a bottle,

on days when i stop believing that people like you exist,

and even worse on days when i'm so far removed from being with people like you that i've forgotten what sparkling even is,

then i can pull you out,

sit with you for an hour,

and be on my way to find my own sparkling someone.

A Prayer to the Gods

a glimmer of hope

like Icharus' shining wings in the sun

flying out and up

before the plunge.

O my fragile soul!

Shards of foil in the sun

shaken

then jolted

then tapped casually

only every now and then,

and now still.

Hope tired like the Lethe

one million years of lonely travelers,

weary travelers,

and confused.

Where am I? Surely...no.

I am NOT getting on that boat, wha-choo think I am, CRAZY?

Where is my wife?

Where is Abelard?

And ne'er a bright-eyed Hercules.

Only Psyches,Psyches,Psyches,

bemoaning their serpent loves.

Is there always fear behind the disbelief

at finding themselves at your shores?

Or only sorrow.

Row on, row on.

Boatman, row on.

Persephone! every springtime

Persephone, every fall...

and they forget and forget and forget.

O River, what have you seen?

You must know,

you have seen their eyes,

the vacuous stare...

Sisyphus rolling his stone up everyday: do the shards still sparkle for him?

Or is eternal amnesia

the one and only

way to survive in this place,

so dark and wet and empty.

Tell me, father,

Ferryman,

when you lay your oars below

and look to the open door

and see the Fields,

golden barley folding and flying,

do you remember the dreams you too once had?

Do you have a cup?

Do you drink the Lethe?

And is forgetfulness,

this long, long river,

the only way to rock a soul after seeing across the fence,

the only way to pretend

an Elysian fields for those of us never worthy to find ourselves there?

Give me a cup.

I'll guzzle it like Joel and Clementine,

so that tomorrow I can dye my hair blue to fit my insides

though tomorrow I won't know why my insides are blue.

For Paige, forever ago

I. THE BURIAL OF THE DEAD

Winter is the cruellest season:

He said I love you I'll be better.

She waited.

He said I can't be better goodbye.

She buries him in the ground and cries over his grave.

II. A GAME OF CHICKEN, A GAME OF CHESS

Exuberance

Blonde hair brilliance

Queen across the board

Knight charges,

Frustrated, her plans are frustrated.

Queen across the board

Check, check, check:

She is not afraid, she will not back down,

Waits

With the patience and grace kin to her royalty.

III. THE FLYING SERMON

Kites swoop swoop--redorangeyellowgreen

And the blue blue sky.

Like water down the window

Diving for the ground,

Swift sweep back up

Up and down up and down

Teetertotter of the sky.

IV. DEATH BY WATER

Penelope's plans get drowned in the humdrum of everyday people

With everyday weights on their everyday shoulders.

Death seems inches away.

Heartbreak wraps its cold arms around

With the fear of dying like all those everyday people.

Oh all the king's horses and all the king's men!

Her fears sometimes block the air from filling her lungs with the dreams

She should not be afraid to dream.

Big dreams.

But in the now of everyday, she cannot see them.

The magnitude of soul:

Hers bursting out and filling the world with laughter

With gold

With everything she touches.

V. WHAT THE RIVER KNOWS

Walking upstream in a river, she looks to the people who are running on the shore.

Why can they move so swiftly?

Why can't she?

She doesn't realize:

One of these days, she will be the one on the shore, now with legs the strength of Samson,

With a heart made and fashioned for wading through hard things,

With a home all her own,

Adoring children,

Adoring husband.

And she will run with twice the speed of any who have been on land the whole race

For she has known the depths of the river.

She has known the swift current's downward pull,

And she has shown stronger than all of it.

Her beauty shall not be slackened, nor her strength overlooked.

One lady.
She moves worlds with soft words

With the magic of a listening heart

And the energy of a thousand summer mornings.

Patience. Promise. Hope.

Dhairya. Vacana. Asha.

Shvasiti shvasiti shvasiti

like letting go of the bicycle handles while careening down a hill

The subway shakes the ceiling above.

The urge to jump onto the tracks
and jump back out real fast,
the hunger for that adrenaline rush,
the zoomzoom of the oncoming train and your widewide eyes
and heart
beating to get you out
before being plastered to the front of the red line,
inbound to alewife.

(a toast): to the miracle bicycle

sometimes you fall in love.  on a warm may night when there's nothing but a cloudy sunset sky and a breeze to keep you company.  when a ride through the neighborhood on a periwinkle bike, the color of grape-jelly jelly-beans, beneath big trees heavy already with the summer's leaves cuts loose your soul, and you drift up like the birds.  and the wind and the sound of cars and the clickclickclick of the bicycle beneath, faster faster faster, and the wind...

sometimes you just fall in love.  sometimes you just fall in love and a warm may night is all you need.

[tear] me away: girl crying home

i wish i could take BYU and put it in a bottle and take it with me wherever i go.  then, at any time, i could open it up and be in the MOA, early on a Friday afternoon, wandering in from a long week, beginning my weekend with a little art and the mysterious smell of hot paninis, cheese, soup.  i could be sitting at those solid maple tables on the fifth floor, or the Periodicals, caressing out the last few parts of a term paper about Shakespeare.  i would be eating a Subway sandwich, no, a Scoreboard hamburger and frenchfries with lots of fry sauce at a table in the Wilk, watching people, wrestling a crossword puzzle.  i'd be meeting with a study group while the sun is setting, fifth floor study room, by the photography section.  i'd be in the HFAC, painting long after class ended, tender tendrils of turpenoid saturating the warmness, hypnotized, pounding through the paint with Radiohead.  late night going to Hamlet or Young Ambassadors for the second time, always Smart Cookie after.  i'd sit in Rick Duerden's class on the morning of the final [studying near through the night], composing brilliance i little knew i had in me.  eating Subway on the lawn of Maeser with Brooke, faking like we're studying--cramming--for humanities finals.  ballroom with judd and acoustic explosion...  but back to the library i would always return, after dinner at the Wilk, with a few friends nearby to keep studycompany, Tiffany bringing me a bag of double-dipped peanuts to eat while constructing literarys on California and simulacra, 

these memories are sprinkled with gold, they echo of priceless.

and through all of them is a forward movement, a weight of future happinesses waiting and passing, a clean scent of excitement, a clean scent of home.

i don't want to say goodbye.

tonight i am prolific.

i drove all the way home today in front of a man on a motorcycle whose sunglasses had become part of his overinflated face.

i kept checking the rearview mirror, one earphone cord hanging from his right ear, turning to spit at the racing pavement beneath his tires.  

she's only happy in the sun.

we got feeling down.  

we got needing up.

we went on a walk.

lucky there was sun. 

we met a new friend.

his name is newton.

he doesn't talk much.

we're okay with that.

we found a happy birthday mobile.

it is brown.

my feet hurt from not being in slippers for tanmuchos dias.

we found a house that looks like pea soup.

funny, no?  a house that looks like pea soup!

then we ate chips&salsa.

our plan is to stave off the day of reckoning (aka: writing lesson plans & grading papers)

with chips and salsa.