Back in a Few Days

I thought it might as well have been
god's shadow in the sunset
coming down the basement stairs

he brought us orange juice
candy bars and cold cuts
and clean T shirts in a shopping bag

boys I had some fight left then
these scars I got from throwing
all my weight against the chains

it was strange
I thought he looked so proud of me
as he smeared petroleum jelly on my cuts

"next time
maybe next time son"
I still get these restless dreams

but so yes boys yes I know you're angry
I know that you don't understand
but isn't this called love?

so yes next time boys
I should back in a few days

Forecast

I think that it could snow forever,
      she said.
I did not reply but watched
her cigarette smoke slowly rise
into the lamp shade.
A plate of bones and crinkled tin foil
grew cold and sticky on the table,
the windows black
like blowholes in the frozen arctic.

I thought of a painting I once saw,
a sailing ship its rigging thick with rime
propped up on white jagged shoals.
Tiny men were dragging boxes
of hardtack and brined meat
      out over the bulwark
down onto the vast ice,
strapping blankets round their pant legs
with thick rope.

It might, I said,
There's places
where the snow has never stopped.

It would be very silent.
She crushed her cigarette.
I listened and the windows whispered
with the voices of the city.
      Cars
and creaking bicycles, people
singing, drunk already, music
from a bar across the street.

There had been snow in the forecast.
We would have to see.
You ok?, she asked.
I wiped the sweat from my forehead.

I had never been so scared.

And there it is

He looked down at the blood dripping from his fingers onto the wet tarmac. A voice said, somewhere, ...and there it is.

There was a quiet approval in those words he had longed to hear again for weeks now, but he couldn't quite remember why or who the voice belonged to. He remembered the face he saw at his feet though. He remembered the blue dress and the soft breasts.

As if a large hand was put on his shoulders, the hazy warmth of the drugs rolled over him again.

You did alright, son, the voice said and then all other memories faded.

Another love song

but go out in the hasty silence
of the town that rains

for now
to be a witness to the beat of time

a child
will answer echoes in the concrete underpass

as her mother
waits the rain out in the blue mist of her phone

ride on
past the cemetery and the soccer fields

ride on
when a roebuck leaps across the road

bridging the canal
out into the fields where distant sunlight

lying
like a pall over the far edge of the land

is held
by wind and water in a thousand hands

it never stops
this time but the rain does

and there is nowhere
to hide

(edited 26052015)

A Parlay With The Lord

Now, y'all know 'bout Mirko, right? Called him Butch, most of the time. Boy used to rent a room right there, above Ms. Rosy's general store. Did his drinkin' like it ain't wasn't nobody's business Butch did, but gentle too, you know? Never hurt a fly. Could've if he wanted to, though. Big guy. Arms like this. Came back from the war and never was quite right again, boy used to come down to church e'rry Sundy and cry like a baby when Pastor Brown'd go on all 'bout Hell and sinnin' and repentin' in the face of the Lord. Think Old Butch knew more 'bout hell than the preacherman ever did, though. Came a Sundy Butch shot hisself in the head two times. Wanted a parlay with the Lord so bad, doughboy had the wherewhital to squeeze the trigger twice, you know? Yeah, wasn't much 'bout Hell old Butch didn't know 'bout, I reckon. Think on that a bit now. Think on that a good long while before y'all go callin' to bomb Bhagdad or Iraq or some faraway forrin place like that. Ain't no such thing as takin' a war over there, that some poor boy ain't gonna bring right back over here.

Exactly unlike crystal

a lady walks by
at seven thirty
every day

she's dressed in shades of sun bleached lichen
carrying a plastic shopping bag

her styrofoam bright hairdo
immovable
despite the morning breeze

everything so arbitrary
but incredibly precise
-in almost every way
it's exactly unlike crystal

life spills
from the magpies’ chatter
as the morning lady turns the corner
into other streets

it soaks the early autumn
of my skin and bones
watching from their concrete box
stiff from slightly overthinking

it all depends on everything
and in the end?
-but nothing ever ends

man there ain’t even a beginning

(an earlier version)

Summer Showers

a spider's waiting out
the summer showers
in the corner of the window

though I have nothing to wait for today
still -out of habit
and a deference to nature-
I too will watch the raindrops smash apart
from behind my book and coffee

it turns the street
into an asphalt mirror
reflecting the first blue bits of sky

much later
when I do not sleep

the rolling thunder

Remembering Shamar Rinpoche

Rinpoche, when I saw you, many years ago
you said - expressing everything
in three languages and four simple words- :
“rangsem dharmakaya, one space.”

Our own mind and the mind of Buddha,
your mind, all-pervading, uncontrived,
not bound in suffering or stuck in peace,
are one space - from which everything arises.

Our good fortune to be with you has ended,
but - as if a giant bell was struck -
your last teaching of impermanence
rings deeply in our bones and hearts.

May we defeat dull laziness, Rinpoche,
and give rise to heart-felt bodhichitta,
Rinpoche, please return to guide us!
Om Guru Dharmamati Hum!

FMKS

Shamar Rinpoche

picture

Air

She comes up for air, taking gulps so big they hurt. For a moment, all she feels is the salt stinging in her eyes, deaf to the writhing sea of bodies around her, carrying her on. The light falters. There's no more time. Her muscles seem to tense around her, a silent explosion of colors brighter than anything outside her skin, and then, the music starts again.

Bowing

rain stains
the evening
with its whispered secrets

so returning
life to roots
that the clouds had borrowed

leaves and grass
stalks hurried
cyclists bow and bow incessantly

so courteous each
on their heart-wide
rainy corner of the night

until they disappear
from sight

Cuckoo {or 'Dordogne Tonglen Song'}

for half a breath
the whisper-thin world
seemed real.

a cuckoo called in the forest
and the stars slowly set
above the hill.

but mist rose up
between a thousand grasses
and took it back again,

dissolved it into prayer,
the living heart
that holds all momentary things inside.

we’re all alone with everyone
and every thing that digs
and swims and flies.

the breath turns endlessly.
a thousand grasses hand it on
to every mist soaked life.

it’s calling out across the valley,
across the slowly turning sky

______cuckoo
______cuckoo

Gifts

The evening gave
a cormorant’s reflection in the reeds,
flying past the world
at sunset.

The morning gives us fog.
It closes off the brick ravines
to everything except the chill,
the sound of cars

and the new leaves
on the branches.

(pic and earlier version from my tumblr)

Snow

yeah so everybody dies
but in most ways
no one does it best

and now snow covers the branches
so for a day at least
you get to be the first to walk somewhere
and look back at the tracks you made

wondering if anything
but time and logic
makes them
yours

still

January

a blackbird sang at five today
when the sun set

but it’s january (we say)
should it not be colder?
should it not be winter yet?

we desperately want
for something to be wrong

even if it’s just a bird singing

Otohiro's Secret

In the end it was decided the girls would get the gasmasks. As in, only the girls.

I don't know exactly how the teachers came to the conclusion that that was the most logical thing to do. They huddled together in a corner around the coffee maker until one of them turned around and yelled out The girls!

That teacher’s name was Mrs. Takatama, I think. She was a mousy lady but she managed to make the announcement sound, somehow, triumphal, especially considering the announcement that had just come over the city wide PA-system. As if decisive blow had been dealt in a war that was old enough to have children and grand-children.

She taught maths, I think. I'm not sure. Must have been in one of the higher years.

Soon a line formed in orderly fashion. A palisade of identically dressed girls lined the airy assembly hall, sorted mostly by age and, as a consequence, by height, with the younger, smaller girls (whose attention the teachers thought most likely to wander off) in front and the older girls bringing up the rear. Here and there discipline broke down, but only a little. The occasional sobbing kindergarten kid was allowed to hang on to their patient big sisters’ skirt hems while the straps of their masks were adjusted by a teacher whose creased, orange sash proclaimed a Level III proficiency at Tactical Preparations.

Together with the other boys I was coraled around the stacked lunch tables in the center of the room. Otohiro, who was a year below me but who I knew well from extracurricular swimming lessons, surreptitiously handed me his tin pen case. He looked around, ever vigilant, but no one else seemed particularly interested in his latest secret. After an almost invisible nod I opened it. There was a bright green frog inside, dead as a doornail. I nodded in return.

That was a fine dead frog, alright.

(Inspired by this thread on /r/historyporn)

Kalimba

There was an old man in one of the smoky huts who would play that song, sometimes. He would never talk, or at least not that I heard, but at night he would get his kalimba out and play for us. Even the littlest kids in our company, not used yet to the hunger and the cold, would be silent and just blink their big eyes at the fire light and listen and forget all about the winds raging outside -at least, for the moment.

When the old man died, my own father threw his kalimba on the funeral pyre in the middle of the endless concrete and rebar ruins. Pah said he had been cruel for teaching us about memory. I think I cried more that day than any other in my life.

Yes, I would like to say I cried. Even though by now, who could be sure about such things?

(Story published before on Reddit and Tumblr.)

I thought it was too long down the year

I thought it was too long down the year
for geese
              but midnight throbs
with their slow wingbeats

their calls above the freezing mist

foto

Sabre-toothed Tiger

now take this life’s record
of dreams and wishes
out under the same cool moon
that watched the tired
sabre-toothed tiger
                      crumple
at the end of his trail
of twisting paw prints

and in all directions
only blinding snow

Ten Thousand Mile Dream

I will bring from this life
a hat full of ashes

*

remember when you hit your elbow?

before I felt like that but then
it didn’t stop

until it did

sometimes you fall for so long
it almost feels like flying

*

as I watch a man
wait for his dog
lifeless muscle
starts beating
a ten thousand mile dream

Rain like this

rain like this
could last forever
but it never does

crows return
and inspect the new leaves
in the gutters

all things wash away
each other's traces

such is the kindness of the world