1999 |
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REAL ESTATES I have drilled into the heart Of a small midwestern city, And I feel like a voyeur. My feet have trod carpets Of uncounted deserters -- Some of them gone for good, Some of them gone for the day Leaving potpourri, TV schedules, Tupperware full of cookies And their friendly house cats. Some of the people seem to Have walked out just ahead of me, But forever, Leaving pieces of toys, Toast crumbs, Ugly wallpaper And the overpowering, inexplicable smell Of peanut butter and mothballs. The soiled bathtubs, The ugly stoves, Broken windowsills, Give me a tacit warning. The unkempt boxwoods And the cracked basement walls. Green small chalkboard: "Party -- Solo cups, Chex Mix" And an Air Raid Warning poster from the Civil Defense Over forty years old. The nautilus machine Beside the overflowing ashtray, The whole house Marinated in the unmistakable odor Of a smokehouse. None of these places has been My next home because For once I have a choice in the matter. Freedom is the most demanding Tyrant of them all. Holding hands we go again Here we go again Again This one isn't it either Even the Canada geese have Stopped flying back and forth Why can't we land? Because we're afraid The next one Would have been The one. And this one Isn't. |
(A BRIEF STUDY OF TIME AND SPACE AND THEIR RELATION TO) CHAOS (or something like it) Time and space change the strange part Of my inner life into Delineated chaos; of the outer Into a mosaic of realizations. Where I am: Suburbia, long weekend Transmuted into one long day With darker intervals; one long Game of throw-the-mouse With Tink, the county shelter Cat who smelled so strongly of urine The day we brought her home, She earned her name instantly, Though we were embarrassed To tell the veterinarian Her name was "short for Stink" Until months down the road. She only likes one space In our house For chasing the mouses (Of which she has several), A long, somewhat sterile Upstairs room in which We do not live, but keep nice In case we ever have company. Tink has a favorite mouse, So ragged we named him "Ebola Mouse" because He has hemorrhaged his very Existence out into space, Worn thin and rubbed raw Over time, enervated By her tensile affection. I saw my first husband the other night. Right now he makes his living In a van on the road (He doesn't make the music He makes the music sound better). He doesn't know where "home" is Except it's where our old cat is, Languishing, sick with a condition Nobody can afford to fix. I still love the man, and he was never Deliberately cruel, just no longer Attached to what I wanted, no longer Able to see the big picture I saw. Now we share old jokes, cigarettes, Gossip and an ailing cat. Which is better than bitterness and Blame, better than shame and Disappointment. He projects a tragic shape into space, And yet he'd hate that I saw it that way. And it isn't actually Tragedy, at least by his definition. And that it is no longer tragedy By his definition Makes me proud of him. We have both moved on, And the second half of my life Projects into the void a happy chaos Of its own, a chaos delineated By the endless day of a long weekend, Split only by sleep and meals, By pots of coffee and laughter. This time, the laughter is anchored And not released Merely to fend off the chaos. We laugh with the chaos, And contribute our own And we play games on its back; We throw mouses into it. And Our languid yet energetic young cat Revels in the act Of running into it And bringing them back To be thrown again. And space and time are only Containers of chaos. And tragedy is when You drown in the extant chaos Instead of making your own, To your own specifications. |
VIRUS Sometimes, in the to-be-vast Tapestry of my human life, The richness of the warp and weft Folded over itself in comfortable History in the war chest of my Heart; the archive of my mind, Is attacked by woodworm, Moth and silverfish. The Human Operating SysTem Has a gHOST in the machine, Rewriting my desires as it goes, Because I can't change the past. Nor the present. Nor myself. (The materials are extant - And the loom makes the rules). It goes back and injects posthumous Desires over my dissatisfaction With past events; revises "What I Wanted" to match "What I Got". Sometimes the fabric reweaves itself, Folded quietly by itself in a cedar Drawer that's marked "NM, 1986" Or "OH, 1979" In my heart; in my mind. It was something and it is something Else now (So very something else). Like pointillist paintings, this life Could only seem beautiful Viewed from years' separation And eight miles high, like A topographic map. An aerial photograph Of Arlington Cemetery. All those crosses Become sculpture Viewed from far away. |
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'BYE! How
far have I walked on |
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EXCURSION Flashlights unseen; |
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THE PROBLEM The problem |
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