rhapsody in
blue was the color of your shirt
the first time i kissed
you and
the color of the first
flower you ever gave me
and the
color the sky
was the morning
after we first
made love
and it will be
the color of the sky
tomorrow morning
when i wake
up alone unless
it's a particularly
smoggy
day in which case
the sky might be more
inclined to gray
it is not the milky cataract that pulls me back into my body
but the kiss; salty, on hard, rough, gray-blotched skin.
I look her in the eye; I fall apart, pulled by the tide.
What if we are not beaching ourselves on these vast shores
and there are no animals committing suicide on the sand.
Suppose we sing the songs of dolphins
and we move through the water smoothly,
knowing our next step preternaturally,
knowing it is acceptable to falter.
Yes,
we will fall
we will touch the shore
but we will learn to
swim again.
time's elegy
for my father. there is a watch painted bronze on the nightstand,
the endless tick-tock having ceased.
i remember the day he placed it in my hand,
remember the warmth of his palm.
perhaps the artist’s hands were also warm
when he was making this watch;
perhaps the metal retained the barest hint
of heat, after being settled into the leather of the band.
there are a thousand watches just like mine;
exactly a thousand. mine has a number.
he had a number; his breath, measured in moments and seconds.
i would count down the number of breaths
up to and since the feeling of his hand in mind
to imprint that second of skin against skin.
Africa Stirring in My Blood
for my broken girls. September 10th, 2002
The numbers do not encapsulate the meaning; it should be said
slowly, savored. This is one of those times when
the date should include the day of the week and the color
of dress one wore.
My memory is less a perfectionist than I am.
Like a finely spun ball of, shall we say, cashmere yarn,
I - (let us insert a pause for effect)
I was unraveling.
Some people mark the day they found Jesus.
I mark the day I found my girls; sobbing and giggling, we
stumbled through the years, tumbled down
added to our numbers while life took away its tax
in tears and blood and breath.
We lived in the extremes of life;
we reveled in pleasure until we were sick
we denied ourselves. We loved,
hard, we crushed others with the power of our love,
we did not love at all, we were in exquisite pain.
I traveled thirty-four hours to
fall in love with myself all over again -
to learn the meaning of Africa
to redefine blindness in the eyes of a young girl.
Friendship is to be remembered
like when she took scissors to my hair
and her own, freeing us from the guilt of being known by our bodies.
Like when she taught me how to lean into the mist
over the Falls, how to understand time and how I was wasting it.
Wandering the streets for two years, she had learned
how to live out of a car that does not run
in a life that is not, in fact, a dead end.
She taught me to ask myself the hard questions.
Today, I have a phoenix in flames, rising up my lower back
for her, to remind me that there are worse things than paralysis
and I have words spilled in desperation, hope indiscriminate
spilling over. I carry Africa with me now.
Wrapped in blankets against the
exposure to fierce cold, harsh light
they appear before dawn
tiny little birds, the blue veins pressing up rudely against their skin,
the cold metal pressing up rudely against bare feet
in gowns that do not hide anything,
except, perhaps, a certain melancholy.
Then the moment of truth, so strangely
anticlimactic, and if you are allowed to know
then there is a certain wrenching feeling inside
and if you are not, then you ask - you always ask -
expecting, as usual, the rueful smile,
a reason to feel let down.
Burmese Girl Selling Postcards After Dark, Alone
Please, sir, would you like this to take home to your family?
I know it is not an accurate retelling of this dirty street
After dark, shop windows closed and other girls
Not twice my age, their wares more inviting -
Please forgive me, but do not touch me
With your kind smile, for although it is only moonlight
My grief may cast a shadow.
I lie still, wondering if the pain that pins me to the bed
That shoots through my body at every movement
Is retribution for lying down and taking the destruction of self
That comes in swords shaped in thoughts shaped in words
I wonder if the spasm that wracks me now - body
Tensing up with expectation
Laughs at my unpredictability, my acquiescence
To an earlier challenge, my bitter rage at this
Expression of immobility, when for so long I would simply
Lie down and listen to injustice -
It says, forget all you want to but still I speak
With swords trapped; because you enjoy the impotence of silence
I will render you impotent.
They took scissors to Ophelia to save our innocence,
paying homage to an ideology that cares nothing for beauty.
When you say you love me, are you referring to a blurred
reflection you captured in some ill-gotten photograph?
Paying homage to an ideology that cares nothing for beauty,
you chip away when I fall outside of your lines,
a reflection you’ve captured in your photographs,
blurred by your cold expectations.
You chip away when I fall outside of your lines,
but there is only so much you can cover up until
I am blurred by your cold expectations,
less than a ghost.
There is only so much you can cover up
before this primal scream that led you to drown me
making me less than a ghost
leads me to drown myself.
This primal scream that led you to drown in me
all those things you rationalize;
that emotion that led me to drown myself
that act of spilling open.
All those things you rationalize,
saying what use love when there are bombs to drop
what use that act of spilling open
when there is propaganda to memorize?
What use love when there are regulations to follow
Scissors to run with and lips to sew shut,
when there are standards to conform to?
Little girls wondering what it means to have a voice
When their lips are sewn shut and dissension cut out,
what does it mean to have a voice? To use one?
Your children are wondering;
They have forgotten the word for it, the thought.
What does it mean to have a voice? To use one
in the face of madness disguised as reason?
They have forgotten the word for it, the thought
of this madness of love.
I am tired of walking on tiptoe
around the swell of hips,
heavy and earthy
around the weight of arms,
made to hold and to lift up
around the laughter in eyes
too loud to ever think about shutting up
too honest to ever think about being shy
I am tired.
I am tired of holding back this fountain of
joy-full-ness
at the roundness of bodies doing what they are meant to do:
dancing, clapping, singing, expressing
because that is what they were made for
and why they exist
and who has time for tears because your dress size is in the double digits
when there’s loving to be done?
and who has time for shame because your happiness is uncontrollable
enough to warrant comment?
I am tired of walking on tiptoe.
I want to plant my feet firmly on the earth
because she has carried the weight of countless generations
and ours isn’t going to break her back now.
I want to plant my feet firmly on the earth
because life is too short/long to delay love affairs with ourselves,
and we have waited too much already.
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