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II
One must still have chaos in oneself to be able
to give birth to a dancing star.
—Friedrich Nietzsche
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Shock and Awe
Tightened jaw, I did not love.
Flashback of myself jerked about,
legs high above my head, men
laughing, I came to sea drifts,
movement and crashing. I found I am
not so far from God exploding.
Gifting, a friend once said, is why we live.
Seven storks white and still on a gold lake.
My lazy eye glances back to that original
split, myself high above myself.
Whiplashed into forgetting, I didn’t know
hours from minutes. I was hyper-vigilant
for catastrophes: my head raging then numb.
The early garden bare, and now,
shocked with sudden memory,
I return to changing sky hues,
blooms of lilac bursting along sidewalks.
Lazy in the grass, I free myself of guilt,
imagine musicians in the park, us overcoming
ourselves. My eyes open before stars.
Holy these leaves, these skies.
What is torn
opens for light.
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Neighbors Smoke on an Apartment Porch
Owned by a Mental Health Agency
Dazed with rambling gossip,
they are at odds with indifference.
There is their looming net of mistakes,
their love of rumor.
A gull darts over and behind
bare buildings. They all dream arousal,
shaggy forests, mountains, city streets.
Trees lose leaves, and one manic man
insists the leaves aren’t dying after
collecting outdated food at church.
Upswing in full euphoric force, he’s
certain he’s spreading world peace.
Oaks yellow. Rocks trap leaves.
Men at work lumber to dumpsters.
Their language bellows need.
Jehovah Witnesses mouthed salvation
Monday to Janice. She listened wishful,
but today relays her own bitter story:
lazy sister-in-law fat on a couch,
quarter-sized bedsores on her ass,
brother-in-law blind, stumbling drunk.
Hearts rigid and numb, they forget
crepe myrtle blooming pink.
Impermanent and frenetic worry hums.
Eyes grow glaucoma blue. Sucking
cigarettes and mumbling, they stand
hardy as an autumn day’s
geraniums, hard before winter.
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Secret Missionary for the Virgin
Mary Off His Meds
He writes of grenades, a universe exploding.
It’s inexhaustible, the sky. Something about badness
turns him on. Passion, a candle with two wicks.
He says to me, “keep burning.”
He often falls out of love,
handles language like a theologian, misses
lilies. Lately he insists fall’s leaves aren’t dead.
His knowledge flickers brown-bagged, like rows
of luminaria candles at night. Seasonal
Affective, he deals with feminine questions.
He argues without hearing his own voice.
Within an occasional dream, he hears language
glide along the starched collars of men.
He will not let himself show sadness or joy.
He forgets the late afternoon lake
golden, geese calling out in droves.
No gang-banger, his past is a series of commitments,
seventy-four-hour holds, Haldol and Seroquel.
Now refusing meds,
he’s found the weather quite bothersome.
Wringing his hands to a fallen image of God,
he has a hurried urgency to be uninvolved.
Like a man in solitary confinement
in prison tossing shit to the guards,
he refuses to smile. Know-it-all criticisms of others
make his days. He cannot let go atheism or disbelief.
Electroshock therapy has him grasping at a forgotten past.
He walks lanky towards a loneliness he won’t refuse.
And the aftermath of madness is calm.
He tries to forget the dread of monotony and expectation.
We, with the same steps, trod towards some understanding,
some philosophy. All of us, keepers of secrets.
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The Sailing Bicycle
A Russian man sandpapers the bark of a dead tree
seeking to reawaken beauty. Later, homeless in
rollerblades with walking sticks made of golf clubs,
tennis balls for each base, his head half-shaven,
he asks, “Where has my wife fled?” Blaming her greed,
he is a swarm of reflections. Sky huddles about him.
Rims of clouds pink at twilight, trees th...
