BEFORE STARDOM, BEFORE THE COLLAPSE

Lana dear Lana, as yet undiscovered,
Wrapped like a doll from Dresden
In a form-fitting sweater
Of Mongolian Cashmere
You perch like a blue-breasted bird
On your Schwab’s crimson stool
With a gangly soda jerk,
Tall Cherry Coke and forest
Of French fries submerged in grease
Adoringly before  you. 

pleasures

Rain’s remnants puddle in the yard, last night’s happy surprise. Left hand travels across smooth paper of this journal, gift from dear friend. Dark ink flows, blossoming each letter’s arc and reach onto the patient page. Taste of coffee, toasty rich on the tongue. Swishing dishwasher sounds from my kitchen soothe from twenty feet away. Toes wiggle on hassock, softened by well-worn pillow. Memory of popcorn’s fragrance, its tasty crunch last night. Perhaps I’ll reach for this tempting coffee, toplit by warm lamp-glow. Sips satisfy then cup returns to metal table, creating still-life tableau with stone and lamp. Stone found on a hike years’ ago, it’s curve a joy to behold. My right hand caressing stable arm of plump favorite chair. I’m eased into pleasure quiescent, caressed by spacious silence, amply held by my easy chair. 

Doctor My Eyes.

 

                                            

 

I am clean shaven again although pieces of clear tape still cover these scars, these scars where a child-bride doctor whacked and sliced away layers of face and throat to expel the cancer. I drink black coffee, blink several times—eyes wet and stinging, there’s remnants of last night’s dream crusted on the edges and I’m settling into a place one could call reverie although a better poet would have a better word and now I’m back in Tucson in Autumn trying unsuccessfully to digest the news delivered by phone while driving there’s a melanoma cursing my right upper arm and no matter how much coffee I drink here in this sprawling Starbucks I have another—a third—news of cancer shock to deal with alone in this desert city where I’ve driven a half day across mountains of sand and sagebrush to honor my dead friend Doug and spread his ashes in front of our beloved Zinburger restaurant in the blazingly tormented Arizona heat. Yes, there is a path of joy of awe for our trip through this life---it’s not all sorrow and struggle and cancer, not all St John of the Cross dark nights—the soul knows both fearful medical news and surprising delights---how canyon walls soar, intrigue and uplift, how they gladden the heart, lighten the limbs, bring a dear friend back from the dead somehow in sacred silence, in reverie, for a blessed minute among the saguaros and sand, faces half-hidden among boulders and a sky singing like gold..

The Visit

Today, before quiet had it's way with us, a cloud

comes tapping at my wooden door

--a cloud--don't ask how--swooshing softly,

wherein its cotton smock a crow is streaking

even as I write of these and similar troubles 

all while a pot of coffee brewing sings 'come in',

steams, adds cream, stirs, then sips and bubbles.

If And When

If and when we drill deeper, towards the brown gleaming acorn

within an acorn, gathering all for our Ithaca, our guiding 

dream, beloved image, siren song calling feet 

onto evermore meandering roads, don't bet on ever arriving..

Yet, still we slug down another gulp of somewhat warm 

creamed coffee, lick fat lips, and recall the tiny yellow bird

at dusk, the colorful seahorses flying across a cerulean sky, 

and yes! that water lapping lusciously with such friendliness

at the world's bright, tumbling edge.

The Dog and The Others

Junkyard dogs beget junkyard dogs, frenzied snarling and wild-eyed,

or when they don't, frantic kittens slinking fast under cyclone fences.

I stand ten or twelve feet from mayhem doing my best to stay level-

headed, one foot perched atop wet gravel, the other facing an ugly

street, rusting Chevrolets and illusions of safety. Then, as if beckoned

by a kind god, a tiny bird erupts all yellow, spectacularly alive, singing

that rings like a monastery bell, like a river cooling a stand of birches

over the desperate scene.

Shining Light

Sun pours in the living room window, warmth offers pleasure,

yet I must move towards relative darkness--skin cancer

and bright sun no longer friends. Children in Palestine, hopscotch

and jump ropes their giggling targets until the bullet in the brain. 

Evil incarnate feasts on American treasure, cancer ejaculates 

into sunshines of ignorance, dawnings of apathy, mangled lights 

of everyone's darkness.