BLUE MOON

BLUE MOON

She said ail the knowledge
we need is in our bodies.
The planets are lining up inside or us.
The earth is a medicine bundle.

There are more natural laws
that need rediscovering
the laws of horizon, of vortices,
of our need to breathe.

The deer beneath the buckeye
don't see the carcass
of their eventual death
sleeping under the tree.  

The limestone rocks hunger
for the touch of the sea.

8/31/94
Walker Creek Ranch

I feel lucky to have found this poem, no record, no efile, nada. Makes all this scanning madness worth it. Scanning jpgs is a pain. Added 3/18

THE SONG OF PASSING TRAINS

THE SONG OF PASSING TRAINS

           Before there was language

              the dream invented itself again and again

             giving us the binding thread.

Each night trains rumble and growl 

down the Feather River Canyon

like snorting bulls, or fiery dragons.

They do not want taming, but a virgin lap will do.

Real train lights, like moveable stars, 

                                 pulse through my dreams;

my neighbor Sonny and Elvis are jammin’ after hours,

riding the long groundswell and percussion of trains

to the harmonica singing of wheels and tracks

resonating like the mouths of finest crystal;

their curved song reverberates off slate walls.

I dream we clipped the talons of captive eagles,

showed them to the children, 

                   were responsible for their hunger,

the talons making small, dark crescent moons on the floor.

Sometimes the trains are like falling houses

coming barreling down the tracks,

leaving me alone with the eagles and children

(having swallowed the abortant too late)

while the men ride into the west making sweet music.

Too much moonlight on the canyon walls.

It begins with trout and bullfrogs punctuating the darkness.

Then, the deep rumble and moan, thrum and pulse

and the extraordinary singing of wheels—

as if shy angels only practiced with each passing train.

The river answers, slumbering gold in the deeper pools.

What survives are the angry red eyes of trains

dragging us into the well of night.

Each train wails along the canyon walls

of Las Plumas del Oro, stitching them like a shroud.

I stand on the rivershore, the unceasing faith of tides

pulls blood through my body, making love

to the song of passing trains.

8/23/94

Twain, CA

CALIFIA SPEAKS:

CALIFIA SPEAKS:

I did not choose this blanket of grass

or the slow fire of this golden heat.

My trees sink roots deep into my canyons.

They are my children.

I did not choose this deluge of rain,

nor the miners choking my rivers.

Why does the canal run south

for the border when so many

people want to come north?

Why do those red lines on maps

slice me from my first-born peninsula

and why does Baja speak

another language of salinity

the pickled tongue?

The myriad rivers

have lost their mouths

I do not understand this

preoccupation with separate things

when I roll out my wealth for all—

this golden wedding blanket,

this blue sea of the future,

these snowy peaks of the past,

the deep virgin lakes of my sorrow

the promise of my naked wealth

for all to see.

I did not choose this golden hoarde

to steal my hidden wealth;

leaving me vulnerable to the elements—

once my gold was gold enough for all.

8/16/94

CLIMAX ENDING

CLIMAX ENDING

Language comes to me

unadorned with the hypothesis

of roses before the fading

of summer’s rage.

In darkened rooms we lie

naked escaping summer’s

wrathful eye.

Cool nights offer escape

and I rewrite the poems that carry me

until the neap heat of midday;

words sensuously release the metaphors

until orgasm is the invisible line

a conclusion, an end stop—

to what isn’t written, not even hidden

characters to give away

the secret climax ending.

8/14/94

DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

DOG DAYS OF SUMMER

not                quite             noon

the temperature spikes                        another ten degrees

hammer in hand                 I can’t get these windows  open

in this august heat I think of how Tennessee Williams’ women

survived                     naked                               summer

regal liz  poor drowned natalie   vivian eternally blanche

in this three-digit weather                 we learn to appreciate

the minute increments toward                              body heat

    we depend upon the kindness of air            through lace

         and window screens                             stripped down

             the long vowels in sentences    into slivers of glass

           practiced stance in cold showers  

                                                               compared it to chi’i

ate raspberry sorbet at midnight               chewed our nails

                                                                    myriad tongues

of fans tasting the four directions                          for breath

  the pale aftermath of sky no white spaces between words           

                    our eyes covetously transgressed

     the condemned lintels            of imagination

                             and the desire for inspiration

                                                          we hung damp sheets

across doorways and windows bared our necks 

                                                                       to any breeze                      

                                                                                                                           .                                                                                 a truce

            said it’s the right kind of night for                a fire           

                                                                             or murder

           doppelganging in the canyons         the siren’s song

                                                          stitched into a shroud

the cats flopped down     blamed us for the heat       

at tailgate parties

we learned to foretell the future in ice cubes       

     we changed the lyrics  

        crushed mint beneath our heels   slept with the tvs on

          hoisted beer skyward                no one ever chooses

                their family                                neighbors or love

when the screen door slams      it’s not hypothetically measuring 

   the temperate distance between yes and maybe

my neighbor                 retrieves his small son from my bed 

reconciles             with his girlfriend

                        they stop by                     grab the ice chest

                                                                                               I crawl inside

                                     fall through the spaces between worlds

8/7/94

This had justified margins and was set up to look like lace. Doesn't exactly transfer here.

2001  Transfer Magazine, #82, Fall issue

Budapest, 1994

I play roulette with numbers for the grandmothers from the east that I never had; it’s all in my head. But not the numbers. Say them: 19, 45, 56, 68. Lottery or is it roulette? To be at home and at rest among the rubble.

Anna Kiss wrote how the fields became sad when they took away the men. The wind told her. After the war everything became unfamiliar to the survivors, and we, all of us, alive today, are survivors of war. Shell-shock, our inheritance. László said Anna was once so beautiful, he was shocked, she was a witch, a hag, he said.

Postcards from a massed grave. Franz Josef, WWI, Trianon, and the white terror of WWII. A generation without farewell, we were born into the world old. The politics of winter changes its mind, but the storyline remains the same. Snow, a symbol of the old guard mired in the mud, scent of leaves rooms filled with collected shadow mausoleums of the mind, becomes the bright talisman of the new guard.

Margít Island stripped bare of her trees. The soul scratching on the eyes of death. Sand, groin of the Donau, I can still see the outlines ofsoldiers. Occupation in any country, trees dumfounded by the fall. Escaped breath in winter’s kingdom.

Who reads the words of dove’s beaks, tulips, summer’s convulsive mouth. We hold our breath for the dead. Beds unmade by the sunlight. We drink Bull’s Blood, I think of Sandor Csóori’s fingertips blooming in the graveyards of resurrection.

Maybe in this forest someone stabbed a girl made of wax. Scorched voices of the candle flame. Who was talking about angels? I have not had to measure my life by the firing of guns, or the bearing of a son killed by war, any war. The winter death of my father buries me until mi yesd summer. My weapon is pen, film and paint. Who can speak all the names of the dead?

In dreams I find myself wandering along the Danube again, wondering whose life is vicariously living through me. Forints in the ash tray. I don’t smoke. Someone said, “Spiders are drawn to music.” They bite me when I move my poetry books, I become ill for the caretaking of words.

The leaf-hands of autumn knitted the smoke-laden sky’s sweater. I can learn to live with departure, and loss as a way of life. There is no other choice. I have never swam in the warm waters of Lake Balaton, nor have I measured the circumference of Szentendre Island, my notebooks having drowned in the thermal pools of Szechenyi Baths. My poor scalded words, a crude broth for an uncertain future. 

August, 1994