Porosity

Passenger Svetlana Minchiker said she was talking on her cell phone as the blast went off — a bang that left her so disoriented she thought at first the phone had exploded. "At first I did not see anything except my hands," she said, holding up one hand still stained red. A trickle of dried blood marked her left cheek. -- Report of a suicide bombing in Jerusalem


We bleed into each other's cell phones in the supermarket, at the ticket office, in the toilet stall, on the bus I hear your life is following me your whole family and friends waiting for you to come home in an hour about all the people you're trying to escape the ones you never want to lose I hear about the heart attacks and the nervous breakdowns what he really should of done instead of opening his big mouth I know where you'd like to go if you could get an extra day off and still waiting to buy tickets for the 9pm show while you went shopping at a real steal with discount coupons you clipped from a newspaper the lines in front of the register tell me to remember to hold the date while you take two blue pills and how you stayed up all night like a wheel balanced on its rim sheer chrome shining a bus deadheading its way to the division yard for repairs, and I'm feeling you I'm feeling you right now

Slipping
A new mattress was delivered to my house yesterday; the old one hauled off to the compressor. My friend's care package finally arrived with an assortment of sweaters, skirts, and jewelry. Whale-watching on the horizon, a visit to New York a possibility. Attending to AC Transit schedule changes on the Web site. Want to get more sleep. Want to do more writing. November is slipping away.

Restoring Wetlands

A Great Egret,
regal in its plumage,
pokes through mud

the way I restore
the wetlands of my soul,
levee by levee.

Laptop Gypsy Lament
Will you bootleg my heart
and sell it for next to nothing
down by the waterfront

while I go around town
carrying the original,
beating a message
I don't get?

I thought you and I,
so many years ago,
were going to harness
wildness in our art,

make it sing
the way a twig still vibrates
with the song of a sparrow.

Online Dating Service
Of all the men online,
I love James113 the most,
him with his green eyes
staring right through me.

But no matter how many times
I look at his profile,
he never answers e-mail.
Tell me, what can I do?

It sounds like we have
so many mutual interests.
He watches the same

television programs,
even has a scar
like I do.

You think I'm a fool
to bookmark his picture?
I will have no other
on my desktop.

When the moon dangles
like a charm bracelet
between two hills,

my love will call to me
in the dance of my dreams.