Lament for Len Sanazaro
Today I rose without prompting from my alarm clock
and brewed coffee ahead of schedule
trying to find a bent corner of time
for you to page through unnoticed
and return to your friends,
sit here with me listening
to birds belt out their chorus
as though there weren't anything else
in the world that mattered.
But it really wasn't spring
when you went
to the basement
as winter receded
from its own frostline
licking ice as it melted
with a long red tongue,
or maybe it was spring
that exposed its gums.
Nothing had a strong grip.
You had a tradition to live up to,
a father who did,
and a brother who almost committed suicide.
Then there was Sylvia
whom you worshipped,
and your lover whose boxes of books
caught your fall,
and who knew before any of us.
Sunday, April 18, 2004
Letter to Mordecai
It was one of the holy of holies, not to be discussed,
the possibility of appearing traitorous to your own people
who had grounds enough to believe you were not to be taken lightly
after a brick had slipped off the roof of a building
and landed on the head of a cop.
You were doing what you always did, one of the Mordecai brothers fighting the class war in America,
but who knows if any of it is true, pieces of dust filtered
through a light tunnel of years, with the bundled saga of how you were forced
to ride the rails and ended up in Cleveland, Ohio, and once you came home kept it zipped up.
It was okay to talk politics. Those were the terms.
I listened to you around the dinner table when we visited Aunt Clara in her Westchester County house
whom you wrote about in your letters to your wife my mother, Olga, her stuck-up sister
who hardly drove to the Bronx because she and her husband, Jack, were worried
about their car parked outside being broken into; but we always went there
and you were polite at their table and blotted your mouth with a napkin,
and listened to Aunt Clara describe her work with Hadassah,
and Uncle Jack a Shriner or Knight of Columbus or one of those orders so he could get more business,
and let them talk about planting trees along a boulevard in Jerusalem,
making the Holy Land into a Suburbia; azaelas and rose bushes
grew in their backyard, gladiola, flaming torches.
You were the peace-keeper of my mother's heart, my mother who took us in the car
on get lost rides half-hoping we'd never be able to find our way back,
maybe drive up a moss-covered ramp and do it all over again,
three tasks, pulls on a lever; for the first few hours it was custard
and chicken-in-a-basket, until we drove back down the interstate, passing
Aunt Clara's house to where our dreams settled on the second floor of a walk-up.
I wanted you to go for it, but you were the bottom man,
holding up pyramids of acrobats above your head. Other people
depended upon you and so you found a balance
between what you wanted and what you could live with,
and like you, I rest on that fulcrum, always your cautious daughter.
It was one of the holy of holies, not to be discussed,
the possibility of appearing traitorous to your own people
who had grounds enough to believe you were not to be taken lightly
after a brick had slipped off the roof of a building
and landed on the head of a cop.
You were doing what you always did, one of the Mordecai brothers fighting the class war in America,
but who knows if any of it is true, pieces of dust filtered
through a light tunnel of years, with the bundled saga of how you were forced
to ride the rails and ended up in Cleveland, Ohio, and once you came home kept it zipped up.
It was okay to talk politics. Those were the terms.
I listened to you around the dinner table when we visited Aunt Clara in her Westchester County house
whom you wrote about in your letters to your wife my mother, Olga, her stuck-up sister
who hardly drove to the Bronx because she and her husband, Jack, were worried
about their car parked outside being broken into; but we always went there
and you were polite at their table and blotted your mouth with a napkin,
and listened to Aunt Clara describe her work with Hadassah,
and Uncle Jack a Shriner or Knight of Columbus or one of those orders so he could get more business,
and let them talk about planting trees along a boulevard in Jerusalem,
making the Holy Land into a Suburbia; azaelas and rose bushes
grew in their backyard, gladiola, flaming torches.
You were the peace-keeper of my mother's heart, my mother who took us in the car
on get lost rides half-hoping we'd never be able to find our way back,
maybe drive up a moss-covered ramp and do it all over again,
three tasks, pulls on a lever; for the first few hours it was custard
and chicken-in-a-basket, until we drove back down the interstate, passing
Aunt Clara's house to where our dreams settled on the second floor of a walk-up.
I wanted you to go for it, but you were the bottom man,
holding up pyramids of acrobats above your head. Other people
depended upon you and so you found a balance
between what you wanted and what you could live with,
and like you, I rest on that fulcrum, always your cautious daughter.
Saturday, April 17, 2004
Thursday, April 15, 2004
Spring Break
We walk down to the sea because all roads in this cypress land
lead down to the sea, a path lined with Pacific Coast Iris
starting to dry out in the early age of their blossoming
as the steady soldiers of our feet kick stones in our wake
announcing an arrival to whomever will listen, the wind, the sun
impervious to talk of family or current affairs;
it's all the same thing when we come down to it, stare
along the rolling breast of ocean for the rest of the afternoon
to remember something we both knew
when there was nothing better to do than spend
an entire day gulping water in one end and out the other.
Silly cells. We really got good at it.
We walk down to the sea because all roads in this cypress land
lead down to the sea, a path lined with Pacific Coast Iris
starting to dry out in the early age of their blossoming
as the steady soldiers of our feet kick stones in our wake
announcing an arrival to whomever will listen, the wind, the sun
impervious to talk of family or current affairs;
it's all the same thing when we come down to it, stare
along the rolling breast of ocean for the rest of the afternoon
to remember something we both knew
when there was nothing better to do than spend
an entire day gulping water in one end and out the other.
Silly cells. We really got good at it.
Friday, April 09, 2004
Passover 2004
Lashanah haba'ah b'Yerushalayim!
Next year I don't want to be in Jerusalem
because why would I choose to be in a land
of war and death where children
blow themselves up because they have no future?
Next year I don't want to be in Jerusalem
because I don't understand why the Israeli government
continues to sacrifice the interests of its own people
at every checkpoint.
Next year I don't want to be in Jerusalem
because I can't continue telling a story about renewal
when I only see a land filled with shredded skin
and bulldozed olive trees.
Next year I don't want to be in Jerusalem
because how can I pretend this isn't happening
like some media cover-up that's come to occupy
my heart with its lies?
Next year I only want to be in Jerusalem with you
to fill an extra cup of wine at the table
for our Palestinian brothers and sisters,
so we may share the stories of those who died
so we may all set ourselves free from our fear and hatred.
Lashanah haba'ah b'Yerushalayim!
Next year I don't want to be in Jerusalem
because why would I choose to be in a land
of war and death where children
blow themselves up because they have no future?
Next year I don't want to be in Jerusalem
because I don't understand why the Israeli government
continues to sacrifice the interests of its own people
at every checkpoint.
Next year I don't want to be in Jerusalem
because I can't continue telling a story about renewal
when I only see a land filled with shredded skin
and bulldozed olive trees.
Next year I don't want to be in Jerusalem
because how can I pretend this isn't happening
like some media cover-up that's come to occupy
my heart with its lies?
Next year I only want to be in Jerusalem with you
to fill an extra cup of wine at the table
for our Palestinian brothers and sisters,
so we may share the stories of those who died
so we may all set ourselves free from our fear and hatred.
Thursday, April 08, 2004
Wednesday, April 07, 2004
Mall Moment
Buddha sits in the Rite Aid lot
beneath the 1-Hour Photo Sign,
a parking attendant of the garden variety
directing traffic around flats of wisteria, jasmine,
fescue, geranium, ground ivy, his round belly,
as I sit in my car listening to KPFA report
the real evening news,
while that stone cold Buddha
pulls out a dollar bill from his ear, and laughs.
Buddha sits in the Rite Aid lot
beneath the 1-Hour Photo Sign,
a parking attendant of the garden variety
directing traffic around flats of wisteria, jasmine,
fescue, geranium, ground ivy, his round belly,
as I sit in my car listening to KPFA report
the real evening news,
while that stone cold Buddha
pulls out a dollar bill from his ear, and laughs.
Saturday, April 03, 2004
Monday, March 29, 2004
Airport Song
I have a carry-on with a singing noise
that goes wherever I go.
Wherever I go,
it goes eeee-eeyah!
I’m waiting to board
so I can get back home,
waiting in the airport
with a toothbrush and a comb.
It goes boop boop, boop da dee doop!
There’s a man next to me
reading a newspaper;
someone's sitting next to him,
but he doesn't want to face her.
It goes oh oh, bodie doh!
She’s wearing a shirt
stenciled with Marilyn Monroe,
but whatever girlfriend’s feeling
she doesn’t want it to show.
It goes donna wap wappa woedie!
"Ticketholders are now boarding
in aisles one through 18,"
I’m over 21 and I still can’t think
what I’m going to do in that empty apartment.
It goes rrrr rrrr rrrr rrrr rrrr!
I'll get in the car and drive back home,
I'll wash up, eat something, and check the telephone
that never goes eeee-eeyah!
It goes blah blah bloddie blah.
I have a carry-on with a singing noise
that goes wherever I go.
Wherever I go,
it goes eeee-eeyah!
I have a carry-on with a singing noise
that goes wherever I go.
Wherever I go,
it goes eeee-eeyah!
I’m waiting to board
so I can get back home,
waiting in the airport
with a toothbrush and a comb.
It goes boop boop, boop da dee doop!
There’s a man next to me
reading a newspaper;
someone's sitting next to him,
but he doesn't want to face her.
It goes oh oh, bodie doh!
She’s wearing a shirt
stenciled with Marilyn Monroe,
but whatever girlfriend’s feeling
she doesn’t want it to show.
It goes donna wap wappa woedie!
"Ticketholders are now boarding
in aisles one through 18,"
I’m over 21 and I still can’t think
what I’m going to do in that empty apartment.
It goes rrrr rrrr rrrr rrrr rrrr!
I'll get in the car and drive back home,
I'll wash up, eat something, and check the telephone
that never goes eeee-eeyah!
It goes blah blah bloddie blah.
I have a carry-on with a singing noise
that goes wherever I go.
Wherever I go,
it goes eeee-eeyah!
Friday, March 26, 2004
Saturday, March 20, 2004
"knowledge is only a step between two questions"
from code blue at the Genome Zoo by Barbara Damashek
"...information is really defined only by what it's related to, and how it's related. There really is little else to meaning."
from Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee
On the Road to Paradise
Spring swept into the house, a pile of white blossoms
from trees outside getting ready for the next big push,
a pile of white blossoms dispensed before leaf-making
as a poem arrives in my email box with its own root-making
story, an evening of diaphanous beings, him and I,
root displaying its credits on damask sheets
as lucky dog licks juicy thigh to make a performance piece
counting how well he did, awards, even the way
an encore performance can send him further than night.
It's all good, what almost happened last night, my love,
but get real. I want to know who you are, and how you feel.
from code blue at the Genome Zoo by Barbara Damashek
"...information is really defined only by what it's related to, and how it's related. There really is little else to meaning."
from Weaving the Web by Tim Berners-Lee
On the Road to Paradise
Spring swept into the house, a pile of white blossoms
from trees outside getting ready for the next big push,
a pile of white blossoms dispensed before leaf-making
as a poem arrives in my email box with its own root-making
story, an evening of diaphanous beings, him and I,
root displaying its credits on damask sheets
as lucky dog licks juicy thigh to make a performance piece
counting how well he did, awards, even the way
an encore performance can send him further than night.
It's all good, what almost happened last night, my love,
but get real. I want to know who you are, and how you feel.
Friday, March 12, 2004
This online thing in between getting ready to go to Tahoe for a ski weekend before the snow melts. Five girls together in one car. It should be interesting. Let's hope all the girls have CD players, otherwise we're gonna be fighting about listening to what kind of music, hip-hop or trance. I'm sprouting my own corkscrew wings to celebrate a second year of living dangerously. In this whirl of random online dating hits it feels like the sperm and egg are colliding in an electronic soup of the Internet, not the strongest, but the ones most likely to connect. And what about the world today, where teachers are now being labelled as terrorists, so that Bush miscreants can seed the airwaves to disassemble the teachers union and public education as we know it. A prayer for John Kerry. May he continue to speak the truth of a Vietnam veteran.
Monday, February 02, 2004
The Way I Cut Up
A muzzled dog guards Buffalo Exchange in Berkeley while the Hare Krishna Society marches up Telegraph Avenue with thumbnail cymbals. Looking for Anne Waldman in Moe’s Bookstore and thinking of getting my hair done in Chicago. I hear a tribute to Billy Strayhorn on KPFA. Bicycle riders model Spandex in broad daylight. Cute tushies.
Wind is an advertisement for every place it touches.
The in-word at this year’s Seybold Conference is taxonomy. The speaker has a Microsoft 95 tattoo that needs to be upgraded every two years. The information model is the ultimate content management tool. No consistent suite. Way of the stickiness. Young people with continuous partial attention phenomena drive semi-trucks
Where rivers run no fresher than a trickle of saliva.
A muzzled dog guards Buffalo Exchange in Berkeley while the Hare Krishna Society marches up Telegraph Avenue with thumbnail cymbals. Looking for Anne Waldman in Moe’s Bookstore and thinking of getting my hair done in Chicago. I hear a tribute to Billy Strayhorn on KPFA. Bicycle riders model Spandex in broad daylight. Cute tushies.
Wind is an advertisement for every place it touches.
The in-word at this year’s Seybold Conference is taxonomy. The speaker has a Microsoft 95 tattoo that needs to be upgraded every two years. The information model is the ultimate content management tool. No consistent suite. Way of the stickiness. Young people with continuous partial attention phenomena drive semi-trucks
Where rivers run no fresher than a trickle of saliva.
Tuesday, January 27, 2004
Elvis Isn't Taking Any Calls
Harold Pulhug gives a presentation in the California Room of the Hilton Hotel at One Hegenberger Road in Oakland. Elvis Presley is his dummy account. Harold uses Elvis to demonstrate the 7969 telephone, a new IP PBX system, which means you can set its properties through a web interface. “Why don’t you take a break. You can refresh your coffee, check your email, and then we’ll start the demonstration,” he says.
He says this several times, at key interludes, between frames. This is the only signal we need to stroll to the back of the room and graze the remainders of the fruit and pastry trays. We’re back. Harold is small-taking at the edge of the projection screen about voice conferencing and data collaboration and about a gateway in Sacramento so the system in question will not hit public service cuts. “Some customers will see that all they want is long distance with pri’s coming in, and that’s definitely doable.” Two guys in the front row nod.
Now we’re back to discussing the 7969. Harold rings Elvis’ phone to demonstrate a pixilated screen that can display content for disability instruction, warnings (this phone is loaded), and application hints. He presses soft keys on the console and alludes to a rocker key that can scroll between services. Now we’re cooking. Harold talks about a directory that can keep track of missed, placed, and received calls with room to grow a corporate directory that’s LDAPted. This web phone doesn’t require twisted cables. Potential cost savings right there.
He’s in the home stretch. Speed soft keys say select. Harold explains the line appearance away and VLAN access as well as digital feed and video conferencing via a Tandberg unit, but then moves from the visual back to the digital, showing how you can drag and drop calls into the web interface after you’ve authenticated the network and can use a batch administration utility primarily for set up purposes. He rings Elvis’ phone again and points to its attendant icon, which shows us that Elvis is idle.
Harold Pulhug gives a presentation in the California Room of the Hilton Hotel at One Hegenberger Road in Oakland. Elvis Presley is his dummy account. Harold uses Elvis to demonstrate the 7969 telephone, a new IP PBX system, which means you can set its properties through a web interface. “Why don’t you take a break. You can refresh your coffee, check your email, and then we’ll start the demonstration,” he says.
He says this several times, at key interludes, between frames. This is the only signal we need to stroll to the back of the room and graze the remainders of the fruit and pastry trays. We’re back. Harold is small-taking at the edge of the projection screen about voice conferencing and data collaboration and about a gateway in Sacramento so the system in question will not hit public service cuts. “Some customers will see that all they want is long distance with pri’s coming in, and that’s definitely doable.” Two guys in the front row nod.
Now we’re back to discussing the 7969. Harold rings Elvis’ phone to demonstrate a pixilated screen that can display content for disability instruction, warnings (this phone is loaded), and application hints. He presses soft keys on the console and alludes to a rocker key that can scroll between services. Now we’re cooking. Harold talks about a directory that can keep track of missed, placed, and received calls with room to grow a corporate directory that’s LDAPted. This web phone doesn’t require twisted cables. Potential cost savings right there.
He’s in the home stretch. Speed soft keys say select. Harold explains the line appearance away and VLAN access as well as digital feed and video conferencing via a Tandberg unit, but then moves from the visual back to the digital, showing how you can drag and drop calls into the web interface after you’ve authenticated the network and can use a batch administration utility primarily for set up purposes. He rings Elvis’ phone again and points to its attendant icon, which shows us that Elvis is idle.
Monday, January 19, 2004
On Martin Luther King Day
I was dark, the swarthy girl
had brown eyes with kindling inside them,
my hips were as round as a Spaldeen ball
we hit against the side of a wall,
for winners walked around the block
past a fire station to the deli on the corner
with a news rack and magazines of movie stars,
each stack was anchored by a chunky iron bar
so papers couldn’t assimilate into street
without anybody first reading the sports section.
Why be blonde and blue eyed, when I could be
fast and dangerous and stand on shale pavement?
But how that iron bar made me feel defeat
when I wanted to fly on my feet.
I was dark, the swarthy girl
had brown eyes with kindling inside them,
my hips were as round as a Spaldeen ball
we hit against the side of a wall,
for winners walked around the block
past a fire station to the deli on the corner
with a news rack and magazines of movie stars,
each stack was anchored by a chunky iron bar
so papers couldn’t assimilate into street
without anybody first reading the sports section.
Why be blonde and blue eyed, when I could be
fast and dangerous and stand on shale pavement?
But how that iron bar made me feel defeat
when I wanted to fly on my feet.
Saturday, January 10, 2004
Tech Notes
1
Light is the breath of my parents who watch over me.
Green caterpillars stop crawling on a 15-inch screen of leaves. Everything on my laptop computer goes black. It happens as I sit on the rug reading the poems I've been writing about my deceased parents. No more lights flashing on the keyboard.
The laptop rests on the burgundy carpet and is ensnared in a hopeless tangle of adaptor and modem wires; the kill has been made and the predator is still in the neighborhood. I guard the carcass.
Tomorrow I want the computer to turn on, hope its aberrant behavior is due to my failure to pay it sufficient attention. This has happened before. For the moment, I ignore its lifeless screen.
But in the morning after my daughter has left for work and school, the laptop does not go on. I have e-mails to read, clients to contact, Internet sites to research. Then there are the poems.
Why’d you have to get sick and leave
when I was too young to know how much
I’d miss you; birthdays, holidays, your touch,
even in my dreams you drop by infrequently.
Sometimes I think I hear you breathe
by the seashore, in a gully near the rushes,
walking together picking several bunches
of flowers near the entrance to the beach.
Even, if by chance I saw you materialize,
would you recognize your daughter,
back then, a young girl who fantasized
about living opposite from the way you taught her,
what part of me would you recognize,
my feet, my eyes, my hands cupped with water?
2
I turn the page in my notebook to several toll-free technical support numbers.
I retrieve my daughter's mobile phone from downstairs and dial. Ten minutes into the wait queue, Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony is interrupted by the voice of the tech.
"Hello, my name is Pat. May I help you?"
I verify my name, address, phone, and e-mail address to help her validate my account. Now the tech begins to identify the proper verse and chapter from her troubleshooting book.
"I've got it. Step one. Unplug the power source from the computer."
We get as far as the battery. The tech advises, "Turn the computer over and remove the battery which is near the media and data source." She doesn't know what that means either.
I whine, "But I don't know where the battery is."
The tech provides me with its latitude and longitude.
I see two latches that are supposed to flip some kind of trap door at the bottom of my computer, but I cannot identify anything to pull. I voice my confusion.
The tech doesn't listen and drones on like a real estate agent about location.
Juggling latches, I accidentally disconnect the phone.
I wish we could sit and talk
after all these years, have that exit interview
you wouldn’t allow. Everyone knew
it was cancer. Marty cranked up in a bed, chalk-
white; Olga, flying around unable to renew
her liver. Maybe you didn’t want us to boo-hoo,
while you were being stalked.
In any case, you couldn’t hear
over the IV dripping. We asked each other why
this was happening, days smeared
together any amount of head banging or cries
wouldn’t dissolve my orphan fears.
It was time to whisper good-bye.
3
Before I call back, I return to the trap doors. I realize that the molded plastic rises at the bottom of the computer are the very handles I've been looking for. I press the latch open and grab the handle. Something slides out and it is, indeed, the battery.
I call back. I wait in the queue. Another tech gets on the phone and validates my account. We do the name, address, phone number, and e-mail thing, and start over.
This new tech has the annoying habit of reading the "Next" prompt that appears at the bottom of the screen as he pages through the troubleshooting guide. "Next, Next, Next,” he says. I think, all we have is now and maybe if we're lucky, next. He intercedes. "Let's go to the training guide. That's where all the really good stuff is. Next, Next, Next," he reads.
Next I am to remove the hard drive, but need one of those itty-bitty screwdrivers and I'm not sure I have one, and even if I do, I don't know where they are. The tech gallantly waits while I open all the drawers in the house and do a quick scan of the basement.
I get back to the phone and report, "I can't find one."
"I'm sorry you'll have to call back after you can find one so we can run through the tests. We also have to remove the memory chips."
He can't tell me what size screwdriver I need, but suggests, "Why don't you just take the unit with you to the hardware store?" Next.
I'm out of the house carrying the computer, which at this point, is minus its battery and DVD unit, its underside exposed. I drive up to the hardware store and find a small screwdriver that will open the single screw that keeps the hard drive barricaded from me.
I call back. I wait in the queue. Another tech gets on the phone. Validates my account.
The new tech tells me that we need to start from the beginning. She explains that since I wasn't able to remove all the components, the previous techs were unable to properly log my actions.
Now I must prepare for surgery. It's time to remove memory chips.
I unscrew the proper trap door. Beneath it are the memory chips, probably about a half-inch wide which dazzle me with their green brilliance, small veins of silverish thread are traced inside each one. A river flowing to eternity. There are two boards. One contains four chips that are stacked vertically, the second contains two chips that are stacked horizontally. Then I am commanded by the tech to remove them.
The services over, it became apparent
you were quietly gone away from me,
never to come home and put up a pot of coffee;
suddenly I became my own parent,
the one who knows all the ways to stare at
four walls and strip them to beams,
to clear out obstacles or move them with dreams;
look at the future and become clairvoyant.
For years, I walked around in stealth
mode, kept my eyes focused straight ahead.
My goal wasn’t to accumulate wealth.
I wanted to know how a person can be dead.
I learned how to watch out for myself.
Everyone said I was a tough kid.
4
I see two shiny metal things that look like the rounded edge of a fat paper clip, maybe a safety pin. I describe them to her.
"Why don't you try to press them?" she encourages me.
I do, press the metal heads, and the chip is released from its hold to the board, rising to my fingertips that I use as a pair of tweezers. Now I slip the chips gently out.
I can sense that I'm getting close. The tech directs me to place the door to the computer chips over the board, and to turn the computer right side up. I turn on the power and carefully listen for some sound of life stirring inside the shell of my desecrated computer.
Nothing. The autopsy is complete.
She orders a technician to come to my house to replace the motherboard. I may hear from him within a day.
That’s it. I hang up.
I am bathed in a warm light that falls through the window, and makes a circle around me on the burgundy rug. I am encased in a glow. I’ve gotten through my own uncertainty with guides along the way. Somewhere I hear a gentle whirring and it is at this precise moment I know that light is the breath of my parents.
Today I saw you near the BART station
where Chinatown’s elderly practice aikido
everyone dressed in jeans and loose shirts, on tip-toe
dissecting the air into equal rations.
But where did you come from? Former patients
in hospital gowns, maybe on tour from a distant do-jo
facing each other, repeating each form in slo-mo
without the help of medication.
I couldn’t believe it, there under the blue sky
tumbling on the plaza like two kids
who’ve never needed to stop and ask why
life bounces us back and forth in a fine sieve
grinding our edges until we give;
I saw you so quickly, I didn’t have a chance to cry.
1
Light is the breath of my parents who watch over me.
Green caterpillars stop crawling on a 15-inch screen of leaves. Everything on my laptop computer goes black. It happens as I sit on the rug reading the poems I've been writing about my deceased parents. No more lights flashing on the keyboard.
The laptop rests on the burgundy carpet and is ensnared in a hopeless tangle of adaptor and modem wires; the kill has been made and the predator is still in the neighborhood. I guard the carcass.
Tomorrow I want the computer to turn on, hope its aberrant behavior is due to my failure to pay it sufficient attention. This has happened before. For the moment, I ignore its lifeless screen.
But in the morning after my daughter has left for work and school, the laptop does not go on. I have e-mails to read, clients to contact, Internet sites to research. Then there are the poems.
Why’d you have to get sick and leave
when I was too young to know how much
I’d miss you; birthdays, holidays, your touch,
even in my dreams you drop by infrequently.
Sometimes I think I hear you breathe
by the seashore, in a gully near the rushes,
walking together picking several bunches
of flowers near the entrance to the beach.
Even, if by chance I saw you materialize,
would you recognize your daughter,
back then, a young girl who fantasized
about living opposite from the way you taught her,
what part of me would you recognize,
my feet, my eyes, my hands cupped with water?
2
I turn the page in my notebook to several toll-free technical support numbers.
I retrieve my daughter's mobile phone from downstairs and dial. Ten minutes into the wait queue, Beethoven’s Eighth Symphony is interrupted by the voice of the tech.
"Hello, my name is Pat. May I help you?"
I verify my name, address, phone, and e-mail address to help her validate my account. Now the tech begins to identify the proper verse and chapter from her troubleshooting book.
"I've got it. Step one. Unplug the power source from the computer."
We get as far as the battery. The tech advises, "Turn the computer over and remove the battery which is near the media and data source." She doesn't know what that means either.
I whine, "But I don't know where the battery is."
The tech provides me with its latitude and longitude.
I see two latches that are supposed to flip some kind of trap door at the bottom of my computer, but I cannot identify anything to pull. I voice my confusion.
The tech doesn't listen and drones on like a real estate agent about location.
Juggling latches, I accidentally disconnect the phone.
I wish we could sit and talk
after all these years, have that exit interview
you wouldn’t allow. Everyone knew
it was cancer. Marty cranked up in a bed, chalk-
white; Olga, flying around unable to renew
her liver. Maybe you didn’t want us to boo-hoo,
while you were being stalked.
In any case, you couldn’t hear
over the IV dripping. We asked each other why
this was happening, days smeared
together any amount of head banging or cries
wouldn’t dissolve my orphan fears.
It was time to whisper good-bye.
3
Before I call back, I return to the trap doors. I realize that the molded plastic rises at the bottom of the computer are the very handles I've been looking for. I press the latch open and grab the handle. Something slides out and it is, indeed, the battery.
I call back. I wait in the queue. Another tech gets on the phone and validates my account. We do the name, address, phone number, and e-mail thing, and start over.
This new tech has the annoying habit of reading the "Next" prompt that appears at the bottom of the screen as he pages through the troubleshooting guide. "Next, Next, Next,” he says. I think, all we have is now and maybe if we're lucky, next. He intercedes. "Let's go to the training guide. That's where all the really good stuff is. Next, Next, Next," he reads.
Next I am to remove the hard drive, but need one of those itty-bitty screwdrivers and I'm not sure I have one, and even if I do, I don't know where they are. The tech gallantly waits while I open all the drawers in the house and do a quick scan of the basement.
I get back to the phone and report, "I can't find one."
"I'm sorry you'll have to call back after you can find one so we can run through the tests. We also have to remove the memory chips."
He can't tell me what size screwdriver I need, but suggests, "Why don't you just take the unit with you to the hardware store?" Next.
I'm out of the house carrying the computer, which at this point, is minus its battery and DVD unit, its underside exposed. I drive up to the hardware store and find a small screwdriver that will open the single screw that keeps the hard drive barricaded from me.
I call back. I wait in the queue. Another tech gets on the phone. Validates my account.
The new tech tells me that we need to start from the beginning. She explains that since I wasn't able to remove all the components, the previous techs were unable to properly log my actions.
Now I must prepare for surgery. It's time to remove memory chips.
I unscrew the proper trap door. Beneath it are the memory chips, probably about a half-inch wide which dazzle me with their green brilliance, small veins of silverish thread are traced inside each one. A river flowing to eternity. There are two boards. One contains four chips that are stacked vertically, the second contains two chips that are stacked horizontally. Then I am commanded by the tech to remove them.
The services over, it became apparent
you were quietly gone away from me,
never to come home and put up a pot of coffee;
suddenly I became my own parent,
the one who knows all the ways to stare at
four walls and strip them to beams,
to clear out obstacles or move them with dreams;
look at the future and become clairvoyant.
For years, I walked around in stealth
mode, kept my eyes focused straight ahead.
My goal wasn’t to accumulate wealth.
I wanted to know how a person can be dead.
I learned how to watch out for myself.
Everyone said I was a tough kid.
4
I see two shiny metal things that look like the rounded edge of a fat paper clip, maybe a safety pin. I describe them to her.
"Why don't you try to press them?" she encourages me.
I do, press the metal heads, and the chip is released from its hold to the board, rising to my fingertips that I use as a pair of tweezers. Now I slip the chips gently out.
I can sense that I'm getting close. The tech directs me to place the door to the computer chips over the board, and to turn the computer right side up. I turn on the power and carefully listen for some sound of life stirring inside the shell of my desecrated computer.
Nothing. The autopsy is complete.
She orders a technician to come to my house to replace the motherboard. I may hear from him within a day.
That’s it. I hang up.
I am bathed in a warm light that falls through the window, and makes a circle around me on the burgundy rug. I am encased in a glow. I’ve gotten through my own uncertainty with guides along the way. Somewhere I hear a gentle whirring and it is at this precise moment I know that light is the breath of my parents.
Today I saw you near the BART station
where Chinatown’s elderly practice aikido
everyone dressed in jeans and loose shirts, on tip-toe
dissecting the air into equal rations.
But where did you come from? Former patients
in hospital gowns, maybe on tour from a distant do-jo
facing each other, repeating each form in slo-mo
without the help of medication.
I couldn’t believe it, there under the blue sky
tumbling on the plaza like two kids
who’ve never needed to stop and ask why
life bounces us back and forth in a fine sieve
grinding our edges until we give;
I saw you so quickly, I didn’t have a chance to cry.
Tuesday, December 09, 2003
Sometimes
Sometimes I can see red buds on the Christmas cactus
beginning to open and know tomorrow's the day
when the entire world changes
Sometimes I hear
rain on sidewalk roof running down gutter
and feel everything's inside a giant washing machine on a binge
Sometimes I think about something I've always hated to think about,
and when I do, it seems less scary so I wonder where the scary part went,
but then I don't care
Sometimes a wad of sorrow rolls up to get me,
but then I blow my nose good,
because I can.
Sometimes I can see red buds on the Christmas cactus
beginning to open and know tomorrow's the day
when the entire world changes
Sometimes I hear
rain on sidewalk roof running down gutter
and feel everything's inside a giant washing machine on a binge
Sometimes I think about something I've always hated to think about,
and when I do, it seems less scary so I wonder where the scary part went,
but then I don't care
Sometimes a wad of sorrow rolls up to get me,
but then I blow my nose good,
because I can.
Thursday, December 04, 2003
Return Cubicle
I'm moving next week to a new cubicle with an available wall that will allow me to stretch out away from my usual daily cramp. IT has been notified about the forthcoming move as has the telecommunications department of one person. I get to make new labels for my file folders, a fitting exercise for an approaching end-of-year turn.
Today was the Christmas Party on the seventh floor, a cozy game hen for each person with aluminum foil tubs of macaroni and cheese, collards, rolls, salad, and peach cobbler with ice-cream. Today also was the day I discovered that the Lemon Drop Cafe is a medical marijuana club, upstairs a bakery with a case of frosted three layer cakes from Santa Cruz.
To get to the basement a person has to show a medical card for admission. I wonder what the conversations are like, but this was early in the morning probably before the marijuana rush, after I did a quick grocery shopping and dropped off the perishables at home before heading to the cubicle, soon to be changed, ordered a coffee that came with a chocolate swirl stick, maybe to make up for its lack of a cover, which I managed to balance along San Pablo to Franklin Street without too many spills.
I'm moving next week to a new cubicle with an available wall that will allow me to stretch out away from my usual daily cramp. IT has been notified about the forthcoming move as has the telecommunications department of one person. I get to make new labels for my file folders, a fitting exercise for an approaching end-of-year turn.
Today was the Christmas Party on the seventh floor, a cozy game hen for each person with aluminum foil tubs of macaroni and cheese, collards, rolls, salad, and peach cobbler with ice-cream. Today also was the day I discovered that the Lemon Drop Cafe is a medical marijuana club, upstairs a bakery with a case of frosted three layer cakes from Santa Cruz.
To get to the basement a person has to show a medical card for admission. I wonder what the conversations are like, but this was early in the morning probably before the marijuana rush, after I did a quick grocery shopping and dropped off the perishables at home before heading to the cubicle, soon to be changed, ordered a coffee that came with a chocolate swirl stick, maybe to make up for its lack of a cover, which I managed to balance along San Pablo to Franklin Street without too many spills.
Sunday, November 23, 2003
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
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
Wednesday, November 19, 2003
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.
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.
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