Tsunami
Just a few years since 9-11,
it's all over the Internet, linking headlines, one after another
bodies stretched on a beach, washed back to shore,
the smell of thousands gone to heaven

as survivors sit inside a circle of grief for lost children and mothers,
fathers, holiday goers at peak-season with an ocean view,
indigenous peoples extinct below the ground cover,

while the war in the Middle East,
which has absorbed our world with its killing
continues to make a blood sacrifice
for some religious rant or right.

Nature has reclaimed her theatre.
Give succor to the living.

Okay

I'm thinking you protected me, belched loud on a rock so I wouldn't notice how you couldn't dance the way I always wanted you. Our link together is billowing silk until it cuts

through the force of years as you got dragged up on a beach, while I was washed into the sea, and how we both missed each other. I'm thinking the computer keyboard are piano keys to a song I'm playing.

Christmas Eve 2004
Along the trail,
there's a sewing machine,
its bobbin a rusted minaret for sparrows.

I think the fairies were repairing
the world last night,
at least along Leona Canyon.

Looking Backward
Some people think a house is a castle,
but yours was a citadel
where you holed yourself off from the world,

watching tv at your desk in a bedroom
that really was a living room.
Some people think a house is a castle.

Each day you cursed the world in your room
allowing dawn no asylum through shut blinds,
where you holed yourself off from the world.

Moving from your desk to a computer desk,
inside a character who was king of them all.
Some people think a house is a castle.

Busy? You were dodging memories,
wrapped in the lineament of a child
where you holed yourself off from the world.

Yours, an inviolable space, a bubble
I, or strangers could rarely permeate, a place
where you holed yourself off from the world.

Offshore Spherific
She worked in a programming sphere
where the passage of conscience
made her think life was a reality show,
any day a contestant could go packing,
as judges reached the shoreline
the whole thing could blow up in her face.

Real problem: there was so little face-to-face
in the web sphere
where a straight line
had no up and no down and no conscience,
only for those who failed to go packing,
and no one was underwriting that one-hour show.

At least not immediately. The politicians talked a good show;
they looked her right in the face,
said jobs were in the mailroom packing,
and unless she played along with their surround sphere
by going offshore with her conscience,
she could forget everything, including a byline.

Not even the networks knew about wavy lines,
they didn't have enough imagination to show
a "crisis of conscience."
Like any sane person, she did an about face;
there was so much BS in the hemisphere,
now she's judging for herself who needs to go packing.

If she got the word to go pack,
it's because her signature wavered on the dotted line
where she'd rhapsodically doodled, entranced by the material sphere,
wanting to feed her hunger, so she could show
no hunger; no question, it was her face,
a credit card never had a conscience.

But it wasn't about conscience,
was it? And it wasn't about who was going packing.
That was a threat. As plain as her face,
as the nose on a fish who's just met a fishing line
and finally understands its own element; no show,
the real thing: just being tangled in her own perfect sphere.

Motion Tabled
I cook for the ghost crowd,
roast chicken, string beans,
white wine, wishing I'd gone
to bartender's school and learned
how to mix the right drink
so maybe I wouldn't
have fallen in love with you.

I did anyway, sipped whatever
you poured inside a goblet
with its woman's body for a handle,
a gift from the czar's table,
a toast for long life
on the eve of a wedding,
something in your family.

Or did you drug me,
slip a few red grains
lodged beneath your thumbnail
into my cup,
and I, who wanted more than anything
to live within your four walls,
pretended not to see?

My bones tell me you are happy somewhere.
What am I going to do with all this food?

Symaria?
You know,
the girl who stays
near Eastmont Mall
because when her grandma,
who use to live up
the street from us
died, all the kids
scattered
but none of them
went to the County,
except the oldest
doing time
at a youth facility
in Fremont,
and Symaria,
who sees her Momma
every so so
along with
her two-year old brother,
that makes eight
boys in the family,
sucks her finger
all the time
come on, she's nine
years old like me,
just sucks
with her barrettes
click-clacking
even in hip-hop
class where you gotta be
doing something else
with your hands.
"You wanna know where is she?
--Sitting in front
of our TV set dreaming--"
saving up
all those stories,
some day Symaria's
gonna tell.

Public Discourse
Beethoven's 5th, ballgame cheers,
Doris Day's phone in the 50's,
ringing at the same time
from several street corners,
tucked in a purse, backpack, brown bag,
or held firmly between teeth,
bright Chesire Cat of a mini-kiosk
flipping into a street sign.

She calls from points unknown
to "come and get me,"
when coming and getting
don't know each other
from either direction,
the way a Lion King roars
at a stage puppet
with its head lopped off.

The Ambassador's Message
Can it be possible
I've walked away from everyone
I've loved, when I thought
they were the ones who disappeared,
watched them
roll off time's edge,
calling myself "clean,"
an innocent, laughing
like a madwoman,
bloated with truth?

A father, mother.
Lovers gone. Now you.

Was it my solitary nature,
my need to sort out
what you said first
without a quick answer,
for recruiting you
into this hostile mess
as our silences glazed into years,
when I'm the one
who should've stayed put,
bathed your feet in pomegranate juice?

Can I answer this question?
Can a hostage speak freely?

One evening at summer's end,
you locked yourself out,
left your furniture
for someone else
to dust off with a wet cloth;
I, crouched ragged
in a dirt corner, knew
I couldn't save you.

After Akhmatova
A cataract more like mist
forms on sliding doors
between a couch where I sit
surfing channels, and trees outside
rooted in a water table whose levels rise
before they recede
the way love has from me.

Don't Mind Us,
We're Just Here
to Identify Wildflowers
On the outskirts
of bitterroot
take the water route
to get funded
through a helping
of potatoes
pass the gravy
no room available
for an empire of oil?

No more openings
no more creeks
hail thunder
to the chieftain
on a bedroll
give me hummus
wild orchids
look like scrotums
pinkies on a pyre.

Play-acting
with a mask on
very scary
Halloweenie
Tiger Lily
Peter Pannish
what a nebbish
tip-toe diplomacy
global warming
in a pot-stirring air.

I'm walking
in my diapers
I'm a baby
pampered tie-dye
bachelor buttons
in my sandy
vagina scratchy
going naked
want my bottle
suckers what a bunch.

I'm trailing
on the outskirts
decked in trillium
in delirium
jeans with lycra
counting pollsters
can't be possible
temperate weather
so dry them bones.

To a Young Girl
Watch out for those run-amuck kind of boys
with frayed jeans turned
toward stone pebbled hands rising
from the bottom of kelp beds
who pull you down, down,
much taken with your song
flowing red flecked
inside molten granite;

be on the look-out should one of them
promise a recording contract for all times,
and study the way you kick up sand
along a foaming shell's edge,
so moved so much to place
both your song and stride
inside a cedar box no matter
how your pitch changes.

But speak as I will, a woman
who has loved deeply if not well,
I know none of this
can mean anything until a visitor
stands beneath an awning of love,
who trawls you inside a net
until murk conceals
any thought of your wildness.

Talking to Bob Blues
Today I went out for a stroll
behind the condos where I live,
along Leona Canyon Trail
down by the water that's a sieve.

Sugar-pie daddy, it's so long,
Sugar-pie honey, no more song.

For all my memories of you
that I wear like a crocheted wrap,
until I reach the bench where I
sit and talk of this one and that.

Sugar-pie daddy, it's so long,
Sugar-pie honey, no more song.

And why our love flowed around me
without my sensing its warm touch,
how you always stayed far away,
but said how you loved me so much.

Sugar-pie daddy, it's so long,
Sugar-pie honey, no more song.

Now you listen to my questions,
without getting pushed out of shape,
a leaf drops from a tree, twirling,
then another, again its mate.

Sugar-pie daddy, it's so long,
Sugar-pie honey, no more song.

The Baker
She kneads dough
from whatever's been

hanging around,
rolls out earth, fire, water, air

to the thickness of an eyelash
until the goop is more

or less uniform.

She's ready to bake cookies.

Today the shape of a circle
is her favorite.

She frames one out,
sprinkles a planet

with mountains,
those green trees.

Transformity
A woman bound in black rags,
a burqa falls to mold and mulch.

She's hollowed over a single spark
inside the discolored sink of her hands.

Hers alone this splinter --
to stone with rocks, or feed with her breath?

Just a moment, please.
She's thinking.

Because she swore to keep the treaty,
even after her family disappeared

to a place she can't imagine,
her heart exiled within her chest.

She must allow the spark to burn.
And yet...

Sing Song
When they hear you've died, even now,
so many people don't know what to say. I don't get it.
I thought death was a well-known thing
as compared to when my parents
stopped working. You'd think with AIDs,
the War in Iraq, and 9/11, word had gotten out.

If I were still a technical writer,
I'd put together an instruction manual for co-workers
who avert their eyes,
or tell me how they've sprained an ankle,
or wait for me to call and ask for help.
They are the rescuers.

But what can I tell my friends who stop by my desk
with their unsolicited gentleness,
explain to them how our rivers diverged,
even as I held you between my thighs,
rocked with the great mystery
of who you were?

It's the finality, the caesura
of our lives.
What's left is notation,
written on the face
of our children, the G clef
of how much we once loved each other.

Prayer for Tashlich
I cast my memories
to geese at Lake Merritt
so as they shit,
somewhere between sky and earth,
my Gemini, who had a heart like a volcano,
you will hear me.

I pray fogiveness
that I could not admit to myself
how much I loved you,
because it was opening a deep wound.

I pray forgiveness
that I could not admit to myself you were dying,
and was not there to shepherd you
through those burnt mountains.

I give thanks for the last joke
you left me with,
and hope you are singing
to a loft of children.

Love is what calls us into being.
Death calls us back.

For My Husband, Robert Galitzen
The week you died my gas tank
never dipped below the half-way mark.
I kept driving and driving anywhere
to let in the fresh air.
I had a magic gas tank.

The week before you died
I saw babies asleep with chins on their necks
in strollers, angels of dimpled thighs,
and pigeons rose in spirals against
the rectangle of buildings,

and so I was caught off balance
when I found you in your bed,
eyes rolled back in your head,
arms stretched out as if to receive
the cold kiss of death without flinching.

I had a magic tank of gas
that took my car everywhere,
but not back to you.

Iphigenia at Lunch-time
I'm exiled in a country
between two great waters
where tornados churn houses
into oversized toothpicks, in a mall
where there use to grow corn.

Lunch-time I serve french fries,
wear a uniform that lets me
nod yes or no
without needing much else, but sometimes,
I disappear into my own language,

and thinking this way,
no one would know how my questions
prey upon my mind until they become gelatin,
my father and mother still in the old country,
whose shores I may not cross.

Achilles, my husband in make-believe,
I wanted you to grab the knife
from my father's hand and stop him
from etching my throat in sacrifice.
I had hoped you'd divine

what I could not ask -- to defy a nation
gathered on the beach for history's recital.
So what became of our bravery?
You killed in battle, and I,
pouring black oil upon the altar of a memory.

Porosity of the Styrofoam Man
We bleed
into each other's cell phones.

On the bus
your life follows me,

the same man
with a package in a plastic bag.

I hear about people
you're trying to escape,

the same ones
who’re coming over for dinner.

I hear about heart attacks
and nervous breakdowns

what your friend should of done
instead of opening his big boca.

I know where you'd really like to go
if you could get a day off,

instead you went shopping
with discount coupons.

“Deals mean long lines
and no parking spots,"

you advise, "which is why
I don't drive."

(I don’t know who
you’re talking to now),

nodding for me to take the styrofoam
& remove its plastic,

maybe you tell me
to hold the date,

I don't know
which one, or if this

is about concert tickets
my styrofoam man wants to buy,

while you or he
take(s) two blue pills

how he stayed up
all last night,

like a wheel balanced
on its chrome rim shining,

and I'm feeling you,
I'm feeling you right now.