I See the Moon

Kate, a young girl edging up on two years old, said her first complete sentence the other week, "I see the moon". I thought, "Wonderful".
I see the moon
has a face
covered in ashes,
he reads under the covers
with a flashlight
made of dawn.
The moon is what I see
when my eyes are closed
and the stars
swirl in circles
around the edge
where the ocean
teases the shore,
the moon clears his eyes,
his smile lights up the water to the sand.
I awake to the sun
pouring daylight
in my heavy, swollen eyes,
every beam of light
a baton that taps
the window sill
to strike up the band.
Birds, bicycle bells,
low voices from boxes serious as salt,
the moon has vanished over the horizon,
the moon has gone to sleep,
the moon has pulled
a hill side over his face
and dreams of clear, dark skies
and the night song of small things
and all things in between.

SWOLLEN LIP TO DRUM WITH FORE FINGER

More gifts than speech fail me,
more lies than flies cling
to the static embrace of
the couch I sit on,
attempting drum solos along the
faded arm to the
rhythm of chattering teeth.

All movement suggests turns
of phrase that is exactly what 1'm thinking.

Only smoke comes from
my mouth and stammering
punctuates the coughing.

It's as if you've been
with me since the
start of time,
and that may be true:
my heart stops when your hand reaches into
your pocket book
to withdraw a pencil,
my watch stops and the hands on the
dial match the hands on my face
feeling for weaknesses in
the mask of cool, and, yeah,
a swollen lip
to drum
with forefinger
and blistered thumb.

There's more than my throat
I wish I could clear,
you're looking at
me in feline squints
that left claw marks
in the gap between our call and response.

My understanding of
what's happening is so complete and
subtle that it’s as meaningless
as bricked windows
and it makes
you looking confused while I confess
that I smoke when you're not around,
that professional wrestling is my passion,
that your legs make the history books
every time you get out
of car seat.

What I'm babbling about is
the poets' disease
of turning experience into stanzas
and arranging ironies in an order that
produces sighs like leaks in which
each emotion finds expression
in every bump in the road that
the flat tire drives over,
life gets lumpy like a
a plate of rocks a the breakfast table

--but oh, but shit, here's what I really see,
what dithering keeps me from, your lips, soft?
full bloom crimson crescent
under the exact pertness of your nose
pointing up whispering yes
along a frayed sting of desire
to the unknown land
of your eyes
clear as prayers in storybook churches
as they gaze back along the stretches and coastlines
of love that exists only
in the permanent promise of empty fields,

My eyes are soothed
by the cascades of twirled hair,
a bonfire mane that pours over your face
like curtains obscuring
a beautiful room I suddenly want to enter, your lips,
that is, I want to kiss, your neck I want to stroke,
hands tracing the lines of my back with fingertips and palms while my hands are likewise exploring the depth of your breathing against
my skin as they smooth down the lines of your back to your waist, I want to smell your hair and have my stubble get
caught in it like a stamp on a letter, refusing
to let me go, I guess this is my letter to tell you what the stammering is trying to disguise.

That is, would you like to start something neither of us has to finish?

Apartment

As knives rest in their
block of sieved wood
and spoons lay along side
cups full of hot, simmering tea

cops are busy at the curb with
a driver whose haste and fast turns
against lights, around pedestrians
gets him stopped cold by the demand of

swirling read lights, a voice on a microphone
goes deep for grit and growls, somewhere boogie- woogie piano
music drifts in from an open window, car horns and church bells
sing together in off cadences,

the shelves are stuffed with legal papers
and plastic glasses.

Knives rust as they rest in the wood,
the tea takes on the taste of the metal chain
that the strainer dangles in the cup from,
an insane dictator makes a speech to countrymen

wielding a shot gun that he’ll fire into the air,
maybe shooting at a passing flock of doves,
this is what the newspapers say, what the
talk shows prove, middle aged men with grey hair

waving their fingers at one another, clearing their throats,
the cops hand the driver a ticket, the swirling red light
careens off the front porches of the neighborhood,
there is no home to drink the tea,

no one left to take the knives to make a sandwich
with loafs of bread all partially eaten,
a refrigerators’ worth of bachelor eating,
mailmen have only the addresses given them
until the numbers change, or the building is destroyed,

it’s Pearl Harbor everyday.

flu

not years after tears
fallen over ash

nor days of malaise
after counting the cash

keeps this head buried
under arms
flat on the desk

as if in grade school
during a drill of some kid,

eyes peeking through
fingers attempting a glimpse

of enemy wing tip
seeding the sky with parachutes

that would blossom and foretell
bad fortune,

the trees were bare
and the sky looked grey, cold,

I cough and go through tissues
and wrestle with issues
in a greased, electric fever,
there is no lever
at the base of the bed
to open the trap door,

there is no trap door,
there is no switch
to lower the heat,

nothing is so neat
as simple things
adding up to
a theory of history
and forecast of
events no one imagines
in their waking life,

the land of sleep
is humid
with rumors
that another morning comes
all the same

if were all the same to me,

one strand of light
and then another
through the slatted blinds,

the limbs have all their leaves,
the rooftops are soaked in sunlight,

another box of tissue
and a bad taste
on the tongue tell me
this morning

"here I am again".

A Map of the World

Each unused piece of the puzzle
falls to the floor
as we make room for fruit drinks
and places to rest our elbows,

This map of the world has
holes in the cardboard ozone,
lakes where there should be
mountain ranges across the
severest edges of Asia,
gaping oceans of nothing
where neither land nor sea
define the tides or the shape of
the wind blowing over flatlands
and highest peaks,

Quite a world, you would think,
coming into being without
all its parts present in the roll call,
and even the curved and islet shaved
bits finding peace as they are pressed
into place, forced to make nice
with border cuttings that make no sense
nor which force the wrong populations
into the same small area,


And even now things get worse
with desert, which comes on a tray
that’s set on the table, we make remove
our cups and saucers,
take away our magazines and ashtrays,
the tray is moved onto the table top,
and the puzzle moves forward, to the edge,
and by the time the first slice of pie is
served on a dish with small forks
wrapped daintily in thin napkins
half the puzzle goes over the table’s edge,
into the brief outer space between
surface and floor,
half the map of the world
has ceased to be,


Irregular bits of the former world
resting in dissociated shards
on the heel marked floor boards,
and it’s not over yet,

Dear brother drops his
dessert dish and now
what used to be the
half of the planet
dreamed about in
a romance of travel
is completely, thoroughly
devastated and covered in cake
and runny icing.

What you cannot see

We would all believe in God
if he were handing out candy bars
from a bag that even His long hand
could touch the bottom of,

We might all smoke the same cigarettes
if our lungs would last

a thousand years of deep woodsy drags
and long harmonica renditions
of Bird's serpentine serenades,

Guns would be allowed in churches
if Jesus were a wanted man in Rio,

Maybe the sound
of traffic would
be flute music
and dialogues starting with
"Please" and "Thank you"
if we could buy more time
like it were bandwidth
or an empty store next door
we could lease,

But I go on instead
with the meanest of expectations
about what the neighborhood
has planned for me,
my foot hardly hits the first step
from the porch
when a cell phone
makes noises like
water flushing down deep pipes
and the woman answers it,
brings it to her ear and
begins to speak at a volume that
would make Satan bang on the
ceiling with every witch's broom
he could find,

Every other son and daughter
of an imperfect marriage
between heaven and hell
yakking it up with all their hand gestures
even though there is no
in front of them,
speaking loudly short of yelling
with every move they could bust
because what they can't see
cannot be disproved
and who or which might
beat them up or steal
their seats at the cafes,
grim thoughts that make
the five dollar coffee drink
in front of them
taste flat as cans
that have just met
a the back tire of a
a really big truck.

Oakland is all trees in the fog

Oakland is all trees in the fog
based on sight lines coated with
balcony cocktails.


Great towns with names
that belonged to generals
who are not around
to see the pretty lights
along the harbor drives.


Every unmarked grave
is where the promise of
literacy fails another child
left in the backseat of a car
who is just waiting to be picked
like a cherry.



I say cell phone
you say call me
I say I’m in jail
you say call me
I say this is my one phone call
you say I’m losing you
I say nothing at all.



An ugly tie around the neck
will keep the dogs away,
but they will do anything
about bad drivers
who have no sense of territory,
they leave their car parts
all over the city.



Steve greets me at the
airport when the rain begins to
blast the cities on both sides of the bay.


We are on a tour
of dive bars
that snake up the sides of the Freeway
all through Hotel Circle.



The pants are lacquered stiff
over the bottom half
of a manikin,
and we go from off ramp to off ramp
photographing with cheap cameras,
stiff, crusted pants
set against the power lines
and Burger King signs
that configure the sky over
the permanent streams of cars
coursing north and south below.



Hours go by
at the news stand
when you realize
that your date
is not showing up,
and it’s a shame
you say, to be so full
of news with no one
to argue with
until the hands of your watch
creep ‘til twelve
and your wound so tight
with verbs and adjectives.



Tonight is such
a rattled pane of glass.
that even a pale moon
seen from a foggy window
such as happens in
best selling novels
and anthologized poems
cannot deliver you from evil
or the inevitability of a slap
with a flat palm, hard like
knuckles playing piano,
solid like prayers
cemented into church walls.


Half of what
you buy is always
left on loading dock
when it's five after twelve noon,
pleated pants and imported Cd's
waiting on a tuna sandwich
and an over- carbonated coke.