Tardiness

I waited for you
In the azaleas
That one spring.

The air began to sigh and pace.
I decided to begin --
How to know?

I have finished the lemonade now
And the cherries are almost gone too.
I'm afraid only the pits are left.

You have missed
All the sweet things.

(How could you?)

Untitled

My dear manic shape-shifter
My coy coyote, dancing for pennies
Performing, always,
With a flourish, you turn your face dark
Your curl up into yourself
And turn 'round the mirrors
And I have lost your real eyes now.
They are all so lovely:
Some morose, sucking on a cig.
Some clownish, aching for the break of laughter.
Or angry and bewildered, a boy-child raised by wolves, alarmed by hush nows and cluck clucks.
Some absent, raking over the brick-a-brack that so bores you, calling for heads to roll for distraction's sake.

Slow down so that I can see the wound
And balm and wrap it.

The Massacre One Morning Of The Ancestors

We arrive on our spaceships
Highest of hopes and good intentions
We plant our gardens vast and green
Harvest our grapes and olives and corn
We build our cities tall and white
Stretch out the road, through land and space
Pointing -- "Hark, the promise of it!"

The monuments we raise, tempting fate,
We scrawl our names over them,
Condemning ourselves.

Here comes the army now
The angry, quill and brush wielding legions
Remembering us hateful, our own children
They paint our gardens and cities and roads
with their ever-growing palettes of words and colors,
But we recognize none of it.
Were not our sylvan-scapes pleasing?
Were not our Babylons and Romes pleasing?
Were they not the fruit of honest toil and imaginations as bright as any's?
Were not our hopes and intentions high and good?

I am old now, I am your mother and father
Baffled by your condemnation
Head on the chopping block, but
Was I not yesterday a promise, a hero?

Go and see!:
My name,
the now-ashen monument, still standing, if bowed and melancholy, in the center of town
bears it!

Alas, and at that, the ax falls:
"It is your fault, these miseries: these ill-conceived cities, these poorly managed gardens, these inefficient roads. One must pay for errors in judgement and deficiencies in information."

It's a bloodbath to make Robespierre blush --
The baby-faced victors, they arrogantly brandish their advantages, youth and no damned Congressional Record.
To be something other than the tormented practitioner, living in the gray,
Was not our lot.
God forgive us for our ignorance, we suppose, but
We stand proudly by our lives --
Even as we damaged, we repaired
And even as we destroyed, we created,
Which is the story of our race, the young ones will soon see.
- - -
Ah! How can I?
Defame the wombs and truncate the loins
Of teachers, explorers, innovators, and artists?
How can I bear their shamed confusion as they are led to slaughter,
the Old Guards, which were, one must remember, at one moment, the New Guards?

"Did I not yearn and strive," they ask me,
"Much as you. Did I not ponder stars and with a butterfly net, chase them, much as you?
Did I not encounter puzzles in new places, puzzles without a key, that I struggled to answer, but likely failed to understand, much as you?"

As they set to us these questions,
Which we answer with silent, stony piety and a finger toward the history books, the verdict,
Our own children look on.

They are sharpening their pencils and wetting their brushes,
Already conspiring against us and our endeavors.
They know, as we knew, that the battle has already been taken.
They will prevail.
With their vigor and technologies from on high and lessons learnt at a tender age from our own missteps,
They will prevail.

Reservoir

With every lash
(And there were many:
There were the raspberry stripes due her,
But also those she bore for the temptresses, ingenues, and bitches
To whom she had given agency)
With every one
It seemed like she was opened,
Stretched a little further
On the medieval machine.
Given the ability to feel more and more
And overwhelmingly more.

Now she has this great reservoir in her chest,
Poorly supported by loose flesh,
Of surplus emotion --
Emotions that don't even belong to her! --
And she is terrified
Of the person who will
Come and with his dynamite kisses
Fell the great wall
And be her ruin
Loosing the flood,
Drowning the voice of her better judgment
That has labored for so long buttress the vulgar dam
(But her dam, nonetheless).
Some call it bounty
But she's afraid of it --
Afraid of a crack, rumble, and spontaneous dissolution
Of many moons of blood, sweat, and tears
Wrought by the hand of someone who may
Or may not be aware
Of the power of his touch.

Map-makers

Map-makers
Charting the stars,
The mountains and oceans
The movements of our ancestors and ourselves.

Likewise, color-coding our bodies,
Our temples,
Graphing the subtle clicks and turns of our hearts
And testing for the tripwires of our minds.

Extracting meaning from the random,
Creating coherency from absurdity.
Measured music; balanced portraits;
Exposition, Mounting Action, Climax, Resolution.
Formulas and chronologies,
Created in frustrated attempt to understand ourselves.

All the while, trying to accept
The futility of our endeavors
To conquer the unknowable.
Trying to find a way
To love ourselves and love eachother
Because
(rather than 'in spite')
Of our limitations,
And our potential --
Who knows which of the two is more difficult to live with?

My Body Climbed a Mountain

My body climbed a mountain
The tallest in this country.

This body that I thought was my ball and chain
It carried me up a mountain
The tallest in this country.

In front of this alien mask
Through the looking glass
Wishing it ill
Hating the soft places

It stifled my Spirit of St. Louis
Kept my red-letter flight grounded
It corrupted movements of sentiment
And made me vulnerable to the vagaries
Of men's attentions
And women's criticisms
And a brutal moral climate.

Vulnerable is not my color.

I resented it, even as I exploited it.

But my body climbed a mountain, I said.
The tallest in this country.

We worked together,
My mind and my body,
Over boulders and through falls
And at the summit,
We communed
For the first time in many years.

Vahaza Woman

Vahaza woman
Donnez-moi; Donnez-moi; Donnez-moi
Les bonbons (literal or figurative, one never knows)
Eyes - in them a melange of desire and self-contempt, bitterness and is that a pinch of malice? -
On les grandes seins
Comme tous les images de
The apple-pie Jezebels,
The fertile blow-up dolls
Who shake their Vahaza goods
On all the televisions
Every night,
From hill to dale
Translucent tits paired with hot-cross-buns.

Yum Yum.

Or half the body for half the price -
Cropped at neck and knee -
No need for these -
Too tough to chew through.

These eyes want the prime rib, baby.
Only the best cut for this fine gentilhomme.
Would you like me to trim the fat?

Vahaza woman
Humanitarian or harlot?
Il n'import quoi.

Snap.Snap.Snap.
Raise your eyes.
My mouth is moving,
Asking questions, telling stories, proving my personhood, something divine.
In between my chin and my nose.
Northward troops!
You're getting warmer.

What do you see when you look at me?
Damn sure it's not capability,
Or heart and mind riddled with funny notches (won't call them scars) borne of absurdities,
Or contradictions of unflagging tenderness in my spleen but gravel in my gut,
That, if you bothered, you'd understand were far from contradictions.

But you see a blur of white, indistinct,
(Because we all look the same, you admit as much)
You see a lasso in my hand to capture the stars for which you're straining
(You want the Big Dipper; No interest for the Southern Cross).
I am simply the means
To achieving dreams.

But I am not a tool.
This is not cultural insensitivity --
This is me
Telling you
That I will not be the object of either your fears or desires.
Re-pocket your hand; I will not be your garden hoe or milk cow.
I will be but your equal; ax sharpening ax.
I will be but your equal; flint against stone, together performing impossible, making magic.
I will be but your equal; our unique wisdoms paired for stunning clarity.

So retrain your eyes -
Find my mind, the seat of my history and my potential -
And we, together, maybe,
Can then begin to heal.