orphans of meadowgrass

I want for her

a heart

that will never

be cursed,

shoeless feet

to walk the earth

beyond the wall

       (the boys who guard the gate
are so easily swayed)

outside her village,

she will learn

to sing her

own lullabies

    
(but that won't be the hardest part)
she will realize that she

has forgotten her mother's

voice, and she will not

recognize her mother

tongue.  She will wander

until she finds the well

in a land where she doesn't

know the rules.

      (except this one, which never changes -- animals always move toward water)

they may worship

the organs

of stoats

or have

no vowels

in their alphabet

or maybe even

not have

a word

for heart

Caye Caulker, Belize

In a motorboat skimming across Caribbean

Blue, the shirtless Islander pilots like a pirate.

One-hand on the wheel, he tells today's tourists

Stories of his Great Barrier Reef Boyhood.

Listening with lust, novice young snorkelers

Adjust their unfamiliar equipment, and awkwardly

Await their turn in the turquoise below.

A ceiling fan revolves, whirs, hums, delivers

Tiny breezes across naked bodies, sprawled

Like already forgotten suburbs. From the wall, a lazy

Lizard watches the only movement in the room–

A single thumb stroking a satisfied cheek. Outside,

The regularly-scheduled afternoon thunderstorm

Tells the stirring lovers in Neverland: Go back to sleep.

Escaping through make-believe walls, the sound

Of reggae rhythms, melodies.  At sunset, lured
By unbroken beats, sandaled feet wander from boats
And beds toward the bar. Reefer floats on the sea air.

Barefoot and nearly bare-bodied, American girls sway

With Rasta boys on floors of sand. Sometimes,
They stay, and raise beautiful blue-in-the-moonlight babies.

But most times, they manage to barely not miss the boat,

the bus, the plane, and end up in a gray airport, inadequately
dressed, asleep on a cold seat, waiting for a ride home.

Ghost Ship Blues

I've never been there, yet I know this place.  It has had incarnations across the Earth, and in all eras. The one I knew was in Portland, Oregon in the early 90's. I was in my early 20's.

I don't remember its name, or even if it had a name.  There are things I do remember, but I don't think I can put them in any particular order.  (Besides, the order of things, once you can read Heptapod.. hmmm... I find myself thinking about the dialogue that might have happened around the table during the making of Arrival...was there an Agenda Item 2b:  Hepta vs. Septa,  or was it just a discussion that began organically, where someone had an idea and the other person said, "Yeah, and..." my money's on the latter...  all the good jobs in the future belong to the creative class anyway... as I get older, I find I have less and less tolerance for meetings with agendas, real or hidden... whatever, my point is that somehow or other they decided to use Greek instead of Latin...and oh yeah, I forgot it was a book first, so the decision was actually probably the original author's, so never mind).

As I was saying:  the order of things, once you can read Heptapod, is less important, and your linear thoughts may well start talking in circles, just like that parenthetical non-sentence above.

The List of Things I Remember in No Particular Order

1.  The Mezzanine that came alive at night
2.  The beyond-handsome Mexican poet
3.  The openness of the kitchen -  every pot, pan, dish, glass on makeshift shelving
4.  The vintage sofa with warm crocheted afghan
5.  The slight chill.  Hence: afghan
6.  The smell of tobacco and herb
7.  The random communal drum kit
8.  The long hair and knit sweaters and trench coats
9.  The gloves with the fingers cut off, on whose hands I longed to have hold me
10.  The sketchy neighborhood (that would become gentrified in ten years)
11.  The openness of everything
12.  The awkwardness of everything

Awkward because I wanted to belong, fully, completely; there was a heady mix of nostalgia for the past and promise for the future that led to art, and which I understood at a cellular level.  But I Didn't. Quite. Belong.  Not Totally.  I was a first-year teacher, trying to adult for the first time, head still full of revolutionary educational ideas, but also full of an MAT degree, lessons to plan, meetings to attend, and students to be responsible for.

I loved it though.  I loved the company and the conversation most of all.

There are so many moments in your hazy young 20's you forget.  But you never forget dumpster diving with the artist boy/man crush (and that one time you found and hauled out your favorite teak desk that is now in your 16-year-old's room), then returning to his cluttered/clean apartment in the warehouse, and smoking cigarettes, and having a 26-year-old Mexican poet drop in to read to you from his journal.

I was never quite sure if it was safer to take the stairs or the elevator.  They were both adventures.

I don't mean to idealize this life, either.  Some of it was filled with drugs, some with despair. But I would venture to say that it wasn't much different than your average home at the time, just less hidden. And it was alive.  Of that, there is no doubt.  I'm also certain that people will start looking for someone to blame, and that the owner of the building is going to have to "own" his part of the tragedy.

Anyway, that's just a whole lotta words to simply say, no matter what the circumstances:
I mourn the loss of the Ghost Ship, its people, its heritage, and its future.

poem in facebook status update format

Sue Spengler
wants a job which would require her to drive a Chevy pickup on dirt roads, wear gloves, and look through some sort of lens
has amazing experiences, because she expects to
likes going to places that feel like foreign countries but that are only a half-day's drive away
is writing while driving on roads she's never been on before
slipped, fell down, brushed herself off, and remembered to slow down
thinks wars should be forgotten
picked things up and put them in her pockets
communed quietly with two winter coat-shedding deer
pulled over to take some photos; didn't pull over to take some others
is following a silvery sleek Airstream dream
worries that she missed the turnoff
has a thing for boxcars and junkyards
should not have doubted her instinct
has proved her intersecting point

navasana

there's always
movement
the leaving and the returning
through doors
without locks
never enough kisses
welcome....farewell...come home....see you soon...goodbye.....

boat. stop. moment.





(photos by Kat Tudor)

for janet

One of my other mothers is dying.

I first met Janet when she was hired to be the ESL teacher on our team of middle school teachers in 1993 (or somewhere thereabouts). She came from a background of civil disobedience and power to the people and Pete Seeger songs and a hippy-live-in-a-bus-and-make-your-own-yogurt world. It was a world of 60's activism I was sorry I had missed. I doubt there is a kinder, gentler soul in all the world.




Winter Solstice of 1994 (I think) I played matchmaker during a party at my house. From that day forward, there was one entity.......

"Janet and JohnRoy"











When Janet was diagnosed with breast cancer, my mother was there for her, providing both practical advice and hopeful inspiration. While my mother lay dying, Janet was there by her bedside for the last 36 hours, documenting it all in a notebook for me. She was the one who called and said, "You need to come. Now." I missed my mother's actual death by about 10 minutes, even still.

One of my other mothers is dying.
And I cannot be at HER bedside.
All I have to offer is a poem.
This one's for you, dear Janet:


one day

i will walk
naked
from my castle

i will walk in silence until
i reach the precipice----
there will be no need for Hansel and Gretel’s desperate crumbs or
Orpheus's doubtful glance

perhaps not a cliff then, but rather a retrospective footpath
helixing down
around a balcony of passions
past a circus of trees
under a moon of souvenirs

and i will walk
shedding my cloak of outstretched arms
pulling back my veil of angular tears

the little princes will never know
that i am gone
because love grows backwards
and they will run---

run! run!

to the castle
to their futures

one more reason to vote democrat

...... as if we needed one

thank you for..........

a red rose from your garden, sitting in the waiting room with me, spinach lasagne, using the word fuck, a limerick, cards sent via us postal service, coffee on my bedside table, homemade veggie burritos, letting us drop off the boys at 6:30 am when your own weren't even up yet and you were making pancakes, coffee and tears at cucuru, your anger, emails, listening, facts and figures (81%!), the dnc diversion, text messages while driving to surgery in the early morning, picking the boys up from school, the chance to slay some goblins while on percocet, slow-talking self-hypnosis man, cheesecake, brownies, pizza, the red jewel of a heart, your tears, prayers, raising arizona, reefer madness, and other cult classics, dr. susan love's breast book, your porch swing, cosmos to drink, camels to smoke, spreading the word, 40 bucks to go see a movie, enchiladas, flowers, taking the boys for 7 hours on a saturday, doing the laundry, the dishes, and the tucking in, helping me get dressed, a phone call from brooklyn to awaken, chicken quiche, the best damn purple potatoes i've ever tasted, fresh greens, peach pie, stopping by, surviving to tell your story, text poetry, tabouli, sitting on my bed, calling the boss when I was too drunk to, chocolate, love, positive and negative thoughts, "an army of friends", a morning walk, doing your chores without being asked (ok, let's be real... after only being asked once), hugs, supporting john too, retsina wine at jake-n-telly's, forwarded funny emails, wisdom, zucchini bread, zucchini muffins, offering to fly out to be here, washing my hair, telling your own children, giving me a ride to work, giving me a ride home, friendship, holding my hand, telling me it's gonna be alright, invitations to go out, commenting on the blog, making the scar match the outline of my areola, flowers, taking care of your son while he is taking care of me, 100% agave tequila in a wicked cool bottle, homemade peach frozen yogurt, phone calls, taking all the recycling on the front porch to recycle america, understanding

rebecca!

Rebecca and I don't really know how we met, but it must have been via Maria or Kate, other women we love but whom we have never met. To meet someone in person who you are only acquainted with through blogging is just so unbelievable cool. We had 15 dollar drinks in Manhattan:

Before opening the wine list, we decided to place bets on how much the most expensive wine would be. She guessed something like $799, mine was more like $300, knowing no better and knowing I had no chance of even coming close. After we opened it,
Rebecca made a joke about us being the big losers on some sort of Price is Right for the rich and powerful!

A couple of hours later, I took to walking alongside Rebecca to the subway station the way I do when I'm with anyone in a strange town who knows their way around. I just completely tuned out and strolled, ever-trusting, engaged in conversation, not caring if I was going north or south or east or west. It was the first time I had done that in four days, and it felt really really good to just let go after always being so hyper aware all the time. She got me to the right place, and here we are on the C line, me heading back to my family in the raucus but cheap hostel on West 103rd, and she heading home to her family in Queens:

wave hello

Is there a hyphen in goodbye (good-bye)?
I’m never sure

I want there to be-
It’s the greedy kind of wanting for a bridge, a “you
Can kiss me”, a rope
From the bow to the dock, a clasp
To hold back a wandering earring

You can fold me a paper boat - even though
I’m too tired to row
You can weave me a hollow
basket - that will hold water I will not swallow

You can pick me seven golden daffodils all
Shining in the sun - my arms
Will be two leaden limbs at my side

Birdhouses make me happy-
For a fledgling season anyway

You can machete me a watermelon and
Feed me the melancholy flesh-
After a few pink nibbles, I will
Spit out the black futurists,

Crawl into my waterproof basket, and float away
Under the bridge without a rope
After we kiss and I can’t find my earring

No - he says-
there’s no hyphen in goodbye

But couldn’t I insert one if it were a compound adjective before a noun?
Isn’t that the rule? If so, then-

Will you really agree to be my good-bye lover?
There would always be a bridge, a bowline, a birdhouse, and a fistful of daffodils-
Waiting.

If so, then–
Hello.
It’s so good of you to come by.

today in other people from my past

Mark DH. He once whisked me out of Seattle in the middle of a panic attack. I once walked the Alaskan tundra with him. We once almost got married.

He makes these incredible pastel artworks filled with luscious dreaminess and visceral aliveness. He has been animating them lately. This one's my favorite. Proboscis Planet:



You can see more of his animated artworks on the baconwafer channel. I will see Mark in September, and we will need only to sit together and say a few words to be happy.

Kirsten LD. She once kissed me. I once visited her in England when she had three kids and I a one-year-old. We once hitchhiked to get to the Glastonbury Festival.

She just produced a BBC radio programme about Child Preachers in America. I saw her last March when she was passing through en route to Spokane while working on the show. We sat on the floor at DIA, curled up head-to-head and had one of those "we've-only-got-an-hour-so-let's-not-speak-of-things-that-don't-matter-and-I-love-you-soooo-much" talks.

I met Mark and Kirsten at the same time, second semester junior year. 1988. Pacific Lutheran University. A course titled Feminist Theology brought a ragtag group of us together that year, and it became a magical awakening time. The kind you can only have when you are young and open and shy and ready and full of longing and lust for life. Sometimes it's hard to believe that 20 years have passed since then. Twenty fucking years!

If it happened once, and you can imagine it, then it can happen again. (That's what Azar Nafisi told the crowd at Shove Chapel when I asked her what UPSILAMBA meant to her.)

I think Alzheimer's is about the scariest thing imaginable. I mean, really, who would we be without our memories? Without our sacred moments? Our daydreams?

There are catalysts in our lives. Sometimes a person and a place and a time come together in such a way that we are forever changed. And we are catapulted into other orbits or higher planes.

What does upsilamba mean to you?

for kirsten

May Day
by Phillis Levin

I've decided to waste my life again,
Like I used to: get drunk on
The light in the leaves, find a wall
Against which something can happen,

Whatever may have happened
Long ago—let a bullet hole echoing
The will of an executioner, a crevice
In which a love note was hidden,

Be a cell where a struggling tendril
Utters a few spare syllables at dawn.
I've decided to waste my life
In a new way, to forget whoever

Touched a hair on my head, because
It doesn't matter what came to pass,
Only that it passed, because we repeat
Ourselves, we repeat ourselves.

I've decided to walk a long way
Out of the way, to allow something
Dreaded to waken for no good reason,
Let it go without saying,

Let it go as it will to the place
It will go without saying: a wall
Against which a body was pressed
For no good reason, other than this.

m is for marina

Marina is moving to NYC. Today is her birthday.



for Marina

I stand and stare
out my kitchen window
north
to where I know you (only
a few blocks away) are
also standing
also staring
north

the water
weeping from our
faucets is
temporarily ignored
as we pour
our own into the
unknown
and down the east face

we who are friends of Charlotte
spin delicate doilies
and know
that friendship is a train station
sketched in pencil

the wind whistling through the
hollow spaces
will carry us away on
winsome silken strands
to other lands we have yet
to weave

the World Wide Web is not the same as
“Can you get the boys today?” or
a coffee in your kitchen or
a summer Smoky two-wheel ride or
a shared laugh over the antics of our offspring

when you arrive
please try to find
a kitchen
with a window
facing west