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To the Formless God
By mid-morning the grey fog burns off Biscayne Bay.
Land surfaces, a silver glint under the veil.
I trust it’s there—I’ve seen its bottlenose before.
For years I’ve prostrated before marble, black stone, brass, burning incense, repeating
God’s name.
There is no one to ask me anything.
Rain floods the highway under construction.
The Bible says, Add enough clay and it becomes slip: sediment and water at once.
No matter how much I read, I am a city of charred rubble folding my
streets-turned-canals in prayer.
On the highway I cross the bridge.
Mist vapors up from the water like the Holy Ghost, like resurrection.
When the city burns away does sea ferry rock back to its prior self?
What becomes of the idol where there is no one to ask anything of—clay doesn’t know
itself as clay.
I’ve never been more flooded yet parched with hymns.
I strain my eyes searching the streets for dolphins.
The Garden Walls Fail
It’s summer and I don’t believe myself nor
my meds of gila monster saliva transfigured
into a chemical that lowers A1C, my summer
body buried so far in the past, it was never a body.
My overall plasticity of joint, of grey matter
long since began its decay. I once prized
your squash, salting slices, squeezing water,
breaking the web of cheese cloth. I can’t recall
what I made of all that yellow. Or your face
in marvel. We too, one summer past the summer
before, no miracle serpent to spit antidote. For now
I’m lost in the strawberries, my hands in cow shit.
The house of us stands. Renovations can wait
until next year. Yes. Next year will be better.
***
Author photo by Bryan Kamaoli Kuwada
Balladeer Quatrains
This slant-ass love song is for six storeys
of cement and light and how it held every portable
us blanket-swaddled against scattering. This is
for the width of its spaces, slope of its ramps, the promise
of a place to just stop for a while in a world full
of go go go. This is for the friends on the roof as the fire-
works flew. This is for letting us wait out the down-
pours. This is for the music and the time to hear
it—Murder by Death cello pulled taught across
my days. Even in later works, Turla’s voice brings
me back (she’s a roving ghost) here. This is for all
the heys and good mornings I got to say and mean
and for the people who cannot hear them anymore
ever. This is for the weird shrimpy scent of callery pear
that marked spring in your air. But mostly, this is for the songs
you taught me to write, the curios. I’m sorry this one took so long.
By Heart
You are all chorus and no verse—catchy
and repetitive—just a few words and a rhyme.
The rabbi next door used to call you
Rice. No one knew why. Sometimes he would
mumble it like a curse, others he’d blow
it like a kiss. It was the way your head dangled
just off the pillow that told me you were
going. You had no bags to pack, no good-
byes to say. The others wondered after you
in duct tape and crayon, but never really
looked. We were more conjecture than action
then. The rabbi looked up every time the door
opened. I like to think he was waiting for you,
missed your hook, your melody. I have no
evidence. One day, he too was the crumbs
memory makes in the hall. I find myself
humming you sometimes. It is not a longing
but an echo of a longing—a tune to pass
the time.
***
Author photo courtesy of author
This was originally published at The Rumpus on June 6, 2019.
The Wind Did What the Wind Came to Do
You’ve seen the tired ceremony of felled trees.
You’ve seen the sparrows toss their dignity aside
for the hollow howl at evening’s edge,
and the humble earth saying, Here, have the night,
do with it what you please, the perfect moment
of love where an offering requires nothing in return.
Though it wasn’t love. There was the bowed trees.
There was the black clouds galloping across the sky.
There was the wind that moved as if the definition
of hunger, going and going, but going only out of habit,
nesting into that habit as we do when reaching
a familiar field, the natural gust of the body responding
to what it finds filling; patterned; rested in the chore
of passion. What if this were love, if the wind bargained
for beauty, let go of its kingdom? It must have a thirst
for tenderness—stillness in the heart. Oh surely
the distance is closing ever so slightly.
Stay inside me until the storm dies down.
Such Things Require Tenderness
Into the rain, he walks—
the rain falling like light
falls before a storm—
and he never looks back.
About storms, truly, what did I know?
I knew beauty. The clouds gathering
gray as infidelity
or the taste of it in my mouth.
No, that’s not beauty.
Before the storm, birds.
Before the birds, a discarded shirt,
a black hat with a dead rose.
This is the last time, he said.
I did what storms do: held
against the long night, made longer
by my howls and crashing,
which, by now, as he dissolves
into the cadence of rain, is only a memory.
One day, when I’m alone
and the birds make use of their boredom,
I’ll return to this place
to watch him walk again
and again into the rain
knowing I must forget such turmoil
if, by the laws of nature,
I want to grow.
—The rain is clearing.
I hold out my hand.
The Dead Are Beautiful Tonight
Even the trees are moaning.
Black bark, black faces,
and winter’s stern hand at the neck.
They say it’s the worse one yet,
but they’ve all been the same.
The dead die every year
and I think I’m too good
for such repetition. The truth is,
I’ve gained so little this season
that the things I’ve lost paint the day
a rough stillness. I don’t tell him this,
but I want my life to end.
He wants another hallelujah
in bed with me
and I don’t blame him.
Our lives are so ridiculed with desire
sometimes. I used to want the romance
of trees, the subtle blue conversation
between the sky and crows. I can’t help
but study the things that bare
my resemblance and that makes me selfish.
But the crow, headless in the bush,
has been there all week
and if I can’t bring it back to life,
what else am I supposed to do?
So much is my want
for everything black around me to live.
Where does want get me?
I have my limits, my childish dreams
barreling into the mind’s fog.
I want, but I must be careful.
A shower here or a shower there,
the trees will still be
a spider’s web of what was.
It’s true what they say about the day
disrobing into a sudden stroke
of sorrow—the poor moon,
I hear, is dying. As are the stars,
although many of them are dead already.
I unthread the evening
and he arranges on the bed
how he see fits, ready to love me
the blackest way he knows how—
salt in my mouth
light in the corners of my eyes.
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