Other Places,
Other Times
Gaugin
halo
apples
serpent
red upper and yellow lower half framing
Self Portrait
white bonnets
praying women
"very small" cow
a fiery red ground beneath
Jacob Wrestling with the Angel
orange trees
purpling horizon
bilious hills
a prismatic cross holding
The Yellow Christ
cut flowers
sarongs at mid waist
three breasts exposed
the pensive olive figures of
Two Tahitian Women
The Future of Heaven
Generation after generation
the souls come to their reward.
Once pristine open spaces fill.
The white clouds darken with debris.
Heat rises from the throngs.
Past solutions become foul
from overcrowding and eternal use.
The restless make exigent demands
to innovate and open another franchise.
Or, facing reality, end and repurpose
the blue globe they all once enjoyed.
Sensing opportunity, the other place
advertises for visitors, promising
a more relaxed situation.
What Poems Do
this poem drinks too much
laughs out loud and cuts up
without decorum or sobriety
happy to have a good time
another dresses tastefully
displays impeccable manners
all éclat and dazzling polish
- a solid citizen of letters
in a quiet mood, one
reflects incisively on life,
parsing its many contradictions,
exploring a less-traveled path
one works to capture reality:
the images, sounds, odors
of things seen and experienced,
recording what is and was
pregnant with meaning,
one is a riddle and maze
drawing analysis and contention
into its lyric black hole
like the people who write
and who read them,
there are infinite answers
to what poems do
Leviticus: The First Five
Bereshith: In the beginning,
God one only and unknowable.
Then came ish and ishah
and their fall.
Shemoth: The names,
The long-lived sons of
a sinful world. A second fall,
and reconciliation.
Wayiqua: And he called.
The sky dropped water.
The earth sang with honey
and milk.
Bamidbar: In the wilderness,
The Israelites, a wandering nation,
rooted, grew, uprooted, moved
and persevered.
Debarim: The words,
Tokens of Yahweh become Jehovah,
promise sprung from "the Word"
- redemption bent.
Advice to Writers
1. Enter the story.
Liked by colleagues,
relied on by family,
already at the outset
the protagonist is dead.
He is propped in a coffin
upstairs and to the right.
2. Paint a picture.
The living revise planned futures
no less, simple, ordinary & terrible
than his had once been in
a life running straight from adventure
& the experiments of youth to a
decorous married middle age
3. Note the details.
With a daughter, a son and one child dead,
A distinguished Public Prosecutor, his
work ambitions increasingly a refuge
as marriage proved difficult but yet demanded
a home and furnishings that safely resembled
those of his circle and the one he aspired to.
4. Make friends with it.
So he and his family lived in comfort
in apparent good health and happy
enough, if never fully satisfied.
Yet, at the margins of satisfaction,
unseen physical distress is growing
& eating away at happiness like a cancer.
5. Drop to a deeper level.
The dreadful taste of death
grew while all about him
life went on as usual.
Feeling as if pushed into a sack
he despaired finally of choices
long since made or evaded.
After the War
There are no keys
for these rooms without doors
that litter spills from.
There are no ceilings above
long and empty corridors,
only stars in a dark sky.
There are no lights
in this city without people that
a chill wind sweeps through.
There are no memories
among the scattered bones
that feral animals pick through.
Adventuring in Italy
At evening near Assisi,
we pick our way carefully
through neat crop rows
and over low fences
toward a hilltop town.
Escaping a nondescript hotel,
and its busload of fellow travelers,
we find our own dinner and memories
after rousing the surprised owner
of a sleepy trattoria.
At ease with youth and pleasure,
we savor piquant details,
praise the hearty local food, and
return holding hands in the dark,
staggered with happiness.
Courtly Love
Surprisingly for those feudal times, it was a
refined game of love in which a woman
might hold the power cards.
To prove his devotion and intent
the courting knight was expected
to declare himself her humble servant,
to show his unwavering devotion,
to obey her without question,
to call his lady "my Lord."
Thus, if she sent word to do his worst
he'd lose tournament jousts all day.
And if she commanded him to do his best
he'd route all comers and take the prize.
However refined the motive, he'd stoop
to the cheapest theatrics to impress her.
So, to keep his lady in his sight at all times
he'd fight with his sword behind him.
The best found it in themselves
to live a better life on a larger stage,
to be and achieve greater.
A Green State of Mind
Mexico for instance, seen from the air,
crossing over land, heading toward Cancun. It is
a nubbly green carpet stretching to the horizon
without a town, a road or a building visible.
Or, seen from an air-conditioned bus kilometer after
kilometer on the drive to Chichen Itza from Cancun,
the green is like two walls pressing in on both sides
that might easily close over and bury the road.
Or it might be the green of crocodiles in Nichupte Lagoon
waiting patiently in the murky shallows near the shore
for prey they might latch on to and drag under water,
perhaps, if lucky, the occasional hapless tourist.
And always it is the sea's band of light green nearest shore
modulating to darker bands as the eye scans outward toward
where turtles, returning from thousand-kilometer journeys,
will emerge to deposit their eggs on beaches shared with bathers.
It is the plants in Chapultepec Park's Botanic Gardens
watched over by bees made of braided twigs and vines.
Other colors, an occasional, white, red or purple appear here
only as embellishments that green produces to adorn itself.
Finally, it is the green of the sacred maize that nourished alike
the makers of jade masks, stepped pyramids and stone heads.
It is the green grass of the ball courts where teams competed
and the earth drank the red blood of those who won.
The Triumph of Death
In this version, Death is a winged skeleton in the clouding sky.
He holds an hourglass in one hand and a long, sharp lance in the other.
It is poised to skewer a fleeing girl, her arms outstretched, her eyes on him.
They are in the middle ground, with sunny hills and a quiet town in the distance.
In the foreground, close to the front, a well-dressed couple sits conferring.
She glances toward the fleeing girl, seemingly undisturbed. He averts his gaze.
Apparently lost in reverie, another seated woman inspects her lowered wine cup.
Behind some rocks a couple snuggles amorously, or perhaps does more.
Wherever you choose to look in this disturbingly calm scene, you can imagine
Death standing somewhere behind you, discretely admiring the art.
The Rape of Helen
There is a decorous backstory on an adjacent canvas.
A blonde Paris sits before three elaborately coiffed standing goddesses.
The four all look calm. There is no hint here of what this moment
Might be prelude to, to what the other, later, canvas might show.
And here it is, foregrounded, without any hint of evasion.
Paris in red tights and gold-colored cape and boots
Has lifted the more drably colored Helen off of her feet.
Her bosom tight against his chest, she gasps, red shoes kicking air.
In the background, a tidy ship with a golden sail and fittings
Waits to carry them from this place of monstrous action,
From the exuberance and passion that it alone has witnessed
To other shores and another story, turbulent in a different way.
The viewer is left to ponder whether or how to assign blame:
To the gods, to the humans, or to an enduring need for color in life.
Ladies Waiting in a Bar
The theme is timeless, but the scene is not.
These four painted ladies in their tightly composed group
Live forever in the 1920s as if frozen in amber. They are
all we see except for some bottles on the bar edge.
The standing central figure is poised like a ballerina,
With raised arms crossed over her felt cap above crossed feet,
She gazes off to the side. Like petals, her skirt edges curl upward.
Magically, a drink with a straw in a tall gas hovers beside her.
Closest, and to her left, a heavy seated woman with short black hair
That hugs her scalp. She is hunched and leaning forward. Her arms
Clasped around her stomach. Her gaze is down and inward,
As if imagining herself in some other time and place.
Across from her, closer to the foreground, is a fat woman in a black dress
With even shorter brown hair and vivid red lips. She holds a drink
On her crossed right knee, and a lit cigarette level with her large breasts.
Interested in business, she looks outward frankly, inquiringly.
The fourth woman, the one closest to us, stands looking out.
Leaning her left elbow on the bar, that hand cupping her cheek,
The right arm is akimbo. Underneath blonde curls, her wide eyes
Stare out at us as if to ask us what we think we see.
After the Hurricane
We had the beaches.
No better beaches anywhere.
Never gonna be the same.
The hurricane came and sat awhile.
Winds tumbled everything upside down.
Brought the sea up into the town.
Now fields are full of splintered wood,
Piled rubble, and wrecked appliances.
Never gonna be the same.
People lost. Lives scattered.
Bodies bagged and in a van.
Can't know our pain.
Our town is gone.
Our lives are gone.
Never gonna be the same.
Collaborating with Master Zhong
When I was still more a girl than a woman,
my hair hanging in two braids to frame my face,
my mind then still as clear as any unmarked canvas,
I took the materials my parents bought for me
and went to a park beside the winding Liu River
in Guangxi to sketch what I saw.
At this time when any grown man seemed old to me,
an old man who was passing by stopped to watch.
We talked and gradually he began to teach me how
to draw. Bridges. People. Trees reflected in the Liu.
The river's own rapid ever-renewing and flowing waters.
Like the river, time passed.
Youth and age sharing, we began a joint painting.
A raucous hover of crows alighting on an old tree
wreathed in dead vines. Cooking smoke wafting
over a bridge and the rushing water beneath it. The
dimming light of a setting sun about to drop below
the horizon in the west. Cold night approaching.
Once done, we parted. Before that, beside my name,
he added "Old friend Zhong Qixiang." Years later, I
read how "Zhong Qixiang, a Master Chinese painter," had
visited Guangxi. Later still, a grown woman, I read that
he had died. Years and decades have passed since he
last painted. His memory now dimmed but not yet set.
Disciples
When the last true Lord of Ten Thousand Years reigned,
and my mind was like a bird that flies about from place to place
but is never satisfied and cannot chose one for a nest,
the Buddhist Master Tan crossed from the beautiful island
and came to Fuzhou in Fujian with two companions.
He had rosy cheeks and his words charmed all who met him,
including Duke Wu and other people of high rank. I met him and his
companions. One, older sister, was very pale and beautiful, a white
orchid in her drab clothes. The other, younger sister, was always
busy and anxious, like a pet, to keep the Master happy. His gaze
fell on me, like the falcon high above which sees a hare in the grass.
We spoke, each answering the other's questions as day turned to
night. Beyond the circle of our conversation, his two disciples watched
and listened. Like a bell resonating in the mountains, my words caught
his attention. He told me I had Buddha talent and asked me to become
his apprentice. I, for reasons I felt but could not name, declined his offer.
To show respect, afterwards, I invited them to dinner. My friends were
surprised when he accepted. At an inn, we dined on vegetables, and
I noticed the women eyeing me with curiosity when he would look down.
Two decades have passed now, and I have no regrets. My mind turns
toward where my own younger sister made a life across the western sea.
In the wide world, there are many paths to Buddha.
No one such path is better than any other.
Advice to the Reader
Prepare yourself.
Is the light good?
Are you seated comfortably?
Is the sound level one
that will allow you to
forget for awhile where you are
and submit to this singular experience?
Banish distraction.
Choose an approach.
Will it be a hearty familiar meal
with maybe a hint of new flavors?
Or, a feast of discovery and surprise?
Something you chew on and savor?
Or, fast food that fills you with empty
calories that you wolf down quickly?
Select carefully.
Commence reading.
Are you skimming the surface,
or plunged into consternation,
wending a complex twisting trail?
Can you trawl the meaning
and bring some value back?
Savor serendipity.
El deseo es rojo
You like to smile.
But you are like a fire
that wants to burn
forever. I like your
wide, white smile
framed by two vivid
red lips. Your hair
as well: a mane of
red that wants to be
admired. Attracted,
I draw nearer to
the thirsty flame.
Civic Elegy
You have been away for too long
in the great forever that overtakes us all
remembered most in history and art
but not in the still beating heart.
Iconic still as a huge figure
seated and calmly looking out
past your many small visitors
who gape, and read, and pose.
Some few perhaps try to imagine
what you might have to say about
this divided nation you look out on now,
with hatreds that might seem familiar.
Would you wonder, father Abraham,
whether it might endure much longer?
Seeing Blues
Dressed in short-sleeve blue work shirt and darker blue shorts
a scruffy man who looks like he has probably seen better days
lopes forward, his shanks an awkward inverted v, dragging
what looks like a stripped tree branch that is taller than him.
With a tattered American flag fastened near its top, he keeps
this makeshift pole upright beside him. A breeze bellies the flag's
upper blue ground and its white stars out above his right shoulder,
but in the area below the red and white stripes are merest shreds.
Like the man, the space he walks through looks disordered.
Above, puffy white clouds hang framed with varied shades of blue.
Behind him, on the left, a blue frame house with white eaves
leans left as it sinks slowly down into the Choupique Bayou.
This poem, a concerned witness, wants him to be someplace else soon.
Somewhere life is good, the winds are calm, and hurricanes never come.