MUDDY WATERS

As winter holds

A knife to your throat

And whispers its honey

Into your naked ear

You put muddy waters

On the turntable

Pick up your coffee cup

And stare out 

the kitchen window

as you inhale the rainy air

you mouth a tiny prayer

and ask for a miracle

from a December

that’s just about as empty

as you can remember

WANDER/LUST

the sun lends a heat

to your wandering

the wind gives a shape

to your absence

the moon cries out

against your loneliness

while the stars dance

their sacrificial dance

for everything

that isn’t shining

AND WHEN OCTOBER GOES

The calendar says it’s autumn.

And yes, the storms have

gathered into a legion

of silver soldiers

who will roll over each other,

one by one, until they break

the hour glass of time with their thunder.

And yes, the place where my mind

went to dwell is equally dark.

So I beg you: even though it's fall,

do not look at the moon,

that liar, as he sits on his

ivory throne wearing the black

velvet night like a cloak.

In this case, white does
not stand for purity.

In fact, he is ambivalent about your love

and you know this is true. All it takes

Is for you to look up, even once,

to see that fat, cratered bastard

flirting with the insolent clouds.

ETIQUETTE

I once wore work pants

to the dinner party.

I couldn't sense the proper time to sit.

I didn’t know which fork to use

and was uncertain how to waltz.

I could feel them staring at me

their eyes as sharp as blades

the imposter inside me tensed,

just waiting to be discovered.

How long, I wanted to scream,

How long until you realize

I know nothing, have nothing

to offer, will not be bringing

a single, solitary solution to the table?

I knew I was a fiction. I was nothing

but a made-up story, but it’s in

fiction, of course, where

one finds the greatest truths.

MY MARIANNE

driving on 

the freeway

with the window down

this golden woman

lets her hair escape

in the naked breeze

it becomes wild 

liberated 

tumescent with change

this golden woman

(who will never pierce

the air 

with her beauty

because it lives in the sky

and surrounds all of us

like the atmosphere

with its life)

sends her love out

as if it was a lantern

a light in the angry darkness

she sends it with mercy, 

baby, 

and such deep compassion 

without condition

SOMETHING LIKE THIS

Something like this

but lacking the poison

and the violence and the scars.

Something with hope,

I think, a clear vision,

maybe some epiphany

that's just waiting to open.

Something like this

In the clear forests and

The meadows and something

like this even in the manufactured

suburbs that are keeping kids safe

And warm despite their

closed door dysfunctions.

Something like this

Where I want to be living

only different, not exactly the same.

Somewhere where the sins are absolved

With impunity

Where friend can be found

Where I desire the proper flesh

Where the sins are absolved

And where I long to drive

beside the cars who blast

their carbon dioxide tunes

through the naked streets of L.A.,

their radios tuned to Top 40 hymns.

Something like this

Very, very similar, in fact,

but not exactly this. Something

nearly like this, yes, but

Without the absence of love.

BOOK OF LONGING

in the book i'm reading

the poems sound like prayers

and are interspersed 

between line drawings

of naked women and

simple self-portraits. 

in my mini-van

this morning, i sang 

several choruses of 

hallejuiah, the notes

soothing, but off-key. 

Outside, the sky 

was lavender

and the moon, as it sank,

was a bright 

silver coin in the east.

SOMEWHERE IN LOS ANGELES

At eighty-two, you still spend your evenings
blackening the pages
while the guitar and synthesizer
gather dust in the corner of the room.
The desk where you write is covered
in the best and worst of your new work.
I imagine Lorca, your daughter
who lives downstairs, straining an ear,
just waiting for the next "Hallejuiah."
Do you still write about Montreal, the city
where the cold nights drove you into the streets
for your solitary walks,
where you were a bemused companion
of the courtyard cobblestones?
Does the Parc de Portugal still find its
way into your verses and songs?
Will there be a line about the pure snow
falling on the slopes of Mt. Baldy?
Let me ask you this, sir: What is it about age
that makes us irritable and slow,
that finds us snapping off the heads
of our guests as we chat? It's not like you
still have to choose between the monastery
and a tour. Your time is your own now.
You may write as slowly as you wish.
It's sad to me, I'm just now realizing,
that you will most likely die in Los Angeles.
I've been there before, my friend, and
I would have wished for you a less
plastic end to your story.

LEONARD LEAVES THE MONASTERY (1999)

I'm going down the mountain,
Roshi, going back to searching
for the Talmud and the Crucifix
amid the sin and decadence.
I'm just so tired
of all of this inhaling and exhaling.

It's time for me to dance again,
Master, in the cafes of the night,
time to seek out the whores and the drugs
like before, when I sat with them
in their darkened corners of the evening.

Have you seen my cedar guitar, Roshi?
It's time to write a new song, time to blacken
more empty notebooks, visit with my children,
and if I have time,
have dinner with Suzanne who
is still half-crazy,
but that's why I want to be there.

And yet I will never forget
what you've taught me, my friend,
about how the music sleeps
so deeply in the sacred chant,
how expensive wine is an eraser
of memory, how moving slowly
through the kitchen
with my bowl of soup
is a solemn meditation,
how the silence of a leaf
as it falls on the snowy hillside
in December
is both scripture and salvation.

I'm going down the mountain,
Roshi,
and I'm sorry to be going,
but you're the one who told me
that when you return
to the spinning world
(with its guns and its lawyers,
its freeways and its starlets)
how purely life manifests itself
when you dive right
into the middle of it,
and how you can only start living more truly
when, once and for all, you are
done simply breathing into it.

BROOKLYN

In some ways you are
one of at least a thousand stories
who pass through these halls
each year.

But this afternoon, you are another
transient soul about to wander. . .

This time you're bound for Illinois
six months with your father
though between the two of you
there is nothing you would really
call a plan.

As we talk in the hallway outside
my classroom
bulldozers create
a master planned
community on the hillside behind us--
a new neighborhood
full of its beautiful houses
and perfect Stepford families. . .

But that's not really your scene,
is it, Brooklyn. Not when
yesterday's xanax still courses through
your blood, and the other drugs
are not as much of a memory
as you'd have me believe.

Tomorrow you will
Pop another pill.
Text another friend.
A year from now, you'll wonder
where the rest of the
happiness went.

So how do I tell you now, in the ten minutes
before you go, that the pounding you hear
in your ears is the rhythm
of loss and pain, yes, but that it's also
the beating of your own living heart?
Where do those words come from,
Brooklyn, when the clock is ticking?

As I speak to you, feeling the
time run out on the chance
I have to share, your mouth is set
in a defiant smirk and your blue eyes
dart furtively like a rabbit's on a freeway
at dusk, but still I try
to tell you there is a light
the burns inside you
and if you have enough faith
that light will save you. And as if by a miracle
I see that somewhere deep within
you there is a small flicker, the tiniest flame
of desire to believe, but trust
is a currency you stopped spending
years ago, though even then
you were only a child, and it's then
you put on a mask
that says you'd rather be anywhere
but here.

So, finally. as my words fly out like
a pet bird whose cage door has been
left open, liberated, but never to be heard from again,
I realize that nothing I say
will make a difference
and that I don't know what else to do
or how else to reach you
so I sign your paper
releasing you from this place
and before I know it,
still another sweet, damaged spirit
that I just couldn't
save is gone.

I'M YOUR MAN (NEWEST DRAFT)

for Leonard Cohen

What were you looking for,
Leonard, as you haunted
the evening streets of Greece, 
while the midnight moon

spun above your venerable 
escapades like a coin?  
What was it like to be torn 
between a woman's flesh 
and a single sweet breath
that illuminates the face of God?
Did your mother's whispers
burn in your ear as she admonished
you from her hilltop mansion,
her sanity nothing more than swirling
tea leaves at the bottom of a cup?
After a swim in the Aegean
you towel dried your hair

and retired to your place in Hydra,
where the thick white walls were

a sanctuary from the past and 
the priest's blessing, a black soot cross
over the doorway.  In the afternoon 
you smoked on the balcony and 
listened to the birds, dwelling on 
the Talmud and the mystery 
of Christ's wooden tower.

Then, as the story goes, you drank 
coffee in the corners of secluded island 
restaurants, scribbling furiously, 
dreaming of the perfect line
until suddenly, her face obscured by sun, 

she sees you from the doorway. 
Yes, finally, it was your muse, Marianne, 
whose husband had just run off 
with another woman and who, 
so long after you left Greece,

and so many years before she passed, 
called your old-fashioned love
“a beautiful, slow moving movie.”

I'M YOUR MAN

for Leonard Cohen


What were you looking for,
Leonard, as you haunted
the dark streets of Montreal
and Greece, as the midnight moon
spun like a coin above
your sacrosanct adventures? 
What was it like to be torn
between a woman's flesh,
and a single sweet breath
that illuminates the face of God?
Could you hear your mother's whispers
burn in your ear as she admonished
you from the mansion on the hill,
her sanity nothing more than
tea leaves at the bottom of a cup?
They say that after a swim in the Aegean
you would retire to your place in Hydra,
the thick white walls serving
as a sanctuary from the past,
where the priest's blessing was nothing
more than a black soot cross
over the doorway.  In the afternoons,
you smoked on the balcony and
listened to the birds,
thinking of the Talmud. Later,
as the narrative goes, you drank coffee
in the corners of dark island restaurants, 
scribbling furiously, dreaming of the perfect line
until suddenly, you saw her in the doorway, your face
obscured by sun. Yes, finally, it was
your muse, Marianne, whose husband
had just run off with another woman
and who, so long after you left Greece,
and so many years before she passed,
called your old-fashioned love
a beautiful, slow moving movie.

NEON MADONNA

she was introduced to a type of christ
in the nighttime.
standing there in the alleyway

she was too enamored
of the holy spirit
to run or hide.

maybe she was just
too overwhelmed
by the lamb of god

to see that the stained glass
staring back at her from
the barroom window

was nothing more
than another whispered prayer.

SOMETIME IN AUTUMN

The fall takes hold
gradually
like a soft piece of music--
each leaf, a tune
set to the rhythm of
the sun

the leaves fall slowly
first green, then red
then orange
then brown

finally, a naked tree
honors its individual
tempo

and with branches
reaching out

conducts a no
longer visible
orchestra.

MAST BLVD. (MASTER PLANNED COMMUNITY)

I have counted
the bulldozers on the mountain
& watched, slack-jawed,
as their giant tires
tear up the ground,
as their heavy metal shovels
growl and snarl
like junkyard dogs. I have seen
them raze and level
bit by bit
even the last remnants
of my childhood
with no second thought
not even a brief suggestion
of what I should do
with my memory
where, if anywhere,
I should put my pictures
of what once were glorious hills
but are now this close
to becoming
the tiled roofs
of three-bedroom homes,
the bourgeois garages and
concrete driveways
of the middle class.

LET THERE BE RAIN

The rain blessing
the patio
is an overdue epiphany
each drop
falls like a
       suddenly understood
bible verse
something jesus
might have said
or maybe something he
only thought
       but kept inside
keenly aware that
the multitudes
simply were not ready.
Maybe that's why the rain
has been so late
in coming:
the answer is above us
     and yet
we see each drop as a savior,
some mute messiah
coming to save us from
the world we made
      (and which now is dying)
with our very own hands.

PIANISSIMO

In the final
moments
of the evening,
the radio is on
and from a channel
I don't usually
play, a soft piano
soothes.

HEAVEN IS INDIANAPOLIS

from the plane

i see a thin

ribbon of road

that never ends

but instead

reaches to

the edge

of an infinite horizon

and then

curves up 

into a sunburst sky

and penetrates a sea

of clouds

that look like

jagged mounds

of white cotton

and there 

the curve

of the natural earth

shifts 

and the plane banks

left

and if I squint

I can almost see

the beatific face

of 

God 

IF YOU LIVED HERE, YOU'D BE HOME

Outside:

the construction workers

powershift

their bulldozers 

into drive and 

decimate the view across the street.

From inside my classroom

I hear them

making mincemeat

of the hills

that have been there

since I was a child.

A year or so from now

the on-line journalists

will call the new

traffic progress

and will laud

the new families

taking root in the

master planned development

of a hundred or so new houses.

And each morning after

the kids

will cross the street to the school

and once again, my desks

will fill as they have every

september 

for the last two decades.

But the only thing left

of the west hills

where my cousins

used to ride their

dirt bikes and hide
at night

with their cigarettes

and their homies

will be a bit of green

and brown dirt

and a few lonely trails

that live in my mind's eye

like a eulogy of

my forgotten childhood.

COULD BE ANY CITY, BUT IT'S NOT

Maybe next week I'll look up
and see a building
in that thriving metropolis

see a skyscraper
made from chrome and steel and glass
with windows like mirrors

and I'll almost miss the cubicle worker
whose hands are flat
against the glass

who stares down at me through the pane
like that last lemming
waiting to jump

he's just one step, I'll think, 
before becoming
another falling man

ON READING PRESENT OVER PERFECT

and so I close the book
set it on the stand
say that's where I'll
pick it up
in the morning
maybe two chapters
till the end
but now with lids
heavy
I step out of my
clothes and
stave the worry off
with three deep breaths
and sink to the bed
words still swimming
in my mind
a good day behind me
but still unsure
how many I have left.

DO NOT BE ASHAMED

of the sunrise that makes you cry

or of the warmth you feel

in your blood when the clouds divide

themselves into sunlight over the lake.

Do not be ashamed of your heart

and the way it grieves

when you see the carnage

we cause in other countries.

Do not be ashamed of the joy

you feel at the skipping child's glee

or of the tantrums you throw

when life leaves you tired or afraid.

No, these are not things

to bring you shame.  Rather, these are

the vital signs of the living,

the green and brown and gold leaves of your life,

the nails in the door of your days

that make you human. These are

the stops and starts that ensure

that you are still feeling in a world

that scoffs at love

or exultation of any kind.

EMPATHY FOR MICHAEL

there are fires

thousands of miles
from here, and
crowds
who have run wild
in the
angry streets.
there are
upturned cars,
shattered glass,
ordinary hands
lifting up staffs
against The Machine.
What do I know
of this hatred
that makes
average men
turn to the staff
and the stone?
Nothing. But if
I ask myself
tonight to feel
for them
to feel LIKE them
(even for a moment)
then maybe
there'll be one
less fire
started,
one
less broken 
window, one
less boy down
in the street.

Morning Breath

Many mornings

I try to remember to take

a moment 

at the edge of the bed

an intentional inhalation

a mindless mantra

playing at the edges

of my lips

like a snippet

of a Beaties' lyric.

On those days 

just after the alarm 

and right before a shower

there is a space in between

(A brief breath)

before the day's duties

line up like dominos

all black boxes with

white spots

simply waiting to topple.

From there, I am grateful

I can hear 

the sparrow's song

And a soft 

stringed instrument

Playing a few 

delicate chords

From a 

distant lullaby. 

TODAY WILL NOT BE

about visiting relatives

or telling the same old stories

around the kitchen table

or living in 1950's houses

in cities that refuse to age.

Today will not be about

taking a Sunday drive

through two-laned roads

where freeways now sing

their white noise song.

Today will not be

about Disney movies

in the theater 

that's no longer there

or watching VHS tapes

of Sesame Street with

children who now sit

through SATs and who,

like farmers, try to grow

scholarships like stalks

of Midwest corn.

Today will not be about 

whispers in the night

during sleepovers with old friends

dinners by the bay

where red, green, and blue lights

shimmer on the bay's black water

or the old dairy in the woods

up the street from the school

where you were once kissed 

behind the bookcase

Today will not be about

your family in a Polaroid

clad in pajamas

huddled around a tinseled tree.

Today will not be about love

or peace or innocence.

Today will not be about 

fireworks in Los Angeles

a live band in a dive bar

picnics by the water

or that warm March night

that keeps returning 

like a weathered dream

(pure and white) 

as if it were its own phase

of a new Spring moon.   

No, Today will not be 

about these things, but how lovely

to think it could be.