Peace Negotiations

found on a cold night
in lieu of darkness
over a hexagonal glass of whiskey.
I took off a boot
we discussed Faisal,
fingers in the middle eastern pie
that make it the shattered mirror
of lost lives

living in this universal crowd
of masked faces
where to touch one is tantamount
to sacrilege, violating
caste purity–
how could I pick your face
from the anonymous mass
contravening this unspoken
border between each individual country.

Such craving throngs to crescendo,
the wrangle between autonomy and harmony,
hands wanting to cross boundaries
minorities within perimeters
pan-identity beyond frontiers
and the sanctity of the solitary.
You reach across your wall
to my foreign hand
on a cold night
in lieu of darkness
passports no longer needed.

Starling

I stare at

shit splatter pathway,

coming from what?

Then she flies up,

head disappearing up metallic tube

I see something in her mouth.

Of she goes,

my head cocks curiously

is something inside,

was she getting food?

That’s when he appears,

suddenly emerging,

the flap wags after him.

‘What a home,’ I think,

imagining the warm dark interior

safe from predators

high up from the ground.

‘The fan must be broken,’ you say,

former wind tunnel turned

starling bungalow.

Homes are piled together here.

Aviary and human.

We eat, we forage.

Tree Girl

Help! Help! My hand is withering...

The Backstory

Commissions Committees and Councils
expert formulators, creators of stories
conscious banners of testament
providing neat explanations
packaged, palatable, and positive

entire libraries devoted to deconstructing such stories
peeling off layer by layer
of elaborate exposition overgrowths
hiding dung heaps.

We each have a council proffering
monopsonic truth
seashells chattering under the surf
deciding memories.

so looking back childhoods have no shoes
and cats have no teeth
heroes battle villains
stoic homelessness survived
secret commissions assemble flawless stories
personal folklore formed and dissolved,
elaborate beach built structures.

Sarah

She siphons smoke from her cigarette, hand draped like an old spider web over bare knees (summer time means the coat is hidden, like the long johns). She tells me about brawn, a jewel in her crown that turns relations into delicate barriers against war, a threadbare string keeping a pit-bull from its dinner. That’s why it all ends badly, she explains between drags. But I’ve seen her cream-thin hand kneading knots from brows and tired shoulders in her guest bed even been recipient to her chilled hand gathering the blankets affectionately to my chin. She deposits straws in juice cups, drips cheese over nachos,composes meals, assembles late night snacks. Hands dancing to supply. That’s why cigarette intervals puncture post-sunset giving. A time for her gossamer fingers to lay catnapping over the pacifying edge of a cigarette. I sit with her. Sometimes even taking a little smoke offered like her blanket tuckings. But I listen too. She is brawn, but the type that links–strong glue for misapprehension.

Absences

I apologize for having been very slow on my responses lately and barely posting at all. Basically I’ve been dealing with that whole transition from undergraduate to graduate thing. You know, feeling like somehow, in the space of several months your mental capacity is supposed to have suddenly progressed leaps and bounds. As though every professor is supposed to think that every word out of your mouth is nectar from God and that the undergraduates should likewise be gazing up at your glowing halo of knowledge. When the opposite is the case it can be quite a downer. In fact undergraduates frankly intimidate me and professors at times make my  mouth freeze in a pucker from which no words can escape.

I suppose it’s not all doom and gloom. I am enjoying myself. Once again being immersed in books and knowledge and other people interested in similar things..and…my mouth pucker does tend to open every so often and sometimes, maybe, perhaps impress some people.

This Old House

crushed flower petals

frozen in dust-held grime

they clutch 

and quiver under

old tile counters and

showers of termite feces.

Some old houses 

keep people like cradles

in embrace of stasis

pretending that wood is not warping

professing that nails never rust

and can forever support

walls from foundations for floors

that sustain feigned banquets

cooing perpetually in an ancient embrace of decay

stitch the fallen threads

soothe warping wood

clean rusty nails

fixing at the same speed as dying.

When we moved to this house

the old faucet broke in the bath tub, 

greeting us with a flood which soaked

the hallway carpet and living room floor for days

We’ve still never cleaned it up.

What a homestead we made…

elderly before birth

a sunset perpetually ending,

strategies for escape

that never reached fruition

because we were essentially building a dying house

within a dying world

while dreaming of not dying.

You wanted me to keep you alive

you begged so often for just a few more seconds

to lap up hopes melting under a thousand summers suns

but all I could do was watch you 

expiring slowly over your rotting bedrock

you exposed me, paralyzed to your death,

and so we died together for a little while

in that dying house

within a dying world

while dreaming of not dying.

Molded

When I was a student
I grasped the grass,
observed all the slow steps,
holding slides to the sunlight.
I was an explorer in the Congo
and the jungle was breathing,
but as time passed, creepers
atrophied to ashes
roots became foundations;
grasping tree trunks
my nails broke on concrete

The Last Time

The last time I spoke with Harry McBride was really only half a conversation. The lesson he gave was meant for her, but I was the only one listening, so I was the one who received it. 

The root chakra, at the base of the spine, is a primal life force. Next is the sacral chakra which many people equate with sexuality, although it has more to do with creativity. 
  Harry paused his explanation to show his diagram, sketched quickly on the back of a flier, to the object of his affection. She stopped briefly for a quick look on her way to refill the coffee machine with water. He continued.
The chakra around the solar plexus is very important and then going higher, we have the heart and throat chakras. At the very top is the third eye and the crown chakra, both related to functions of higher consciousness.
Not caring that I was second choice, I snatched up the crumbs. “I think Carlos Castenada must have written about a chakra at the solar plexus because when he goes into dream time he ends up with this weird sort of extra spirit arm that comes out of his stomach and attaches to things in the world around him.”
Harry paused, trying to remember, that sounds likely…
“So what do these do, how can they help you?” 
  He looked up with a forlorn tinge to his eye. Well I suppose you can focus on the chakras with specific yoga exercises or meditations, but I just know the basics, no practical applications.
Harry turned to gain her attention one last time as she dashed by with a carafe. His half wave didn’t even pause her work routine for half a second.
“If not chakras then what do you rely on?” 
  I was always partial to the spirit guide, but, of course, sometimes the only advice they can give you is to jump off a cliff. He ejected a raspy cough and a wry smile. 
My library is still filled with Harry’s books: a biography of Madame Blavatsky, a reference book of Celtic Gods and Goddesses, and a bushel of Charles De Lint novels. He’d filled everyone at the coffee shop with books on everything from the 19th century occult, to ancient Egyptians and hallucinogenic rituals. He was a desperate teacher, distributing lessons at an astonishing rate before the inevitable.
Six months before he stopped coming to the coffee shop, he appeared, wraithlike, at a workmate gathering at the bar down the street. 
She sat up rigidly, “what is he doing here?” she whispered not too covertly. 
Another co-worker and I stayed to chat with him while the rest of the group migrated away from the table. He only drank guinness.
“Do you regret any of it?” I asked him once.
  What, joining the navy, going to war? He smiled. No, that’s what needed to happen, and it did get me out of Pennsylvania. 
Everyday at about 3 PM he would leave the coffee shop for the little Eritrean market two buildings down and buy a cheesecake. Then he would smoke a hand-rolled cigarette and sit down to his afternoon snack, backpack placed carefully beside his seat.
  When I got out of the navy I was offered a job in the tech industry. If I’d taken it, I’d probably be much more wealthy. Choking laughter. But I made a decision then that I wanted to have an outdoor life.
This assertion was confirmed by an alpine-hiker look, a muted green hat that looked like a cross between a fedora and a fisherman’s cap, and khakis that hugged trim legs. Despite his looming expiration date he exuded virility. He who talked of third eyes, gnostic rituals, and the power of menstrual cycles. 
But he could only catch her full attention when she told him of her dreams.
After he was gone, I heard that his sister came to collect his scattered library. I wasn’t working at the coffee shop anymore. I kept his books.