Writing Off the Walls 2022

On warm summer days wild birds were seen walking together across large back yards.

Nature in all its color and vibrancy sang its melody like a poem dropped from heaven.

What I remember most are the conversations and the games, of course.

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Hydration was of upmost importance, and I won’t over-indulge;

Some brought water in plastic bottles, Poland Spring and the like.

The kind of bottles fit to be transformed into clothing.

Others brought iced water in thermoses or cold drinks with vitamins and electrolytes.

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There were suits made for play, Nike and the like. And ordinary shorts and tees.

In late fall, layered clothing was the fashion with heavy sweats, even coats.

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We exercised and ran enough to reach a fence or slice a ball that couldn’t be returned.

Levels varied; so, teams were made to keep competition balanced.

On court, we encouraged each other:” Good hit, nice whack, good run, attack!”

We always “left it all on the field”. Off court, we shared. We spoke.

Sometimes injury sidelined us, and we waited to return.

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But now that covid-19 has separated us, when will we play again?

Or will it be a notice of a fallen friend via our handy cell phones?

Covid -19 or old age. Take your pick.

Layering depths

The complexity

Of human experience

De then Re composing

Insistently exposing

Beliefs, Concepts, illusions

found, repeated, transformed,

assumed,

trusted,

lost,

feared

contradicted.

Scratching out pain, sorrow.

Misunderstandings.

From the hubris

Pluck out hairs,

Flag gagged justice.

Take them all…………

surviving

Fingers, paper, enamel,

personal materials

Insistently reordering,

Undoing, redoing

intermittently

explosive and comforting

wild then quiet.

The canvas heart beats.

They arrive refugees in back of a ponga.

Tiffany housewife, criminal ghostly sailor, voodoo priestess

                      Shipwrecked

Where the coconut and banana grow.

Where the swagger of green palm and yellow bamboo line the distant cove.

They step unto the playa, tortoises climbing from their shells.

                       To

Bronze themselves

Shed their skins.

Peel themselves, of themselves

                        Drown themselves.

Rid themselves, of themselves

                          Day after day

Watch their bodies float away on the back of the ebbing wave.

                           Feel the pulse

                           Share their secrets

                           Cleanse themselves, of themselves

                            In the suds of the delicate foam

                            Footprints disappear

                            Bury their lives in the sand

They come back, day after day

                            Sip on Margaritas

                            Hear the pie woman say “Tu quiere una pastel de banana.”

                            Sit on a spout of a humpback whale

                            Speak Spanish with the dolphin

                            Walk the pace of the mule

                             Paint the landscape with themselves

                             Climb the manure trails

                              Follow the sign “a la cascada.”

                              Purge themselves

                              Baptize themselves, of themselves

                              Make friends with the scorpions

                              Hitch a ride with a butterfly to a Mexican graveyard.

                              Ride the back of a crab

                              Discuss the political essays of Octavio Paz.

                              Attend the Quinceanera

                              Reggae down at the disco nights.

                              Set a bonfire in their hearts

                              Watch thoughts flow down the mouth of the lagoon

                               Lay naked under the dry palms of their palapa

                               Here the indigenous cries

                               of themselves

                               Awaken each morning to island dreams

                               Falling In love

                              With themselves

                              With each other

                              With

                              Yelepa

In a world ere the dominion of tar and glass,

when the human animal humbly watched time pass

and the other kingdoms in benign concert reigned,

an hour and place for all things Gaia ordained.

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But the ambitions of the wise ape overthrew

such accord as all other earthly creatures knew,

devising instead the tyranny of machines

that bent the world to suit the selfish philistines.

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Now on this bewildered scape of nature spoiled

where from raging fire, wind, and flood we are recoil’d,

even the night wanes in the toxic mists of blight—

the waves and particles of ever-present light.

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The temples of the sky star-hung do we betray

for the profane veneration of ruined day.

In the valley the fields

lie fallow under the first

snow, the grain safely

stowed away against marauders, no

chance of famine here, coils of baling

wire at the ready, tarp-covered silage too,

cattle secured in their pens, the

flitches of bacon drying on

the rack, the puddings boiled

in the basin and he

takes these long nights to

mend his harness and

plan for spring planting, the

furrows riven in the earth to

coax forth new life, the

ribbons of green marking

the borders of his land

beneath these sheltering mountains,

the peace of the night yet

undisturbed by word of random acts

of violence blot-splotched across newsprint

in newspeak

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In the shadow of the mountains,

Near the farmhouses and fields,

The snow lights the cold night

With a reflective glow

From the distant cities

And the nearby lampposts.

So cloistered in light,

The heavens are lost.

I pray for darkness -

The velvety darkness of childhood

On a winter’s night

When I stepped into the January air

Absorbed by the inky blindness,

Until my eyes adjusted upward

To distant pinpoint stars.

Coaching myself to stay still,

Take time, ease into the nothing,

Feel the winds blow through

Until it came into focus

The Milky Way spiraling through cosmic clouds.

How small I needed to be

To see such grandeur.

No machinery can or will rescue

any of us from the law of being.

For centuries we have pretended that

by echoing those grey wings on the wind

grinding the black earth into our palms, and

dipping blue confections to our pink tongues,

we are truly living.

But, by proclaiming that

there can only be one of anything,

we are gradually tearing at the

seams of a sheath, well worn.

It would do us well to remember that

while the fringes may be tattered and torn

the main core is always serviceable.

Because while all our ancestors loom large

in the shadows of grief

Brown, Yellow, Red…

We must remember that

someone great was and is ever-present—

In the untouched landscape

In the interior web of oneness

In the infinite expanse beyond that

disposable jacket—

that great white hide.

Wearing a black coat, head bare,

his face set against armed strongmen,

he stands close to his brothers

and sisters, his gaze harbors a wilderness,

a deep resolve to share in the scattering

light of this dark dark world.

Then:

His skull, fractured.

Body, bloodied.

His life is light.

From a psalm dancing hills emerge

the sea splits, and in the path between

the walls of water freedom sings.

His soul grows “deep like the rivers.”

There is no darkness in it.

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She wore aprons similar to this

     in colors and shape

they were called Mother Hubbard

did any of them last through the six

      children she didn’t truly want

before birth control or abortion

       except DIY

the coverings practical, related

        to her own but not

indigenous cultures

        while we stripped her to her hide

a great woman long gone

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