"because" # 2

"...but, someone requested that i please share my stuff with her so here are a few; one was written when i was a teen, the rest in the past 0-24 months. feel free to guess which is the aged one.

panic: dear! god - hadn't realized i'd pasted a letter to my brother over these - just now nearly lost them all. have created a backup copy on my desktop."
- from because[#1] entry in The Crossed Keys.

Song for Preservation (of Redwood Groves)

This failing butterfly
Spirals towards Earth.
Her reddish hues speak to me of transformation,
A drift towards graves, and
Suddenly oxygenated venous blood
That will never return again to the heart.
This leaf will become mulch, and be reborn
First green, then yellow.
But her sisters, she whispers to me
Gliding into my ear,
In ancient groves, have already fallen and
Like the men of Antietam
Can rise no more.


mulatto women

La de da
Says la
Zebra
As she
Fastens her
Bra getting
Ready for
Her
(Blind) date hoping that
Her stripes
Don't show

[subtext: her date Is blind; could care less what she looks like, but she is tizzified, perched between two colors.]


drifting...

this world
around us
all the
time
falls apart
around us
all the time
breeds
priests and
killers all
the time
lovers and
dreamers all
the time
extinction and
rebirth all
the


another piece of eight (will try to let up soon)

so here we
are twenty
years later
and i ask him for her phone number and he gives it
to me says "USE MY PHONE" as if he's a pedophile offering sweets and
i know better shy
away from my dad
called my mom later that night and she says "i love you"
she didn't say that before dropping me
off on his doorstep though she had 'til i was
four years old to get those words out but i'd never
inspired them she's sick; he doesn't want
me at her funeral
but i think what if
it was me and he told HER not to come to mine because
she had "never seen me"
and i know i would
cry thunderstorms end global warming if that
happened i
write her back at st. luke's in the city and tell my
mom
"i love you too."

and my dad doesn't say happy new year did
you make it safe to philly,
he says don't tell her a damned thing about us she's
not your mother.


an (untitled) remembrance

resurrection
insurrection
take me to the
tower


no idea where the h--- this came from

i was little when you
found me you walked
out today...walked out on
me said you had to see
your baby mama it's your son's birthday
he just turned three
laughs like you, looks like you,
runs like you someone
said later you were cursing god on the
corner outside like a
sailor with syphilis 'cause
we were broke
you couldn't stop
tears from falling
down your face
we spent 13 years trying to
find ourselves in the mess
of each other loving
every second of it
until
she pushed you
i pushed you
god forgot to love you
and you stepped off the curb
moments too soon -
and all my sunshine in your (my)
big brown body
big bright smile
it ain't -
- i don't mind that you're not
coming back, i just
wish god i wish
i hate this i wish you'd taken me
with you...

-frightens me, made me cry when wrote it. very strange piece.


hands and memories

Friends burn.
I am at my best friend's apartment,
I am exposed.

There is money flying straight out the walls -
In the chink between bricks and window,
Her oil heat is warming the icicles on the trees outside.
There are memories flying out of the walls,
Mortar-covered hands reaching for me:
Hands that have reached out
For over
2 centuries
Brick by brick; in South Philly
These hands built the outskirts of town in the
1800's
They built a future and a meeting place -
- They are visible beyond
Unfinished drywall
They are
Stripping me naked.
They still live,
They're so close.
Hundreds of hands.
And my friends burn,
The best and least of them.
They have been reaching out over time,
Touching, asking
"Do you remember me?"
And I am going mad.
And I don't, can't -
But I remember hands
Always reaching reaching out to me.
Reaching, burning, defying time.

i'm having an extremely weird night.


miso

it's raining
he sits by the window.
my hostess skills are rusty so i
take extra time selecting the perfect strands of wakame, stirring
them into the broth just so.
i hold the lacquered bowl he bought for me
reverently
i hold our love reverently
i drop in cubes of tofu, as if they were brush work.
he'd like to help but i've told
him no so he sits with
his black manx, scratches him behind the
ears, so quiet and gentle, happy and
full of life. i am always suprised how much zest flows from
this quiet man, this vegan, this buddhist.
he and max are silent now;
max is in his lap, knows better! than to jump on the
table when the true alpha cat is around.
i stir with the wooden spoon he sent from japan,
indented like a piecrust, an ancient jomon
artifact. the tea is from a box,
so he is spared my lack of
ritual knowledge, but i make a
miso ceremony for my brother, brew the green
leaves and he thanks me as i finish pouring the soup,
add the love he's been sending to me
all these years;
we watch it overflow.

Miso was the reason I begged for you to print your poems again.

I know I have written abit about some off the othersbefore, and I always love your poetry.

I think Miso is a wonderful gift to the person it was written to.
Even if the history of the people in the poem is merely hinted it feels like I know them. I can imagine what came before, and the love and tenderness shines through.

I also like the moment, captured, the feeling of being there. Right here and now. The scents of miso, the sounds when to tofu falls in. The care of it all. The love shown by the attention given to everything, every part of the experience.

This might be a strange thing to compare the poem with, but it reminds me how the world just around you feels more clear, more real then before when there is fog. All the sounds next to you, the colors, the scent of grass or leaves. Evrything feels more true than before, inside this cocoon of mist. This poem gives me that feeling. So much care, so much joy and tenderness that it overflows, spills from the paper, and fills me - the reader - with
a love that makes the heart ache softly and warm.

...my younget brother (we are four siblings) wrote to the family lately about his desire for peace in our family, and how he would "never forget" his rage that there are problems in it. It was a scream, a tear (both kinds), and a blow. my other brother (the subject of this poem) and i were a bit blown-out-of-the-water. it's interesting, because my youngest brother has a problem with me because i don't appreciate having been abused by his mom.
anyway, my brother who's teacing in japan and i talked, and he was so open and loving, and i was so sorry to have seen his hurt at the e-mail, and i shared this poem with him. at that point it was 3 weeks old or so, but i'd been too embarassed to share, and didn't want to embarass him, because i love him so much, plus didn't want to drown him in glop :). he really liked it. i was so glad i had a way to tell him he's treasured.

Then, this morning i had a dream. my stepmom was reading a poem from my youngest brother (not the one in nippon (japan)) and i thought it referred to her. it talked of love.
i asked to read it and she checked the address very carefully before handing it to me. my brother had written a love poem, and it was about me, with my name in parentheses, in the manner of singing harmony to a song. and he wrote about the poems he'd read on this forum, and it was full of love.
which may not tie in with the poem really, but it was so nice to be able to wake up with loving thoughts and the knowledge that someway, somehow, my brother may still love his family.

thanks for your comments...

fog...i love fog. maybe it's because i was born in england, or because i grew up a half-hour away from the northern california coast, but i know just what you mean. it makes everything heartcatchingly precious and immediate. it is like a melody and taste of another world...