It's as though I thought
I held that bridge up
with my eyes and if I
turned my back it would
collapse and make that crash
because my ears were there
to hear it.
And along the freeway
seeing shooting stars
I know they blow because
I'm there all big eyed
and sighed up with
the look of it.
Vanity O Granny
you have got it. Go
off to the city where
the air is so full
of things you can't focus,
the locus is nowhere, the point
is to let your eyes wander.
Like your son says,
"My mother's attention
span is so short she
reads the dictionary so
she won't hang up on the plot."
It's not that sonny, although
you're only put on intermittently,
let me disagree, just for the record.
There is one word I've
heard more years than I
can accurately remember.
It has a round round sound
I come back to as in
treadmill, ball bearings,
money, maypole, the moon moon
and "cinnabar," there you are
again. That means red, means
metal, is part Mercury —
cynopar, cinabre, cinobre,
cinnabaris, kinnabiar, zinjafre,
zinjifrah, sinoble, sinople,
sinope — in all tongues defies
my intent to describe it.
And were I to close that
book for the bit in the
city, you'd bug me. Knowing
I'm only half there when
you're half here. Having
only half said it: Cinnabar
You are.
And so I imagine
a cloak for you
I would sew myself
to be both
dark and light laden
with symbols; a saber's tooth
and wings always
an eye in every
button hole, badges
flowers and ice
some of every season.
But your spirit grows
more huge each year. The thing
would weigh
you down.
So I simply thread
you through my eye
again in ten bright shades
of silk.
Watch through a prism
while I say this
it's what there is.
I will you my bones
then, that you may carve
and hone me
into a music
for the heart's ease.
It is a vanity
to hear the tears
of nightingales dropped
from their drooping
branch, the mourning
of the doves doubled
in a witless dirge.
For this is no sad song.
See? I would be even
castanets to click
a dancing girl to motion
in your quickened eye.
And then, laughter
from your fluted hand,
and the hummed silence
after, as you dreaming
smile.
* A flutelike instrument made of human bones.
The 12 of us
sitting circular
discussing ART
and allied stuff.
Solemn little Salish
bright unbuttoned eyes
offers the closing
commentary.
"Walter just cut wind."
We blink in the sulfuring silence.
"Walter," I bleat
to cover it
"you've got a great future
as a critic".
12 fits of giggling
O -- my fine young innocents
such fresh air you are
And Walter, redeemed
throws caution
to the wind
AGAIN
I watch you — thin as fins
your warped bones knotted hard
against the skin. And ribs,
my God, a scuttled hull sunk
in mud a hundred years would
have more hide than that.
Death looks so optional when
you're young: contract or contraband,
something one could hide, and take out
when the chips are down.
The chips are down, Jean,
The only reason you're not dead:
the digger lost your name.
Eyes are wounds, shocked blind,
unblinking. Face has gone
blank as bread. The pain has
ground your slate quite clean.
Or is it drugs? Or has your
brain refused the killing anymore?
Whine your litter by me,
I won't watch. I won't watch you
when they shove the needle in.
I won't hear the nothing that
you never say. Because you're dead,
Jean, I've got the flowers ready by your bed.
And all my tears.