S is for Stone

 (c) 2005

I want to tell you about the Stone in my shoe,

the skipped stone once submerged in the lake bottom

It accompanies me. I have named this stone, Stone.

This stone was the heaviest of two dropped from a bridge.

Though both splashed simultaneously the lighter

was the stone to be envied. A stone light enough to shoulder.

Stone requires fortitude to hurl away.

God knows I know it. Its gray contains variations

that saturation, night, or depths disguise.

Palmed closed to the eye

Stone speckles salt and pepper as my moods.

I have missed few opportunities to analyze this stone.

It cannot be ground to dust by will alone.

Fire will not burn it. It resists polish and bears no usefulness

except to be wedged into my sole.

R is for River

 (c) 2005

A river is any fresh water stream whose path

has not been designed on blueprint; not in

the disarrayed shops of carpenters or leatherworkers,

A salesman hears “stream” and imagines online events.

Developers want to pull the river taut.

A river discharges into another, into lake or ocean.

A river defines cliffs, beaches, and villages.

A river is never river alone.

Trout breaking surface imply hymns.

The acoustics of stones mirror the river.

A river may become lost. Should it reappear

it is transformed by the weight of earth.

As the river ages, it expands the valley

giving all of us a place to sit.

The School Locker Dreams

 (c) 1993

Finally, I dream the locker unlocked and open

after decades of forgotten passwords,

attempted safe-cracking, faulty x-ray glasses,

only to find the contents confusing.

 

One painter’s five-use-utility tool

for unscrewing cover plates and filling holes.

The handiness of appearing untainted and new.

The tool is rusted beyond repair.

 

One stack of blank paper.

I know these once contained notes,

ambiguous embryos of novels or essays

now invisible ink and bloodless.

Read into them what you must.

I can no longer read them at all.

 

This dream leaves me empty

hence the crumpled candy wrappers

scattered inside the locker.

 

It has come to this:

contents I could not go on without

now unneeded and powerless

to further possess me.

Elevator Dreams

 (c) 1990

It follows a circuitous path 

and because it lacks a bottom  

I cling to the broken handrails  

or to the cage itself  

propeled at nauseating speeds, this elevator  

taking me everywhere except 

my desired destination.  

 

If I push the down button it goes up 

past floors which have never before existed. 

I will be late. I will lose my job. 

I will miss the big sale. 

Long past closing time  

the elevator spews me onto a wrong floor. 

 

Is this protection or is this abduction? 

A murderer stalks me. 

To elude him I steal a hundred garments,  

wigs, large rimmed sunglasses, hats, 

wanting to disappear into the crowd.  

 

The exits are all chained.  

The only way out is that elevator. 

If only I had some say 

In where I am going. 

GRACE

 (C) 2003 

I am already off-kilter:

the divorce, my room-mate and best friend getting married

and asking me to move out only two months after I’ve moved in;

the ludicrous dates, the last of which ended in assault;

the work-load and school-load, the mounting dental work

and accumulating debt. I think I’ve had enough

and then today my unemployed, brooding, eighteen-year-old

tells me she is pregnant.

This is not the straw that will break me.

A walk down any downtown Seattle street or through

the Pike Market Park smelling of piss and ripple reminds me 

that bottom is a long way off.

Is that where I’m headed – I wonder, still too numb to surface.

I stop to give spare change to a homeless man

who smells like one beer too many. He asks how I’m doing

and I say my day’s been pretty crappy before I even realize

that I’ve got it world’s better than he does.

He can respond anyway he’d like now and I’d accept it.

He could tell me to fuck-off or grow-up

but he is generous enough to deliver a personal sermon.

He slaps me in the chest near my shoulder, says

to remember that god created us—made us to be gods.

I’m not believing this line, because we are all already

sorry examples of humankind, let alone omnipotent enough

to evoke, jesus, whatever it is gods evoke:

wrath, compassion, peace or war.

He smacks my other shoulder, pokes his message home

just in case my ears ain’t hearing. You got to focus

on the good, he says. You got to insist they respect you.

He pushes me sideways a good six inches in example;

got to hold your own space, he says, cause they

gonna take, take, take. 

Hell, my “they” is me.

I’m the last one to respect myself, feel so much

like a broken-wing bird, or a muzzled dog, de-clawed

and worthless. I can’t even think enough to throw

another blanket on the bed when I’m cold or to buy groceries

and feed myself something near balanced. I probably shouldn’t, 

but I give him $20-bucks instead of 50-cents

knowing it ain’t as much as he gave me:

some eye contact, some encouragement,

some of god’s strange grace.

PASSAGE

(c) 09/11/2021

An eight-foot stretch of green shag flanked

by celery colored walls left unadorned

by family photos or one of Grandmother’s paintings

of the orchard or a forest.

One brass and rubber doorstop.

The hallway was an in-between place.

A place where the living passed through

on their way to live somewhere else.

The living room raucous with saxophone or drums

and bursting accusations of infidelity.

And the kitchen, while no one ever cooked

a decent meal we all foraged for popcorn,

licorice, a can of soda or two. For the grown-ups, beer.

There was enough yet we all felt some form of scarcity

letting out war yelps and yells as we claimed our food.

That hallway was all about passage and nothing more

from the kitchen past the bathroom and to Momma’s bedroom

where silence pervaded like a stench of rotting onion.

If noise is an indication of living, then no one lived in that bedroom.

Sometimes I saw it, a shape like a woman passing from obligation

to the bathroom where water in all it’s forms

could hydrate a husk back to life and redeem a soul any sin.

I always turned away and looked over my shoulder

over the red linoleum tile, the yellow table and out

to the neighbor’s lilac bush overhanging our fence.

And there I saw the possibility of a way out

tenuous and so fragile I was afraid for years to take it.