francEyE
Stats
Pastime trenz pruca
Hometown seattle, washington
job photographer
interests landscape, portrait, travel
Poem Titles
> SOMEWHERE
> GRIEF
> BEING SOMEBODY
> TONIGHT'S THEME
> I WILL WRITE
> HOW TO TELL A POEM
FROM A BUTTERFLY
> COMPARATIVE RELIGION
> LITTLE GIRL IN A PINK DRESS
> JUST ONCE
> ONYMOUS #4
> EPIPHONY
> dec 2007
SOMEWHERE
in this house there's a boy
sleeping, sleeping deep and I clump
away trying to silence my canes and
almost slip and fall on the bare bathroom
floor and think
how awful it would be for him
to wake hearing me scream so I don't
slip and I don't
drop my cane and back in bed I
thank myself for one more
successful venture through the web
of family love and
decrepitude. He
sleeps and maybe I will
have watermelon for breakfast, maybe
both of us will. The holiness
of these moments makes me grateful
for sacred songs and I'll fall asleep dreaming
of lambs in someone's arms. The moon
is down so I can't
tell it goodnight but I will dream
it sings to me.
________________________________
GRIEF
like the tides
washes over, then flees
leaving flat
crabby sand, no good
to build a house on, not
the kind of landscape
you dream of dancing in, but
still
on the wet mud flats
before it comes back
you dance.
________________________________
BEING SOMEBODY
Excuse me! he said,
running after me, aren't you
Charles Bukowski's mother?
Oh no, I said, that's
Anne Hathaway. Xanthippe
is my name. People
get us mixed up all
the time.
________________________________
TONIGHT'S THEME
will be poems about Paris.
I've never been to Perris,
though my ex-brother-in-law
lives there -
It's up above the Inland Empire
in San Bernardino County -
but I have been
to Milan.
It's in Michigan, right near
Ohio and the Michigan
State Mental Hospital.
________________________________
I WILL WRITE
the shifting sands of time, and
you will write the rose that blooms anew.
We'll look at each other and say
What
trite
rot!
and we'll shun
each other, go looking
for something to
listen to. Then I will write
the rose that blooms anew, and
you will write the shifting sands of time, and
we'll both
gasp with joy at such
art and maybe we'll say to each other, please
by my love forever (I have seen
more than one elopement just like that, then
even suddener divorce, haven't you?).
So strange, how much just depends on
the weather.
________________________________
HOW TO TELL A POEM FROM A BUTTERFLY
Try as you will, you can't
rip the wings off
a poem.
________________________________
COMPARATIVE RELIGION
You walk into the church of your mind and you see the BVM all
in blue with a golden halo behind her head
and you are humiliated by your own ugliness.
This is called having a rich cultural heritage.
I walk into the church of my mind and there’s nobody there.
It’s empty.
After a while the dust in a shaft of light from the clear window
becomes holy.
This is called puritanism.
There is another church but we don’t like to talk about it.
We go there in dreams or on Saturday afternoon to buy melons,
where so many bodies rub us
our skin
dissolves.
________________________________
LITTLE GIRL IN A PINK DRESS
It's fuchsia, really. She's the apple
of someone's eye and here's the someone,
Mama in a pale yellow shirt and sort of nothing jeans
and off they go. She gallops, her
sandals flop, her black curls
bounce. She says
- what does she say?
Maybe the same thing the pigeon said on the beach a while ago,
Life is good. I'm so
often thinking it isn't but it
isn't life that isn't, it's
stuff that kills that
isn't. The music
of the merry-go-round
in the salt air has not
made me content but
she does, with her
sandaled gallop. I will call her Luz,
La Virgen de la Santa Monica Pier; daily I will ask for her
intercession and she
will gallop away with my
gratitude.
________________________________
JUST ONCE
I'd like to fly
at the back of the North
Wind into all dark cold places
and back.
________________________________
ONYMOUS #4
SPELL AGAINST BAD DREAMS
Under the ground people live who have come here from
Other places worse than this place. I met some one day at your house
When I went back to get my keys. They were very
Friendly sitting in the darkened room (they never
See the sun and this makes them homesick); they did not
Mind my coming through - they smiled, ate chicken, throwing
The bones to the babies on the floor. Some had knives
In their hair, one wore a long rope around his chest.
I was glad they didn't mind my coming through but
I was glad to get out of there. Let's go where they
Come from and give back everything we took. Let's
Shine the sun in all those dark underground places.
________________________________
EPIPHONY
Like Chris
on the Pinta
finding us, I found out
today that soy sauce is good on
burned rice.
________________________________
dec 2007
long black lashes
on brown cheeks
against the white pillow: an orchid
in the snow
