Words

i sat down to write tonight,
keying in a long string of words
who felt a bit uneasy together,

but who expressed the idea
well enough for me to look at,

well enough for me to see in them
a blurry image of two jealous eyes and,
with a careless gesture of the hand,

the kind you make when
mosquitoes have given you
too much trouble,

wave them away.

The Sacred Number

this is poetry too,
the grey-haired air whispers,
peering down
through golden rims
on its way to the twin silos
of regular and decaf.

this is poetry too,
words echo in my mind
as i return to Sylvia Plath
and he returns to his chair,
leans forward with everyone else
into PowerPoint slides spilling from
an immaculate screen.

this is poetry too,
words dissolve into the engaged conference room
as i try to comprehend the lives consumed

calculating the seven digits
of the sacred number:

the number of the sun swallowing the moon,
the number of eyes closing,
the number of atrocities before we find our end.

Guru

The syllable gu means shadows
The syllable ru, he who disperses them,
Because of the power to disperse darkness
the guru is thus named.

- Advayataraka Upanishad 14 - 18, Verse 5


i carried you with me,
naomi shihab nye,
from albuquerque to los angeles,
excited to continue words under the words,
looking at your picture,
waiting to check my bags,
thinking that i might find your mother
somewhere in the crowd,
smiling with the same expression.

i have to apologize,
though,

as i never realized that such a short trip
could be so dangerous for you,
never anticipated sitting down
next to a woman from taos
who would be moved by your image as well,
but moved in such a different way:

     nuke the muslims
     (she was so calm when she said this),
     nuke them all and then i can sleep at night.
     i don’t like bush,
     he embarrasses me,
     he scares me,
     but the muslims,
     they scare me most of all.
     there won’t be peace
     until we’re rid of them.
     my guru tells me that the final step
     in the movement from gu to ru
     is to open my arms,
     but i don’t know if i can do it.

she finishes
as i sit there next to her,
with your book in my hand,

wondering if she has ever
read any of your poetry.

The Piano

why this knife twisting?
why me twisting it?
to remember?

and do i withdraw it from myself to forget?

does the wound heal?
does the blood stop running?

and,
if it does not heal,
if it does not stop running,
is it possible that each drop might sound as

one note played on the piano?

Disappearing

i wonder if you could actually disappear
into a city as small as albuquerque.

i wonder who would come looking,
the blind people who want to find you
or the seeing people,

the hundreds of thousands of people
with their eyes open,
eyes looking in every direction,
except yours?

where do the homeless go
when you look the other direction?

do you remember the tuft of grass
pushing itself through a crack in the sidewalk


on vale between the irish coffee house
and the outpost performance space?

that would be the place that would welcome me,
at least for a small part of the afternoon.

Sing

sing,
but only from the edges
of the white cliffs.

dance,
but only in the shadows
of the great dunes.

write,
but only on the walls
of the silent oubliette.

fly,
but if you find
that it is the wind
who supports you,
who lifts you,
then return to me
and fly no more.

Cancer

we put our cancer on the shelf last night
before we went to bed.

wanting it back,
we watched it beat against the wall,
watched it rise and fall
with the rhythm of a heart
next to the swarovski crystal swan
and the valentines bear
with the requisite red patch
bearing the words “I ove You”,
the “L” having succumbed
to a starving kitten
years ago.

in the morning,
we rushed for the shelf,
a ritualistic display of our excitement
at having it back inside of us,


there, where we could nurture it again,
this single cell,
which had chosen
so randomly to make
so many copies of itself,

dreaming of the day
it would burst into our blood,
a glorious metastasis,
and,
as it sent us trembling
into our final moments,

listening,
euphoric in the silence of the words
trying to escape
from between our clenched teeth,
but never quite making it.

Alone

when i woke up this morning,
i found no one in the house.
i looked outside,
but there was no one in the street.
boarding a bus with no driver,
i made my way to an empty airport and onto a plane,
where i waited,
alone.
exhausted,
i drifted back into a world of dreams
and remembered the one i had danced with,
the one who had made everyone else
disappear.