Posts (page 2)
Saturday morning
still warm with the scent of you
folding pajamas
rude awakening
reflected in the faucet
fun-house mirror eyes
forgotten affair
the unraveled cassette tape
flutters in the street
the back of your neck
tracing the fine line of hairs
moonlit down your spine
your breath on my neck
as I argue with the noise
of a crowded room
guilty carnivore
licking grease from your fingers
you apologize
quivering cupid!
shooting heat-seeking arrows
that land in the snow
the outlines of clouds
stretched taut between sky and land
pulled thin by desire
around and around
giggling at dizzying speeds
two year old jogging
dressed in his PJs
he is pulled into her lap
the moon outside dims
grooves in the carpet
motorcycle still rocking
from his pre-nap race
mid-January
greeting the cold of morning
like an ex-lover
wind blows north, then south
I am still vacillating
outside her office
each year when it blooms
I think it is too early
in truth, I run late
green moss in his pits
Buddha statue in the rain
his palms to the sky
dog barking wildly
convinced today is the day
she will catch squirrel
walking by the surf
I look down at my sweater
clinging to the mist
the trail turns and sighs
reaching the point where it ends
we walk side by side
in shadows and dust
the plant forever in bloom
waits in the corner
racing and laughing
the backwards escalator
spits them on the ground
outside, the rains come
the sound of a heart breaking
across many miles
unforgettable
no matter how hard she tries
everything you
at her small table
listening to her small house
the big bang begins
with resignation
I listen to his lectures
smiling patiently
foam curls on the lip
of pounding heat-seeking waves
rolling into you
between the driftwood
salty shadows are playing
games of hide and seek
such a patient toy
somewhere the long-eared dog waits
amid lost luggage
tiny galoshes
stare out with painted faces
in the crib, he sleeps
watching dark clouds part
I think of all the partings
that have yet to come
sea kelp canopy
great heron cries miracles
walking on water
the last leaf to fall
descending and wondering
will her tree survive?
aching year-long crush
each atom of your body
vibrating harder
today you hugged me
later I held my arms tight
trembling aftershocks
something that I said
made your temperature rise
this small victory
Silicon Valley
empty weekend parking lot
learning how to drive
straining at the leash
two mallards just out of reach
tentatively quack
tender Christmas Eve
under a watchful white moon
look! up in the sky
battling the wind
seagull helicopters down
into white-capped waves
pushing the vacuum
extending the week's patience
with small household chores
welcoming the beach
sand in her bellybutton
the grit in her teeth
end of the season
the emptied farm rows waving
to cars passing by
our footsteps soften
a blanket of pine needles
covering the path
in his Santa hat
a Buddha statue laughing
harder than before
our sneakers slipping
on the shiny exposed roots
of sturdy-boned trees
surrounded by deer
rustling underbrush and twigs
their tell-tale whisper
winter's long darkness
lingering on my pillow
a chill in the air
cold moments waiting
our furnace groaning to life
out in the garage
sea otter and pup
swirling to one another
safe in mom's eddy
beyond the barbed fence
a field of black birds singing
to a winter sky
tangled potatoes
emerge from the dark pantry
wiping clear their eyes
racing the wave's curl
the board hangs for a moment
and then disappears
green porcelain frogs
motionless for their portrait
the crickets less so
familiar tremors
rattle this old house on stilts
the roar of the waves
For anyone who has been paying attention to this blog, you will know that I have a hankering for haiku. Well, I've decided to try something different today. I will call them Dream Sequences. Make of them whatever you will (that is, after all, the entire point).
It's an amusement park and you're so amused. Hanging upside down in your air lift ski lift aerial view of the sunset strip. And, boom!, with a click and a yank you've pulled the cord and gone done parachuted outta that cat bird seat. If this was a reality show, you'd be the winner, and I'd be the viewer flipping absent-mindedly through commercials featuring you.
Sitting across from me in the dining hall talking randomly about class notes class experiments class wars, I watch your mouth move around a stale biscuit made from an instant mix and a dull cardboard box. I look at your blouse and wonder why you're still clinging to the price tag, and I wonder what's on the price tag, and then I look at it more closely and the numbers are rising and falling like the tiny heartbeat breathing chest heaving breast of man. Only then do I understand supply and demand.
It's Paris in the twenties and you're surrounded by a circus of flappers and freaks. You light a cigarette for each one in turn, and from the smoke rising you detect a lie, a scent of deceit, and in that moment the future clings to you like a bad habit. The one closest to you looks up from her black rimmed spent eyes, and were in not for the mood lighting you'd quickly realize that he had other plans for you. It's a hard, nasty, battered and blue truth.
My ability to decorate is seriously flawed. I look at the walls full of kittens hanging on and raccoons peering out their beady little eyes. What magazines featured these centerfolds and thrust their way into my hands and forced their way onto these walls? Was it a junior high school fund raising subscription drive? Or was it something more sinister? A demon of perpetually bad interior decorating taste? Next up you'll show me a bathroom that features wide eyed drawings of children, or dogs playing poker.
Stepping into the bedroom, the house tips. It tips to the ocean, in the general direction of you, in the general direction of wetness. I can see the tide coming in, through the window, and I think to myself that this would be a nice way to die, drowning in you. But my habit of breathing forces me to step away from the window, back towards the center of the house, in the hopes that I will tip away from you, and in that moment I think "deja vu!" When, rather, you are my deja dreamed.
In the daylight I had seen the amulet, the elephant that never forgets. By night I had encountered the bald man. He tells me that he had an elephant tattooed across his chest, but that the execution was imperfect, and that he had just had it redone, in the form of a chick, only a chick wearing a beard, not unlike his own. I laughed and said that was delightful and suited him just fine. By morning I knew I had forgotten some essential fact of the situation, and tried to remedy the affair by wishing for an amulet of my own.
And thus concludes this installment of dream sequences.
So, 'twas mid-morning on Saturday November 24, 2007. I was hiking out at the Shoreline nature preserve. Then I looked out to the skies above Silicon Valley (in the general area of Mountain View and/or Sunnyvale). Was it a bird? Was it a plane? What is a Flying Google Nerdman? Heck if I know. I can only say that I couldn't identify it.
Caveat: I live near NASA Ames and Moffett airfield. So, I'd really like to believe that my UFO was piloted by little green military men instead of little green martians.
My observations of the mystery object in the sky follow:
- It wasn't a helicopter, plane, blimp, or zeppelin -- or, if it was, I couldn't identify it.
- It appeared to be triangular in shape, slow moving, and low to the ground -- which is why I thought it might be a hang glider and/or kite at first (even though it was not windy).
- But then I realized it was quite large, was moving much higher into the sky, and was rotating or spinning (sunlight kept glinting off of parts of the object).
- And at this point I was really PERPLEXED, as was the other person with me.
- After about 5 minutes of watching it, it wandered over the foothills toward the Santa Cruz coast.
I know at least two other people saw it -- two guys jogging pointed at it and kept jogging and pointing. Everyone else on the nature trail kept nattering away into their cellphones. That's the funny thing about Silicon Valley. Little green martians COULD show up hovering over highway 101, in broad daylight, and no one would notice as they've already been taken over by their gadgets.
If anyone else in the SF Bay Area saw it and/or knows what thing to my wondering eyes might have appeared, please leave a comment. I'd also like to add that I wish I hadn't seen it. I'm all for open inquiry and revealing the mysteries of our universe, but I was just getting used to the idea of quantum physics -- and now there's this OTHER little crack in my reality! Fabulous.
in the tree's v-neck
a winter spider knitting
some long woolen socks
striking the guitar
my body resonating
the sound of her fist
the rear view mirror
sunset clouds part to reveal
the laughter of gods
grade school pencil cup
so many coils of wet clay
stacked to adulthood
in bitter darkness
the smell of old age drawn out
by carved cedar balls
striped urban bandit
vanishes down the sewer
raccoon at nightfall
winter's alarm clock
beyond our warm comforter
chills in the air
