No Simpler

Everything should be made,  
professor Albert Einstein averred,
as simple as possible but
no simpler.

I'm fond of your chubby dimpled chin
Delight in whispers of the scent of your skin
So much is lost in reducing all that's true
to only I love you

Fool my Heart

I shut my eyes
trying to fool my heart
that I'm fast asleep
But here they come again

Creeping out as if from under
a shut door into the moonshine
swelling out like diamonds into the dark
one and two and then a trillion tear drops

Disgraceful

Sex
An exercise
In disgraceful pleasure

Horizontal calculus
Integrating the area that pulsates
Beneath folds of sensitive skin

Myriad sweat drops that march
To the sound of heartbeat drums
And sultry gusts of breath

The hoarse-voiced commander
Again and again shouting orders:
Pleasure!  Pleasure!  Pleasure!

Aidos looked away from her body
Her teary eyes had just glimmered
In the cracked blood-soaked mirror

The Law of Conservation of Love

My eyes rained upon the sheet last night,

smudged my formula of Xs, Ys.
Emotions make a shameful mess of things,
I thought, exhausted cried myself to sleep.

This morning I upped and killed a lost fly.
I don’t care, I don’t believe in karma.
Life’s unfair, I’ve nothing left to lose.
My heart sleeps, my eyes are red but dry.

Tomorrow I may wake and slowly rise
and desire to, or consciously choose
to believe in the conservation of love,
to trust that love is never truly lost.

And later when my hair is grey and white
I may kiss an adrift fly, apologize
to life at large and my own injured heart,
that I doubted the invisible formula.

It's Easy

It’s easy to sing and dance
It’s easy to hate and cheat
When your shoes are
your own feet

Stardom

I sometimes wonder if the weather
knows of its boundless fame down here.
Weather is talked about everywhere,
Day and night, winter and summer.

Weather could start a fashion line,
Walk the red carpet, promote some airline
Posing in the skinniest of Calvin Kleins,
Hear them rave “Weather looking so fine!”

Weather could write a book or sing a song,
Endorse a politician, be a sex symbol in a thong,
If woman, or if a man, look ripped shirtless and strong.
Be a role model for the children and the young.

Along with Jennifer Lawrence and George Clooney,
Weather could star in a summer blockbuster movie,
Or be spotted by pap going out with a certain celebrity…
If only weather knew how predictable things could be!

This Is Just to Say

I have eaten
the coins
that were in
your piggy bank

and which
you were probably
saving
for a bicycle

Forgive me
they were delicious
so coppery
and so cold

Forgive me again
this time for pulling your leg
Truth is that with both our coins
I’ve got you that bike my boy

Cool

Undecided the fan sways,
facing me then looks away.
Like sun and shade (in reverse).
Crawling up my fingers first,
the calming cool parting the warm,
round my elbows, up my arms,
massaging my neck and cheeks,
breathes me in, as it creeps.

Office

I’ve no office of my own.
No walls. Roofs. No machines.
No fancy bi-weekly checks to sign.
No sick pays. No deadlines.
No pens. Staples. Wastebaskets.
Have no forever-ringing phones.
No office politics. No gossips.
No vacation pays. And that's just fine!

For I write on elephant ears
with a scented aubergine ink
from sweet juicy blackberries I eat
I gossip with mockingbirds and cranes
And when sick I sleep under the rain
that cools my burning sweaty forehead
In the scent of hyacinths I get paid
in stocks and lilacs and peonies
I've no deadline since when the sun sets
the starry night is just as open and pleased
to shine down and caress me with a breeze
I sleep where I live and live where I work
surrounded by myriad office-less livings
I hear the cicadas and crickets singing
and see the sunlight and shadow's artwork
and feel the leaves absorbing the light of day
and giving us life without receiving a pay

I like it here

Four Haiku

#1
Seeking the famed sun,
fell off a fifty-foot cliff.
Rain-scented sandstone.

#2
My eyes turn cloudy
Our aging tree in the sun
A sour apple drops


#3
Rats chase each other
One stops and looks back at me
Black eyes in the snow


#4
Crunch of gold and flame.
Do not walk on dying leaves!
Autumn wind circles.

One-Man Restaurant

The nonstop clank and jingle of dishes,
some being washed, some breaking in the kitchen,
some exploding by chairs and drive us almost deaf.
The mathematics-professor-now-turned-chef,
burning the lamb, knocking over the kettle,
sweats buckets into today's special,
his nose wheezes like the whistle of a ref—
his soul longing to flee, possessed by the devil.
Turns waiter, serves, then talks to us of women, 
now sitting next to us, of being Christian,
of his youth in his homeland going fishing
for compliments from the ladies in his church,
and tears up and his lips quiver and says, Hell!
Gets up, hugs us, begs us to come back again.
We leave complaining to each other, but then
can't wait to go back there again and again. 

Paper Tooth

She made a paper tooth for grandma
with plenty of gold and silver glitter.
What gaudy thing! grandma said, bitter,
as if expecting the tooth to have been better,
not flat, not a child's gift, not yet another thing
she has to smile at, useless as her own sweater,
as her own memories; her bones.  Her heart.

Time-Out

While we spoke of our losses,
of jealousy, hate, of troubles,
you looked out the open window—
as if to force a time-out
from our timeless squabbles—
to watch the rain-soaked boughs
heavy with kiwi blossoms.
But I was watching your face,
glowing against the hot rain,
your tear-filled eyes seeking
some cool hush beneath the bolts,
some dry patch in the flood of pain.

Last Fall

Leaves of saffron and marigold
mingled with canary and rose,
some shattered, some frozen
within the mud and early snow.

The scent of chilly air and soil,
the sound of familiar voices
rising up at once to a roar,
the feel of gloved fingers below,
all fused becoming something new
that grew more and more distant,
but she enjoyed her last fall; every hue.

Compassion

Compassion is not time
that passes without looking back
Or confused air
once a breeze and then the storm
It pours
not as water that freezes in the cold
It's not the sun when concealed
by darkness of a mindless cloud
Compassion does not cower
like fire in the downpour
Is not seduced by alluring words
Will not crumble beneath untold
unfelt sufferings of the world
Compassion can never be known
but from the experience of breath
through the revived reborn field
of heart that softly beats—
despite the ravages of time
howls of dolor
despite springs of agony still unhealed
and shattered memories that keep order
as fearful guards blocking the roads
despite the snoring snow-covered wolves
and homeless feelings running for cover—
having felt an openness and softened care
as if the city of heart is much much bigger
as if it's a room that welcomes and can hold
that and the breath and has room to shed a tear
as if the heart is vaster and warmer and wiser
beneath the damage and the falling snow
as if the heart is patient enough to wait
for blossoming spring and fruits of summer
But these are only words! 
Who could really know
why this time the breath had beamed with joy
returning all content
up to the mind from there

Tragedy of the Little Goat

The moonlit rows of roses guard
my garden's grace.  They taste so good 
to Goldberg's goat.  It coughs and burps 
and rams my door.  Gobbles my reds,
repays in dung.  The scent of stool
should guard my plot.  I shake my head,
I sigh, sit down.  But soon it's she
who turns and eats, my full goatee.

In My Own Bed

Sometimes I want to cry but I’m afraid
if I start I won’t stop until the whole of Earth
is filled and flooded with tears that hurt
the soil with salt that kills all trees and herbs,
daisies and gazanias, tulips and orchids,
and every heavenly stem of baby’s-breath.
So I must defend against destroying the Earth.

But sometimes I’m still more afraid,
petrified of something much much worse,
of shedding hot tears that always dry and fade,
of my choked weeping sounds that go unheard,
of roses that bloom, secrete their heavenly scents
just as before, trees that grow and folks who wed,
while I drown in strange tears alone in my own bed.

Woe.

I sing a sweet barcarole to escape grief—

its sores bleeding confusion, silence, disbelief.

Yes, we try chanting; airs afford us relief.

Thus men row; miseries ebb as harmony haltingly flows.

Melodizing is soothing. Mourners need a caretaker, however,

a spirit caressing and embracing humanity’s woe.

Because grief (a sullenness which protects, as heartland’s scarecrow

intends) when lingering, cuts—cuts, song's powerless to sew.

Discordant traumas painting a grisly show!

Melancholy dreams of reaching higher.

By contacting divinity, heartache generates

harmonic elixir of serenity. O God, vast Universe,

do allay the tide, so I, a crooner,

blissfully return amongst shipmates.

------------------------------------------------------------------------

As an additional personal challenge to writing about the emotion of grief, my poem also corresponds with digits of mathematical constant, π/Pi.  First, the number of lines in each stanza is equal to its first few digits: 3.1415.  Secondly, and this was the most time-consuming, the number of letters per word, also correspond to the first 100 digits of π.  For instance “Woe” has three letters, “I” has one, and “sing” has four, corresponding to the first three digits, and so on.  Oh, and to represent “0”, I’ve used the letter “O” and words with 10 letters.  And here are the corresponding 100 digits:

14159265

358979

32384626

433832795

02884197

1693993

751058209

749445923

078164

06286

20899

86280348

25342117

0679

Forgotten Hideouts

We children hid among the rocks and oats.
We hid, behind the walls, our shameful parts.
Our frightened eyes we veiled with swell of tears,
Our hurts secured inside our padlocked throats.

And so it passed, the days and months and years.
But growing up so fast, we all forgot
The places where we hid our hopes, our hearts.
The pieces left: as rank as reefer butts.

The crumpled love letters and blood from cuts 
had dyed the grass beneath the lone bleachers.
We fled from all, but from ourselves much more,
Choosing to leave the ugly parts down there:

In bathroom stalls, behind the fastened doors,

In gyms, in Gale’s garage, never in class, 

But on the balding, moist, and yellowed grass

crowded with weeds.  Don't look, we're found nowhere.