A Chewed Up Old Pencil

Perhaps I am a chewed up old pencil
but this body had once wrote beauty,
against the page had once sizzled,
a silhouette of seduction satisfying
the white face with sounds so tender
they melted into memory’s honeyed fountains,
had once tickled the pages with laughter,
once filled them with insights of such richness
no books could contain them nor hearts without
whispering them among silences of wonder―
dazzling celestial bodies in the darkness.
This body but I mean that I also
wrote masterpieces even, my
own Malvina and Vanessa.
Here’s something I have learned in my long life:
Whether or not it is turtles all the way down,
it must be pencils all the way up, for we write,
get written, and we’re the means of writing,
and words that move through our chewed up
bones, will have our signatures too somewhere
deep inside their marrow.

Pictures

Pictures:

             an empty folding chair to the left

                                                        a tart cherry tree

                                            through French windows

                                                                  to the right me and my chai tea

                                                                             my back 

to camera

I Will Forgive You

Forgive you how I did

For all things you had done to me

Now far enough for heart to see

I never felt what must be touched 

Unreachable

                   Unreachable

         Then                        for me

Forgiving you for

                                                     Who you are

On the Porch

On the porch the sunshine pours into me
like a bowl of mom’s butternut squash soup
so hot the baby blue table turns white
where scented steam clumps or streaks across but
freezes long enough like a memory.

Emotional Overhaul

How do you overhaul
A mangled self severed
From the fury of libido
Strangling agency
Of ego?

The conscious commander’s left
Those silent bones
Splayed out on the divan
You can see inside
Where the troops have run amok:

Rage in clashes with grief
Paranoia shooting in the chest
Shame digging itself in the rocks
Despair hurling bolts up the clouds
The soul’s powerless but to watch....

How do you into this butchered land
Anesthetize the guarded bounds
Sharpen the sterilized words
Suture these psychic cracks?
How will you doctor
Assemble
                                  Me

                 Back?

I Hear Frogs Croak

A South African lion thundered, roared
at me: Stop! I shall be devouring you!
Shuddering, "When?" I asked the mighty king.
The fiend bellowed: It will be a surprise,
like one's birthday bash…or a fatal stroke.

Oh please have mercy on me, I implored,
sobbing: Is there anything I can do?
The big cat growled back, Not a single thing
can save you, so get up and wipe your eyes,
you look pathetic…man is such a joke.

I stood up slowly—though my tears still poured,
my bones convulsing with despair, anew.
Meanwhile a breeze, perfumed with blooming spring,
passed by, birds sang as sun began to rise,
and spill the warmth of that, that runny yolk.

But what if I kill you, you godless lord,
or end myself, before you could get to?
I’m immortal, the beast began to sing,
and second, as for wooing your demise,
go on, I even lend you my own cloak.

And then the jungle's king retired toward
a red bush, after bidding me adieu.
That mamba hangs as though a tail or string
from some dead-rat tree; here slime lily lies:
split white petals…but those are frogs that croak.

To Kiarostami

Were you the one driving us sir,
alone, and one by one asking
earnestly...what...to bury you
right there—there!—by that barren sign?
Did you desire to heal, seeking
to find in our refusals lines
that lead to roots, curing you too?
Of what, tell me, your own despair?
Perhaps you were the passenger
who rode with us, the audience—
to whom cinema's for hiding
from self, who hope to find a friend
who'd stop a bit to throw a rope.
But what's the need for this pretense?
I too had seen me in your lens.
Abbas, confess though, was that you?
If not then what are you here for,
close-up or sound take only?  Hope
celestial winds would carry you
to roots at home—or at a friend's....

*Abbas Kiarostami, the world-renowned Iranian filmmaker, passed away exactly a year ago, on July 4, 2016.  He directed, among others, the Palme d'Or-winning "A Taste of Cherry" (referenced throughout my poem), a movie about a suicidal person driving around and asking others that should he go through with it, if they'd be willing to bury him.  I also make passing references to three of his other films, "Where Is the Friend's Home?", "Close-Up", and "The Wind Will Carry Us."