Some Nights I Fear Going to Sleep

I don't recall my dreams, at least
not the narrative: Saw a priest
wearing a cape, fluorescent green,
and warning me that West's now East.

Another dream: A vile disease;
it kills none but weakens the knees,
so people crawl along the streets
and weep sometimes and hug the trees.

Some nights I fear going to sleep;
stay up for hours just counting sheep.
My day's odd but I make it mean.
At night meaningless terrors creep. 

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."

Wish

I wish for peace and happiness,
For safety's hug and hope's caress.
I wish for fast and full relief
From aches, abuse, and suffering.
I wish for strength and well-being,
To live in kindness that endures.
For grit and grace in times of grief,
Freedom that heals and love that cures.

That Shark

Between the feverish shiver
of sharks, and the approaching spout
greedily slurping ocean's waves;
with green and orange colored canes
(as though the sailboat's veins; or snakes
that crawled from dark of reachless depth);
with stranger of a schooner there
nestled on distant foamy crests,
with every kind of beast and bird,
a sight from future, maybe past?

You hold your head up with such grace.
Please tell me this:  Are you content,
sitting, reflecting on your life,
on goals of lawless motion, sense
in ages, hours, in this moment?
But leaning back you look composed.
How soft your feet and loose your toes!
In chaos all about have you
at last secured yourself a home?
Oh tell me how, please tell me how!

You look dignified, look so sure.
Am I wrong though, are you in pain?
Did you give up, believe you'd failed,
to now be looking back, away
from kismet's open drooling mouth,
your will in pieces like your mast,
your soul is torn as now's your sail?
Don't stop the fight, don't give up hope.
In awe of you for now, it's I
that shark who's looking up to you!

Inspired by:
"The Gulf Stream" by Winslow Homer, oil on canvas,1899.
http://www.metmuseum.org/art/collection/search/11122

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/b/bf/Winslow_Homer_-_The_Gulf_Stream_-_Metropolitan_Museum_of_Art.jpg (wikimedia public domain)

Craving for Peace

Of late and when the world's asleep
I've got a strange craving for peace
And sleepwalk down so late at night
My fingers still groping for light
And if a plate inside that fridge
Oh even if it's just one piece
One taste of it could make me weep
It's scent would float as if a bridge
Above ripples beyond my sight 
To where no word can stand for spite
To where no fear or fight can creep
Nor crazed turbulence in the deep

My doctor calling me "addict"
Prescribed a diet very strict:
No peace at home even outside
No peace especially at night
But healthy dose of grim conflict
It's tough love for this peace addict

Protecting Pain

Her wrinkled ground of psyche bears
the throbbing spoor of savage wills

She seeks to gather fearless strength
and build from hate a bed of spikes

It's not the light but shades she wears
reposing on protecting pain

Her skin was charred and she was shamed 
for all and naught and for her weight

She sighs as though an offshore wind
and arches faced with faceless void

She loathes herself as storm the breeze
and dies at sea as squalls abate

So fear and hate coordinate
in a harrowing harmony

Centillion Ways to Die

Hospital, hospice, laid in bed,
On freezing streets, in fancy rooms.
In timeless spaces, sunless skies,
Cubicles, prison cells...and tombs. 
In front of judges, parents, kids,
Audience—friend or strange—their eyes
Still staring from behind the lids
That speak the feelings left unsaid. 
With prayers, with grating cries, with sighs.
Unseen, unknown; unloved, unwed....
By force or will, with guns.  In wombs
Of girls whose souls have parted too.
Kisses on cheeks and pale foreheads,
Holding of hands, and swallowed tears,
With lonely aches and greedy fears.
Mystery, grief...then peace one year,
as pain searches, with wings unspread,
for warm and kind suffering peers
to help release the inner dead.

What I Want

I want the leaves to never turn
I want the terror on the run
I want the limbs of anger axed
I want my grief now kept in urn 

I want the leaves to never fall
I want the love to never fail
I want this love to come and stay
I want this love to be my all 

I want the leaves to never break
I want the tenderness immune
I want our softness always safe
I want our hearts to never ache

I want my life to never bend
I want my trees to never age
I want my time to never pass
I want my verse to never end

Rain

The rain must pour, the windows fogged; 
The gurgling cyclone spits and gongs
inside the bone-spring of acid 
where mucus seesaws up and down

The selfsame fountain feeds my eyes 
Aboil as conscience of a saint; 
or fish soup that prolongs the strain 
of homeless underneath the rain. 

Bless Me

Oh bless me Father (muttered I) 
for I have sinned, for I have sinned, 
for I have roved against the wind, 
and over lands that house the hands
that—blithe—unfold beneath my feet.
The branching hands, with love imbued,
thus reaching out they've made me food.

Ungrateful yes, but blind I'm not,
for I have known the sun, the lands, 
the trees that fruit, and blooming shoots,
the taste of figs (I've not forgot),
the peach has long perfumed my hands,
the grapes and dates, angelic fruits.

I've seen the moonbow over falls;
the snowfall gather over roofs;
about the coast, descent of gulls;
on grassy plains, the dance of manes,
I've heard the tune of trotting hooves.    

Yet I have stepped on aging leaves, 
and drank atop their withered roots,
I took and took but please believe
my heart is not so black as soot,

Now here tonight I'm sober, weak,
this conscious-guilted rueful thief
inhales the scent of grass with grief.

I beg you father now once more 
to bless this worthless selfish soul:

For I can not—Oh I can not!

Love: Do You Dare?

We lapped the icy water—Truth, 
some bulldog barking at the sun
had blocked the pathway to our homes. 
We passed the leaky hose around. 
Of loveless pets, the alley reeked.
"Love," I then heard some mother bark, 
"Come home, it's late, oh can't you see!?" 
To Truth I pointed, thinking: Love,
but do you dare?

From High Up Here

From high up here, it's crystal clear:
His graded garden down the street—
its charcoal soil, the ancient bed
of colored life, the humid home
of carrots, pumpkins, yams, and corn;
tomatoes, radish, luscious beets;
cilantro, okra, tasty peas;
and melons (huge and juicy, near 
the orchid flowers); planted, grown,
and toiled upon for many hours
by swarthy hands that hurt, in gloves;
with grace and zeal, unsullied love—
resembles any other dirt. 

Resistance is Fruitless

Apricots, pregnant, hanging low,
the golden drops of blessed sweet.

Be careful! Some have fallen, split

against the concrete. And as though
they're lips and tongues prepared to kiss, 
have flowered open 'round the pits.
They're silky mines below your feet—
It's too late: You are part of it.  
Oh now it's fruitless, why resist?

The Little Mermaid

The dripping black descends her back.
The blue lips (painted onyx black)
against her battered knees they rub—
But who is babbling in the tub? 
I don't recall the drowning but 
the ocean raging flaming red.

I hovered high above the flesh. 
The sirens; flash; then silence 'gain.  
That scent of skin, dissected fresh.   
The little mermaid...living dead. 

Short Poems #3-4

His Love was Thrashing 'Gainst her Heart

His love was thrashing 'gainst her heart, 
then pulling back, releasing shards
of colored glass—erect like guards.
His love and hate displayed; like art.


************************************

Perfumed Sunspot

The alley boys had asked if I
had tasted June's perfumed sunspot.
I've gauged devotion only by
the nightly pecks of moonless sky.

Feel the Solitude

Whimper, holler, weep; and let burn  
your eyes and turn blood-red. You sob 
at night alone inside your room.... 
There's no moon.  It's long departed 
to watch the lovers nuzzle, kiss, 
by sonorous curves of Fraser. 
Breeze on their skin: a glacier soon 
melting, like their whispers—lover  
to lover, lips to ticklish ears. 

You must feel the solitude's weight:
The haughty air, the empty chair...
Listen!  The walls are crumbling, hushed, 
akin to bones that bound the heart. 
Rotting bones inside the concrete,
marrows of room within a room. 
Sound of your labored panting breath,
the only sign that here resides, 
a living corpse inside this tomb.

Let your shoulders shake and quiver. 
Holding your breath you shiver—There
you hope to keep the throbbing walled
(Oh the illusion of control!)
Loneliness aches; and aching's so 
lonely.  Ache that keeps you closely
dead-awake, and clings to your soul;  
ache and journeys through your body‒
but you it never ever leaves.

Release your breath, forgive your sin,
ease the form, undress the ego,
clear the walls without and within— 
to and from your heart.  Let tears
cleanse you of old and vicious pains, 
polish your senses‒scent of  bread,
taste of coffee, comfort of bed‒   
Let cry, this self, I softly pled: 
I'm drowning in your tears—unshed.

Successful Evasion

Simply this: Successfully!  This,   
the word they wrote—from news we heard— 
of how we dodged the damned police.  
But we too evaded sadness,
regret (for who we'd now become),
dread, disgust at weakness within, 
and fury at a world unfair—
those, they never printed or said,
but were torments still that we fled;
and past and future too (enough, 
to only think of cash and cops):  
No homespun Spider-Man pillows, 
Batman blankets, Zorro flipflops....
shopping for hoodies, gloves, and hats 
(for winter), with our moms and dads,
under the summer's hottest star,   
for second-hands in old bazaar. 
Evading who we were, could be, 
we fixed our eyes on dazzling rocks—
sleek fragmented mirrors, tokens  
of commitment, happiness, love— 
that could for us on black market,
bring in (fingers crossed) crazy bucks.