“Yesterday I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today I am wise, so I am changing myself.” ~ Rumi
All you need is less
I'm not looking for a husband,
but, out here on the island
where there's a castaway's view,
I can tell who might have
camped the volcano with me
to discuss the diaphanous
beauty of secrets
and the door left open
to an abandoned excavation
too succulent to pass.
Enter here, secret:
All you need is less.
Discontentment is a door;
wanting to laugh hard
with someone who knows you
without knowing you
is also a door.
But, I'm into entire rooms
of star where I keep knocking
around God's furniture
on this planet called earth,
forbidding myself to wander
too close to any real poem
I could write for fear
of being discovered.
There's a graveyard full
of my poems; I visit
and offer condolences
to aborted words
conceived in desire.
Reflect on the parts
of me that remain sturdy
and faithfully married
to the human side
of Life. A woman
without continents
or coyotes scratching
the distance
between civilization
and happiness;
suburbs with Subaru's
in the drive, homes safe
in the 3:00 P.M. light
living methodically.
Every man and woman
needs to decode messages
from their god to make sure
their dark side wasn't passed
up for an early sleep
with a husband or wife
they wanted but could not Love.
Loyalty to the colony
of strays that live
within the paintings
and poetry of an unknown
language few decipher,
black compositions
of starry lyrics
and risen Lazarus
are true reflections
of the species
and belief that I
am constantly
mapping a course
of time through
by existing simply.
This altered DNA
immortally coiled in flesh
is something that one day
soon I will remember
having helped knit.
Until then...
A new shipment of hope
arrived today. God sent me
spirit guides to keep my Angels
company through the wait;
the long haul of packing
all I've known for the move:
a white wolf and horse,
a snowy owl in case
I choose an alternate route
and bareback it out
through the canyon.
I'm not looking for a husband;
I left that sixteen years ago.
But, out here on the island
where there's a castaway's view,
I can tell who would have
camped the volcano with me,
discussed the preservation
of a simple and secluded
togetherness without any
pomp and circumstance
too succulent to let pass.
Enter here, secret:
All you need is less.
Isolation is the core
of my soul's blueprint...
~
March 2016
You must know
“It was at that age
that poetry came in search of me.”
You must know there are times I will not choose you
over the poem; I will not choose your letter, your email,
text, call, or pouting silence over the poem; I will not
be swayed by your bulging zipper or swollen suitcase
by the door. If you want to be first in someone’s life
you must know it can never be mine.
I'll never be the faithful wife skinning carrots at the sink,
a gimlet eye’d grandmother supervising, her starched apron
and recipe splayed submissively across the counter, contents
spooned carefully by measured taste; the roast, flayed
awaiting its wake to commence, garlic attendees of potatoes
and skinned carrots following into the oven's heated pyre.
I will never be the faithful mistress at the door holding
a drowning olive in a cocktail donned in your favorite négligée,
alarm at attention so we don’t fall asleep, alerting your wife
to your late absence. I will be in the bathroom with the poem
instead; the gluttonous tub splashing imagery over its porcelain
skin with each spit of the candle and stroke of the pen.
You must know in bed I'll fantasize about the poem, how it carried me
continent to continent, shielding my isolated survival from extinction
sought by laundered mindsets whose truth hung on clotheslines
before ironed into their firm sects of belief, spreading themselves
as meticulously embroidered modesty sheets to carefully monitor
the privacy of conjugal enjoyment.
You must know the poem is 'One Hundred Years of Solitude',
its banana plantation abandoned by death; it’s 'All the [archived]
Names' without Ariadne’s Thread, the Life that Pi actually dreamt,
'The Shipping News' reporting anthologies, modern American beats
underground; it’s 'Water for Chocolate' torched by match heads;
it's 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil'; it's Romeo; it's Juliette.
You must know that if betrayed by lies or entrapment I will escape,
elope, even commit suicide with the poem before being captured alive;
we’ll die together, deeply inhaling the afterlife as Plath did – taping
your sleeping existence from joining us, towels caulking the door frame;
and you, you must know you'll wake lonelier than you’ve ever been.
~
July 2016
Literary references: Pablo Neruda, Gabriel García Márquez,
José Saramago, Yann Martel, E. Annie Proulx, Laura Esquivel,
John Berendt, William Shakepeare, Sylvia Plath.
​
November, 2016