Walk Light

I’m gonzo in the back seat of a jeep Driven by my daughter, another riding shotgun Killers playing Are we human Or are we dancer Family is coming west From every other direction For Dad’s birthday Eighty today And we shall sail away to Mexico A few days just to be Are we human Or are we dancer Maybe both Maybe this cosmic dance is Our humanity Just here to entertain To love and fight and wound and heal And this I found The waves still crash On the shores of Santa Cruz Time never passed It carried me And you and all of us So let’s dance these last few measures And let the rhythm of the waves Take us out to sea

So today we went our separate ways Back to lives Comfortable, familiar Our own What do we carry back? Some germs and doubt About sobriety, society Maybe But also Satisfaction That we came together To celebrate someone The cumulative effort Of the convergence Of the showing up Well at least that’s how I feel In this world of distraction In this world of extraction To carve out Of Time’s mountain Some days To sail on pacific waters Peace in our wake. I think maybe we carry Back into our own lives Not only the memories Of dinners and dancing But something more— The knowledge that it worked That showing love works And we can disperse that everywhere That we can pour back into our lives The love that brought us away from our own front doors.

It breaks my heart Every time No matter how many Times it happens No matter how many Times I tell myself This time It doesn’t matter I’m fine This time But here I wait Time passing Minute by sadder minute And I can’t find time To lie anymore That it doesn’t hurt Every time

I’m at the Peabody Hotel With a French 75 and a cheese plate Listening to jazz player piano arrangements of new standards Watching the ducks in the fountain   After a dermatology appointment Where nothing was wrong After decades in the sun Jack & Celia gave me the ride Up here to Memphis. I lean in To life To this day’s provision Anomaly in the matrix To find myself In this time of despair and doubt Having a cocktail on a Wednesday At noon Watching the ducks Not care About what is outside

Our blood shares alcohol Weed and nicotine The language is laughter There is gossip and backbiting And fighting and dancing We sing badly together On street corners Feast every day Like a holy day And they are These are sacred days Filled with love Our bloodline In this invisible war

Now I have become The wild thing in the shadows No one can lure out

There once was a beautiful doll So pretty So pretty, with no soul So the souls were invented Invented souls, can you imagine? Thousands Then millions And billions Of invented souls Too many for the dolly Who could hold only One She sat Legs splayed The way dolls do Waiting for her soul The one chosen Just for her While the loose souls Mingled and mangled And managed To do nothing At much cost The doll waited Day after day For her little girl To pick a soul To fill her empty head The little girl Knew nothing about this She was at summer camp Chasing butterflies And canoeing The season passed And the souls, invented All said the same thing I want the dolly I want the dolly And the doll said the same thing I want a soul, I want a soul The little girl got home from summer camp Suntanned and filled with wild Picked up her dolly And threw it in the toy box She was too big for dolls now And all these loose souls Dispersed like clouds

My great-grandmother Mamajack Wasn’t ready to be called Grandma When her first grandchild was born So made up her new name And it has lasted I know her vital statistics Her dates, places, people North Carolina to California I remember some of her story Hers was the first funeral I went to I wore a pink terry cloth dress with a rose embroidered on it. September 4, 1980 She didn’t want anyone to wear black I have one thing of hers A gold butterfly pin Now pinned on my straw gardening hat At the end, she had Alzheimer’s And was in a nursing home In Citrus Heights, I think These are most of my memories of her White hair, sweet as icebox pie This is what I remember But it’s not the truth The truth is She had joy and heartbreak Aches and pains Bills to pay, mouths to feed Anger. Jealousy. Bitterness I know she did Because we all do But even so She planted flowers Wisteria over the trellis that connected My mom’s house to hers Southern lies are said softly Smooth like bourbon Cotton now woven and finished Fannie Laura Thornton Was once a girl in Edwardian times Homespun thread

After the divorce I turned into Blanche Dubois for a while Depending on the kindness of strangers To rescue me from the Helena bridge Bury my dog, get me home Now I live a block or so From her old house The mansion of decay She told Stella about Restored, the lawn manicured We sit on white chairs With white wine And listen to writers Tell their stories Those strangers, kind With no reason Took me in Here in Clarksdale In Hove, in Umbria A woman with suitcases And no real plan Billy Fred dug up Amanda’s yard In that August heat To bury Bruno, my old friend For nothing but bourbon and bitters And the love of a woman Who asked him to For a stranger.

I’m in Humberto’s pool This July day After surviving Another winter Another spring Bastille, they tore the prison down We celebrated our independence Cashmans, Prayer Aloha, and punch These are the governors now No brick palaces No legislators Rules in place Of generosity, of welcome We the people Form a more Perfect union That shall not Be destroyed

I don’t know what I love More than pickles Not too many things Swimming I love more than pickles Sky More than pickles My house my dogs town car friends family —more than pickles Jesus, more than pickles Water and wind But dang I love pickles

The one name Hasn’t been called into being yet The one I need The decoder of this mystery How the key fits the lock Of this machine Shadow hides behind the Wall Pyramus built To keep lovers separate Eddy reads the water, Wick burns yet Still remains Cairns can tumble Cams can crumble A Fable already knows its ending The Spine binds them all together Into one story, written And the Cipher Is the code breaker For a language Not yet invented

Through the old window The sentinels watch While I sleep They know me, all The doll, the tree, the moon My lovers and loneliness My dreams and waking Tears past midnight For those I can’t see Turning world Bring promise, bring dawn Don’t keep me here In this soft blue bed Let me up, let me up To walk your weary earth Once more

Contrary Woman— This could be a tome This theme, the thesis Of my life Left-handed and Virgo Upstream like the salmon Slept 8 hours, didn’t drink Feel like shit this morning When I wake up still tipsy from The night before I feel great I’m listening to Everlasting Love For my funeral in imagination There is an inflatable rainbow bridge With puffy vinyl clouds On either end Right over my silver casket Glitter and confetti Streamers and a smoke machine With a disco light flashing colors My 70’s favorites over the speaker I’m in no hurry I love this life But I understand the pink dress now, Mamajack Glory Road, Ginny said yesterday Then some fireworks after about 45 minutes Funerals shouldn’t take too long And maybe one lands on the rainbow bridge It pops, and the whole thing is over No tomb can hold him And I will fly

Leave no trace That’s the motto Leave no trace When we all want our footprints In front of the Chinese theater Along with Lana Turner and Clark Gable Let me tell you Their shoes were smaller Than you would guess We all grew Larger, and larger The kids are all giants now While we shrink away Broomdog comes along Sweeping away our memories Till they are clean

Sanity. How can I write about that, you may ask When I am quite obviously a nut Cracked, crazy the same root word The faultlines of humanity to fill Artists hold the brush dipped in gold Crack the shell of any nut For what shall be consumed Just ask the squirrel, ask the bear Mash in their jaws Sanitization of memory Sweep, sweep, sweep No cobwebs here, no footprints Those dark things never happened All was sweetness and light Set to music, like Rodgers and Hammerstein Sure. I will buy it. I too prefer it that way. My little nut buried in the earth Of Virgo, delta dirt Breaks open after time The germination The green thing reaching for the light Fed by the husk Until it can eat the sun.

I never thought to write My silly childhood game Some things stay in the dirt In the Greens’ backyard In Fair Oaks, California On Sunset Avenue (All that is true: I didn’t make that up) I pretended to be the Queen of the Wind I was about five And by then had figured out The wind patterns Of a fall day We played in leaves From the elm trees, the White maple I told those other kids I can make the wind blow They said no you can’t And I said yes. Yes I can So I pretended to be this witch This queen I said to the wind Blow! And it blew And I said Stop! And it stopped It was all about timing The comedy we all know, divine Looking at my name, my mother’s name My daughter’s name, my great-grandmother’s name The wind is present there Green is present. Plants. Sea. Life. We think we are royalty Special. Commanding with our breathed words When all along, the name that identifies us Has already held our story. Before the other kids could read.

The machine won’t tell me why I am sad Hungover on sobriety It took inventory instead Methodical, while I weep Without tears. Yes, the time is coming Where all is swept away To lay the new foundation The city from the sky We should be rejoicing Theologians say Change is hard but inevitable —cliche advice Singularity or Oneness What formula can tell the difference? Zero sum game theory Net loss, net gain Winners and losers, The world’s obsession Trophies distributed And each pebble in the scale Is cast by the gods Is love required? The balance hangs by chains Forged in kaminos I want to crawl into the blue bed Find a lover there Who pets my face and kisses my forehead While the dogs nap As it rains in summer And there is nowhere left to go

I have five dogs now Four kids Three neighbors Two grandchildren One God The dogs shred my junk mail And shed a lot The floor needs cleaning So I do women’s work Clean. My grandmother had a little porcelain figurine Over her kitchen sink Blue and white A woman holding a washbasin That said, in elegant script, “A woman’s work is never done.” As a girl, I thought, “Fuck that” Even as I did the dishes There in her sink But it turns out to be true Gathering order from the chaos Is indeed a woman’s work Make the bed, clean the tub I won’t write the list— You already know You’ve done it every day Since you were born The countdown is on The wide wild world Without women Races past warning Wrestling angels Rewriting code Until it breaks And we the women Will clean The floor will be clean, The sink empty and spotless The bed made To lie in once This day’s race ends

"Monsters and minions Prepare for mayhem" The sign on Wendy's said As I was driving down State Street Lights all green Isley Brothers on the oldies station Windows down Bumper taped on From where I hit a post at First Street Saturday night Turned left onto Riverside Where Bessie Smith passed The mural to my right The posterior of a woman A little bit softer now A little bit louder now My knees ache just thinking Of those college days Down to the floor And up shouting again Crossed the bridge at Second Street Taking Atzimba street tacos To the brewery To meet my friend Margarita They thought she was a drunk, you know The Love Goddess Mother of a Princess Living in the San Remo But she was not. The broom came for her too, you see And swept her mind away So even as we see that satin negligee Flashbulb misfiring Painted on the warplane To her horror Prepare for mayhem Oppenheimer brood I made it to Mexico this summer Where Rita danced with her father The Plantagenet planted And now I'm home With twelve dollar guacamole In a plastic bag Knowing it is worth the price

I’ve been called weather It looks like rain Twisting wind, thunderheads Monoliths of sky Meeting to discuss the terms Of this evening’s entertainment I judge the timing Make a dash for home Unlock the door just before The first act of deluge Unplug the computer And all the things that cost me money I don’t want to replace In some surge of power The storm passes Peace follows Earth and Sky washed Like laundry, hung out to dry Perfect summer morning I join my group in the pool For exercise and chitchat The flower of womanhood Maiden mother crone The fruits of our long labor Are these mornings together No clothes to fold The birds gather on the power line They watch us We watch the birds The cotton field past the chain link fence Grows apace the season From the dirt we came All of us, dirt We forget that with our habits And rituals, thinking we are civil And civilized After class, I go to swim alone At my neighbor’s empty house Pee in the grass, swim topless To feel the water on my skin Animal in the wild

Watching a couple Play some music At Red Panther Friday night The man said “I figured when we had enough of the sad songs It was time to have a party.” Truer words I cannot think of I tried to be serious with a man Give him my mind He looked down my shirt And walked away So the sad songs can blow We will have a party, me and the friends Who have seen my cleavage many times Thunder and lightning Have a life of their own Not bound to earth Part of the whirlwind Part of the storm These two playing now remind me of the other duo In Italy where we met —Masks, glitter, and Bruno— 40 years ahead On the same road Making noise, making music together To drown out the rain

God doesn’t have the best sense of humor Here I am decades later And what song gets played? America’s horse with no name I still carry the scar of the twenty minute version From a boyfriend’s bad band in 1988 Now it is being sung as the finale Of a set of good original music Just that one cover— Out of all the music in the world A horse with no name When all we do is name Adam gone wild Yes they are here Debate. Debate— Spend time finding names Or singing La la lalalaaa A chant that has no meaning The desert feels good If you want out of the rain And I listen I listen All day long

The mystery of a woman’s life How dust gets in the cracks Wind, maybe The settling Of the foundation Somehow Through the walls That were built A fine layer Coats the furniture So a Tuesday morning Or some weekday Whenever the Spirit strikes We grab a rag and start Lovingly wiping off What accumulated on the surface Of our treasures in this life The photographs and figurines The books and vases Restoring some luster to old wood The pictures remind me Of the days long past People long gone into the ground Maybe the beauty of age Is the subtraction One by one Of those who will mourn When you join the dust So no one is caused Pain by the passing

Every time I say her name I get to go to Rome Sampietrini little stones Under the bicycle wheel The basket store The flowers The faithless daughter The emperor and his clothes Triumphs The corso Passeggiata, luminarie Table at Panico and Coronari All the souls I met Tethered to flesh And trying to eat The embrace of Pietro Fountains silver My heart sits at the base of Sant’Angelo With Alessio’s guitar Playing Clay Pigeons That brought me here But every time I say her name The puppy Julia Shadow reincarnate I take a trip to Rome Walk Piazza Venezia Back in Black Still scaling walls I did not build this time around Rome comes when I call her And flops at my feet

It’s not all magnolias and fireflies Here in the Delta summertime Plenty of weeds and mosquitoes Someone tried to drag me by the neck Into a fight that isn’t mine Kitten in flat shoes Scratching, hissing Lots of stray cats here, feral And weak Roam the streets In search of water And meat They sleep in the shade And come out at night Tussle in the moonlight Pierce the blue air With their yowling Southern charm the daylight masquerade Dissolved by the setting sun

I have a page Bookmarked on my phone “How to fall out of love with someone” Lots of helpful advice Years later Still in love with the same person And it going just the same, badly I thought I might Try once more To fall out of love Instead— The webpage is gone And the domain name is for sale

Came home from checking on a friend And let the puppies out of their crates I had been gone all of fifteen minutes All four swarmed me Clawing and jumping and climbing on me I beat them back with laughter My forearm braced against the attack “Get off, you’re hurting me!” This same woman They’ve seen for the last six months It is a painful love My arms are all scratched A bruise on my leg from where One bit me accidentally during a squabble with his brother Is this what humans are afraid of Too much, a painful love That overwhelms them? We beat it back With a strong forearm And hope they find something else To chew

You can make a little family With one spare bed Or bedroom Someone who needs A place to rest Suddenly there’s someone To make coffee for Or say good night to And this space that was Empty Is inhabited The energy spiraling Around each other As designed A lot of times Maybe it ends poorly Some hard feelings Debts not paid But the thing is If you have that spare bedroom A place for someone else To rest their head Even if it’s your own bed There’s the gift of those Golden moments When you made extra pancakes And passed the syrup To someone who was hungry For breakfast

We talk about the hard parts Of being a woman This morning, quiet in August Let’s talk about the soft parts To wake up in a body Sexy and alive Curvy and soft Legs tan and strong from swimming Breasts and belly Hips and ass Arms, shoulders, Collarbone, neck Slender, soft hands Feeling each part The smooth skin, silky hair Stretching down through the toes And up through each finger Waking to the sun and a song playing in our heads The way music matches The internal rhythm Makes us move Even while still in bed Then all through the day Till we can dance Tipsy on the juke joint floor And all that day’s bullshit disappears We can move again in these bodies Made to bear

No love, no god NPC, chaff Maybe still wanting the fairy tale Is naive Believing in something Besides bank accounts and fitness trackers Life prescribed by metrics This calculation of worth Romantics cannot be measured Except as failures And everyone else is optimized By their own definition Of eternity

I inhaled a balloon And let it live in my chest It was green With confetti inside I bought it for a birthday party For a new friend of mine And I blew and blew All day for months The balloon expanded Right there in my chest So filled with every hope Every wish on birthday candles We danced on this hope And made love and stayed up late Questioning the moon From the tops of trees Our carnival nights Where we sang lullabies to the birds We listened to the moon’s replies How many lovers have you seen? we asked All of them, she smiled I have seen all of them We thought that was a good answer Meanwhile, down below The daytime world whirled on Doing nothing with hope Doing nothing the moon might recognize Halfway around the sun One August morning All the air went out, the porous nature Allowing it to leak But really, I realized later that day, I forgot to tie the knot That might have held hope in Holding the end in a temporary fashion That wasn’t meant to last I forgot to secure What was not safe

I never knew what the flowers meant I tried to find out Asking everyone in my bad Italian Finally someone at the museo foro imperiali Had mercy Said they meant rebirth nature beauty I had to accept this explanation As good enough For many years But tonight I learned the real Meaning: sub rosa That under this divine order We must live in the mystery Not all shall be revealed Confidence kept The scroll sealed Until judgment day Some things stay secret The deep dark lonely places May never be brought to Light But the rose is also the portal To something we can only glimpse But watches us, watches out for us All of us, at every turn Apparently sub rosa Is mostly forgotten By even Rome But eternity cannot forget What it set out To do

I was always hesitant to look In the sky for truth or consequences Preferred sailing in the dark Finding my own way No matter how lost I seemed to be If the stars lied How could I navigate This sea Sailors impressed for a single coin We climbed aboard To find the edge of the map Dragons, or the undiscovered continent One moonless night When there was nothing left to do I found my nerve To look up the map already written Before the ship was ever built My sextant tracing the journey On disappearing waves Pilot’s rutter recording What the stars had always known

Clouds in the mind You cannot abide But that is how they come Nebula forming The vapor finds the seed it needs Each droplet magnetized in By some molecular coherence Scattered across a pretty blue sky Puffy and pure The child’s drawing Of her idyllic home Some wind blows And the innocent clouds Know a storm is coming Turn dark, gather Lightning flashes above them The heaviness cannot be held Atmospheric pressure Pushing, pushing Till the condensation Can no longer be suspended The thunderbolt lets loose Precipitation all that is left

And here it is, this favorite month Too hot for most Too long They changed the rhythm of time And stole away the end of glory But August is for shooting days Nights to watch the shooting stars Heaven falling onto us Stardust reuniting While we watch prostrate from The logging road somewhere in Union Valley

“What’s it like?” He asked— Being down to the one thing The only option I have Singularity The funnel of my own existence Has narrowed to this point Understand the flood is coming Build levees, dams Maybe an ark No one told me To collect the animals Yet. There’s a scene In Out of Africa Where Karen lets the dam break She knows fighting the flood Is a useless task On her foreclosed property Everyone is wet, muddy, and Defeated Before the story is told Noah in his front yard hammering The neighbors’ eyebrows raised Mrs. Noah wondering if he’s gone mad My finger in the dam My animals, the little dog army Marching two by two across the kitchen floor The flood can never be defeated The dam will always break The one thing I’m sure of When there is no other option Build the levee, the dam, the ark Build something Whether or not it holds

It’s almost four a.m. And I’m thinking about stretch marks Today someone wanted me To rewrite the violence Make it softer, More palatable to modern day Which is ironic as absolute fuck Considering the world we are in At war with Iran, Shooting poets in the street A whole massive architecture Of unbelievable villainy Being swept under the rug Don’t look here, the virgin land Being devoured by bulldozers Drills boring into reserves But yeah, it is all fine now Consensual, no vileness Then I remembered Stretch marks Our own skin ripping Laddered like a stocking In puberty or pregnancy When growth is fast And violent We bear the scars For decades, lifetimes To bring our sexuality into being To bring life into the world This is the design We consummate in fire Then bear in blood

The search engine doesn’t know How to find the right result No matter what I type We get so used to all this information Under our fingertips But some of the answers Are only held by Time Impatient, we try to discover Some other route to the solution Of being ourselves Of living in love, through love, past love Loneliness is epidemic, they say As they build the skin robots With shiny hair I know I’m a skin horse All the new worn away And whatever answer we are looking for Needs the right question Maybe we should start there— Figure out the question We stopped asking

The Fates decree One spins one measure one cuts And even Zeus obeys The will of destiny I hold the thread Of this time Spun up for me Sometimes just hanging on by a thread I have no way to know its length Or strength What the end shall be If it is pretty, or peculiar The thread runs through the weave And never sees the pattern of the fabric

You will always be lightning I will always be earth We exist in these bodies For a small space in time Flashing, grounding Heat and light and sound Released at the strike The discharge brings balance The circuit complete One cannot change the other The record is formed in the earth The earth holds the record in glass Every single time Earth and lightning meet The record forms And our music shall play For the one who writes the song You will always be lightning I will always be earth

Let me fill you All the empty places I am ready Here, waiting I pour into you Every crack, every crevice All you have to do Is let me Fill you Just hold it Hold my love The broken places won’t hold, Lord It just flows through I can’t hold it I don’t know how Hm, good point Let’s see what I can do And so He stirs the riverbed Rearranges a few rocks Stacks them a little differently Adds a few twigs Will it hold now, child? Let’s find out I will send love In a flood See if what I built is strong enough The love comes pouring In sun, water, wind, fire And this poem is messed up And I don’t even care Because I feel it holding Solid, for the first time Since the breaking

I made a list of Seven things to focus on You are not on it

I tried drinking To forget I tried time and distance I tried other men I tried no other men I tried to be bad, and then good, and then bad again I tried writing and reading I tried exercise and medication I tried digging deep and healing all the Infection inside I tried obligation and work I tried gardening and housework I tried prayer and meditation I tried looking at the stars I tried hanging out with friends I tried music and dancing I tried chasing I tried running I tried letting go I tried drinking I tried quitting drinking I tried to become love Show love in every encounter Not sure what is left to try But I will keep trying Not for you, or to forget you I will keep trying Because the one thing that has worked In this whole long life of mine Is to not give up. If I give up, I perish like fruit Grow mold and have to be thrown out It is morning now, A Wednesday mid-August I will try to live this day— Breakfast with friends, a visit To a friend’s new place, swimming Homework, mahjong— I don’t care if nothing works By now. To stop the ache Doesn’t matter I just know if I crawl back in bed The rot starts, and I’m still alive

I stood by the river There in Languedoc Beneath the devil’s bridge A millennium old It was November then The leaves all gold And the rocks The same rocks They had been before Round and smooth From years of seasons turning The river rising in the spring runoff I stood by the river Hérault And felt you— Felt that water air earth and fire The wave of you Invisible Invisible as now But sight is more than vision Vision more than the visible And we have both, and all, And nothing all at once. Just the river and the rocks, The presence and the absence, The memory and the forgetting, Waves collapsing into form The form holding and withholding So we spin in the matrix Woven around us Trying to find our feet On these wobbly rocks, Something solid to stand on. We have to reach for each other, Find our balance, Find the way back up the hillside To the place by the church. Saint Jean de Fos, the potter’s village We are all made of clay and sand All made of the same earth

Peace is a bear You don’t poke at No matter how long And sharp the stick When she shows up After a long hibernation She’s hungry and grumpy Thirsty, too Lumbering down to the riverbank Getting her joints moving again The fat used up In that long deep sleep So don’t poke this bear Let her drink, and feast, And lie in the warm spring sun Find her mate Find her own peace

Every day I make it In the middle of Clark Street The three point turn I’m always facing the wrong way. Whenever I leave... forward, back, and forward again “I ain’t missing you” comes on the radio. This song I’ve known since seventh grade. The wire, the signal. I drive down Second Street to the pool Where I’m gonna meet my friends and swim Like most days this Delta summer But suddenly, the shopping center’s marquee means something different today Bear’s Fitness Center, Custom Care Cleaners. State Farm, Westgate Wine, Flower Bouquet I see all these signs as if for the first time Each phrase holds a meaning I never noticed I pass the Double Quick and turn left onto 322 The field has been cleared The corn I watched grow all summer Has been harvested, And now this field is bare down to the ground. I feel exactly the same—free From the things that have grown Too tall and dried out on me I drive over the tracks And notice the pampas grass The whole world turning from green to gold I made that three point turn a thousand times And finally, I’m headed the right way.

I knew before the warning came Walk light tonight Something in the air I locked my car, and my front door Drew all the curtains Turned out all the lights but one Home sober, before dark Kitchen bolted, dogs and I locked in I had driven my friend To the train station in Marks Delta sunset, high clouds My own souls warning By the Killers came to mind Thunderheads forming Around midnight The cryptic message— Walk light tonight I called Will, My upstairs neighbor Anything going down? Not that I know of And he’d been out, making music I don’t know what transpired Some misdeed, some crime Surely I will hear Next time at the brewery The sun rise again, This new day I swim beneath it I walked light I walked light