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

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 Mama Jack 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 Green’s 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

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