16.11.05

I thought of Sasha as a dark black hole in the world
Where my 8-year-old mind’s
Understanding of chaos stopped
And peace began, outlined thick in night.
She was a pocket of quiet and silence,
Not a dog to me. Never just a dog.

In the basement
We found dad, crouched near
Sasha, her elegant darkness
No longer so well-defined.
Now feathered
Somehow, against the world’s edges.

She’d been alive as long as I had.
As a toddler, I’d ridden her like a horse
Baby-fat legs flailing as she trotted around,
Patiently bearing my weight without complaint.
And sometimes I would curl up into her night-dark
Folds; by the fireplace, in front of the TV,
At the bottom of the stairs.

She wasn’t dead now, though.
Not really. Her fur still glittered
Under my hand as I traced
The soft and shining black.
I wasn’t old enough yet for her to be dead.

We put her in a box, like a package to be mailed.
Her favorite blanket accompanied her
On her trip to the Underworld.

We put her just under trees, stark against the overcast sky.
A dark boundary, limbs glowing, they
Encircled a field.

Even as my parents dug her grave
I stood silent and still,
Imagining that at any moment,
She would erupt from the box
And bound around us like a puppy.

I Know It Is a Way of Preserving Life

I came home this weekend for my Grandma’s eightieth birthday
The leaves hadn’t changed in Washington yet
But they were “at their peak” here

As we were driving back,
I saw them all
Suffused with earthly energy
Glowing with the clouds
In the grey light of the afternoon

And I thought,
This is how I want to remember things
Not green but golden
Chill winds twisting the leaves
Back and forth
And football games
My old band’s sounds
Riverdancing across the field
Shaking some of the leaves;
Twirling to the ground

When I woke up the next morning
I think I slept under the same blanket—
An old, patchwork thing
That reminded me of being a child—
That I had slept under our first night in this house
My bed since then had tried out many positions
But now it was back under the window
Like it had been the first night

When I walk outside
There are so many black birds
Too many to count
And they follow the wind
Spiraling up and down, back and forth in the cold
They’re swirling black dots; anomalies in my field of vision

Tonight I feel it more than ever.

I.

Earlier I found myself on a bench at Dupont Circle.
I can remember looking down; saw some chalk letters which read
PEACE NOW
And I thought to myself
This is peaceful
As those banners
With grotesque images of aborted fetuses
Loomed in the background.

I don’t know exactly when things started to go downhill
Although, arguably, I was upset all day
Full of fear of an obscure possibility
Which I knew I would not let myself carry out
So why was I scared of it, anyway?

But I was walking somewhere around R Street
And I went into a gallery
Beside Alex Gallery
Just outside, I met Alex
An artist from Spain
Alex had a piece in this exhibition
Which was for some reason in the sexually explicit room.

The piece was called Sorrow
It was an image of a woman
There were dark black lines to frame her
And they stretched in dark, dark circles under her eyes
I wondered how long it must’ve taken Alex
To write
SORROW . SORROW . SORROW .
So many times.

After that we went to dinner at a restaurant called Annie’s
And I’m pretty sure I was the youngest person there
It was a swarm of gay energy
Hot dogs were an apropos choice for just such an atmosphere.

I guess in general
I really ought to stop watching
Those films such as
Walk on Water
Because every time
I do
I start to feel kind of
Hopeless

II.

And now here I am
Paralyzed on the bench
In Dupont circle while
The world goes spinning around me
You can’t know
But I composed this poem
While I’m actually sitting here
I wrote it in a txt msg on my cell phone
Cause I had on other way 2 write it down.

I don’t know why I’m still sitting here.
I don’t know if I’ll ever get up again.
Everything’s turning
And here I sit
Somehow suddenly cemented
by loneliness.

III.

I tried to read King Lear, but I couldn’t.
I got distracted because everything was spiraling around me
--too fast to be still and to concentrate near.

IV.

A man’s dog just came to me out of the swirling mess. I saw him coming and spinning and I reached out and placed my hand on the dog’s head to stop them both and keep them here with me.
He couldn’t understand why the dog liked me even though I didn’t have any food and I don’t know but somehow this moment in which our lives collide shines in my mind and then here it comes, filtered down through onto the page where I’m scribbling other verses about finding beauty in amazing, mundane moments of everyday life.

V.

I saw a couple
They had a baby
And I couldn’t hear what they were saying but I looked over at them and all of the sudden there was too much love surrounding me. What can you do except to let it flow through you like in American Beauty? So it does—
Channeled out between my fingers in words
Passing a ring of seashells things shudder in its monumental wake. There’s nothing quite like it here
It’s like the biggest carousel in the world and it never is moving like the rest of everything.
Here is where I can come to stop everything and watch it all go by.

18.3.05

We go to his girlfriend's play practice: Copacabana.
Meet her at a restaurant, where she tries Irish Creme ice coffee
and decides it's her new favorite flavor.
I'm the third wheel,
but for my observations as an outsider, I am valuable.

Before we leave, we see Isaiah with his parents
One of whom seems caught somewhere between regret and joy
The other settling into the life she has chosen.
"As long as you're working toward something
and following a path,
things will work themselves out," she says,
as her husband absentmindedly spins the ring round and round on his finger.

As they kiss goodnight,
I blow tall columns of breath into the air
Against the grey lights of the parking lot.

He walked her to her door
And I thought it was beautiful

I tried to burn the image of it all into my mind
so that I could remember beauty when I needed to

We went back to my house where we played
four games of shuffleboard
(I won a dollar, but didn't make him pay).

Before he left, we stood in my living room
With the giant windows
Through which the light from our own
luminescent town
shone

"No matter who you are"
he says
"Everybody
needs
held."

So we cling to one another

and it's far from everything we need
but
that's ok, because
it's enough.

It's enough
for now.