Neighborhood awhirr when ambulance visits

Dick and Marg

Do not cry.  It was five years ago

We didn’t think he’d last this long

Dick, the neighbor. The white, fifties house with an eagle above the door

The unmowed grass

Kids want to go look

I tell them thirty seconds. I repeat

Sit at the window, peering, at an extreme angle

Through a foot of warbled glass

They want more, ask to go up to the porch roof

Hidden by a pine, the porch roof

On a soundless evening when the birds are down

I am tempted myself

A long while passes. I wonder

What will they see of him?

Does one keep them in? Will they dream

Of lights flashing red?

Too late to bring a plate of cookies

What will become of the landscaping

The paint job, the eagle? Does he conjure Marg

Carrying her through the door, or when she was wheeled out?

Then stomping, scurrying down with news

Of seeing his foot move. His foot

I ask if they saw his face

They saw Dick’s face!

They saw Dick’s face

Ben says his heart is beating super fast

I stroke his neck, remember his birth, smelling him for the first time

Beating super fast

How to paint a house

How To Paint A House

I.

First, prepare yourself to choose the color

Don’t be fooled. Operate from a place of authenticity

Only there can truth bear witness

Truth and beauty: Honor both

II.

Ask yourself these questions…

Is it the color of trust?

Are you alive in its gaze?

Can you swim in it? How deep?

Will the color eye you like a lover?

Does it compliment unresolved canvasses of night?

When you stir it, what energies let loose?

What kinetic jewels dance in the eyes?

How do the trees and sky play along?

What possesses you of the shade?

III.

Then, take a step back

Grind corn in a metate, back and forth, filling the lungs

With cinnamon, chocolate, chilies and garlic

Keep a journal on pigments

Wonder: How to wrap my home in abundance?

Research what birds are attracted. Consider climate change

Nap as the sun glows pink and far

IV.

Next, discard the notions associated with your choice

Think of the neighbors. Do what they do

Rub out the bastard hue with vengeance and repression

V.

Finally, decide the color

Consider painting naked, then rethink that too

Go in rags. Clothe your beautiful torso in rags to paint

The godawful color you have chosen

(Paint the house)

VI.

Wash the brushes in the sink

Singing to the milky streams of what could have been

It's a wonder that neural synapses do not more often resemble missfiring seizures. Ordered as they are, how can we light fires to the pathways of awe and love to counterbalance the daily patterns of the human condition?

Dear organ dancing brain,

Conjure me a tongue [for song]

Angelic choir dragon stilt tall

Harmon-I-zing sure and fire-drawn

Catapulted novel courage sure

Songed-up chanced and rung

Caroled flung fit honey glad

Chanted slack-jawed wildrippedbright

Bursting comely, glad-green

Alight loud hollered emerald

Piqued stone clear still

Corpus christening zazen pink

Holy pewed cool-told-deer

Absolut moment NOW

Gland watered blued heights

Starry nude-far-dancing

Tickled bird nesty glee

Ripe sugar-banging song, Brain, 

May I bite a song long unwritten

Warble careening loud earthy rich

Strummed deep in the secret cave 

Written at midnight in the heat

That Good Night

Most of us, thank god, do not have the dream

The glass vase dropped down stairs

When the furnace of chest leaks to the lip

Popocatepetl and Iztaccihuatl

Breath like an engine

Heart like village drums

Grasping to the bathroom blurred and soupy-thoughted

Sawed in half like a sex-glossed stage model

To decompose here at the railing

Lost at a scenic overlook

This is the whirr of moment

Before a stroke.  Unaware of words colliding

For reliance on smell in the night

Listening for the olfactory

Windows wide unto the heavens

Footsteps, or the wind? A dirge by organ

It comes out of nowhere, like a burglary

Played by the feet. You ride the rails

Wafting from an antique armoire

Odor of wood when wet

Go quiet into an eternal womb

Sprawl, long in a last cool space of air

Slipping in from the Ganges

Go under with your eyes open

Remember: Open, to this rare dream

In the library, grasping

In the Library,

     Grasping Tricycle Magazine

For Buddhists, glossier than life

4 Tips to Achieve Mental Strength

8 Verses to Break the Selfish Habit

     Or the Joy of No Sex

Inside the front cover

One could go to BuDhaGirl.com

For crystal prayer bowls

     And mindful costume jewelry

Life is boundless on page three

With a purchase of Zen Cancer Wisdom

Or Homeless Kodo, it seems

     I must do more be more

Free to join, DharmaMatch

Where spiritual singles meet

Hook up for nonattachment over yoga

     Or a Blizzard at DQ

Volunteer psychologists help

Thai survivors recall staggering

Confrontations with death

     Nosy bastards

Over the Sea of Sorrow

A billion monkeys swing endlessly

Santacitta Santacitta Anadabodhi

     Branch to branch to branch

Tendencies for the mind to

Overcomplicate, tattooing

Impermanence across

     Their hairy breasts

Unaware of clocks

Waking on a Saturday

Without alarm

Unaware of clocks

An absence of sounds

The children are making

In another house

My arm is sprawled

Across a wide bed where

Their mother. Their mother

Is listening to giggles

The way the eyes grow wide

I hear a finger

Scratching the bedsheet

And echoes of cupboards

Wrappers and bowls, how

Ben Ben entered kiss-first

In other words…

Their mother was called

My wife and the house fell silent

With a fruit basket of decisions

And peering into memory

Wide as an old bed

That served a purpose

Upon waking, eyes as slits

When the silence cries

On a Saturday morning

Ever find something that frightens you?

Finding Something in the Middle of an Intersection

I put it in reverse

Leave the engine running

Door open to the street

I thought it had a face

Was carved in wood

And sure enough

Hand wrought

Its face is charred

Black as a secret

Dropped by mistake?

From a bad accident?

Tossed for a reason?

From Tahiti, Bora Bora

Tourist trinket or folk art

I wonder, gripping it

Like a lucky find

What we get when

We have lived well

But I wonder

If that is true

What the thing means

Hands full of charge

And charcoal  

Face full of apparition

Why in the intersection

Of my crossing

Staring up at me?

Compelled to bury it

At some distance

And just forget

Throw it down

A pit at some depth

None too deep

But I hold onto it

Once in a while grasp

It in the bath

Keep the spirits tilting

Torrid and piquant

To wonder, to incant