sunpuddle.

circles.

a fly circles my head.
i don’t swat it away.
i cup my hand over
my ear and trap
it inside.

Sing, i hear.
Hum a song
that he might buzz
into another ear.

wings tickle my eardrums.
i can only think  in circles,
old ladies swallow itsy
bitsy spiders. Nothing makes
much sense.
he won’t last long in there
so close to my thoughts.

Your hand slides
to the back of my head
and though the fly could
leave he stays
with my indecision.
Uncertain, but
content to fly
in circles.

_____

A scuba diver cleans the tank at Bass Pro Shop

every Friday at 3.
There’s a fish in there that could swallow
my arm [at least up to the elbow] but the people
pay no attention to him or his buddy bottom dweller.
I bet if he sucked up an algae-encrusted pebble
and spit out an eyeball no one would notice.
We can always gawk at the ones that live on display.

It’s the person in the tank that draws the crowd of voyeurs
who make nose prints on the glass, press
themselves closer to humanity.

I’m no better, watching people watch people.
They shove their hands in back pockets
to keep from tapping on the glass.

———

then came an unexpected gust of wind, sent the people scrambling about as thoughts swirled up and up out of their heads like blowing the tufts of dandelions. they frantically searched for their own dreams and fears and insecurities and obsessions and plans and worries, ran to closets for butterfly nets and fishing rods but it was too late. the thoughts tangled together, formed a giant nest in the sky and the people stopped. they became very calm and one by one, settled into that nest for a long, dreamless sleep.

when the people awoke everything seemed different but perhaps the change was only within themselves. either way, they recognized nothing from before and were left with only a familiar presence in the back of their minds that they could not manage to put into words since words no longer existed. communication became effortless as ideas simply floated from one person to the next. the ones who thought in pictures before the change now felt a sense of connection they’d never thought possible.

for the first day they all simply sat. needing nothing. observing everything. no separation. the second day sparked diversity and they were drawn back into the material world [something always seems to bring us back]. by the end of the third day, each person had a place. though it happened quickly, it happened with grace. they knew their role and had no reason to fight against it. when they sensed an overlap they broke into groups, division without animosity.

but with diversity there came good and bad and the people became confused. they started to disagree about how to fix the bad::

-we’ll create a vacuum. remove the bad from the world, suck out the evil in ourselves!-
-no! create positive as opposed to [NOdoNOT oppose anything!] destroying negative!-
-replacement? that only covers up the seed, lets it grow!-
-but keep digging and you’ll find yourself buried!-
-ignore it and the roots will ruin you!-

the people chose different ways to live with this confusion.
some retreated, disconnected,  fell back into the nothing.
some began making beautiful noises to drown out that incessant dissonant hum.
some were more distracted by the constant chaos, an unending stream of conflicting images and so they escaped into fantastic worlds of their own creation.
some found immense pleasure in the material world, the limitless combination of sights, smells, tastes, sounds, feelings.
some were convinced that the answer lay outside themselves and formed groups, combined forces toward some unseen goal.
some involved themselves so deeply in the lives of those around them that they hardly had a chance to notice the confusion.
and then some were able to simply float, to live in uncertainty.

most that chose a certain path surrounded themselves with others who had made the same decision and in so doing, changed the natural order of groups. the motives of these people were insincere and thus the seed was planted.  they developed biases towards the other groups: since they could never be sure they’d made the right decision, they found comfort in convincing themselves that the others were wrong.
let’s not forget that the people were good. they were unaware of the underlying motivations to these actions. they truly believed in their way and tried to help the others who were wrong.
but just as they tried to help the others, the others tried to help them.
and they took offense.

…

let’s be frank

a sunday at the market if you’d like to call it a market
and i’d like to call it a market because i like how that feels
like tradition, like i can jump into black and white photos
where you can’t see the coarser details
and all of this must have been so simple
and a sunday at the market was a poem in process
and nobody had to try so hard
and we didn’t make all these efforts to suck out the meaning.

a sunday at the market on an outside basketball court,
black cracked asphalt like gradeschool recess.
bill has red freckle lettuce and a dreadlocked
beard. he hasn’t cut his hair since bush came into power.
this is not a political poem. is this a poem?

stephanie has her fingers in everything and brought
bunches of it with her. the greeting cards sprawled
across the table as different as the holidays.
‘schizophrenia’ she says.  ‘you’ve found a good outlet.’ i say.
why give abnormalities such strange names as abnormalities?
why not just greet them with open cards, a thoughtful message
scribbled in glossy red raised ink so even the blind can see
what we’re trying to say here. these words will bleed through the paper
anyway, soak into different forms, variations on a common being.
just being. stephanie also knits and makes brownies and firefights
and starts businesses to animate medical videos for hospitals.
there’s a common thread there somewhere, woven
between unlaced shoestrings. she wears boots
these days, the slip-on kind without strings.
that might not be a fact but there’s likely some truth
in it. which is how she feels about most of this,
weaving herself into all these creations
and no one’s left to trace to the beginning
of the string
and a simple snip
only makes a false start
so the end won’t pull back to where it began.
there’s just so much in between.
but her eyes shine and her brownies
make people happy
and she doesn’t understand
why this sentence started with ‘but.’
it’s the author’s interpretation that’s skewed,
that finds reasons for buts. she’s learned to swap
her buts for ands and every person here holds
a bit of what the other needs; swap a brownie
for a head of lettuce
for a book on anger management
for a dozen eggs. sam could eat ten eggs
at a time if he had to. but he’s never
had to so that’s just a guess. scrambled
would be best. no milk, please. let’s not
make this any thicker please.
what’s happening here?

like a seesaw, frank sits on the far side of my picnic bench.
if i write this all down now the little bits will stay intact but this
is more than poem fodder  and whether frank started talking
about cupcakes or freckled kittens munching lettuce isn’t really important.

frank tells me Bodhisattvas are among us
and that our western brains don’t tick
like Tibetan brains and when we think ‘paradox’
it means we can’t see every side of this paper cup, ‘see?’
he says. ‘this cup is a circle here
and a wall here and now it’s a monkey
stand if you flip it this way, flip
and it again and it’s a coffee cup and you can’t try to see
that, you just have to know.’ stephanie fills the cup,
takes it back to her table.
why add these tassels of untruth
when everything you could possibly need
is already there if we ask the right questions, flip
the cup around, splatter the notional coffee
onto a blank greeting card and now
stephanie has even more to work with.

‘today i’m putting the finishing
coat onto a sculpture
i’ve been working
on for three years.’ says frank.
‘you should come by and see it.’

don drives us to frank’s sculpture yard.
frank’s perched on scaffolding and looks
like those statues of Buddha with a belly
only Buddha had no belly.
‘that guy’s not Buddha but he was a Boddhisatva.’
Frank’s polishing one of three massive stone pillars.
smooth, milky dark like coffee on top. rough like
moon rock at the bottom. i run my fingers along
the wavy divide between.

frank designed the mars rover to explore outside space
but now he’s retired and polishes rock to explore inside space.

we sit at a stone table on stone chairs while frank talks about marriage.
how each of us are mirrors for the other but a spouse is a sturdy type,
solid mass of polished stone. ‘refinement,’ says frank.  he’s made
the table very smooth but [swap your buts for ands]
small imperfections freckle the surface.
‘those won’t ever go away.
they’re just a part of the rock, details we don’t invent
but find once we’ve worn away the layers on top.’