A Poem Sighs Upon Taking Up the Impossible

Every element

mattered and made

its way to the surface

carrying with it

a memory of itself

from another time

and far away,

all connecting  to that

amazing  crescendo

of being,

a mosaic moment

made for joy

awash in a convergence,

an alloy of singular melding,

inscape of landscape

and swelling soundscape--

a sense-scape

once played with no copy made,

never again to be, having been.

And having been, always to be.

I alone was there to see it.

To know it. To praise God for it.

To praise and leave it.

And now, as if betraying a secret,

I ask this pale poem to carry

within it that impossible

freshness (fading by the minute

like recirculating air).

I gather and order these words,

none of which were there.

Mountain Man

On the balcony of the Lorraine Motel

you fell backward, your cheek shattered,

and all that mattered in the world

mattered most in that mad moment

where love again met its inevitable end

standing at 6:01 PM behind the cold rails.

History fails to hold its heroes as high

as it hides the reasons the heroes first sang out.

A Remington rifle bullet rang out

across the dirty Memphis street

and completed your final speech

with its exclamation and point in red.

You had been, you said, to the mountaintop.

You had seen ahead to the Promised Land,

man like Moses, fate like his too,

to see from far away what all your life

had been the stage to view—

to be cut down now by a coward’s crouch,

your necktie flung into the air

where your words still hung, growing louder there,

“Mountaintop. Promised Land."

The promise from the mountain man

whose eyes had seen the glory of the coming

as only climbers of such heights can.

Here is final part of the speech Martin Luther King Jr. gave the night before he was assassinated:

Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. [applause] And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land! [applause] And so I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. My eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord!

The picture above was taken the day before King was killed on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel near the very spot where he was shot.

The Second Jazz Man: A Tribute to Dave Brubeck

Your signature was being on time—

mind-blowing rhythmic arrival! Expenditure

of cool jazz temperature,

steady flame in sixty-year fame. You stayed true

to Iola who took your name to the grave

dying fifteen months after you.

You died a day before turning ninety-two.

Humble rancher with a new rhythm running

through nerve-damaged fingers prodding the strings’

vibrational ring, the black and white keys

pressed into long seamless lines of climb and fall,

give and take five responses to every call

of the seed, of the theme, of the truth,

the proof in the doing: the Wolfpack grooving

an uncharted pathway;

the math-play of the Quartet with Gene on the bass

in the race to make music all over the face of the madness

of Jim Crow’s rancorous bandstand.

You made a grand stand at the newsstand—

Time had placed you on the ’54 cover,

the second jazz man after Armstrong to make it.

Your chagrin was not fake, what you said to the Duke

when he knocked on your door,

“That should have been you.”

NOTES:

1.      “Cool jazz”: Brubeck is considered a pioneer in this genre of jazz

2.      “Iola”: Brubeck’s wife of seventy years!

3.      “Humble rancher”: Brubeck was born in Concord, CA, the son of a rancher with early intent to work with his father on the family ranch

4.      “Nerve-damaged”: Brubeck suffered a spinal cord injury diving into the surf in Hawaii in 1951 that caused nerve pain to his hands for years afterwards

5.      “Take Five”: one of Brubeck’s most famous songs, written and recorded with his Quartet in 1959 on the album Time Out (the first jazz album to sell more than a million copies). Melody written by saxophonist Paul Desmond

6.      “Wolfpack”: Brubeck started one of the armed forces first ever racially integrated bands while serving in  the military during the early forties

7.      “Math-play”: the Dave Brubeck Quartet was famous for composing songs with innovative time-signatures

8.      “Gene on the bass”: African American bassist Eugene Wright

9.      “Armstrong”: Louis Armstrong was on Time’s cover in 1949

10.      “Duke”: Ellington.  Brubeck thought the Time cover honor should have gone to Duke Ellington but that he was chosen in part because he was white.

First draft of a tribute poem to Dave Brubeck, in preparation for an upcoming art show called Panoply, featuring the art of Tom Matousek, the music of Tom Patitucci, and my poetry on Monday, March 13, 7:00PM, at the Calicraft Brewery, 2700 Mitchell Drive in Walnut Creek. Everyone welcome to this free event!

Depending on the Name

Some call them The Three Gossips.

Some The Three Kings.

How different, depending on the name,

follows the kind of whisperings

that piggyback onto blowing desert dust.

The Gossips say things

never meant for others’ ears, delicate

and delicious malingerings.

The Magi ask questions, or for directions,

and sometimes sing

when they are lost and looking up

at stars, bright and blinking.

The gossiped air churns sluggish and dragging.

Slowing , sinking,

 the dust-devil hardens into a

shower of pebbles flinging

themselves against the cliffs,

scattered like beads off a string

into crevice and rut, mute in the mud,

underneath the faintest hint of frolicking—

a merry melody, free in the breezes—

the laughter and pipe-smoke of kings.

---

 This poem continues my series of poems inspired by various famous sandstone arches and towers found in Arches National Monument, Utah.  These poems are meant to use the famous natural structures as foils to reflect on the nature of human becoming.  The three-towered structure pictured above is sometimes referred to as The Three Gossips and is sometimes referred to as The Three Kings.  Deciding which name to use for the poem would send the poem in very different directions.  And this in itself struck me: how powerful the name we give ourselves to shape who we become.  Suddenly this idea took over the poem itself and shaped its becoming.  Everything depended on the name!

After Christmas, the Trees

are strewn street-side, abandoned,

the ornaments  having been

extracted and safely packaged;

the nobles  who bore them with pride

through the long vigil of Christmas tide

are now flung aside.

Seven years of growing in a country aisle.

Four weeks of glowing festive Yuletide style.

My hour long morning walk passes so many

casualties unceremoniously cast casually

along the street, fragilely angled at curb and gutter,

unclothed and left utterly exposed in rows

awaiting the garbage truck to come dispose of them.

Near the apartment parking lot

a mass of trees is high-piled,

mound of green and brown, branch and trunk,

bleak bunch of castaways

that only yesterday were hailed as heroines of the home,

angel-topped and gilded in gold,

now shorn and forlorn in winter mud

next to a dumpster filled up

with crumpled wrapping paper, cardboard,  tape—

the things that hold or hide what, growing late,

we forget we ever loved.

Driving to Choeung Ek

Little girl

in the light blue dress

throw your ball into the air

and catch it,

catch it every time

as if your life

depended on

each little toss, your focused eyes,

your quick-stepped skip

to keep you close

to the dropping ball.

You live too near the Killing Fields

of Pol Pot’s madness.

Much too close

to let it fall.

Too near the brothels and the KTVs

where girls barely

older than you

have stopped the toss,

have lost the ball,

the skip, the step, caught up

in another killing field

without a skull-filled

stupa built

as monument to

mark the horror.

Little girl,

in the light blue dress,

it’s evening.

Toss your ball some more.

---

Notes:

1.  Choeung Ek is the most famous of the many "killing fields" across CAmbodia where Pol Pot's murderous Khmer Rouge communist regime murdered nearly a fourth of the entire Cambodian population between 1975 and 1979.

2.  KTVs refer to the Karaoke and TV Bars that serve as the place of contract for prostituted women.

3. A stupa is a Bhuddist shrine that holds important relics.  The picture above is the memorial shrine at the Choeung Ek Genocidal Center just outside Phnom Penh.  It holds the skulls and bone fragments of the thousands of victims discovered at this killing field.

4. About this poem:  on the way to visit Choeung Ek, out my van window I saw a little girl in a light blue dress tossing a ball up and down in her dirt back yard as we drove through the narrow streets outside of Phnom Penh.  I saw in that brief second all of her youthful exuberance and innocence and potential, and I shot up a prayer for her protection from the sex-exploitation culture that surrounds her growing up.  For some reason I have not been able to get this little girl in the light blue dress out of my mind

The Sex-Workers are Thrown a Christmas Party (Phnom Penh, Cambodia)

It’s daytime and for now you’re safe with us.

We want nothing from you other than

to have you hear that you are precious and

more valuable than you believe. Please trust

this to be true. I know the cruel unjust

nights you must spend to send money home can

obscure this truth as fast as the nameless man

who uses you to feed his aimless lust.

And he is like the plastic Christmas tree

in the corner, its lime-green candy sheen

shines awkwardly, a patchwork of crowded

swirl-bunches of thin film sheets mounted

into a mound as unlike a fragrant noble fir

as he is from the young prince you deserve.

---

I have just returned from Cambodia where a team of us from our church had the privilege of reaching out to "entertainment workers" in Phnom Penh's red light district, hoping to be messengers of dignity and hope in the degrading and inhumane world of consumer sex. Young women are forced into this line of work due to a combination of factors:  extreme poverty, family expectations, cultural acceptance, limited economic options. Many are lured by false pretenses.  Many are trafficked and held against their will.  We were inspired by visionary organizations such as Precious Women, Daughters of Cambodia, and Hagar working with these women to provide income alternatives, education, counseling, trauma care, and community support.

Cake and Eating It Too

If you leave the light on in the bedroom,

you’ll diminish the dazzle of the super moon

out your window.

                                    See the fidgety bridegroom

                 unravel his bow tie in the bathroom mirror

                 and bring  both  limp ends near with weary  diffidence.

If you insist the porch light must stay on

you will miss the nascent rays of dawn.

When your eyes adjust they will be gone.

                 See the bride shift right in the hallway mirror

                 trying to zip up tight her clear ambivalence.

Not until we embrace our darkness can we see the light ahead.  Not until we truly believe that dying to our selfish selves and giving ourselves away is the key to being fully human can we experience the depth of joy in the thrill and risk of love.  

Images: CCO license, public domain, Pixabay.com.

The Collapse of Wall Arch

Nearby campers

thought it thunder

in the middle of the night.

Any wonder?

Thousand tons

of falling sandstone will awake

every fear

that everything

will break at last, will fall in time.

Gravity’s avid

unkind press,

the underdress of water and wind

never rest.

No rest again

for anyone in Devil’s Garden

peering up

or ducking down.

Wall Arch bore no signs of stress

like the crack

in Broken Arch.

Nor was it thin like Landscape’s stretch.

Just a Monday

like any other.

The sun had set. The bats at play.

No star later

said they saw

the moment when the Arch gave way.

---

Some time during the night of August 4, 2008, Wall Arch suddenly collapsed along the popular Devil's Garden Trail in Arches National Park.  Wall Arch was the 12th largest sandstone arch formation in the park at the time.  Later inspection showed microscopic cracks in the structure, but to the eye there was no sign of imminent collapse.

This poem is part of a series of poems reflecting on the nature of becoming, using famous sandstone structures in Arches National Park as the foil.  The Collapse of Wall Arch reminds us of the uncomfortable but unavoidable truth that failure is an essential feature of the process of becoming.  I would add that it is usually (and ironically) our failures more than our successes that more dramatically contribute to our transformation toward wholeness.

Let Me Be Born

Let me be born

morning-light against

this settling,

be the butterfly

dancing free

beyond the tattered chrysalis,

above my infamous

death, laying low

the old dark,

the gaping hole

from which I fly,

far, far beyond its grasp,

how high, how fast

these thermals rush

the Morning Star.

Photo Credit: Public Domain CCO License Pixabay.com

It Seems like God is Never in a Hurry

We weren’t meant to rush here, rush there, were we?

Breath comes short, my pounding chest, relentless.

It seems like God is never in a hurry.

After all He carved out valleys fully

using glaciers that count years with inches.

We weren’t meant to rush here, rush there, were we?

Did you know the granite boulder’s burly

surface can be cracked by lichen? In this

surely we see God’s not in a hurry!

The glimmering stars we saw last night so clearly

arrived after millions of light-year distance!

We weren’t meant to rush here, rush there, were we,

fuming in this traffic, wracked with worry,

while overhead clouds pass like idle princes?

Seems like God is never in a hurry,

never helter-skelter, frantic scurry—

arriving just in time for Caesar’s census.

We weren’t meant to rush here, rush there, were we?

Seems like God is never in a hurry.

This is a villanelle inspired by a nature walk up at Donner's Pass last Friday.  Informative signs along the path explained how glaciers had formed the topography around us.  One sign in front of a large granite boulder explained how acid from lichen forms cracks in the granite allowing water (and thence ice) to penetrate the surface and break down the granite, eventually returning its mineral riches to the soil.  When I read that I thought, "Man, God is really OK with slow processes."  My next thought was that maybe I could slow down a little myself.

Photo credit: Pixabay.com: CCO Public Domain

Balanced Rock

Teeter-totter

teetering, tottering

always toward the

slightly weighted edge.

Constant attention

to the correction,

teasing out the

resistant middle,

and Moses’ arms

grow brittle

over the fickle

battlefield of

give and take

rest and run

break and mend

this and that

more and less

press, release

war and peace

again, again.

“When, when, Peace, will you, Peace?”

I am the small ball

juggler careening

atop the beach ball

in the pool.

And now that

I have fallen again

and shown myself

the charlatan

glum in wet

clinging clothes,

I have no will,

heaven knows,

to chase after flotsam.

           -----------

Whittle me with wind,

with rain that planes

flat the grooves

and cuts

the neck away

until I am

what I have so long

sought to become:

an impossibility!

A held-together

defying whether

it’s either-or.

Anomaly in

the world of precise

manufacturing

and more economy.

Carve into me

angles more alarming

than the circus

contortionist,

out of proportion

to the grade

of today’s

immaculate mode!

May Aaron

and Hur hold

each other in

fierce orbit,

each listing

over the ledge

with the recklessness

of falling

were it not for

the mass of the other:

Love rescuing each minute

My Truth

even as Truth fills

My Love with

such weight as

will crush

the shadow it casts

beneath its perilous lean

if ever it should break

and fall so far.

I have conceived of a longer work that features various rock formations inside Arches National Monument in Moab, Utah, and uses each rock formation as a catalyst for musing on the nature of becoming. This is the first draft of the first poem in the project.  In Balanced Rock I am wrestling with the idea that attempting to achieve balance in life through the effort and discipline of "finding the resistant middle" and holding it in place will only create fatigue and eventual failure.  In contrast to that "manufacturing" approach, I instead in the poem pray for a miracle of transformation, effected externally by divine power, which creates in me "balance" by a radical inclusion and embrace of the edges (Truth and Love, Aaron and Hur) over against a compromise of having just the right amount of each.  Healthy life-balance  turns out not so much a heroic act of careful juggling, but a faith-jump into the messy mix of the way different values  shape one another when they are  fully present and allowed to play.  The italicized quote in the middle of the poem is taken from Gerard Manley Hopkins' poem Peace.

Photo credit:  Pixabay.com:  CCO Public Domain.

Never Outnumbered

Brandish the leaf as a weapon!

Behind you an army of wind.

Spears of sunlight break open

the formidable pass, and thin

wisps of cloud, whatever happens

next, witness the impossible again.

Photo Credit: by Unsplash: Pixabay.com: CCO license

Early Blood

The bloated moon in early rise

scowls an angry orange,

menacing the as yet vacant sky.

But only wait a little while.

Climbing on its arc,

accompanied by the slowly emboldened  stars,

see it soften into yellow,

welcoming once again

the wonder of all at-the-window children.

Is not every worthwhile start

marked by early blood,

the sting of faltering hope and failing heart?

Before Yorktown must not there

come the dismal midnight

crossing of the icy Delaware?

Photo Credit: Skeeze: Pixabay.com Public Domain CCO License

Scoreless

O that a soundtrack

were always playing

at my back. The swelling

strings and sad oboe

would turn poignant

my ordinary moments,

and even I, after

awhile, might begin

to believe that even

this mattered, this

dull aimless stroll

beneath a silent heaven.

Photo Credit: Unsplash: Pixabay.com: CCO Public Domain

In the Mid-Afternoon

Over the hills

slow and shallow

roll the dark clouds,

pregnant with sweet rain,

dragging heavy shadows.

Photo Credit: David Kasich: CCO Public domain: pixabay.com

Thin Line Between

Ocean waves stay

shy behind the gentle

rising beach.

Fire, in your stone ring

dance, flame fingers

held by each.

Bomb, be locked by

guard and code

and double fingerprint.

Mountain molten

magma free your steam

through crust-veined vents.

Vaccine, with demure

deploy your

tiny coterie.

Oh, Desire, bind

your power

to this golden ring.

I have been thinking how good powerful things, if they should breach their boundaries, can turn deadly and wreak havoc.  How thin the line can be between life and death, all depending on whether boundary lines are drawn appropriately, and if those boundaries hold. 

Photo Credit: Albatros67, CCO Public Domain.  www.pixabay.com

Running Things

The family in

the one-bedroom

flat has neither

internet

nor Dish TV.

Their little children

will one day

be running things.

The contralto

in another

breeches role

yields to

the tiny limbed

soprano born

the heroine

of running things.

My Chevy needs

another jump.

Battery

or solenoid

or something else—

one failing cog

in the world

of running things.

Panty hose,

children’s noses,

world wide web,

melting butter,

dirty rivers,

guilty thieves,

the clock the king

of running things.

Photo credit: hpgruesen: CCO Public Domain: pixabay.com

Gun Lap for the Mile

No race is ever a steady deed,

no gradual slackening from first to last;

the large store of energy

cannot be freed in a careful pour.

The worst of it is actually

toward the first lap turn

when the flush of fresh adrenaline

abruptly pulls up short,

or finishing the second round

when the half feels like a whole,

with a whole half yet to go,

and who knows how much more

grit is left to shake the obstinate bear.

With joints seizing, jaw clenched,

lung cages like old jails

are wrenched open at lap four,

when the mesmerizing spell splits

at the sudden report, and through the crack

rushes a gust, a shove,  a love that turns

weightless heavy feet and sets coarse

gray hair waving wild in wind,

and wheelchair wheels to their spin

and glint in slanted sun;

and everyone is leaning forward!

Back straight now, muscles

screaming their defiant

delight at the quickening

impossible pace, and more

of the world is taken in

and breathed out

that moment the lap gun

fires its shattering roar

remaking the race into

a brazen grace that runs

the lane like it has never

run the lane before.

Gun Lap for the Mile is a metaphor for those entering into the season of retirement.  I am indebted to my friend Jay Grover whose idea this is.  He is seeing his own recent retirement as the gun lap, that final lap where, instead of things slowing down toward a tepid finish, the race is enlivened with drama and energy, the gun breaking the spell of "tiredness" and infusing urgency and life and the will to win into the final lap of the race.  What a beautiful picture of the last season of life!  As Boomers edge past the 65 year mark at a rate of 12,000 a day, may this idea inspire:  run the lane like you have never run the lane before!

Photo credit: Geralt; Pixabay.com CCO Public Domain

Such and Such

And if that had been too little, I would moreover have given unto thee such and such things.  2 Samuel 12:8 (KJV)

 Some say you are a miser,

that you dole out in pinches and specks,

that your storehouses are double-locked

and inventory checked by the grain.

But how would one explain my backyard ivy,

plush and wildly overtaking the fence?

And how to account for the allocation

of more birds here than my space deserves,

so many songs crowding this tiny parcel of world?

Because the leaves are waving at me

in unrationed lavish bunches,

I dare pray for some of that extravagance today,

for some of that profligate touch.

O to be awash in the spillage of your mercies,

in the flood of your such and such.

Last night I had the privilege to participate in a worship service at the Garden Chapel in San Quentin State Prison.  After the service I was praying with one of the inmates, a wonderful joyful elderly man named Walter, who prayed over me asking God to pour His "such and such" into my life. I was so touched, I had to try and capture it in a poem!  This is my attempt.

Photo credit: Cocoparisienne, Pixabay.com, CC public domain.