Which Is Where We Are Now

  • I live up near the Canadian border. I’m standing in a large line for something like a bus. There is a couple of people next to me speaking French. The woman talks to the black man. She’s in line for a Canadian passport. Then she talks of a special passport for a small region of Canada called the island of Good, though it’s just a region. The passport declares she has the rights of a citizen when shopping in that region. This island has this special passport for economic reasons. It’s mutually beneficial: it’s good for their economy and it provides foreigners who work in the vicinity access to goods that might be otherwise hard to come by. I make a mental note to apply for to those two passports.

    Passport to the Island of Good

    –––––––

    6 May 2011
  • You’re going to make a father out of me:
    first snake I’ve held;
    first baby I’ve cared for.
    I place my hand into your cage;
     you sniff and avoid
     when it’s obvious to me you should glide right on.
    Only after both of my hands have lain on either side of you
     and you’ve tucked yourself into a ball,
     head resting on curls, do I realize
     I must pick you up directly.
    
    You don’t snap when I pinch;
    then it’s hand over hand over hand:
    non–stop.
    
    On the table, in the sun,
    you stretch out into a new world.
    You don’t know and there’s no way for me to tell you:
    it’s small.
    Just one big circle as far as the eye can see:
    only, snakes are blind.
    
    You’re so young; you need this experience
    to learn to move, to understand your body.
    You head straight for the edge;
    it’s instinctual or inevitable.
    And there’s my hand.
    It’s such a long drop; I don’t want you bruised or dead.
    So, here’s my hand.
    And you comprehend.
    And, though it’s not the best new place to go,
     perhaps it’s the only place you know.
    
    And, back on the table you go
    and straight to the edge.
    I blame the small circle you’re in;
    and, a hand I extend.
    And you still search for ground.
    I pull up a chair, in case you want to leave.
    Do you dare? You sense something underneath;
    though it be further than you’re long,
    you hover down till — plump — you fall
    belly to the sun.
    You twine between the slats
    till, like water, you find that sinking leg
    and dive down — despite its sheer plastic,
    crimp on it with your pinky–full stomach
    until — plop — again.
    
    Back to the circle and its edge you go.
    This time, no hands, though.
    We are both learning about falling here.
    Now, I see you can smell the ground — or its absence —
    and I let you dip
    as far off the edge as you dare;
    head and belly drip
    with just your scales left to grip
    and that fine sense of gravity,
    refined from your last fall,
    saves you
    or perhaps this is normal activity
    with which I’ve just been meddling?
    Now, you gracefully circle and dip
    along the edge without fear to slip;
    just desperate for some place wherewith to get
    down.
    
    I guess I’ve learned my lesson, now,
    knowing, as I take you in my hand,
    we needn’t go hand over hand over hand.
    And I need not worry about your leaning on me
    while upon my hand you circle ’round.
    to curl into a peaceful perch —
    until you sniff deeper ground.

    Tough Love

    –––––––

    30 Apr 2011
    dragonfly book
  • Munch and marvel upon the apple.
    Its planter’s footsteps tread on.
    We share this future time with him:
     its tang on our lips.

    Chapman

    –––––––

    27 Apr 2011
    heart book
  • Margrave was teaching an art class. In the school, I see a beautiful poster for it. Something like “Express yourself”.

    I go down to the school basement. I’m enrolled to take classes with young people. They are wizards with a Harry Potter feel to them.

    The next scene I remember is my station wagon skidding around — something like a PT cursor and a woody — having just left the main road full of battle. The dogs were safe. The back door and a side door ended up flung open.

    I look around for spirits because I sense they are with me… as if we must have been working together or I’ve already seen proofs of their assistance. There, off from and behind the left-hand side of the car, was a golden spirit. She looked like a collection of gold ore, was human-sized, perhaps on the tall side; even her wings were of heavy ore. And when I say ore I mean rough, raw, lumpy, dark with chunky flecks.

    The scene then jumps to her shutting the car doors.

    “You’re going to have to get moving,” she says. To my pleasant surprise she stays, hanging on the outside of the passenger-side window as I turn around in the woodsy cul-de-sac and I pick up speed.

    “You are going to have to learn Greek.”

    And that was fine, because I was taking a class for Greek at school. I’ll just study extra hard. What a great feeling to be watched over this way. There was this familiarity of working together for good, casual, friendly work. The tiny, pesky, red, man-sized demi-dragons were making their course around the bend and my fairy casually, and with straw hat flapping in the wind, courteously departed.

    Golden Ore Fairy

    –––––––

    26 Apr 2011
  • The week between
     heating and air–conditioning
    when frogs whir and birds sing

    Spring

    –––––––

    25 Apr 2011
    dragonfly book
  • I give a black man a ride. He tells of how he first arrived here from overseas. How he wasn’t given of the funding promised him when he arrived, so he had to make do.

    We arrive at the doctors office. We sit down in the waiting room. Just then he gets to the part about ten-thousand Chinese with a thousand dollars between them. He becomes distraught; I get choked up. I think to myself, how am I going to be a good doctor if this gets me unsettled?

    I’m called to the back. It’s a pleasant back hallway, reminiscent of a hospital hallway. I’m nervous and incredulous these folks are accepting of my taking a doctor’s role without any training or knowledge. I peak into an office room. In a small part of the room, I see a quaint sign with a medical serpent emblem saying something like psychic studies. This reassures me. I’m called to see a patient. This will be interesting.

    As I walk down the hallway, a woman walks beside me and hands me a book. It’s white with metallic blue letters and a simple golden snowflake (a hexagon with lines continuing out). She thanks me for the book. I don’t understand what she means. “You and Chelsea and Elsie (the two doctors here) wrote it.”

    Hmm. I look at the writing a couple page back from the bookmark and the conversation we are having is in the book. This gives me a good, wholesome feeling — a special, cared-for feeling.

    Somehow we are turned around. Elsie comes into to see the patient just as I was about to begin with him or her.

    I go to the lunchroom with the woman who gave me the book. It’s more significant than a lunchroom: there is a feeling of home and that this is the center of many cultural activities; still, it’s normal-sized.

    There is a nice, wide table of unpolished, comfortable wood. The woman and I have a seat. Doctor Chelsea sits across from us. There is a feeling that a presentation is going to begin, but the atmosphere is that which precedes a family member presenting to a family without any feeling of business obligation.

    Elsie sits down besides me to my right. Again, there is a family feel here, one of immediate acceptance, as if we’ve been doing this together for a while, or, it’s the comfort of being happy with what one does and being involved with a thoroughly solid and good and wholesome practice. Elsie settles in as though she’s about to tuck into a good sandwich. “Oh, mom’s here too,” she says with a grateful nonchalance.

    Doctor Elsie and Company

    –––––––

    24 Apr 2011
  • One touch turns my clear, cold lake ashimmer,
    Triggers my steady stream of smoke
     into a plume of vortexes.
    I pull my skirt down;
     still, my ridiculous, silky legs
     form an arrow as bright as a billboard
     advertising that cleft in my soul,
     beating in my stomach.
    Your seawater seeps into my clam,
     irritating my muscle, violating my space.
    You fucker, sticking a thumb into my polished lens
     that held a million colors:
     a thumbprint rending all my pictures blurry.
    My body quakes with chain reaction:
     I will never be whole again.
    My life condemned: a vain attempt to protect
     this urchin part of me —
    Only for it to continue on into
     as many grains of sand in the sea.

    Contraction

    –––––––

    24 Apr 2011
    heart book
  • Not the ruby baubles the factory man
     works so hard to impress,
    But the slumbering body
     relieved of its day’s demands…
    and perhaps a lay–in
     Saturday morning

    Les Miserables

    –––––––

    22 Apr 2011
    heart book
  • I’m the director of a high school play. The play is being held in an amazingly vast and spacious theatre, much bigger than any professional theater would accommodate. It’s very professional and high class. All or most of the seats are taken, despite the hugeness. I’m looking at this from above.

    In the same wise as this detached hovering, I’m beginning to walk down a very long and spacious hallway. It’s equally well appointed with shiny hardwood floors. It’s here I consider myself as an actor rather than director. I remember trying out and acting for the high school play Working. I realize it’s not a matter of talent: talent is honed over many initiatory experiences. The ability to remember lines, itself, is something that an actor learns over the repeated exposure to the demand of memorization. So, it made sense for me to give a try for a little part and for a director to inquire about one’s resume as a matter of course to get a feel for whether the heft of experience meshes with the heft of the role.

    I’m beginning to approach the front desk after walking, floating, down this long immaculate hallway. I feel myself become nervous as I hover towards it, anticipating a face to face with a beautiful clerk; yet, I abstain from going to the front desk. I go ahead past the desk right into the backroom where the hotel owner is. I disregard a feeling of entering into great danger. My brain seizes, processing what I’m about do to: I strangle the owner.

    The Accumulated Weight of Experience

    –––––––

    22 Apr 2011
  • Heaven might be found on a mountaintop;
    we could be lost in the desert flats for all I care.
    As long as the vehicle is cared for,
     we still have someplace to go.

    Well–tempered

    –––––––

    21 Apr 2011
    dragonfly book
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