I have two cemeteries
within my house.
One on the ground floor,
in a very small room,
under the stairs,
where my shoes,
sole wounded from their run
through many rough roads
rest in peace.
The other one is in the attic
where dozens of my notebooks,
badly scratched
with my handwritings,
are buried.
I know nothing about where
this mysterious power comes from,
When the day took me for a walk
towards the twilight,
I saw my son sowing a kiss on a young lady’s lips.
I felt old.
As if by magic, a grandfather grew within me.
After two minutes’ walk, my mother phoned,
‘How are you my son’, she asked;
and I felt young again, like a child.
I was a small child
when a bird flew into our house —
I caught it.
It was tweeting and tweeting
trying to flee.
‘Free it’, my grandfather said.
‘No’, I replied, ‘it is singing.
Let’s keep it in a cage’.
‘It is crying’, he said.
‘Birds sing only in the forest;
in the cage, they just cry.’
He opened the window.
I let the bird go.
Yes, I can go. I can leave right now.
An aeroplane or train ticket
for 10 or 15 pounds of flesh and bones,
including some clothes
and some necessary domestic things,
and .... goodbye.
However, I’m not gone,
as my memories and feelings
are disobedient. They never leave,
and I can’t dictate anything to them.
So, when you see me leaving
don’t even think I’m gone.
It’s not me.
It’s just a heft of myself
escaping from fighting with me.
My grandmother had a true calendar,
a meaningful, eventful one.
“You were born four moons
after the heavy flooding
which killed half of the town,
twelve moons before
the communists dynamited the church.
It was just two moons after
the grapes were ripened,”
she used to say to me.
As a child, until I began school,
I knew nothing of the fact
that I was born on 1st October, 1963.
If I tell you my birthday
with the current calendar,
I tell you nothing about myself.
A little perfect owl, size of a sparrow
But an owl by manner of intention
I discerned in a flash on a wee branch
As a seat in a vehicle bore me by.
It had no doubts about being an owl
I repeat, quite certain and casual.
To be what you are with no intention
Or concept of being otherwise,
With only the dimmest thoughts about that
Is something of which I won't philosophize;
There being too much made about that stuff:
So much hyperbole about small truth:
Lies shielded by poor refugees from bluff.
you are real
but this world is made up
this world is real
but you are made up
you are made up
of opposing forces
united
like a symphony orchestra
being orchestrated
by the band leader
except the band leader doesn’t really exist
only the band is real
Red sun dropped below a psychiatrist’s
left brain, not
to mention the Cascade Range.
The psychiatrist’s opinions rose:
“Computers aren’t anything,
and no one knows how the brain
produces emotions. Anyone who
claims to know is lying.”
On their tiny platform, window washers
dropped into view, 17th floor.
Patient and psychiatrist looked
at them. They looked back.
The patient promised to call the psychiatrist,
especially if the patient were to feel
like a blackbird flying over ice-fields or
to sing obscure anthems in retail stores.
One day in July,
Sierra Nevada
(sun unblocked, high, blazing)
—I was splitting and
stacking tamarack-rounds
for somebody
in town. Heat
came up
through my body to my head.
went blind. I was seventeen,
had learned by then to be
more embarrassed
than frightened
by affliction. I saw
just well enough
to stagger down to the general store,
It’s not a question of letting
go but of never having had
hold. It’s not a question.
Our hands are empty often
and at best only transfer,
never own. Possession is
nine tenths of illusion.
Hands operate as points
lines use to reach points-next.
We might say all lives
are way-stations to nowhere: The I
passes through the Me,
connecting points to point
of ceasing-to-be. In a
related story, animals
demonstrate how to live
I am my home,
my real estate.
Memory contests the deed
and title, would
force me to live
in recall, a phantom
condominium of fate.
I am the shack
of me, a self with rooms,
a past out back,
an attic that looms,
a pantry with brooms.
This is why blankets
at 4:13 a.m. feel
(why rain badgering
roof over the roof
I got into my car. I drove it
so it joined other cars in a long,
noisy line between one city
and another. To my left
another long line of cars
moved from the city
to which my line was
going to the city I'd
just left. When my car
and I arrived, I stopped
it and left it amongst
other stopped cars. I
entered a building. On
one of its upper floors,
I entered a room. I sat
down. For several years