Corona Senryu II

With beards and long hair,
Men protest the shutdowns, but
Later call doctors.

Gilgamesh

Startled in the pre-dawn light
I awoke in time to see
My thoughts, my dreams,
Rush up the bedroom walls,
Leap in the quiet air
Through the windowpane
To God knows where.

The ceiling did not replenish dreams,
Not the closet, not the couch.
But the bookshelf held out hope.
In the gloom was tossed a rope.
To pull me from my bed
That grew or shrank
With the weight of joy, sadness,
Dread and madness.

At the other end of the rope
Gilgamesh stood and spoke:
Do not pine after dreams
Of storms and bulls and
Birds that breathe fire.
You have not lost your Enkidu,
Your innermost desire.
Your wildness sleeps
Without need of rest or dreams.

The good life is not lived
Building walls, fortifications
To keep your beloved safe and true.
Immortality is not given you,
Neither youth nor vitality
Outlast the adventure.
The monster in the mountain
Must be slain, though it bring
The rage of gods, the winds of war.
From unknown lands your dreams will spring.

Kanye

I resist

the commodification
of the struggle to define
the self;
I am not a brand -
from where I stand,
no man, no woman,
or rock,
or bird,
or tree,
can truly see
to understand
the struggle is not in blood,
not in riches or glamorous fame,
but in language, in memory,
in the past that never was
and forever will be.

She repeated the sentence three times
To herself in the morning, stopping
On each line for emphasis,
While breakfast was served on her balcony,
The fresh squeezed orange juice
Cooler than the wind from the sea.

Before her tea at three,
To the reporter,
To the photographer,
To the publisher,
To the maid:
The long sentence in every receptive ear
Seemed to steer clear of any risk
Of meaning.

The unknown safety of not thinking
Keeps us while we sleep
With eyes wide open:
Protection from the standing rock,
The bent, old tree,
The incomprehensible
Wind from the sea.

Privacy

The American notion of privacy
Is a bizarre, surprising thing -
A kind of lunacy -
In other places in the world,

Like a joke made of sobs.

No thought of privacy where,
On the floor mattress by you,
Your father on top of your mother
Wrapped in blankets,
Trace a cocoon of mystery.

You think that is her head,
Turned back, staring up
At the black wall in the darkness.

And there are soft grunts
Every few minutes, and rustling
Of wool blankets, and your mother
Sucks her breath through her teeth.

Months later you lay the wreath
Of brittle leaves upon her mound,
Without thought, without sound.
She had gone to the wood one day
And not come home

While you walked alone
By the shores of the stream,
Listening to your mind flow,
Like the sound of dream.
There in the moving water
Your shadow face is seen
Wondering if you matter -

A strange notion,
New, pristine.

Birthday

Happy Birthday
To me,
Happy Birthday
To me,
Happy Birthday –
I’m one year closer to death
so I’d best turn from the wayward
path leading me through the wasteland
of entangling briars, so base my desires,
and find my way to the one true path
that ends in authenticity, my own felicity,
only I can’t because I’m lost, no map,
and my compass fell into the bay
where my future stretches away,
tossing among the waves, though
perhaps my ship will come –
To me!

Sight and Sound

How can I make you see me,
Not you, but me?
You have fixed me with your stare –
My words in mid air –
And have trapped me in amber.

A practical paperweight, amber,
It can be hurled against windows,
And, finally, the cries of anguish
Can escape into air
With the pleas to reason;
Perhaps – to you – all rubbish.

And though the caged bird sings,
Still its song is not heard elsewhere.
Silent is the vast landscape
Where a new soul grows in the wooded grove
And the words fly to the trees, feeding, at night.

Oh, what a sight! The multitude that is me,
Cresting that moonlit hill,
Without a sound, they cannot fight.
They stand, waiting,
For your surrender of me.