through the front of raindrops, bounce
off the back, refracting into slick colors

        different wavelengths gelled at
        different angles, vibrating, blue

near the ground, red at the top, billions
of falling raindrops, the whole tap dance

        sucked back into the black hole
        in my eye, retina muscles focusing

like a scrutinizing god while
chemical reactions in cells' molecules

        absorbing photons dispatch an impulse
        over the optic nerve and the brain

I beam out through my eye, penetrate
each raindrop, bounce, refract, merge

        with thrumming, shimmering liquid light
        billions of crashing prisms waterfalling

over me, through me, I absorb their
flow without damming it, shimmy until

        I don't drop but stop breathing, suffused
        with fragrances of rushing rain, and like

an imploding star's disembodied halo
my spirit hovers, suspending the moment, parting

        iridescent rivers spraypainting the air
        floating in their distilled essence

in the flood, but not of it.

Sometimes he hits you over the head
with a tire jack, and sometimes he
wields an axe or dangles clusters
of bombs like ripe grapes, innocently
gifting you with a bouquet of dusted roses.
Sometimes he crawls in your window
and through your veins and sometimes he
delivers a sermon that encodes tumors and
sometimes he licks the salt from your flesh
in the desert and sometimes he floods you so
you spend the rest of your days retrieving boxes
of ruined mementos from muddy river banks.
Often he is Uncle Sam pointing at you
from a billboard and the woman forever
sipping vodka come-ons with subliminal skulls
and sex tattooed to her forehead and breasts.
Sometimes he is the boot heel crushing you
like an ember to prevent forest fires
or sometimes the commander's thumb obliterating
the enemy's children and grandfathers and
mothers nursing newborn Nagasakis.
Sometimes he is expected in November
ripping a leaf from its branch and this is
called the change of season, or when you
throw yourself over the cliff possessed
by tormenting demons, this called
a blessing in disguise or sometimes
just a blessing or an act of God.
Sometimes he gulps your cells then spits
leukemia, which is natural, and sometimes
he takes a holiday long enough for you to
slip your hands in your pockets, but
the home movie runs through your eyes, he
sits lounging at his tropical island cafe table
sucking your soul out like raw oyster
or inspecting you like another empty shell
washed up on the beach he will glue decoratively
to his basket for Little Red Riding Hood.
No doubt by now you will have recognized his
theatre, his identity, his escape hatch, you are
trained at literary interpretation, you have
the collective unconscious as references, you
read his symbolic presence into everything.
But what if he steps out of this text
and follows you everywhere, you know you
shudder when a blackbird's ragged shadow crosses
your shoulder, shiver if planets strangely conjunct;
what if that gargoyle falls from its cornice, just
grazing you; remember that near-miss in traffic?
Doesn't he awaken you, wind walking over your roof,
your ceiling, creaking up the stairs, isn't he staring
through the shut window as the curtain stirs?
His grin spreads through the jack-o'-lantern
when you light the candle. Experience and all
that education tell you he wears the rapist's
ski mask and the charming smile of a lover
picking your pocket both in the same instant,
ventriloquist and magician, priest, cop, and
chairman-of-the-board, he stalks your nightmares
and fulfills your every dream because he
wants you, he is tracking you down.

Can art exist without war, conflict, tension?
I've quizzed myself all afternoon, mind tossing turning
tangled in a subtle puzzle postmodern "discourse,"
riddled to the core by its violent erasure's X
stake driven twisted through every poet's heart.

My mind crosses its forefingers to ward off the vampire
wrapped up cloak-and-dagger like a black calla lily.
Bleeding I've sat here the hour through dusk
and the hour of darkness it takes human eyes
to adjust 100,000 times more sensitive to light.

Rushing with the rest of our galaxy at 45,000 mph,
whooshing in our own orbit at 66,000 mph,
not a pine needle rustles, not a hair on my head stirs.
The only hint of motion, the moon slipping out
from behind the scent of a branch, lit up

like the glance of a woman in love too shy to speak.
In the distance, wave upon wave coming-on to the shore.
A voice vaster than the universe thundering: Yes!
Imperceptibly my skin dampens, my hair frizzes
on the edge of my neighborhood and continent.

Under my bare feet, scratch of pine needle thatch,
roof tar patio, salty sand, sewers and lush soil,
earthquake fault, and layer below layer, boiling magma.
Know thyself, fallen angel.
Every day 300 tons of cosmic dust fall on the earth,

star dust constructing the gothic cathedral
of my body, 45 miles of nerves, alimentary canal
the length of a three-story building, this heart pumping
30 trillion red blood cells through 70,000 miles of vessels
and back in one minute -- the material me

sits perfectly calm while emotion radiates out
like solar flares registered unconsciously
in all the electrical gadgetry in a lit globe.
Everything is more complex and simpler than it seems.
The Presence of creation's Creator pours out

and out, miracles abound, I'm on overload, ecstatic
yet detached as a snake from her sloughed-off skin.
Chemically we are crashed meteors.
Yet life!
I breathe the essence of the pine, and the pine breathes me.
 

Not God: a god of gods, he carves his throne
From homegrown wood, its carpenter, its slave;
His hands, like ours, drive mundane nails, engrave
I AM like Moses in its inlaid bone.
Not God: like us, an angel, but on loan
To tempt us back from exile, from this cave
Of shadows we, like devils, seem to crave --
Our fall, though not as far, leaves us as prone.
Not God: yet helpless at his mother's breast
Inspires the Magi -- Could God's Love amaze
More than his presence steers their star struck quest?
That good and choice and life exist must daze
The blind! -- Though gifts of insight sate the blessed,
The selfish starve for want of humble praise.

               (after Lorca)

Dead center of the universe, rising
from labyrinth earth, Your soul
embodies midwest humidity
this thick sunstroke afternoon
sponging a week of rain, it
presses against my flesh till I'm sweat,
fevers my inside out, licks my palms
sticky with juice of split green plums --
the pit of my being ripens and fresh-cut
wind gallops through drenched fields
in my mind -- I hardly know where I begin
and end, creekbed algae feeds
on my breath, plowed open soil sprouts
bread for body, mind, spirit plowing,
lush forest moisture flushes my skin,
swells into thick sweat beads sliding
down my glass, slipping through
my fingers like love forever
and then Your soul slicks, oil of peppermint
floating on ice, its chartreuse scent floating
away on air and this too is part of me.

How intimately yet remotely connected
I am to all things
within myself, my heart beats
up through my soles as if
I were its skin, my skin wears me
like my old coat donated to the Salvation Army,
like verdigris hushing a brass bell, each cell
of my blood orbits at the speed of light
through its own galaxy, bleeding me,
and my star slough hands -- discrete veins,
fingerprints, moist, grass-stained palms --
I hardly know to whom they belong.

They belong to You; Your hands
move the heavenly bodies, Your body, my body,
the body of the raped, murdered angel
bloated with creek water, silent green scream
floating to the surface of the front page
I hold in my hands, Your hands, her hands,
                    grasping
             while I read,
I'm pulled under, water filling my shoes,
sopping my Sunday dress, quickly at first,
then slowly I am sucked to the bottom.
Silt settles, and tiny shells, and my slashed flesh
remembers the chill swimming like a fish
through the last bubbles drifting into murky light.
Sand fills my ears with the hiss of doused fire.
My hat sails silently away,
my hair wavering over me like smoke.
I've lost one glove; my hand lifts and lifts.

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Poetry, Part I

Poetry, Part III