Lilith meets a vet

 

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I asked if I could take a photo of the tattoo on his upper arm. "If you're into ink!" he replied. He'd been one of three or four men with the same last name on a battleship in the Persian Gulf in 1987-89; he pointed to several tattoos, naming each guy they stood for, starting with Jerry. All I saw was naked women, but what do I know? He held a crumpled Coke can (was that where the pakololo smell came from?) and listened to music the played from his open car. 

 

He looked grizzled, but fit; his energy surged up and down some. From Arkansas, he carried the twang on his tongue, said he loved to go back to hunt on private property. "No wardens ever go up on that ridge, which was used in the Civil War." His Aunt Gracy owns it. He met his wife when he got back from the Gulf and their 35th is coming up. The family includes Snoopy, so I gathered there's a dog. His 20-something son's never given him much trouble, but the way kids act these days. 12 year olds now do NOT act like they did when he was 12. They have no respect. 

 

When I told him my son was just sworn in as a police officer in Virginia, he said, "Good for him! I wouldn't do it." I asked how he got to Hawai`i, and he said his sister lives in Kona. Bought her house for 750K, but now it would sell for over a million. I told him that kind of money would get you a fixer upper on Oahu, and he honed in on the phrase "fixer upper." We appreciated the sun. He hoped things would start to dry out a bit. Lilith was missing, but I had a story.

Metronome: Elegy 9

Metronome

A friend says her grief

Is like a puppy pooping

In the corner   yes!

It stinks all right

Hyperactive / aware

A small blonde girl

At the Kurtistown Cafe

Stood in high pink boots

Her shirt read NO!

I asked if she wore it

So she didn’t have

To say it, but NO!

Was her and her father’s

Answer / they left

Hand in hand with her

“Sushi toys” / his plate

Lunch / A woman in mask

Came over to ask

If I also live alone

She lives out of a cooler

I said no / but I left

My husband at the airport

And was treating myself

To kalua cabbage

Grief becomes a form

Of awareness / a looking

With / an eating with

The dead / you’d hold up

Your hands before you ate

Blessing the food

Before it entered you

To fuel a prayer for

My dog and cats /

They organize them

Selves in geometries

Triangle square near

Perfect circle before

An inevitable shift

Stench from litter box

Or yell from food dish

Bark at front door

Metronome keeping

Time before it stops

Again /

Lilith blesses America (a story before the last one)

A week after the assassination attempt on Trump's life, Lilith and I ran into Uncle John in the cemetery. He asked how we were feeling. I reported that I felt sick to my stomach. Why? Because it looks like we're going to get Trump again.

He raised his hands up, gazed toward the sky, started to sing "God Bless America."  As Lilith and I trudged home, I thought I can't do this project any more, can't keep my equanimity, can only write evasions of the central subject. I'd intended to write a second volume to Lilith Walks, one that ended with the coming election. But now I just couldn't do it any more. 

We got home, dressed in our gloom, and I turned on my computer. "Biden steps down, endorses Harris," it told me. 

Political joy, you've been a long time gone.

Two faces in Waikiki (sans Lilith)

Walking down Kalakaua in Waikiki, watching tourists drift by and taking pictures of some of them, I saw a rumpled, gray haired, man approaching; he was staggering toward a curb. As he got there, he fell straight forward, off the curb onto the sidewalk, face first. Two security men appeared out of nowhere. A Japanese couple stopped, startled to see the man get up, his black-framed glasses thrown a couple feet ahead of him. Drops of blood spattered on the cement. His nose was bleeding, his right hand was covered with it. One security guard talked into his lapel.

 

A block or two farther toward the Diamond Head end of Waikiki, a young man called out, "Obama!" I told him he was the first person in Waikiki to notice my shirt, which is all I have before I find a Kamala Harris one. "Great president," he said. "My name is Barak, and I'm from the Holy Land." I asked if I could take his photo. After unsuccessfully suggesting that we take a photo together, he stepped back from shadows into the light, which didn't make for a good result. "Come into my store," he said, "I like you, and your shirt." After telling him that he could not sell me anything, I entered, sat in a black chair as he talked to me about the bags under my eyes. Did I want them gone? Did I want to look younger? I told him I had been younger, but feel ok with how I look at my age. He put a blob of skin color gunk on a big q-tip and started applying the goop under my right eye. I might need it on my eyelids, too, as gravity was operating there, too. He aimed a small fan at my face and started drying my under-eye. My skin would tighten, he said. No more bags.

He showed myself to me in a mirror, and to tell the truth, I didn't see much difference. Realizing that I could still offer him nothing, I said I would tell my friends about his shop. He thanked me; he's not paid on commission, but he could use customers. 

 

I never looked to see the name of the shop. But it's on Kalakaua, in case you want your bags removed. You might have to raise your windows, though (as he called my glasses).

 

Lilith and the hunters of Kahalu`u

 

The snail hunter of Kahalu`u doesn't hunt snails any more, but she still has opinions. "If this weren't happening, you couldn't make this shit up," I said, spotting her opening the back door to her car. "I knew if we ran into each other, we'd make faces," she said. "Was that guy paid off?" she asked about the shooter. (I didn't say it's hard to get paid when you're dead, but I took her point.) "He missed. He missed." What next? She looked at me hard and said, "Harris is Asian and Black; she can't win." I suggested an all-woman ticket, Harris and Whitmer, and she gave me intense side eye. Her tone, as she retreated to her gate, was sandpaper grim.

 

The deer hunter of Kahalu`u said as soon as he heard the assassination attempt, he knew it wasn't serious. He's a Democrat, but he knows all the rifles, all the rounds, and that wasn't going to do it. Michelle Obama would be his pick (I also heard this from another dog walking friend).

We all agreed we'd just have to wait and see. History is a bitch that way, when you're in it.

Time Stamps: Elegy 8

But whom do people kill? They kill the noble, the brave, the heroes. They take aim at these and do not know that with these they mean themselves. They should sacrifice the hero in themselves, and because they do not know this, they kill their courageous [sister].

--Carl Jung, The Red Book

Or, they kill the mirror

That reflects themselves

As if surface were allegory

For depth / and depth

Could speak in words

And words could kill

What they hate they

Cannot see in themselves

But saw in you / trans-

posed to light / radiant

In your little house

By the creek / frog-

infused / where you

Put your tent out

Back some nights

Cacophony the mirror

Of silence / frog song

Mantras chanted to

Mark a prelude

“Don’t expect thoughts

To stop,” they say

They never do

But you can drop

Them like towels

In a basket / snow

On city street / you

Offered us the silence

Of your frequent

Absences—off to do

This! Do that!--

Neighbor looked up

To see her missing

Dog at the edge

Of her lanai / only

Her time had passed

Not his / for he was

There / Is your death absence

Or return? Your photo

On my fridge place-holds

The question / time stamp

Reads 2001 / March / afternoon

Now 2024 / July / morning

Dog and I turned back

When it began to rain

Eucalyptus and I, from Lavender Ink Press.

https://www.lavenderink.org/site/shop/i-and-eucalyptus/?v=76cb0a18730b

 

---

I and Eucalyptus is series of meditative poems, or poetic meditations, on the relationship between the writer and a tree, by way of Martin Buber’s I and Thou, including 21 full color photographs of the tree. Schultz’s obsession with a solitary eucalyptus in a neighborhood park opens up space for discussions of self and other (as well as dog), creation and decreation, accident and abstraction in art, politics and spirituality, and much else. Tree and writer exchange vows, but there’s no insurance to cover such a union, so writer and dog return home, “develop” photos, and muse about these encounters between human and tree beings. The eucalyptus, so often considered worthless and invasive, becomes a worthwhile guide to thought. Answers, of course, are all more questions, for the book is more quest than end-point. Each section is accompanied by a photograph of the tree’s drips and drabs; greens, reds and yellows; its peeling bark and black sap.

Elegy 7

 

It happens

The man who sits

In his cloth chair

In his garage,

Cigar in hand

Agreed the world

Is coming apart /

Said, “my older

Brother died today--

Cancer” / and I

Told him briefly

About your murder

Put hand to heart

Wished him well--

“Happens to us all”

He said / This time

I’d remembered

Water for Lilith /

Didn’t ask him

For a bottle / “That’s

What it’s for,” he’d

Said / when dog was

Hot and I had none.

Lilith, disrupted

 

Do you know Adrienne? She said her professor lived near here. . . I think the event was staged . . . We don't want him to be a martyr . . . Wish Biden would step down, Harris couldn't win either . . . My mother wishes he hadn't missed . . . He missed by just. this. much . . . Really? don't keep up with politics . . . [a brief wave to Uncle J, busy with busloads of tourists] . . . Oh, that was Paul; he used to do security for us in NY, was a paramedic, now mortician . . . Auntie P's neighbor yells at everyone, screams at people in our work lot the other day, everyone needs a psych test these days . . .

Lilith and the undertaker

The unexpected aria ended almost as soon as it had begun. "Are you an opera singer?" I asked a man near the cemetery chapel. "No, but can I ask you a question?" he said. A tall Black man, dark circles around his eyes that sat under short cropped white hair, dressed in blue scrubs and sandals, he wondered if I was a Christian. No, Buddhist. That didn't faze him. In the Bible, he said, Jesus gave talks to large crowds of people, but didn't speak loudly. They'd talked about it at their Watchtower meeting. He likes to test things to see if they're real or fake, so each morning he sings his note and the worker down the hill responds that he's heard it.

 

Elegy 7: Blue Tara

Death visits this morning

A ball in the chest

Grief clothed as anxiety

The melancholy ball

Cannot be absorbed

Like you / finding my

Self gesticulating

Like you / cutting air

Putting it back in

Box or small bag

Like two Buddhas

In metal frames

Portable in case

Of wandering

Oh bag of Buddhas

And bag with one

Old joint and paraphernalia

Launching toward spaciousness

"She was fearless”

Steve said / and I 

“perhaps too” / nearly

Finished your bardos

We’ll not know how

You come out the other side

Unless in the faces of dogs

Or a man washing another’s

Dirty feet (without video

Proof) / there’s kindness

And careers in kindness

Sung loudly on Instagram /

The proof machine I

Am I and you are watching

Me be me / no doubt

To our existences

Except when they end

Intentionless wandering

Begins / water flows

Back into Lahaina

After fires destroyed

Archives and shirt shops

Crazy democrat / fire 

An island paved over for

Baseball wishes to return

Ichiro’s inside the park

Home run / standing up!

A model for cycles

Flowing back / gone are

Plantations / tourist mai tais /

(But banyan is growing back!)

Stay with us a while /

Boddhisattva / let us cleanse

In your clarity / tell developers

To fuck off / one hand holds

The map the other taro root

Blue Tara hold my hand 

Sixth elegy

Theater in the Round

You will not find a spot in the world--

Where death will not overtake you.

Ultimate come-from-behind sprinter,

that one / remember when you found

a book about super-marathons

and decided to take up running /

had your students read the book,

hit sidewalk / toes first / on your jogs

until 60-something knees said /

No Way! / to such dreams

of flying / legs as light as a hippo’s /

everything up in the air

at once / do mantras keep balls

in air / or do they release

our worries when they drop?

Took a photograph of a young man

walking to work beside Kahekili

practice-juggling three balls /

didn’t smile for the photo / was

too intent on completing the circuit

like musicians with their notes up

in the air, eyes meeting to avoid

mistakes, blue notes on the plank /

A performance by one man, three balls,

witnessed by a woman and her dog

is not public or private / like an actor

staging a stage on which

to face empty chairs /

a photograph of you reading

at a theater in Samoa, your killer seated

against the wall in front of me,

audience transposed

to a newspaper / my eyes

find nothing there to suggest

the later murder at the theater,

empty but for you and her / no one

reading off a script / no one to

direct the needed indirection / away

from blur of movement and voices

(if we are to believe ourselves)

toward an exit / to whom

did you call out who might’ve

heard you / who failed to hear you /

did your mantras juggle breath

and grief as you / gathered self

together deep inside your wounded

body / close to the joy of words

breathed out / if theater heals, then

who are we not to watch or breathe

Quote from The Dhammapada, translated by Gil Fronsdel, Shambala

Conundrum: fifth elegy for Sina

Conundrum

If I held your hand as you died

I hadn’t protected you

And if I protected you / I failed /

Leaving your hand and mine

hanging in the stale air

of dying; what did you realize

in those blood-drowned

moments / between / living

and having-lived / or having

had / ownership of air / spent years /

for we are all consumers

of what eats us alive

perched between body

and parasite, we in our present,

it in a future defined as self-

loss/ if body can be lost / not

waylaid like keys or a toothbrush

left on a yellow sink in a black

room, beam of light laughing

at our wanting to own it /

I write “your killer” as if / she

belonged to you / and you let go /

shedding onion skins of light

arriving at a perfect sphere

shed of so many imperfections

If I had held your actual hand,

chanting actual mantras, would

that have allowed us to get up

walk out of that room alive /

or are you because we watched

you radiate a tunnel of light

seeping through our minds’ skin

down to what we call “soul”

if we’re not ashamed.