Wednesday, July 31, 2024
Lilith meets a vet
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 /
Monday, July 22, 2024
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)
![](https://mail.google.com/mail/u/1/images/cleardot.gif)
Friday, July 19, 2024
Lilith and the hunters of Kahalu`u
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
Tuesday, July 16, 2024
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.
Sunday, July 14, 2024
Lilith, disrupted
Saturday, July 13, 2024
Lilith and the undertaker
Thursday, July 11, 2024
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
Monday, July 8, 2024
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
Sunday, July 7, 2024
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.