Disremembering you: Elegy 22

 

Disremembering you

how grieving a death makes

bird song

less

Or the only song

More than siren

Than weed eater

Than mower though

Mowing is death’s

Artifice before renewal

Buddha-like lightened

If not en-

Another stone dropped

By Selina / news

More horrible than /

As if death

Were not enough

Grief not enough

Without shock / “the

Gory scene” / further

Unveiled in which

Sina’s lost—again--

To details to

How we tell

Stories as rise

And fall emphasis

On fall on

Failure to resolve

The scene in

Sweetness why could

We not have

Stopped you where

You stood that moment

Before entering death’s

Theater your host

A parasite armed

With planned rage

And we chorus

Members sunk in

Amber talking talking

Never moving toward

Because we’re stuck

In time’s passage

Proust’s PTSD madeleine

Memory carves us

Up eats itself

Then leaves us

Dis-memoried and blank

(opening by Deborah Meadows, from “Dear Henry”)

Talking Trees: Elegy 21

Talking trees

Bug encasing itself

In its own spit--

Thinking as body

Armor mind shield

Feeling glued to

Highway like a kitten

Shivering under tires

No one stopping

Save the man

In a photo

Kitten on shoulder

I give you mine

To cry on

There must be

Tears where you

Are, Sina, echoing

Like puddle drops

In Hereafter’s suburbs

Neatly set trees

Dropping leaves of

Bark no yawp

In whatever language

You now speak

I am tree

You are tree

We negotiate through

Our roots / synapses

Tethered / pass on

No pass back

"Bug..." Verse 1.4 of Jigme Linpa's Revelations of Ever-present Good,

trans. Ken McLeod

Reading from Meditations (2019-2020)

https://tinyurl.com/5yv7ry32

Video of my reading from Meditations

 

From the Talmud: Elegy 20

From the Talmud

 

You are not

obligated to complete

the work but neither

are you free

to abandon it.

What work to

Talk to you

Game of telephone

Without the phone

Just me mis-

Understanding myself

As words smack

Into walls like

Tortoises who never

Stop their rowing

My flippers flip

Ignoring the obstacle

Death deals us

Power out after

The storm / Hone

Meaning “sweet soft”

Hurricane force winds

“Make perfect / complete”

In Hindi / “sharpen”

As in a knife

Sweet soft knife

A kind ethics

Cut from corrupt

Papaya’s too-sweet flesh

Campaign season: Elegy 19

Campaign season

I read your

Mother poems over

And over again

Knowing the entanglements

Of grief: you

My parents Marie

Not cardboard stand-ins

But actual absences

Opening the computer

This morning I

Saw your photographs

Smiling at me

Grown more thin

Susceptible to bronchitis

Toll of peripatetic

Travels in planes

Thinking to separate

Yourself from colleague

From niece from

Intimate opportunists one

Of whom—it seems--

Would kill you

So open so

Inclined to serve

You exited that

Door / opened another

Entered the staging

Of your death

Keep your naivete

A friend advised

When I got

Burned but was

It worth it

To stay in

Such unguarded space

Your intrepid self

Rowing past lens’s

Reach / I want

To talk to

You now about

The politics of joy!

Eyes: Elegy 18

Eyes

You were over

The moon when

Obama was elected

Now only moon

Watches you watching

The DNC from

Hereaftersville / need no

Screen no Stevie Wonder

No candidate’s son

To weep unmediated tears

Only form of honesty

That’s left / staged

As mockery this

Morning / to see

Compassion’s blade

In my father’s

Eyes too no static

A kind clarity

Clarion to us who

See in the human

Way / image after

Image all the way

Down like turtles

Holding earth for

You to look

Back from your

Moist eyes I

Miss them all

My Bodhissatva kin

Word stones: Elegy 17

 

Word stones

You wrote, Stones

Pass away, but

Words last forever.

You, completely lost

Completely found in

Names / sound stones

Stolpersteine / Stein’s

Stones words laid

Across pages like

Bricks though places

Aren’t bricks are

More diaphanous sound

(A stone’s light)

A feeling before

Emotion before act

Even a set stone

Gets acted on

When we look

Not to step

On it / another

Genocide blooms red

Under shattered concrete

Each soul a stone

Like yours thrown

Across sea water

Skipping like a child

Like your eyes

When you laughed

At the human

Comedy before it

Curdled like milk

Or office politics

 

Quoted words from "Dear Mom (IV)"

seedlings 7, Jerrold Shiroma, Editor

Sina's Garden: Elegy 16

Sina’s garden

You imagined your

Reborn mother at 2

Making mud pies

The love of eyes

That imagined her

Not in the life she

Lived with you

Fresh starts always

Include mud pies

And bloody knees

An early unawareness

Of our being

Before the mysteries

Start / you were

Sheltered by dakinis

Until the end

Did they go

On strike or leave

On holy vacations

Vacate meaning to

Empty out like

Tourists on their own

Time / though emptiness

Isn’t quite it

Except as spirit-

Mulch / tendrils

Of new growth

Peeping out / a child’s

Eye glistening curious

As a dahlia

Blossom and you

Tending your mother’s

Garden / reborn in

A place I don’t

See on any map

Though my heart’s GPS

Sends occasional pings

Lilith's odd morning

"Hey Jarod!" I yell to my favorite _Lilith Walks_ "character"; "like my shirt?" It's my new somewhat psychedelic Harris / Walz teeshirt. "I love that guy!" he says back. "Other guy is an ass plug. And Trump? OMG, I keep telling my mother what an awful person he is, but my aunty used to own Heald College, and Kamala shut that one down. I want a "Ballz to the Walz" shirt, myself," he adds, amid a hail of references to podcasts and bursts of the f-word. "They're calling him Tampon Tim! But I want my intermediate school daughter to have supplies in the school bathroom." Goes on a bit about evangelicals and why they go for Trump (one belief system makes them susceptible to another.) Leans over to chat with Lilith. He's vaping, and I wonder about the smell. "Oh, it's Susan taking random pictures of me again," he protests. Gets in his car. At the stop sign, he pulls up, yelling, "What the fuuuu?" Across Hui Iwa, we see a lot of police tape, a cop, a guy from DOT. Of course I cross the street. A large patch of the fence is rolled up on the ground. In the culvert, a truck rests, upside down, beside the pig hunter contraption that now sits in shallow water. Happened at 4 a.m. No one found in the truck, which is spilling out with clothes and shoes. "The guy was being chased," a woman with her excited little boy said. "We think he ran." 

 

I asked for Uncle John outside the Temple, where several huge tour buses were parked, with more coming in (backwards, as required). "I want to show him my shirt," I explained. Well, there he was behind me, talking to a guy in a wrong-colored Dodgers cap in a truck. "Oh no!" he says. "Well, I'm going down with the ship; Trump's my man." I said Trump had nothing to say, so he said Harris had nothing to say. Four years of this awful economy. "She gave an economic speech yesterday," I said, to silence. "But she's been in charge for four years!" Anyway, we fist bumped and Lilith and I walked to the top of the cemetery, met a young couple from Buffalo, NY (talked grain elevators and the old train station), and then returned.

 

"See you tomorrow!" John shouted from the crowd of tourists. The upside down truck still in the culvert, a lone policeman kept watch over the yellow tape. Someone would know what to do.

 

Failed story / Elegy 15

 

A failed story is a poem

Buddhist stories end

With what we

Had thought would

Happen not happening

Teacher angered by

Dirty dishes left

In communal sink

Realizes she left

Them there / wisdom

Of embarrassment /

Your story ends

But why it ends

Where it ends

Or began where

It began can’t

Be told / narrator’s

Unreliable and you’re

Dead / need to know

Basis when there’s

Nothing to know

Is all tease

She in jail on five

Counts, including theft

Of your car

Which she drove

To a friend’s

House afterward

A count is number

But not plot

At least not

In the sense

Of story making

Sense of arc

Flat-lined unreadable

To whom story

Is told cannot

Tell it back

Do not ask

It tells for thee

Asterism sale on _I and Eucalyptus_

 

https://asterismbooks.com/product/i-and-eucalyptus-susan-m-schultz

 

I'm thrilled with how the book turned out. Lavender Ink in New Orleans (Bill Lavender's press) did a wonderful job with the text and full-page color photographs of the tree.

 

Or, get straight from the press: https://www.lavenderink.org/site/announcements/meet-eucalyptus/?v=76cb0a18730b

Shoulder blade: Elegy 14

 

Shoulder Blade

How do we talk

To our dead /

Like trauma they

Interrupt us

Our daily routine

Not ritual but

Remorse instead

Of recovery / we’d

Enjoy making memes

This election year

Deft take-downs

Of shark-fearing

He-man / his under

ling who doesn’t

Mean to be mean

To cats / I fell

In a dark hole

Of right wing fantasy

Social media samsara

Can’t get it out of

My head / knife

In my shoulder blade

Is metaphor (I

Tell my daughter)

Or displaced wound

Taken from or for you

Whose written voice

Sits in Signal

Like an egg

To be cracked

When I want

To be strong

Then shatters into

White and yolk

Fore-conversation

As we are

Now after it

Watching your killer on vimeo / Elegy 13

 

Watching Your Killer on Vimeo

I watch her inter-

View on tape: VA

She says / is

The space between

Us / living and dead

It comes from

The land / care

Taken of graves

And between us

“VA is everywhere”

Albert Wendt

Writes / after I

Published a book

Whose title offended

You / I visited his

Office (Kuykendall 511)

Asked him what

To do / given the word

That begins with “c”

In English / the author

Also American

Hadn't known

And while Wendt

Understood your concern

Said cultures change

They're remade

By us / as he had done /

Reflected through the lens

She says on Vimeo

Of her perception

Drawn to taboo

Tattoos like those

On her hands

Those who act

I can imagine

Rewind that image

Back to her theater

Back to her

Teaching / back to

Her her her her her her

Ten minutes up

Return a stranger

And more than

Strange that you

Can’t hear my

Words / bent screen

On wood house

God is ugly

Elizabeth writes / so

We won’t identify

With him / we

Who are beautiful

As her words

Were until time

Ends / we tend

Your memory grave

Ashes to ashes

Word upon word

Upon word upon

Unmortared rock

 

 

with thanks to Elizabeth Robinson

Life in Hawai`i: Kamala style

 

Life in Hawai`i: when I wear my "[comma] la" teeshirt, people think it reads "[`okina] la." So let's hear it for `OKINA-LA for president! 

 

Life in Hawai`i, part 2. When you wear your new lime green tee shirt that reads, "you think you / just / fell out of a / coconut tree" and two people who read it respond, "that happened to me when I was a kid." 

 

[K Harris quotes her mother saying this to her, with the following conclusion: "You exist in the context of all in which you live and what came before you."]

 

The Lost Word: Elegy 12

The Lost Word

Several times in

The night I looked

For the word

“Succulent” / failed

To find it / though I’d

Heard it yesterday

Seen one with green

Springs near the cat /

Mr. Mu / it’s

Not that the past

Is so far away

But the present

Is so close

You move in

Both directions / I pull

My bucket up /

The sodden ferns

Frizzy on trees

Hanging like dreads

Another kind of

Reverence to read

Not as landscape

Reflects us but

As we do it

Droplet to droplet

First here / then

There / transparent

Metronome with

No sense of time

At the border: Elegy 11

At the border

Not your killer

But the woman

Who killed you

Pleads innocent to the court

Admitted that she

--No, the devil--

Used the knife

As if the devil

Were other /

Migrant who crosses

Borders / getting all

The free stuff

Trucked back south

The knife cut you

Open like pages

Of a book

You wanted to read

A carriage driver in cahoots

With demon-logic

Kindly stopped for you

The event plays again

In my ribs’ cell block

I think you’d feel for

Her / tangled in samsara

Of self and colonialism

Who knows which

Jealous of you

Dear borderless pilgrim

Ka`u Desert Hike: Elegy 10

 

Ka`u Desert Hike

You know how happy I am /

Sina / when I pump my arm /

Asking truckers to honk

Their deep horns

At my Harris sign

I waved it for you

Yesterday on Highway 11

By the orchid place

With older ladies

Many with cats

I sense you’re pleased

Out there beyond bardo

Walls in whatever form

You now assume

I’ll look for you

The desert hides nothing

But blue and yellow lava

'Ōhi'a with chipped bark

Maybe to catch the rain

Two dead white trees

Embracing where Jill

And I walked with her

GPS / nice to know

Where you are / can’t

Follow footprints

Of travelers overcome

By ash / many lack toes

Some tiny / one child

Foot in soft brown

Set ash / we put our

Boot prints down

Not for History

But to notice on

Our return / the quick

Histories of us /

The record of you

A print / I return to read

Your elegy to your

Mother / I ask your

Daughter for a photo /

Not knowing which

Or why looking at it

Leaves such a trace