Puzzle Box
A puzzle box from Japan —
a few pieces of wood that slide around until
you find a little box inside.
But the puzzle box I am thinking of
has many more compartments and pieces to move.
The first side slides up,
the piece underneath moves easily and
here is a large compartment.
In it there is a little plastic figure of a brown person.
Then the opposite side slides up
and a quote from Kafka on a little slip of paper —
War is the result of a monstrous lack of imagination.
There is a false floor in this compartment.
Here, there are little legs, arms and heads
representing 40,000 people killed in Palestine and Israel.
Then you start crying,
and the top slides away.
You may want to find the reason
why people kill each other
though greed seems to play a big role.
When that top slides there is a little drawer
underneath that has burnt into the wood itself —
Peace is a need – Herbert Brün
Then a side piece slides and reveals a drawer that has
tiny pieces of black licorice
as if death could be sweet
but now you are crying
with however a tiny piece of licorice in your mouth.
How could this happen?
The intrigue of the box mixes with
the vast regret for human unkindness.
In the last drawer you find,
an unexpected aroma
from incense in a temple so small
you almost can’t see it
and that is where hope begins.
Bones And Weather
I can be chilled to the bone,
but not heated.
I can be punctuated by rain.
Notice how just a little wind makes for a deeper silence.
Like a gentle rain,
between the sounds of drops falling
there’s a gap, a punctuation,
but a big rain is a run-on sentence
and it never goes up, they say.
Really, it is always going up
just massively and silently.
Evaporation whispers up
just like gravity pulls us down
also in silence.
Something is lifting us continuously and mysteriously,
all the rain becoming clouds.
The sun drawing us up along with flowers and trees.
“As the flowers turn toward the sun,
By the dint of a secret heliotropism,
The past strives to turn toward that sun
Which is rising in the sky of history.” (W. Benjamin)
Articulations punctuate the bones,
like turning points in history,
bringing lightness and movement
through the darkest places and times.
Everything opening and striving up
to drink the sky.
Central Kitchen Poem
Just the steam
from the coffee pot
on the troubled forehead
soothes the mind.
The fruit from a vine
is your messenger.
In some rooms
no one is kind.
Roots eat the tree,
soil too hot
for the happiness
we wish to find.
Now here’s a soup line –
simple, the pleasure
of being fed –
troubles unwind.
For a time
what’s tender
is so touching
you are crying.
It’s a feast,
the beast of capitalism
burns up
just in time
for no more war
no more stupidity.
We tasted your world.
We want to leave it behind.
Cesar Vallejo Speaks
This is my love
with two sunrises.
It came over the 3 horizons
with distastefulness
for what doesn’t fly.
This is my love
with 4 disappointments:
bad teachers,
forgetful señors,
breadfruit,
governing demons.
There went my love
with glorious fanfares,
March music
April warmth
May times June.
I wish the multiplication
of failures
would not take place.
That time times time
would equal open space
for at least
a final love.
The Earth Makes a Shoulder of Itself
The earth makes a shoulder of itself,
like the lungs make the arms
the river makes the banks for water
the heart makes vessels for blood,
arteries for the spirit.
Golden nerves for flow of mind –
This is all the one body
we find ourselves in.
Love makes new pathways
in the universal traveling road show
we call you and me.
Poetic Advice
Let it fall off the bone,
fall as leaves from the tree inside of you.
It is not hard.
A word emerges, sits down
spreads its coattails
and begins to play.
Then it speaks to you
not you to it
with its notes and its music
a song that touches the heart
a heart that is true
because watered with tears
and, of course, blood –
Wounded and healed
Wounded and healed
until it just has to say something.
And what that is
is poetry,
not necessarily great
but real.
