A Fly on the Ground
A Found Poem And A Poem About Finding
(with a wink and a nod to my sister who knows the art of finding)
“At the age of forty-eight
On the verge of divorce, Rita left
An elegant life in LA to follow
Her dream.” I read these words
On the back cover of the library book
I just checked out on my lunch break.
Fall leaves crunch beneath my sand-colored clogs
As the line echos “Rita left …
To follow her dream …” What is my dream?
I ask my self. What is my dream? I ask the book.
What is my dream? I ask the leaves
That scatter to reveal the hairy black legs
Of an over-sized fly, plastic, grounded — Odd
I think as I walk past. “Excuse me,” the fly
Calls out. “You asked a question. Aren’t you going to listen
To the answer?” What can I do? I retrace my steps
Palm the fly, place it on the edge of my desk
When I return to work. “Okay,”
I say. “I’m listening.”
The Spider
Maybe they were dreams you forgot
Slipped from memory
Fell between the dowels
Of your bedstead
Landed like little black eggs
In the corner where you
Admired the tidy pile
Then the steady hatch
Multiples of eight
Needle- thin legs
Balletic in their precision
The beauty of black
Lines definite and cold.
If so, you called me forth. Fed me
So I’m yours. Darling.
Don’t run
Now that I’m grown
Larger than you dared
Imagine. I’ve come to claim you.
Stitch my desire to your skin
Your towering legs
Endless arms.
– Weave, spin, create
We could play it that way.
Or else admit your pain.
Your fear. The delight we share.
Leaps Tall Buildings … Without Ever Leaving Her Bed
Enter Dream Girl:
Caped crusader of the world
Of vision, premonition,
Randomly fired neuronal activation. Oracle, oneirophiliac, offerer
Of answers to any question that you’ve dragged into sleep:
Change jobs? Choose a suitor? Get a degree?
With a flip of her cape and another of her flowing tresses – flip, flip, flip,
She’ll send forth a dream
Replete with answers (though disguised in symbol and forgetfulness).
Find Dream Girl in her nighttime palace
Beneath a crystal dome, lit by the gleam of midnight’s star-freckled cheeks.
Her sheets are stitched from moon dust and memory,
Her forehead is dotted with an emerald or sapphire
Glowing from her never-closing third eye.
You fly in your dreams from time to time? She flies
Asleep or awake, up to her Pantheon of gods and helpers:
Morpheus, Phobetor and Phanteus … and Daddy of them all, Hypnos.
Then there’s Jung, delver into the depths of consciousness
Explorer of the universe of the universal. She’s attended by angels
Of creative genius: actors, artists and writers,
Who make dreams incarnate and shower them on sleepless mortals,
Thirsty for imaginary waters. She’s a cosmonaut of consciousness,
Champion of creative solutions to plaguing problems.
She can leap tall buildings without ever leaving her bed,
Is beacon of truth and guidance,
Maps mysteries and invites you
To do the same.
Dictation
My fingers tap tap tap at the typewriter keys
A heavy black machine, skeletal keys pecking
Wildly at a winding ribbon of midnight’s ink
Words embossed unevenly on onionskin
Periods punch, comma tails fade as they curl into sleep
Parentheses, I decide, can earn their keep
Hooking each end of my smile in place
This is happy work, at a wide oak table
Fellow poets and scribes at my elbows,
Filling every seat
In a room lit by the strange yellow
White light of vision beyond vision
Where we tap, type, scratch
Words into being, in this steno pool
Taking dictation from the mouths of dreams.
Pastry and Conversation with Cindy on a Night When the Veils are Thin
She looks good
Spiky hair, frosted,
The way it was between bouts
Of chemo. I call out to her
And we take seats in some cafe
Where we eat pastries and get caught up.
“How long can you stay?” I ask.
It’s good having her back
Talking, the way we used to in the office
When we’d sit at the lunch table
Stuff envelopes, complain about the boss.
She’s doing that now: complaining about her boss.
“In heaven? You have a boss there?” I ask.
She nods. I begin to wonder.
“You did make it to heaven, right — “
She brushes the question aside.
“Heaven basically sucks,” she says.
She tells me she has a little house there, a job that almost pays the bills,
and lots of people to talk to.
“Then death is just like life,” I say.
I’m pleased to hear it. I want to keep doing this
Living thing. Sitting in my dining room, say,
Looking past a vase of yellow lillies
Out the window where a chipmunk scurries up a pine.
“Pretty much.” Cindy exhales the words like a mouthful of smoke,
“Except without your loved ones,” she adds.
“That part really does suck,” I agree.
I take a bite of my Danish. “You’re sure you’re in Heaven?”
I want to ask, but Cindy gets up. Her boss only gave her so much time off,
she needs to get back. That damn boss again!
Just like always.
Day of the Dead
Death is in the night.
Death is at your back.
Death makes her naked threats.
Death will stop you cold.
You are in this dream.
The dream continues.
Setting Intentions
First step: Engage the senses:
I smell the varnish on the floor and memories of sweat in the air.
Feel my sneakered feet and hear my step squeak as I run, step, hop across the court.
Second step: I visualize the shot. The ball swooshing through the hoop.
And then, having thus prepared, I move to step three:
I try, toss, fail.
Intending doesn’t work, I think.
As I open my eyes,
I notice that my back was to the hoop the whole time.
I was throwing a frisbee, not a ball.
I back up a step: turn, face the hoop, basketball in hand this time.
Now, I think, I’ve got a plan.
I’ve got a shot.
Cut
ZOOM IN:
The Gardener aims a pair of clippers at a single blade of grass.
ENTER:
Another pair of hands. They push the Gardener’s hands
Such that instead of the grass, the Gardener hacks an entire lush branch from a rose bush.
PAN TO:
A patch of sky seen through the empty space, bare of foliage now.
The CAMERA LINGERS on this emptiness.
DIRECTOR’S Q&A:
Q: How can one film the disappointment and the resignation? The impact of the loss?
A: Let the image speak for itself.
Q: Is this a morality tale?
FADE OUT
My Dream of the Pattern Store Closing
Each pattern slipped long ago into its own paper sleeve
Decorated with a pastel washed and ink-lined vision
Of the future in this skirt or suit
One for every size and stage of life
Careful maps of manufacture
On brittled paper, too fragile now
Even to survive a pen’s crisp tip.
One can understand why the proprietor
Is loathe to give them up, pack them into cartons
Release them to the antique dealer who will admire
Their anachronistic charm, or simply resign them to the curb.
He is as dusty as his dusty shelves, tired of tending
And too tired to give up. People have come to help,
Young people who can imagine but not yet know
The dejection, the shame.
He doesn’t want their good intentions, their optimism.
He’s comfortable with the discomfort of the dust
He knows. But oh, the letting go.
In This Dream
This day could have been a dream: I walked through the stone gates of an ancient-looking outdoor theater and crossed an emerald-green lawn to find a gathering of poets under a stand of pine. Sun misted through drenched trees and chipmunks scurried up and down the trunks as the poets read and a man strummed his guitar, bringing a sudden rain with his words. In the midst of it all, I read poems, but the poems were really dreams … or were the dreams poems? I couldn’t quite tell … Anyway, everyone in the audience had a dream to tell and their words danced together and formed this poem:
IN THIS DREAM
A Group Poem by the Audience at the Florence Poetry Society Festival:
Look Park, Florence, Massachusetts, October 4, 2009
Recorded by Tzivia
In this dream I’m stepping onto the train, following Emma, who had already stepped off the train.
In this dream, my friend was doing the hula hoop
In this dream I am punching pillows in the local strip mall.
I am tired, even in sleep.
In this dream I am murdering my ex-husband verbally — with my bare hands.
In this dream I am being attacked by a wild horse.
In this dream I am spending a lot of time with a fellow worker.
I am flirting with an old boyfriend — it is a bit awkward because I am now married.
In this dream I find a hidden room in the house I grew up in.
I have to match up shoes for firefighters to wear.
I am lying on a mattress of dead body parts — which poke me.
In this dream I am walking by the river and see a large green lizard in a pine tree.
I see a small boy trapped in a box car.
My big sisters still think I’m a baby.
In this dream I am running through the woods and I jump up and start flying above the trees and fields and everything –
In this dream my stomach feels funny.
In this dream I am at a zoo in the nocturnal animal’s house and a zookeeper is showing the crowd a blond bat.
In this dream
I was in a play.
In this dream.
In this dream.
