SAY HELLO
Out on the high
Way hitching
To nirvana
Ginger and curry
Pasted on my open
Palms
I wake up
In San Diego
The desert rolls up
To the street curb
In a gold limo
You step out like a star
Meanwhile the parakeets
are parked in the palm trees
In front of Von’s
They wave
A gold-blue salute
Then disappear
Into the flat blank
California sky
PS I am here on the left
Coast and you back east
Up to the hilt
In snow
Say Hello
Watering this small plant
covered with road dust, half dead in tire tracks
and gasoline fumes, I forgot to tell you about
what is here and elsewhere,
How as a child driving in the car at night
I would lean into the immensity of my father
And feel suddenly safe, fear falling from me
Like water, and I would remember the overgrown
Thicket behind our house near where my ma hung out the laundry
And where sometimes I would go to feel something,
Anything in the scattering sky, wondering
why I was forever being born
How way past older now
Rebounding from the usual flinty remarks
I wished for before, emerging in the unseasonable
heat, looping up and doubling down and across the arbitrary
Freeway , I come across these blazing sparks of memory:
Arc flung up against the baffling sky
Coyote man notorious
He’s doin’ the precarious
The new dance craze
Far from hilarious
He thinks that he’s uproarious
This trickster makes us furious
He out slicks the weary us
He’s doin’ the precarious
The new dance craze
Leapin’ from that snowbank
Wavin’ that icicle
He’s doin’ the precarious
That’s why we call him dangerous
He’s laffin’ from the rafter
This bad/ass master
Master of disaster
He’s doin’ the precarious
The slick dance craze
What is unfinished
Is all ways unfinished
And what is finished
Begins again
And the green
And the green and the green and the green
And the green goes over and over
Suddenly over.
Like that. Then you ask again
When can we begin?
Then: there is something
I wanted. Here. Fiery beauty.
Full bodied. Lucid.
Then. Wants to be small.
Obscured. Then. Wants disappeared.
Then. Wants to wake up.
Could this possibly
Be snow fever ? Then again. Get
Going. Then. Go out.
I’m out here
Waiting for you
You’ll find me
After lunch
At the Allalin
Out in the garden
Under the glacier
At the long table
The red one
Near the pine trees
Or if not here
I’ll be up on
The grassy bank
Near the near side
of the Crystale
You’ll find me
Waiting for you
As you enter
On the poetry bus
Chanting
“Dig in the dirt now
It won’t hurt now”
As we throw away or gather in
an image or a question or a red thread
As we speak our dreams
from the heat to the hear
To the heart to the hearth
To the middle of mud to
the first circle the creation cycle
We listen we hold on
Tomorrow we will do the same
We do not disappear
We eat our words
They are nutricious and satisfying
Here in the sunlight under the glacier
And we am grateful
So we bow to the mountains
We bow to the sky
We bow to the great momma
Who’s happening by
We praise the poems
that make us cry
Or laugh or sigh or wander
Or wander off
When we’ve had enough
We praise the one that takes too long
The one that comes into us
Like a song
The one you never wrote
The one that catches in your throat
The one that makes you yawn
The one you suddenly own
The one you dare
The one you try for the first time
The one that arrives
As surprise or this morning at sunrise
The understanding one
The one that gives you rant for the rope
The one that got away
The one that catches in your throat
The one stuck in the craw
The one for the crow the one for the crew
The laconic one the ironic one the one that says nope
You see me/ I’m here
I’m your poet laureate
I have my lasso
So don’t worry
You can’t go wrong
I’m here
At the garden’s edge
Like an egg on the horizon
And if it rains
We’ll make a contingency plan
Maybe inside near the bar
Or upstairs in my room
We’ll find a place
So don’t go away
I’ll be there
Will you be there?
Ok then
Ok
It is a bitch no break
A purple mysterious bitch
to make a poem in this Library
The ghosts of poets escape book covers
And hover over my shoulder
And snitch to the god of the dead.
Their words are not much read here.
Their memories rust in the mold.
I am alone and cold.
Besides, I am covered with the cloak of Jah
All the gods I follow are women
And they are all living gods
When I seek just one
I look into the eyes of my mother
Or the eyes of my lover.
–Dia Ajanaku
Catch ol’ coyote
Doin’ the hilarious
Down by the curious
You’re the one
I searched the world for
the one I clothed
In rags and feathers
And mysterious beads
from sunken treasures
Yes you’re the one
I followed home
when papa told me
No, absolutely
No.
You’re the one
Who keeps me waiting
In frightening ports of entry,
Pulls me under, pulls
Off my outerwear, slips
Into me soundlessly
Effortlessly
Lisps
Lullabies
Older than thyme
Or mama
Older than trauma
Or boat of the dream
Older than knife
Or seek a new life
Older than shine
Or thine
In time with
Mine
Yes
You’re the one
Blame it on coyote
Howlin’ down some mean ice-slicks
Turnin’ some snow tricks