Last Week of September (Haikus) (9/27-9/29/10)
Contrast
Autumn leaves, they look
so strange against haze and mist
and September gray.
*
Not Raining
Moisture hangs aloft,
clings to clothes and grazes eyes,
but doesn’t quite fall.
*
Heat Wave Washes Out
The chill rolls in now
after days of stifling heat.
Once more I can breathe.
*
Smells
The stink of low tide
makes me miss the smell of farms.
But then, vice versa.
*
Pick a Side
Skies cannot decide
to weep or to hold it in.
So then—rain or don’t.
*
Duality of Climate
The wind grazes me,
I want for a sweater but
the humid says no.
*
Wishing for Life
Dried out leaves scuttle
across asphalt, leap in breeze
like frogs in the stream.
*
Meteorolithium
Weather swings to and fro,
from bleak, moody gray and chill
to stark, manic heat.
*
Sunblind
My eyes have been trained
out of seeing in this light.
Everything is glare.
*
Bad Houseguest
Indian Summer
has arrived late, crashed parties,
worn out its welcome.
Song of One Fish in the Sea (9/27/10)
I can never get enough
of the glorious agony of love.
Infatuation is my favorite drug.
The irrational passion
that I am entrapped in
with no desire for an out.
I want you to torture me again
with naught but your smile and presence.
You are my muse and you don’t know it.
I abuse myself with you.
Maybe someday I’ll see this through
but for now I’m content to smolder.
I am caught, I writhe on the line,
and thoughts of you possess all my time.
There are some who worry on my ensnared mind
but I love nothing better
than to pine away and wither.
I will blossom again much better
under the agony of the sun.
Saltwater (9/20/10)
Some miseries
are beautiful.
Pristine.
Like falling water:
immersing,
nurturing,
at once
while drowning.
It slides down my face,
hangs on my chin
gathers in my lids.
In the heaving
of my chest,
an exercise.
In the blood
that pounds
and floods.
In straining
bridging tendons.
In trembling muscles.
I want no pity,
no worry
though I’m weeping.
Though the heart skips.
Though I grieve
and I need.
I savor this.
This is when
I feel myself breathe.
1945 (8/11/10)
I am unaccustomed
to a joyless rage.
A grudge
without a certain bouquet,
the scent
of bloodlust,
fascination and righteous spite.
But where is the delight
in wishing ill
of the downtrodden.
I’ve seen
flickers of your life
like distant wildfires.
It eats you alive
and regurgitates you—
you strive,
you cry,
you shrug off the bile
and say,
“This is what living is.”
And I know
of no such thing.
I am sure you are right,
to be outraged
at my lack of sight,
there is much
I cannot know
I should be knowing.
But I will take no
glancing blows
from your vicious words,
from the stir-crazy rages
you uncage upon me
I will taste no more
of copper and charcoal hypocrisy,
when you spit upon
my brain chemistry,
say, “grow up,”
and cry, “oh, I can’t breathe,
I can’t breathe!”
Life is hard
and serrated at the edges.
It has some of us to eat.
But it won’t be me,
and you will not drag me along
to the mouth of the beast.
I cannot savor
your death march,
the way your hair and skin
catches on the thorny trees.
I cannot enjoy it.
But I can close my eyes.
And I can breathe.
The Hunted (9/16/10)
Time is the most dangerous animal;
the top of the food chain,
it slaughters all life.
Insatiable and gluttonous,
it never has enough of us
and it is unstoppable.
Both the largest carnivore alive
and a being too small to sense.
There is no hiding.
There is no recompense.
In fact,
time is always devouring you.
From when you’re born
you’re in its jaws,
there is not a pause.
So why do we celebrate birth?
Why not mourn?
One more life
is prey to time,
one more victim on the Earth.
