I am

You ask me what I am
So I will tell you this

I am the breeze that whispers
on a heavy summer night
I am the face in the copper moon
that floats in a cobalt sea
I am the damp taste of the air
moments after rain

I am the salt inside the tears
that fill and burn your eyes
I am the footsteps in the night
that rouse you from your sleep
I am the throbbing in the blood
that rushes through your veins
I am longing in the cry
inside your unborn child
I am the words you do not speak
that linger in the air


I am the soundwaves of your favorite song
I am the grinds in your morning cup
I am the darkness that creeps in slowly
I am the light that follows

I am the inverse, the converse, the outside and the inside
I am up and I am down
I am presence and I am absence
I am sight and I am blindness

You ask where I have gone
I never even left

For my mother, who is always with me

To Raymond Carver

I wish I could have met you
But what would I have said?
That I hear your voice, it echoes
Across the expanse
And uneven terrain
Of distance and time

What did your face look like, as you wrote the lines
That rattle and shake my bones?

Did you linger over verses
Did you read your words aloud
Did it come to you in a torrent
Or silver drops of rain?

Or perhaps it's not your soul
The secret those letters tell
Perhaps your words have tricked me
You used them to conceal
The essence of yourself

For a Friend

Sometimes people don't know what to do, exactly
Or how to give you what you need
They want to
I will come to you, if you need company
I will listen, if you want to shout at me
Or, if you so desire
I will leave you be

For D

Objects in the Rear View Mirror May Be Closer Than They Appear

Once
Your arms were so light
Ebullient
Eyes wide
In them I saw wonder

Many miles traversed
Distance marked
We wandered blindly through the years

Once
You returned, again
Removed
Eyes narrowed
I was relieved to see
A glimmer still remained

For E and Q

The Maiden

My mother's hands move slowly, deliberately
Across keys the color of bone
Faltering

A slight hesitation
A difficult chord
One note is not quite right

In the distance
A Maiden stands
She does not notice

Time has brazenly
Declared its war
A battle long since lost

The notes rise
For just that instant
The world itself stops

For my grandmother

Heaven

Last night I dreamed I was in heaven
You were there
Head thrown back,
Laughing
I tried to capture that moment
It drifted away
Ephemeral as the breeze

Today as I walked in the park
I pretended I was in Germany
Where I had visited
Some time ago

I stared up at the periwinkle sky
The trees
So high above
Whispered to one another
In a language only they could understand

For my father

On Immortality

Milan Kundera once said "A man can take his own life. But he cannot take his own immortality". And as I write this, I prove his point.

I was having a conversation with L the other day, and because she is a writer, I asked her a question that has been plaguing me recently: why does the artist create? Is it because he or she has to - because it's as essential to survival as water and food - or is it because he or she wants to leave something concrete behind, to make a statement about his life, to give herself existence beyond the cold, indifferent concrete of the grave?

"I guess it's a little bit of both", L said. And I suppose the urge to create is a double-edged sword. Because no matter what a writer writes, or a painter paints, or a musician composes, there is the impulse to create more. Once you decide to leave a voice behind, isn't it vital to express your sentiments the way you intended? Even if others interpret and misinterpret, as they inevitably will, you don't want to make a mistake with what you say. You want to be true to yourself. You can't fuck up your own immortality. Because it will exist long after you're gone. And really,
it's difficult to get it right. Or maybe impossible.

I very much want to write a book in my lifetime, but if you asked me why, I couldn't tell you. Isn't the act of writing itself enough? Why is it necessary to have something published in order to feel satisfied? And even if I do, will it suffice? Won't I have more to say as I age, learn, blunder, get up again? Will I worry that the voice I leave behind will in the end betray me? Maybe Kundera would have told me, "A man reckons with his immortality. But he forgets to reckon with death."

Harper Lee and Margaret Mitchell, two of my favorite authors, each wrote only one book in their respective lifetimes. It has been the subject of speculation why these two women never published anything again. When asked, Harper Lee simply answered, "I said everything I wanted to say". Or maybe she didn't actually say that. Maybe that's a fiction passed down; the blessing or curse of her act of creation (immortality) and its lover (as Kundera said), death. Yet still, I wonder how she did it.

Maybe what we leave behind is necessarily illusory because even in life, it's not possible to see things clearly, and therefore not possible to express exactly we meant. We can't
quite convey what we don't understand.

In "Both Sides Now", Joni Mitchell says "I've looked at life from both sides now/ From win and lose and still somehow/ It's life's illusions I recall/ I really don't know life at all." I would tend to agree.


Excerpts from "Immortality" by Milan Kundera and "Both Sides Now" by Joni Mitchell.

To Things Not Seen

The subway car
Propels me through time and space
Screeching halt
Passengers move in a mindless frenzy
A living, breathing, shapeless entity
The conductor undoubtedly
Behind some door
Existence without a face

Ode to a Shattered Wine Glass

Fractured
Innumberable crystalline pieces
No two quite the same
Scattered

Some destined to draw blood
Others swept away by dusty bristles
The blue plastic dustpan
Their purgatory

Certain fragments
Will find their way to beaches
Smoothed over by oceans and the apathy of time
Only to be picked up by a precocious child
Grabbing the seaglass from the cool, wet sand

I know of no glue potent enough to reconstruct
My Ikea glassware
Yet still, I gather the shards

The B Side

Last night I went to a concert with my friend L. The performer, Lance Horne, sang a variety of songs, most of which were entertaining. But there was one that resonated with me, in the dim blue lights of the small and intimate concert hall . It was called "The B Side", the story of a man whose lover had left him. Although I probably don't do it justice in paraphrasing, the man in the song likened himself - and his life - to the B Side of an album. Always there, ever present, rarely played. The songs that never make it to the top of the charts, the collection of melodies that remains, waiting and hoping that someone will finally, truly hear what it has to say. The B Side is certain that one day, even if it is never favored, someone will make sense of its myriad of notes and lyrics. Someone has to. Its existence will be given meaning. And so it waits.

Yesterday at work I was reading a poem called "Rememberance" by my favorite poet, Rainer Maria Rilke. It goes like this:

And you wait, keep waiting for that one thing
which would infinitely enrich your life:
the powerful, uniquely uncommon,
the awakening of dormant stones,
depths that would reveal you to yourself.

In the dusk you notice the book shelves
with their volumes in gold and in brown;
and you think of far lands you journeyed,
of pictures and of shimmering gowns
worn by women you conquered and lost.

And it comes to you all of a sudden:
That was it! And you arise, for you are
aware of a year in your distant past
with its fears and events and prayers.

And then it occurred to me this morning, in the subway station with its ceaseless humming and faceless throngs: the B Side. In a sense, aren't we all "waiting for tomorrow to come/For that train to come running 'round the bend" (as Springsteen said in "Better Days")? The promise of the future. Fame, glory, wealth, love, excitement, recognition, healing, freedom from our demons, clarity, understanding. That one thing - it's out there - it has to be!

Rilke's words, so powerful to me, transcend time and space. I wish I could have met him. I wish I could have told him - though I am sure that the right words would have failed me - that once, at least for single, powerful, inimitable moment in my life, I heard the B Side playing loud and clear, and realized that it's been the side that's really been playing all along. Because the B side is life. Humanity. Hope. Desperation. Mistakes. Forgiveness. Ceaselss yearning.

That was it!

Yet still I wait.