Carrara

  

Narrow streets,

Hot night, yellow light

Smell; hot, sulphur, garbage, bread

Try to sleep.

Voices invade the open window.

Don’t these people ever sleep?

 

Music, mopeds.

The streets look like indoors, a set, a stage.

The sky almost not there.

 

            A blue ribbon between saffron walls.

 

Red flowers, wrought iron, jasmine.

Piazza, fountain.

Voices, soft and clear like music.

An invisible boy sings “Ave Maria”, 

Angelic.

 

A bridge, a niche, a statue.

I am here.

 

 

 

 

I.

 

Unhappy man.

When the world ended

It was long gone to you

I think.

 

Uncertainty rules in this case.

Everyone has a different theory.

Endlessly debated, analyzed.

Nothing finalized, but the act itself. 

The individual’s guilt is collective-

Embraced and denied.

 

Amidst flowers,

fresh to decay,

We cry.

 

 

 

 

II.

  

I changed the water every other day,

Following the florist’s instructions faithfully.

Still the smell of quickly rotting stems and leaves,       

The water thick and slightly green.

 

Some I dried, mixing roses

With roses from other occasions-

Births, anniversaries, and days

When I just wanted roses.

 

 

 

 

Ode to a Dog Drowned by her Owner

 

 Upon me, walking my dog,

beloved, pampered, loyalty taken for what is

and seeing on the beach,

limp, lying in tragedy, drowned-

the small like and unlike beast,

unknown by me,

but perhaps loved by the crazy man in handcuffs.

Who knows what happened?

Not me, cushioned by comfort, family, dog,

The reliable sanity of my own mind.

 

Who knows?

Perhaps voices of old schizoid gods, saying,

“Drown the beast for we are jealous gods.

Perhaps her kibble was too dear for his small income,

lack of where with all and societal care;

suffering his own betrayals of mind and government.

 

Certainly her small, loose, not yet stiff body looked well fed;

not abused, perhaps even loved.

Certainly she loved him.

 

As his hands pushed her under,

Did she struggle?

Did she regret her trust?

Did the wolf emerge to bite, to fight?

Or did she think his will must be right?

 

Surrendering to this push into darkness,

this wet, cold, robbing of breath,

this choking out of all that is

everything contained in one small body.

 

This World.

This Universe.

This insignificant me.

 

 

 

Wild Child

  

Child, wild, sweet as wild as strawberries.

Fierce like lions from a child’s book.

You burst unwritten upon the world.

 

Lion and wild strawberry,

Not yet written.

Not chapter, not line.

A spoken poem.

 

And who will consume whom?

Will you gobble up the world,

Before the world gobbles you?

 

 

 

 

Not A Mirror

 

 They say you are my mirror image;

I can’t see it.

You are like myriad different people.

 

The familiar lift of an eyebrow from an aunt,

The expression of your father,

The chin of your grandmother, 

Joined together to become unfathomable,

Subterranean, deep as ocean,

A mystery, and in the next breath,

 

Shallow with an adolescent’s self-absorption.   

No thought beyond the next pair of shoes, 

Or easiest experience.

 

You are a loyal friend,

Secret Keeper,

Pact Holder,

Never Betrayer,

White Liar,

Sibling Tormenter and Best Friend.

 

You are as foreign as another language,

As distant as another time.

When you were three, stepping on a feather.

You cried, ”I’ve killed a fairy!”.

Impossible to console.

When you were twelve, you held my hand in shopping malls

 

Not my mirror image,

You are as dear as my next breath

And closer than my own skin.