a waking mind aware of being here nor there

(or, mental amusement before seeing the light of day)

I am older than the selves of life leap-frogging along the making of time and place.

I am before the restless generations of becoming and dying and becoming. Before the chaos, the watery womanly demos of unthinking flesh and bone generating the moon time. Before the history of fallings from the womb and returnings to its vaginal elections. Before the breeding laying beneath the seeing of me alone unpartnered, uncoupled from the frenzy of fucking before corpses of stone deadly silence.

No music without the drumming of knowing nothing, knowing everything in the dance. The eros of gorging, of nippled firming of magical wands, then seed spewing and lactation. Who understands the middle churning between the alpha and omega, the bearing of souls from wet wombs spasming the vibrating streaming of being in and out of touching the accordian stops and starts. The attuning done by ear, not seeing the measurement in darkness but in light.

What withstands the onslaught of viral memories of how to suck the energy out of nothing and be such being. Rosy redness sainted nick clauses of coded connection, spitting of flakes of blood frozen in falling from night sky of the womb, here and not here, there and not there. Which is it after all?

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America’s humanist: Studs Terkel

Just finished watching a wonderful tribute to Studs Terkel on C-SPAN2’s BookTV which is introduced here at their website. Studs Terkel died on October 31, 2008, at age ninety-six, having lived long enough to see much of his humanistic hopes for the U.S. re-energized by the campaign and election of Barack Obama as our 44th President. Here’s a resourceful website dedicated to Terkel’s life and work which is an integral part of the Chicago History Museum’s online media. Studs Terkel’s person and productive dedication to the humanity of neighbors and citizens continue to remind me and others to listen for the voices of people who live and love and dream in common ways most often drowned out by the pronouncements of presidents, generals, and other proponents of the ways of the mighty among us. In today’s many troubled world, his message of social solidarity is at a premium.

that scent

(written on Wednesday, January 9, 2008, at 8 o’clock in the evening)

He knew that scent.
She’d been here
not long ago
looking for him
to share a pillow
with her.

She fell asleep
he guessed,
tired and alone,
then woke and grabbed
her keys and left.

He lay his head
where she’d laid hers,
the pillow case grown cold
without her.
He knew that scent
she’d left for him
to dream on.

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just a momentary dream

(written on Sunday, July 8, 2007; immediately after “time plays no reverse”)

Where river cuts its bend,
through solid rock
lifted by land’s rise,
there is no turning back
to primal where or when.
Nature tells no tale of comfort
but harsh history of irrepressible
re-mattering after re-mattering.

We may stand near canyon’s edge
hand in hand for a time
full of promises we keep
when all seems still
beneath our feet
but the completion we feel
is just a momentary dream
in the time of rushing water
through rock.

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the unkindest cut

(written on Tuesday, March 1, 2005, at daybreak)

His billfold seemed more youthful and less patriotic
since it had been on a low-income, no plastic diet.
Its breath smelled less the chew of greasy greenbacks
and more the leather holster of a lone cowboy.

It didn’t come ‘round much anymore
to salute the American Dream,
but stayed behind, shy of company
that used to call on business
before stocks fell and depression struck
and work was hard to find.

But the unkindest cut was
not lost portraits of tendered presidents,
nor demagnetized swipes of other peoples’ money,
nor forgotten deals on cards of calling past.
Gone were love’s pictures without a kiss goodbye.

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