New Poetry, March 2014

Valentine’s Day

When loneliness arises
With the harsh warmth
Of acid reflux,
And you wonder
(Without meaning
To be a bother about it)
What it was about you
That kept love away,
Be prepared
To despair of an answer.

But since you’ve asked,
Please, don’t abandon the asking.
Kindly resist the impulse
To avert your eyes
From that unmet longing
For a gentle caress.
And when you call to mind
The couple who,

With time out
Only for meals and movies,
Spent the weekend fucking,
May envy break open

To reveal the delightful shock
Of non-separation.
And may you laugh out loud
When you see that Love
Didn’t exclude you after all
(Even as they lay there naked
In the meaningful conversation
That kept them from seeing it themselves),
And may you wander home, consoled
By intimacy with all things.

If, a generation later,

They find themselves sitting together,
Say, on the fourteenth of February,
On some wintry park bench,
And one of them offers a mittened hand

To the other to hold,
May that gesture also break open

Into the same delightful shock:
That nothing was ever left out.
And may they also wander home, consoled
By similar intimacy.

Ichtheology

The sea of delusion

In which we all swim

In artless confusion,

With minds rendered dim

By misguided wishes

For all things uncouth,

Contains in it fishes

Who’ll show us the truth.

Accept the existence

Of one who swims near,

And heed his assistance,

And buy him a beer.

Future Blessing

For the dön season at the end of the Tibetan year

On that day when

Everyone hates you, and,

Helpless,

You hate them all back,

Take a breath.

Observe what it’s like

To want nothing

From anyone,

And file that memory away

For future blessing.

For when your poisonous mind

Is restored to equilibrium

By desire and ignorance,

The recollection of

That lopsided moment

May cause you to smile

With gratitude.

My Grandmother’s Baptism

In November 1910--

Or approximately then--

Her soul got saved, her sins were cleansed,

And she descended, with two friends,

Into an Ozark mountain creek,

Though it was wintry, dark, and bleak.

And shivering, and clad in white,

The three submitted to the rite

That made their girlish trio one

With Father, Holy Ghost, and Son.

As it happened, only two

Of those young girls would make it through

That chilly baptism intact

One died soon afterward, in fact.

God didn’t stop (‘twas not surprising)

Hypothermia’s arising.

When I learned, five decades thence,

Of that unhappy consequence,

This girl began to haunt my dreams.

And as my grandma sewed her seams

And shelled her peas and tatted lace,

The hymns she sang with simple grace,

Throughout the day, with dedication,

Became the girl’s commemoration.

Tea with the Mother of God
For Sherab Chödzin Kohn

Drops of angelic host hover about her
As she sips her organic Pu-erh.
“Your problem,” she says
“At least as I see it,
“Is that you’re praying for insight
“To overcome paranoia,”
(She doesn’t slurp.)
“And that’s your first mistake.”
“That’s discouraging,” I say,
“What’s my second mistake, then?”
She smiles. “That you’re discouraged.”
She motions to the angelic host
Hovering impatiently (for what?)
Around her head and shoulders
“Imagine, if you can, that you’re one of these guys.
“Their clear seeing doesn’t blast
“This funky tea shop
“Out of dependent origination.
“Or make it morph into something nicer.”
Dang if the enlightened drops
Don’t seem to nod in agreement.
“You still seem to think waking up
“Would transport you to a cafe
“Without this cracked cup or,” she nods in the
Direction of the men’s room
“That annoying Lysol smell that cancels
“Out the delicate aroma
“Of this expensive infusion.
“Or that it would reveal this place
“To be something wonderfully other
“Than it is, Lysol and cracks included.
“But delusion doesn’t go away.
“Enlightenment doesn’t appear.”
“You, mean,” I say,
“If I get that, I’m on the right track?”
“Maybe, maybe not,” she says,
Just before she disappears.
Leaving me with the check.