The Puzzle Maker
Suffering from irrepressible inspiration,
he has a steamroller flatten himself
and his immediate environment.
The result peels from the pavement,
is taken to a die-cutter, and voila --
instant jigsaw immortality!
Certain pieces are mailed
to each of those who knew him
with the invitation: Party Time!
It's party time, it's party time,
a put me together get together.
A happening soiree!
Emotions rising, bit by bit,
for the first time, a clearer image
of the host emerging; such surprise!
Oh look who got just which pieces,
some never imagined
even by those who knew him best.
The ribald hilarity! The merry amusement!
The indignant uproar! The pieces
around the edge are missing --
A static frisson. The party flattens,
is cut apart and scattered
across a wider table. Hands reach out --
Hands freeze. Flatten, are cut apart,
scattered, and --
(get the picture?)
Oracular Couture
And in Paris, the stunning show stating
without possibility of contradiction
exactly what everyone will be wearing
next season took an unexpected turn
when the third from last model
emerged in a gown made of clocks
set to the individual times
the 33 buyers will meet their deaths,
but the critics called out for calendar accessories,
otherwise how could you know the date?
and the next-to-last model
displayed a body wrap so dark
at first it looked midnight, but then
when you stared, stared deeply into the ripples
her muscles swayed in the fabric
as she moved you could see
what you'd dine on three days from now,
when the clasp on your black pearl necklace
was finally going to break, the price of gold
in a month and a week, when a 17 year old
in Teulon would lose his virginity
(but not to whom) and even the price
of champagne and orange juice at Nefertiti's
after next year's show;
the last model came out naked;
the designer spilled her entrails on the runway,
saw within how and when the world would end,
and fled, driven stark raving screaming mad
by the death of fashion as we know it,
but I wasn't surprised,
not by any of it, I already knew
when I went in, if I wear the green silk socks
with blue dolphins, I get lucky.
The Buddha Pool
Too much flak; the noise, the dull blades of no consequence,
the unrelenting sour smell of aimless discontent
drive me back from the city, to the low ground
deep in the forest, beyond the great stones to the
pool.
There are many there already, not relating.
Leaving the strife in midstride we arrive
in all manner of dress, suits, ties now discarded,
rolled up jeans, shorts, short skirts, long skirts
held high
we wade through the ankle deep water
too murky to reflect but soothing.
I remove socks, shoes, roll up cuffs, ease into the
coolness,
I move my feet against the insolent resistance
that links us all and try to think. In the pool,
the only woman who meets my eyes is singing.
All others still blindly carry anger in their sight,
but she denies hers in song: there is great emotion
in her melody, her voice paints a better world
than we can hope to live in. Our eyes meet,
I smile, but I am not complicit in her song.
Stabbing the sore tooth of my pain, I hug her body
to mine,
to keep the water, our souls, and the depths of love
and struggle fierce within us still in motion.
The Specialist
The counselor calls me back,
unable to reach her client
who now speaks only in dreams.
I set up: the patient, asleep,
draped across the chair behind me;
I play quietly at the piano,
the mirror in front of me,
reflecting all. I stare into my eyes.
They become doors. They open.
Both of me enter --
I emerge into fresh sun and bright air,
each breath drawn draws down hallucination,
the landscape every color of her music,
filled with the singing of her perception,
each shifting, patient, beautiful tableau
-- and above it all she flies.
I drop to the green,
yearning in envy, but my feet
never touch the air.
My despair reaches out, drags,
brings her plummeting to earth.
In sorrow, I assume my task completed.
But she finds me kneeling,
staring down into the darkening grass.
She consoles me, reassures me,
it is no sin not to be able to fly.
Tenderly she kisses me;
we fall
falling ...
falling --
The music stops. She awakes.
I do not.
growing green
Deep within the unknown landscape
of the heart lies a spring,
a sudden clearing in the rampant tangle
of undergrowth filling all available space,
a space to breathe, cut into being
by all that we find wrong with the world
that we know should be right.
The spring is fed by sighs,
the foliage broken by tears,
each sigh a drop of blood,
each tear a single flame.
Yet the life of the heartscape
never grows green
unless fed by this spring, so -- dive,
dive, deep, deep down into this pool ...
the art of living by the heart
is to learn to nurture
by what you lose.