What does it mean

What does it mean to sit silent,
Waiting up with the moon all night,
Expecting something,
Expecting some sound, some signal, some sign?
And get nothing.
Just a blank, embarrassed absence.
An emptiness like an ellipse.
A closed curve vacant as a vacuum
With an anemic moon dimly fading.
And when morning rises
Pale and nauseous,
Sickening as the ass end of a nightmare,
Even the birdsong
And dogs barking
And kids at the bus stop
Aren't enough to make it normal.
When morning drops
Like a corpse onto the lawn,
While the children stand there
Staring, dumb as relics
In the dawn,
You realize
It's over....

I Turned My Back

I turned my back and went.
But instead of going eyeless
I looked
And saw furniture flying from the roof.
Windows, lintels, doorways & eaves,
Tatters of time-dusted draperies fluttering.
A woman in burgundy bustle
Holding a little girl by the hand;
Both suddenly gone into the ground.
A man in frock coat
Powdered the same burgundy
Waved. Smiling.
Then he, too, turned
Into a doorway.
And was gone.
Lattice. Ice on the asphalt. Ivy.
Dim details.
Random fragments fixed from dreaming;
When initially
The whole thing
Was so certain.

Thursday Evening. Houston.

Elizabeth Bishop's Moose
isn't tall enough to fill
all the spaces in this house
where CRAZY has spilled.
Saturated gauze keeps unfurling
even in my sleep, wet and yellow
with cold, edemic discharge
that would ruin all the dainty furniture
kept nice for company and visitors
who never come.

The Way I Remember It : A Reminder To A Sister

Two tiny plastic dogs: one white, one black. A set of Scotties.

The kind of cheap plaything parents buy for a noisome child in the backseat while traveling the New Jersey Turnpike. The kind of plaything a desperate single-mother with few prospects, and no money, few friends, and two children buys in desperation at the rest stop to quiet a noisome child---even though the purchase empties her purse of her last bit of change.

And still several miles (and several tolls) to go.

Tea & Sugar

When sugar melts in tea there is taste. That is known; not a noun; but a sense of something there in the water.

Anniversary

Two small boxes full of dead boyfriend.
I saved just a few ashes.
The rest of him in Italy, somewhere.
Buried in the family plot
which I refused to witness.

I carried him there like a courier,
in a zinc-lined box labeled BIOHAZARD
instead of in a proper coffin.
Embassy regulations. International red-tape.
(Never mind my tears. Or feelings.)

And him burned up just because.
And the family screaming.

Too much. Too much
to think of or remember.
But this would have been
eighteen years.
Half a lifetime; or a lifetime.
Over.

Summer Day : June 4, 2003

What can you do when the earth shatters under your feet
but fall into the crevice and hope either to recuperate or die?

You sit in that dark, smoking hole
amidst the debris
of what had been
a normal, regular life;
with sunshine and house facades,
and perfectly tended lawns,
and immaculate plots of flowers,
fine shrubbery always just the right shade of green;
and everything else that's beautiful and ideal.

You sit in that hole
choking on the fine, ideal dust of it:
A dream that had been so fucking lovely
you thought you'd die from its perfection.

Then,
one day,
everything shifts,
just slightly.
And the precarious balance
of its loveliness
is thrown off,
and there goes
your precious fantasy—
in an avalanche of rosebuds,
wood panelling, antique glass,
your grandmother's tea cups,
all the once-worn clothes
you believed were so beneficial.
It all comes down on you
in dust and darkness;
and covers you up.

And meanwhile,
the sunshine is still glowing;
and all the neighbors are on the street,
standing just at the edge of everyone else's lawn,
admiring the beautiful, chemical perfection of it all.

And no one notices the smoking dust
settling over you. No one misses you.
No one needs you to remind them
of the dust-drenched meaninglessness of it all.

Because they have full faith
in the beauty brought
by a lawn cut just so high,
and a shrub trimmed just so square,
and a life opened just so wide.