This morning, I watch on as a group of business people, khaki-clad, collared, sandaled, slacked, stiff as the trunk of a hundred-ring tree rooted in Mad Square Park, tries to find moments for breath in the middle of a morning commute.
They’re in a circle now, eyes closed for the most part (Pink Collar is peeking – snatching examples and wondering who’s peeking back) arms raised above flat-lying collarbones now lowered now raised again spit-shined mules in second position.
Navy Blue can’t undo the tensed knots in his shoulders. They rise past his ears as he readjusts his elbows and wonders why he’s left his briefcase in the center of a circle of business-casual strangers.
Next to him, Gray Pants squirms again bends his knees to shift his weight forward bounces lightly to maintain feeling as blood hurries from his elevated hands to his rocking feet.
Three people down, Purple Cardigan is getting the hang of this. She hasn’t moved in minutes, not even when Crew Cut with Glasses dropped an orange backpack into the pot and joined the perimeter with raised hands and a quiet glance at the feet still clacking past.
There may be music playing, but the grunts and shrieks from tires on 23rd street mask it well.
Slow as a balloon leaking helium from its neck, twelve pairs of hands sink to occupy the spaces in front of their respective hips
and as they inhale, miraculously in unison, a new onslaught of fresh-off-the-PATH passengers rushes across the gravel to make it to Park Ave by nine.
but it’s hard to find its light etchings on my mind with only hindsight, and when all the rush hour traffic of an island that swells to twelve times its evening size is barreling through the point between my eyes, it’s a fight to stop squinting through heavy lashes at the crosstown buses and the taxis blurring by, at the socks high, cap straight, stretch-necked father posing sons and their smiles with the Empire State, at the hordes of black and white, of heels and ties, of ears buried in iPods while they wait for their light cars stop and they walk straight, chins tethered strong to the horizon, wearing blinders like a prayer to belong – I see walls that stretch and yawn with the morning on all sides reaching up towards a vanishing point, but somehow a glimpse of sky still trickles through the spaces left by joints bent open, offering summertime embraces… there isn’t much room on cross-streets for breath or width in this fit-me-in city, unless you fix your gaze on the rooftops, invisible from here, but you can tell the metal fingertips are scraping fresh air – but back on the ground with the glares that glance off windows in my irises the sound of each motor droning by the purr of bike tires turning as they carve out their own slice of the one-way street the water weighing in the heat the sheen of sweat on backs and necks and the frantic urge to check underarm fabric the dizzy wafts of cologne and of gasoline the ticking seconds spent waiting for the 1 and the fickle breeze the stray leaf from the sometimes-trees that rides its way through the gridlock, settles in at my feet, and the pavement itching under track marks and trash the attention it demands and the attention that it lacks the backs of every stranger and the fronts of every friend… every instant in this place turns concrete in the end I can’t see past the universe of my five senses so, instead of sprawling views of terracotta roofs, I write park benches and let the subway grate’s rising scent engrave my bones, line paper with traffic cones; I find home in the truck groans and flickering lights and with my eyes wide open, whites reflecting the sky, I find home.
i carry your heart with me(i carry it in my heart)i am never without it(anywhere i go you go,my dear; and whatever is done by only me is your doing,my darling) i fear no fate(for you are my fate,my sweet)i want no world(for beautiful you are my world,my true) and it's you are whatever a moon has always meant and whatever a sun will always sing is you
here is the deepest secret nobody knows (here is the root of the root and the bud of the bud and the sky of the sky of a tree called life;which grows higher than the soul can hope or mind can hide) and this is the wonder that's keeping the stars apart
His eyes crinkle at the corners from years upon years of grins and smiles and mischievous winks, receding, now, into the crevices of his skin, etched by fingers tracing and eroded by water coursing and numbered, painstakingly, pain-takingly by the soft brown eyes of the pudgy four-year old perched on his stubborn thigh. His teeth have seen too many turmeric days, but not enough preschool plays, and his hair, turned gray, turned white, has almost bid farewell altogether to his kingly forehead.
The too-green grass was wet with laughter as much as with the slashing rain - not that the green was visible beneath the insulated overcoat of Scottish night – but still, the flecks of Crayola Kelly, Hunter, and the occasional Jungle, splattered across hands, now dispersing under the steady course of tap water, were there, engraved, on palms and in minds and in star-dancing eyes. Strands of field cartwheel through the sink, mimicking a prior demise with appropriate joy as the head-over-heels, mudswept, windwashed culprits retreat, lungs inflated with lightning sparks and abandoned shrieks, to the shelter of walls and rain-spattered windows.
Found this (and some others) in my poetry notebook from my fall ‘08 seminar. Whoa now.
Handwriting
I scribble myself upon the page before me inscribe my fingernails in wails of looping graphite every tooth-ridden edge etched into the sliver-blue lines I write my crescent-moon tips and the beds they lay on into the lead waves they play on and watch as shaky hands pattern the page with words and curves and snaking gray breaths
yesterday, three people to one seat, sloshing, two-wheeled, through gray-tinged monsoon rain was giggle worthy - with the thrill of whirling roads blurring past weaving speeders pulsing wildly red against wrists and clutched fingers (we’re fine, we’re fine) we tugged at our curls and leaned back fondly into glazed eyes
today I lean back into those average times and wonder where these skidmarks came from that trek so heavy across my chest upsetting glass to shatter salty wet and smeared red in their silent wake
Here are some lovely pieces, of varying and often multiple authorship, straight from my fridge door.
smell the rain, for I am drunk with music this moment shines through a honey sky and I smear dreams on delicate skin & worship sweet summer. _______________________________________________________
let as-s shake.
(why on earth would they not include the word ‘ass’ in the kit itself? oh well, at least they have spare ‘s’s.) _______________________________________________________
you said, pant-s-ed, “I have no red sausage.” _______________________________________________________
blow petals in whispering wind always picture spring _______________________________________________________
with all your dancing prisms before my eyes I feel anything but flat. I am clean-faced and clear and no mere desktop weight. I wink window-worthy from street-facing glass and the whole world shimmers with scattered rainbows
