Sometimes 
I show up
so absolutely lovefilled 

I show up
and listen
And I hear….

an absence of
Love

Love is pouring out of me
How is it not pouring out of everything?
Why does this feel… 

so lonely?

And so in connection
to the center of everything?

Maybe what sounds 
like absence
Is actually
presence 

Maybe, I’m
learning to hear

Maybe love-filled
means hearing things

A different way

I want to hear the whole world
All over again

Emotional Affair

            1. California Girl

I dream of whales off Big Sur, floating, 
opened, stripped & blowing air on the tide

I pass,  
electric freeway trees sway swift, whizzing past, 

change pitch-night into day & I’ve missed you 
for twelve years, because nothing fits. 

& I felt naked the day we met that winter. 
There blew salt in my eyes, 

& the smell of sardines fried on the beach,
& my pager went off—someone talked of mandatory 

overtime, a possible four feet that night. Time to call
the wife. Where slowly, a steady something small 

tugs at my big toe from our belly’s empty yawn, 
so hungered its laces—our old torn, black leather shoe—  

All the world’s a fashion & shoes will finally fit or fail. 
Cinderella had it easy on her first sooty try 

after rolling down her hose—
why, O why, can’t I?  

I’ve felt like an ugly step-sister 
all my life, forcing my feet to comply. 

I can’t. 
Why, O why, can’t I? 

I want to break my heart all over you until I bleed dry, 
just as the whales knock up on rock with the pounding 

yesses & nohs of the Pacific—the gap between those;
the pain of Poseidon’s green hammers— 

fletchers’ harpoons peppering their sides, 
torn in the wind, undressed—

            2. Object Permanence 

This is the day I wonder
whether the desk where 
you sat loved me too.

Did the paperweights follow 
to the copier & whisper 
with our colleagues?

Did the spoon in your tea
wish you good luck? Was it
going according to plan?

            
            3. Is it Too Much to Ask?

What used me sore after we parted;
her tasteless requests for boxed television dinners, 

an apoplexy at her litanies—
put in the lightbulbs, pick up the toys scattered everywhere, 

children into the shower, into the bath, 
wipe every ass,  

don’t come near me, 
wash this time, 

take the trash out already, 
would you mind?      

            4. The Sonar and Love of the Pacific Humpback Whale

With jerks & twitches at your absence, the peaceful California whales 
clear space between my ears & beat against the hydrangeas & hollies 
they sound, where I fall to fitful sleep for two hours. So good, a dream 
to meet again. You walk in the snow away to the women making baskets 

at the Falls of the Ohio, who knit branches to stop the sky from falling, 
and come back with hushed knowledge your marriage can’t survive us. 
You look me in the teeth & I eat them like a fool—truth tumbling out 
while you run away. I am scared witless to leave my brood, nowhere to go. 

Then to hear your tentative squeak & walk on tightrope over ocean nonchalant 
making business calls on a cellular phone. Inside the receiver you are 
three massive inches tall, much smaller than before. Nonetheless 

your voice stretches vast as a southern coastline. You’ve no husband, 
my wife, flown.  We agree to mend. What remains is that edgy feeling. 
I get to know myself again.

Me and Bri were great at playing zombies.
We spent a lot of time at the food trays.
Bri would slip his fingers in the rolled meats
and I’d greedily chew them off.  

I was starving.  

I’d gnaw at the meat
until I was lapping his knuckles.
Jim and the lighting guys loved it.
The little rind flopped to the floor
of the set. Later, years later even,  

this depressing sound is imprinted.
Because, as I said, at the time I was starving.
And now I am not. I have, maybe, PTSD
or something like it.  

That plaintive slap of dead meat rind
like a nightmare, I consider occasionally.
Like now.  

Then, we’d laugh like idiots.
What I consider zombie-like laughter.
Fitting. Though zombies almost never laugh
in movies which is a shame  

because automatons 
have every reason to laugh.  

comforting silence 
thick summer morning warm gold
we were a tangle

summer days make summer nights make summer days
makes summer nights make summer days and nights
become the same summer     summer is the bright eye
in the peak of dry water and dust in air; I recommend
summer days expand to everything all the time;
I weep for the coming winters forever.

someone said there was an eagle
living free around these parts
    feathers bright in the June sun;
    wait for it to come to you and you would miss it
    spiraling, waiting to be beheld

so we stood ready at the mountaintop,
poised to behold
    two brown wings without regard to classification,
    vulture talons held up to ride
    upon this breeze; here, capture the wind

and perhaps the wind itself captured
the us & them & it of the world
    eyes born to hold tight to significance
    tracking the monster of death & not liberty
    freer than any creature seen in the many ages past

I babied bombs into being; I rolled munition in my hands.
Not for me.  Not for my enemies.  But I was
the think tank and the supplier.

                         Nearly three decades ago, a friend of a friend
                         was asked to meet his gf in the park, the next day.
                         He knew she was breaking up.  He was inconsolable.
                         He was broken.  He needed a preemptive strike to not be
                         broken.  We meant well, as friends.  We were
                         toxic.

We asked, “Well, what doesn’t she like?”  
He answered, “Um , she’s vegan?”

                         We drove to the grocery.  We bought eggs and hamburger meat–
                         the kind that lays in slabs, in styrofoam, a sheet of wax paper
                         for quicker release.

My friend and I sat in a dark car, our hands covered in sticky, visceral, gore,
fashioning substance from once-substance, purpose from variant purpose.
And when I drove us to her house, I was both instigator and getaway wheels.

                         With our whispered shouts urging him on, he rallied self-respect,
                         martialed manhood, gathered his misgivings and go-get-em,
                         and one by one the projectiles flew through the air, meaty-arcs
                         that stuck (holy hell, they stuck) like giant, bovine polka dots
                         across the front of her house.  And I gunned the engine, tires spinning
                         and leaving their mark behind us.

This is not bragging.  It is humorous, perhaps, on the surface.  Who “hamburgers”
a home.  I was the architect here.  It was my idea.  I did this and 25+ years later…
I was this.

                         I open (and then close) my social media today and I cringe.
                                 At the way we treat one another.  At the way so few seem to change.
                                 To see the need for change.  To be willing–to work–to change.

                         I open (and then close) the news sources and I cringe.
                                 At the countries (no, the initiatives of those guiding the countries)
                                 and their lack of change.  At their hatred and hate bombs.
                                 No change. 

                         I open (and then close) my hope for a relationship, again and again,
                                 and I cringe.  At expectations.  At the need for change.  At the lack
                                 of ability or recognition of need or the willingness to change.

I am committed to the attempt to change.  But three decades of failed relationships…
at what point do I recognize the one consistent and persistent element of similiarity

                                 was me.
                                 
                                 That was me.
                                 
                                 My hands, with good intentions, meting out hatred and retribution.
                                 I didn’t lob the missiles.  But I armed the assailant.  I gave him wheels.
                                 I kept the secret three quarters of my life.

And I’ve changed.
                                 
                                 But how many times, how many relationships, were shaped by
                                         my hands?
                                 How many servings of good intentions meted out one or another form
                                         of botulism?

How can I continue to write lyrical beauty
discussing physical beauty, imagining idealistic beauty,
without seeing the ugliness

of who I was–
who I may still be–

who 
was with me

all along?

What was once a possum

remains baking in the sun

on a record breaking May

afternoon. He was searching

for his daily bread

when crushed under the wheel.

His children will not mourn him,

for they have to carry on

in a world where warm fur

becomes less necessary.

His mother long passed will see

him soon, in the heaven

only open to those who cross roads

for a better existence.

Muddied, like the certain brackish river water
laden with broken branches, swirled silica,
the crushed styrofoam something colored yellow.
Gray clouds hesitated overhead, as I can,
and me there, thinking
of those spiritualists after yet another war.
People were seeking, and they provided–
knocks on tables, automatic writing.
I sat there sinking. The air, thick
with something about to come.

If I were to put my pen to paper then–
the drift of car across the Valley View Ferry
could have taken me downriver
and toward the poem I meant to write.