It’s good for things to lie down Under snow Under snow We too will have to be Tucked under Black-armed under Into the gap, and gap Again A man old enough for wisdom Though few do know Breathes through tooth-holes Laughing…
I was on Ko-Pi-Pi, an island off the southern tip of Thailand, to rest after a gruelling work trip to Japan. I was with a boyfriend, a not very nice one (insecurity made him arrogant; weariness me intolerant) but in that place we did not squabble – the heat and…
I was boy crazy for forty years All I wanted was the flayed whale Its huge red flesh And the senseless drumbeat Which would beget no kid. Then one morning I woke up And both the thorn and the rose Had lost meaning.
They’re paired up Coupled up All over the land Man slid in woman Woman in man Mostly they’re chunky Heavy with fat But the flesh it is humming Murmurous in that Lying down gently All over the land Man lies in…
We’re driving home as dusk comes up out of the air over the flattish land and turns it all inwards. Over the hills slight as breathing, from within the ground, creeping slowly but sure, grey and mauve and deeper darkness come – turning things over like a mouse turning in…
(warning: for reasons of its own, this poem will be rhyming more and more furiously as it goes along, at times lapsing into limerick. Perhaps this has something to do with the habit of roaches to clone themselves in a tumultous and accelerating way??) India, 1974 I’m heaving lemon-tarts…
Relaxing Back Balls For minor back distress (for example if you lift something just that much too heavy) and to prevent it from becoming worse, I have found this of enormous value: take two tennis balls or racquet balls – depending on your size – and at first sign of…
Once, rather long ago, a wee baby girl curled up like a seedling in her mother’s womb, and maybe she was eventually pressing her face against its warm walls so hard, trying to see what was going on out there, that her little nose got smashed, or maybe she was…
Once in the early 90’s I had occasion to stay in an odd little house on the side of a ravine in Ticino, the Italian part of Switzerland. One could not see the place from the small untravelled road, and had to go down a steep dirt drive to get…
I’ve never understood why anyone would revile a bright yellow flower, like a sunburst shining up smiling from the ground! Whose tap root goes deep enough to aerate the soil; who is tough enough to brave cold and spring frost to bring much-needed vitamins to those same ungrateful folks! Get…
Every stern thing we think or say about another has its roots in our own dissatisfaction. The mirror is perfect: as outside, so inside. What would it be like if we trusted other people enough to let them go? By ‘trust’ I don’t mean ‘approve of’ or ‘Oh, I know…
As I wrote in my last post, Suppose There is No Armageddon, I threatened my teenaged niece with the specter of reading the aforementioned poem to her if she continued telling me about apocalyptic dooms a-coming. This got me thinking… and by evening I was guffawing, all by myself, with…