War Memorial

How Was Your Day?
I ask him, how was your day? and he says, 
dull, I just couldn’t find the impetus to do anything, 
and I say to him, so you didn’t do anything today?
and he says, well I did the crossword puzzle, that’s good, I say, 
yeah … he says, lately it has become hard for me to just feel life,
but what about you? (he asks after a pause) what did you do today?
well, I say, I met a man who won the Pulitzer for best drama 
and made plans for dinner later this evening with a man that 
makes soundtracks for movies and in the interim I bought a book
for my class by a guy named John Ashbery and then I sat
in Washington Square Park and felt the sun on my face 
and listened to a musician play Thelonious Monk’s April in Paris.
Well, he says to me, at least someone is making the most out of life …
it makes me happy to hear that you’re on your way to becoming something. 
I smile and grab his hand, (wrinkled like a paper bag crushed time after time 
and then taken out and attempted to be made straight again) and I say to him
as I look into his old and gray eyes, well you’ve already lived a full life, 
as for me I haven’t done anything yet, thanks, he says to me,
(clasping my hand hard), sometimes I forget about that, he says,
I smile at him, he smiles at me, in his eyes is something incredibly
immense like a distant landscape or a forgotten simpler time,
I am happy to have helped my old friend 
but I know that the problem he has cannot be solved 
simply by revisiting nostalgia, so, I just sit with him 
on a little park bench overlooking the Hudson river, 
he reads his paper and I read my book by John Ashbery, 
and we just sit next to each other and exist side by side, listening to 
the river pass.


How Was Your Day?

he handed me a
paper and said i
want you to read
this

from the looks of it
i could tell that it was
old and important, when
i started reading it i found
that it was a contract from
1908 of a native american
from alaska who signed
away his rights and culture
so that his son could have an
education, his child now in his 80s
watches me as i read his father’s
contract

and i say to him
this is about your dad,
this is about you

and i see that his face is as serious
as the icy water in northern alaska
underwhich the belugas swim
are beautiful and he says

it is and i remember that when
he gave me this contract
he explained its meaning and
told me they can take away your culture
they can take away your tradition but they
can never take your dignity


On A Letter Given To Me By A Native American Friend

Their Lovely Delicate Bodies



the older man who
i met along the trail
who said he had climbed
the same mountain over
30 years ago and shared
with me how he felt once he
reached the summit and said
he just wanted to relive that
moment of feeling accomplished
and young and vibrant but said that
now in his older age he is happy to
just be on the trail but that it would
be nice to make it to the summit

well, i said to him, i’ll keep an eye
on you

and i did, i hiked slow just to
occasionally wave and smile at him
to encourage him, but once we reached
the summit i looked down and saw him
sitting on a boulder about half way down
not showing any signs of continuing but

just looking
and watching
the unfolding of
the vast beautiful
world


Portrait of Joe

Fleetingness

Being with someone 
so intimately if even for
only 24 hours, an hour
or a fleeting moment

Contains all the vivacity of
emotions of relationship over
a long span of time

Encounters are really
brief microcosms of our
relationships to one another
they are intense for a moment
as we discover like a new land
someone else

We start to open up our gates
let down our moats and start
planting flowers in the garden 
and sit under the trees

Then night hits and we
are so blissfully together
watching the stars that 
we are not even aware of
our approaching departure

And then we are faced with it
as we prepare to board our separate
ships and depart for the rest of our
lives, this sadness gives fuel to
emotions like two stars in a cosmos
that pass by on their unimaginably
long gentle heavenly bodies

I look at you as the closest
proximity is reached and admire the
joyous subtle details that delicately

make you you

that make up the intangible within you
we look out into outer space for a moment
and begin to pass on

we see the vast unobstructed view 
that inexorably pulls us as our hands 
begin to drift apart despite our individual
force to keep them together gradually it
is only the grazing of fingertips and then
the empty space and at the same time
we let out a tiny inaudible moan 

we look at eachother for what can only
be described as the flower of the cosmos
the very fruit of the galactic gravitational
force that brought us together to begin with
a light that at the same time is being 
born, unfurling, and then dying as we
find ourselves now separated and the
other person gone and a whole infinitude
of possibilities now separating us

what will he become?
will he remember me? us?

And we hope that our gigantic 
individually coursed spheres
might collide with eachother again
so that I could hear his voice
hear his giggles, kiss his lips,
his tongue in between his slightly
ajar open mouth, his back that
trembles and our bodies like
two delicately made Chinese
porcelain spoons that fit together
perfectly

But we have moved on
and that other galactic force
the side effect of moving across
time: Change, takes hold

If we were ever to meet again
I hope that the gentle intensity 
in his eyes remains the same and 
seems reserved for me only and that
his dream is still as innocent as a 
mountainside in springtime covered
in newborn leaves on trees with green
grasses, the symphony of insects, the vast
and varied heads of flowers looking to the
sky, watching the show unfold, as the birds
cannot help but sing

As long as this hope survives, I realize
our meeting has never really died

And perhaps that flower or star we made
in that impossibly large cosmos, still subsides,
floats on, sends us out its light, and reaches us,
and guides our thoughts, to either one another
again or the appreciation of what one has already
shared and thus the creation of everlasting life.


Everlasting Life

Ruins at Ollantaytambo

A shaman singing

Invocating the ayahuasca, the
dead connect with you as the shaman
sings your spirit leaves your body, your
mind ceases to exist and you begin to dance
seamlessly with the sound of the shaman’s song.

You see life displayed like a timeline in a museum.
The endless movement of microorganisms, then
the life you know, the spirits in the forests, the
iron tree, the puma, the capebera, the snake,
and jaguar and monkey and sloth, then parts
of animals, a liazard’s tail, a beak, the piercing
sound of a Tucans call and the cicacda’s cry
and then the shaman’s song again and

Then you see life as it was … giant primordial
beasts and their enormous presences, the
dinosaurs and the fungus, the plants and
insects and then another vacuum, as
the shaman kisses the silence and you
are taken to the birth of a star, an intense
light and then an expansion of light and 
the spreading like jam over toast of the
cosmos over space, a huge one dimensional
sphere and then a collapsing as the universe
is held in your hand and you feel its presence
And it’s you and you understand unity and bliss
and the cosmic indifference of the universe to life 
and its bittersweet existence, like an exceedingly
sweet song and the universe in your hand expands
and encompasses you and you sit in it, in its womb
like forest and you hear the shaman’s song as he 
begins to dance, to moan and sigh, you open

Your eyes and you see the darkness and feel
the presence of an infinitude of spirits watching
and you hear the ambiance of the Peruvian Amazon
and you understand existence without thought, ideas
or illusions and you hear the crickets and the birds and
the myriad mystery noises of the forest and you understand
that these are all in worship, they are not mating calls or
claims of territory, the birds, the frogs, the plants in 
the wind and the insect’s call, are all manifestations
of worship, of this intensely spiritual existence of
life in context with time and the universe in 
context with space, of you in context to your
brother, to your mother, the world, its
stones, its singing girls and half naked
boys, of its ruins and bones and colors,
and stars at night and you sigh 

And hear the shaman’s song as he begins
to let go to whistle, and cry and then
laugh a little and then the silence and
this silence represents all of what is left
after we have gone 
and you understand that
this is alright, this silence,
is all that is left
it is its bitterness it is its sadness 
It is its happiness, this silence.


A Shaman Singing

Sounds from Tuesday evening

writing this with
his pen

4 years ago
we made this
same trip

and had the best
day we ever had

today, I make this
trip again, we are
together, but he is
in a mahogany box
in my lap

most people will
never understand
our relationship

but that’s O.K

all we really had
for each other was
an understanding

an understanding so
deep that no metaphor
or analogy with the Grand
Canyon, the Eiffel Tower,
or the beaches in Hawaii,
could come close to the
immensity, serenity, and
loveliness that invisibly
bound us to one another

today I take him to let him
go in a stream, surrounded
by flowers in the French
countryside of Vernon, and
Monet’s Giverny gardens

Today is the day
I say, thank you
I will miss you
I love you
and
(as the water
takes him away)
that now, there will
be no pain, no more
guilt to carry, no more
gasping for air

you are absolved, set free,
forever and forever in the
arms of grace

smiling your wide grin
laughing your raven laughter
I know that you have become
eternity, and that one day,
I will become eternity too

For Freeman

The Boy Centaur (REVISITED)

Sounds from Sunday morning

A Road

Sounds from Friday afternoon

we at the scene
are drifting between eachother
like particles of water that have
no reluctance to absolve and become
one another
we at the scene
are lying upon the streets
sleeping and wandering what the
world may look like, if only
we’d close our eyes
we at the scene
are bemoaning our fate
as things doomed to die
because we enjoy the suffering
though we’d never admit it
if we did not suffer,
we would not know we are alive
and then there is the question of love,
love? love? love?
I say to you,
yes, you say to me,
I love you, I say to you,
and you say to me, that passed
all time when the towers we have made
dissolve like little castles of foam popping
by the sea, even then, I will love you too,
and you smile, and we at the scene,
sit by the docks and watch the waves crash
and splatter, laughing, laughing,
knowing for whom the declining sun is beautiful for,
knowing why we suffer is so we can love.

We, at the scene

  Hands

The man next to me has the most beautiful 
hands, hands like my own but more refined, 
more in size, everything of my hands but more. 
They look like the hands of Michelangelo’s David 
vaguely holding the sling that he had used to
slay the giant monster threatening civilization, 
a hand that could hold a heart in its palm and 
not let it fall out as it beats, a hand that could 
carry great burdens and save you from falling. 
I see his hands as they rest on his knees and 
then on his arms and then on his neck. These 
are hands I could fall in love with, that I would 
never tire of seeing or ever tire of holding.


hands

Paris

Tenotizchlan

When I walked into your hotel room
you were sitting in a hard wooden chair
looking out the window watching the rain
saturate the electric glow of central
Times Square. I said, hello, and you told
me to relax, to not be shy and you started
to undress me and place my clothes like
delicate glass sculptures on the hangers
in the closet. I could see in the mirror my
naked reflection and you bent down kissing
me in places that usually do not know the
feeling of the light from the sun 
and you told me that you were an artist
and that I was about to witness your art
and I believed you and you rose and bade
me to undress you and I began to, and
your lips were like the plump contours of
olives and your eyes and your skin were
also like olives, even the way you talked 
was as abundant and as giving and as smooth
as olives freshly picked from the vine and
then crushed under the press and spread
out over freshly baked bread 
and you told me to not worry that you’ll go slowly 
and you did, you cradled my body into your body, 
my body fit into yours like a ball in a glove 
and you held me like an experienced catcher,
a Cassanova, a Don Juan, an Adonis and
you put on some music I’ve never heard before
and you described it as the sound a violin makes
when it reveals it’s desires and I was seduced 
by the delicate and thorough hue of your skin 
and you turned me over and your body is as hard 
and as thick as any primordial wilderness,
there is something about you that reminds me 
of the origins of the first man to emerge
through the mists and fog of the great big wide unknown 
and you drag  your hand over my back 
and your fingers graze my skin like wind over sand by the sea 
and you tell me to breathe in steadily
and I do and you then you enter me - slowly,
ever so slowly, I didn’t think I’d be able
to handle it at first, I thought I’d burst from the shaft
of your arrow piercing my skin like an innocent virginal girl, 
but you knew what you were doing and soon you were inside
me, and in broken English you asked me if I liked it
and I looked back at you and gazed at you in such a way
that could not be misunderstood in any language
and you continued and we danced and you gave me
all you had to give and I gave you all I had to receive 
and you kissed my lips and I showed you the meaning 
of gentleness and when we were finished and towers
made of marble had finally come crashing down like sand
upon soft Persian blankets, 
we just laid together, and listened to the rain hit the 
buildings in Central Times Square, and you turned to me
and said, thank you, and I smiled at you and then you asked me
how you could ever thank me and I said to you 
just never forget me and you said to me
that you could never.


The One Night Stand

i saw all the people I’ve
ever known or seen
as one who sees great
infinite possibilities
in the unrealized
potentialities
of the present
moment in the
context of eternity
for example, my friend
could be the best single
jazz musician of our time
he could save jazz from
drinking too much wine
and ruining its liver
and ultimately dying
from self-inflicted wounds
the mediocrity of wanting
to make something last
and last without the substance
to keep it going healthily and purely
and yet I see this
when I’m in times square
and looking out over the seas of people
i see the future of a man who may cure cancer
but is dependant on the chance meeting
of his one true love while vactioning
in rio he discovers an indian woman
who tells him of an exotic vine that lives
deep in the amazonian rain forest
but it’s dependant upon this
chance meeting with this indian
woman in the streets of rio
over the vast limestone
ruins of the seas ancient
yearning to encroach upon
the land and meet its tender
embraces with giant stone
monuments that defy the human
imagination and implant an impression
of god and a higher power to
try to explain the sparkling
beauty of the sea in the backdrop
of this major modern metropolis
and so back to time sqaure
I see a boy who might grow
up to become the next rimbaud
and then I see a man who
saves another man from
jumping off the empire state building
because he says to him, don’t
jump, I love you
who then goes off to become
ceo of a major
non profit organization
that puts peanut butter sandwiches in
all the empty bellies of hungry
children all around the world
and then then there
is a little girl who writes a fairy tale novel
that goes on to be published and shared
with all future generations of man
that inspires them to remember their
childhood innocence as one of the
most wisest times in life, i look
out over the sea of people
in central times square
and its like looking out
at the entire galaxy
with its centillion
numbers of stars
going in and out of existence
flashing off and on
each one given the chance
to shed new light upon life
or to fade away unseen
in the empty black
bottomless night.

On Possibilities

I see the old Chinaman on the corner weeping
his long thin beard streams down with droplets of rain
that is not rain, he neither hates nor loves
the world, he is a man of thousands
of years of human history, he has
seen the Yangtze river in spring
with the cranes and vast pagodas
chiming at the sight of twilight,
he has seen the first empress
and the last emperor exit
the jade palace in the vast
primordial landscape of srangrila
that blooms within every season
and gives rise to the kingdom
of the chrysanthemum that keep
guard over the first lotus flower
that bloomed from the mind of the Buddha
the chinaman knows that the world is burning
he has seen it in Shanghai wherethe people
wear long hats over their heads
and keep their sighs in the shadow
under their eyes so that they cannot be seen
and he is weeping over the first
signs of the first flames and he is
waiting, all he knows is that he like
his ancestors were patient and existed
in the silence silently weeping over
spilled tea over the muddy floor
when the mongols first gave them
reason to cry, the chinaman
does not care about the destiny of man,
it is the world that concerns him, he in love with nature
and he is waiting, he has seen a quintillion number of dawns
and they have all been beautiful and unique the way they
color the clouds and fill the sky with a testament
of a most pure love, and he is waiting again
for another dawn, right before the world burns,
he sits there and silently stares at the first
sign of light over the horizon and stops from
weeping and stands up and stares off
into a crimson shaft of light and from
where I can see him, though
you may tell me that I am wrong, I swear,
I can see the faint impression of a smile.

The Chinaman

     The Crane
He has written down on
the page for anyone
willing to read, the dearest
part of himself, written as
lightly as being in love 
as hastily as trying to contain the
vastness of forever in a moment
as willing as someone who would give everything
in exchange for nothing. He finishes it and reads it and is satisfied. 
He folds it in the shape of a paper crane and writes on its wings the words, 
‘for you’ and places it on a bench in the subway for a stranger to read
and then leaves. Someone, an old man with a cane, 
bends down and picks it up,
he unfolds it and reads what it is 
written inside and something within the old man that he had almost 
entirely forgotten that he ever had reemerges and is revealed. 
The old man smiles and refolds 
the piece of paper, back into a paper crane
and places it back on the bench 
for the next person 
to remember.


Happymonk

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