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~

early Sunday morning

before waking others

a rising sun gives my mind pause

~

fingers of light touch the spine of a book, a memoir

where anticipation rests after question marks

nothing speaks where commas reside

~

behind leafless branches outside my window

the sunlight still low on the morning horizon

I watch a perched migrating bird that doesn’t see me

~

I recall the silence before a first snowfall

when I can see myself breathing again

on empty memoir pages,

~

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In my dream I saw you in the morning sunlight as I got on with my business. From between cracks in the sidewalk, and spaces between shrubbery branches and blades of grass, you spied my every move.

Each time I stepped into daylight, I found you waiting, delusory and immovable. My ignominy grew with each sunny day. Though I saw myself in mirrors an upright man, outside you mocked my nature in your low mutated de-form.

One morning when the marine layer held, I shut my door and walked into a dense coastal fog. The cold mist hid me from you. A sense of relief overcame me. But as I continued to walk, and the sun’s heat dissipated the cold air, I could see your faint shape in vanishing vapors. Were you there laughing?

I found a brief reprieve at high noon when dimensions flattened you to nothing. But you returned in the afternoon, and passers-by distanced themselves, and dogs growled, and children ran behind trees.

Then I dreamed a time late in fall when short days were on my side, I took a walk after dinner when darkness hid me. But in the cold night sky as the rising harvest moon illumed, you returned laughing.

As a feral cat screamed from its post, I ran from you cowering under the cover of a eucalyptus. Its branches reached out to me. The familiar scent in my head kept you at bay. Unseen, you laughed louder and louder. In the distorted span of hours I couldn’t shake you from my mind. So I remained under the protective scent of the tree until I could no longer keep my vigilant eyes open.

Near the midnight hour I awoke in the imaginary void. You were in my thoughts. You were the inescapable darkness. You were everywhere.

I passed the remainder of night unmoved and on the cusp of daybreak, laughing on the border of lunacy, I assumed my monstrous form. I became the immovable shadow.

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~

a generation ago

along the sands of laguna

youth danced in a frail heat

~

though faces smiled, rippled bodies sank into sand

and we who escaped watched, waited

to see if they emerged from dunes for another day

~

at the Boom Boom

they stood in sandy corners

drowning in sandy spirits

~

brushing off listless grains

struggling to be heard

speaking broken words

~

then summer ended

and the boom boom faded

and sand rose silently

~

was it you

is it me

who’s the next boy lost

~

after a generation

the beach is once again a youthful beach

where feet leave imprints today after today

~

cool pacific breezes push sand in blankets

enveloping memories

in a patchwork of common threads

~

no one sees the sand

resting under layers of yesterdays

layers of lifelessness

~

what could have been

remains concealed under drifts

where living words seep without vowels

~

as their voices creep between our toes

we who remain still

hear the lost boys of a generation

~

Leaves fall

   After my warm day

Colors letting go

       Thoughts adrift

In transition

             Toward consciousness

Moments in time

                   Losing contours

In translation

                        Toward memory on a shore

Lapping waves

                              Rocks smoothed over

In transcendence

                                   Toward subconscious nights

Silhouettes of branches nearly barren

                                         An autumn moon

Ahead of a first frost on a monochrome morning

                                               Alas, my mind at rest

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| |

bitter confusion

a cup of coffee

waiting

for clouds to clear on a clear day

momentarily

until they reappear

_ |

the empty cup

sitting cold

waiting again

to find nothing there

awake or still asleep

insecurity blankets a silent morning

_ _

the drive to work

the workday

the drive home

still faces

blank time

floating moments in silent skies

?

the evening sun fades on the horizon

of a day that ends

with recurring bytes

of tuesday morning seared

into a consciousness

in mourning

” “

awakened

by

a

cup

once

full

…

About the Poem: Fractured, confused, blank – these words describe my recollection of the events of September 11, 2001 as they unfolded for me, like many Americans, on television on what should have been an ordinary workday.

Just as unforgettable was the clear sense that the American conscience too was punctuated with profound change.

Photo: Death and Life, Klimt

Seeing the embalmed body of my grandmother was a scary thing when Catholicism was already scary enough. In the rigidity of both aspects I was too young to think that she was in any other space than either the eternal fires of hell or among the idols of St. Patrick’s.

It was the first time I saw death first-hand. I can’t say that it had any profound impact on me at eight years old – I didn’t have the aptitude with which to contextualize my own mortality. Rather, it scared the shit out of me trying to understand where my grandmother went, wondering to whom she would now be speaking, in Spanish of course, not knowing if I would ever hear her laugh again.

Though my internalized questions garnered neither empirical answers nor meaning, something fantastic and Menippean did happen. My brother, sitting next to me in the cohort of my mourning relatives, was laughing.

I first looked at his face, his eyes had that “I can’t control it and I don’t know what the fuck to do” look.

I wanted him to see my “Oh shit, Mom and Dad are going to kill you” look but he couldn’t.

My impulse was to fight the wonderfully juxtaposed situation that presented itself. I couldn’t see my parents huddled among the familial network of the rational who only saw the gravity of Grandma’s present state.

“Shhh!” I whispered into my brother’s ear. This only made him laugh harder.

I tried locking in on his eyes but as the organ belched and the mourners followed, my possessed brother, in mimicry of the others, sang grossly out of tune.

The same impulse took me over. I could no longer look him in the face at the risk that we would further upset our already volatile Catholic Latino relatives. Though our singing was drowned out by the adults, we didn’t stop.

When I couldn’t catch my breath, I bowed my head as deeply as I could boring my ears deeper into my chest. An unfamiliar old man seated in front of me turned and gave me a cold stare, then turned back around. By appearance we were profane in the eyes of the somber.

We knew that the situation was out of our control. Feeding off of each other, we tried expelling as much laughter as silently as we could before the singing ended and found ourselves in another fit with each chorus.

I remember hitting his arm once. He punched me in the leg too.

And as quickly as it came, the laughter stopped, as did the music. We rejoined the grave world. As I looked at my resting grandmother and the large crucifix centered on the wall above her, I felt ashamed.

But somehow as I think about it so many years later, at least in the way I’d like to think, Grandma’s wake was more of an awakening. Grandma made us laugh that day. She needed somebody to laugh at death and all related absurdities. It was great to hear her laugh again.

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the sleeping railway

a thin configuration line giving shape to the rolling plains

otherwise blended together with blankets of wild grasses

the Rockies in the distance split the cloud lines

where the rains from the day fall onto peaks

into valleys

into rivers

that shape the plains

until they evaporate back into the sky

repeating over milennia

I wander the afternoon

the heat of the rail under my feet

the smell of soft leather from my sandals

balances in the shimmering air

air moving as radiant curtains of heat

that envelop my summer thoughts

in the slumber of my long summer vacation

I’ve wandered from my uncle’s house

on the edge of a town of two hundred people

a town whose thread is snagged on a rivet of time

that keeps a bell ringing on the door of a lone market

that keeps the vending machine at the solitary gas station full of ice-cold bottles of Orange Crush

that keeps the grazing smell of manure from dissipating

grasshoppers avoid my balancing act

and halt their chirping

when I skip off the rail

the gravel beneath my feet

crunches under my weight

the time between trains is the amplified silent matter of summer in a small town

when minutes blend with warm breezes

a context punctuated now and then by another train

when the town raises its brow with suspicion

that it brings something new

people

gadgets

secrets

change

I oscillate on the rail

looking ahead of me

then behind

nothing on the vast plain defines the point at which I stand

except the lazy present

I’m still a child too impatient for definitions

I close my eyes and imagine a horn

followed by subtle vibrations under my soles

I anticipate the direction to take

one that takes me further down the tracks

away from the securities of a town fixed in time

toward an oncoming imaginary train

when I open my eyes

I no longer see the rail as something else

the rail is a rail

the rail will be a rail

honest wind, honest town, honest grasshopper

are you to blame for the end of my summer

it wasn’t but a minute ago that you were undefined

adrift on the Colorado plain

still alone

my time on the rail is short knowing that soon an unimaginable train will come

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On a clear day,

the sunlight between clouds is brighter when it touches the restless

the tired

and the tolerant.

~

On a clear day,

sounds of nature resonate wider

echoing to our history

the future of a listening people.

~

On a clear day,

our minds are filled with progressive thoughts

that pull us from the mundane, ordinary contentedness

from which we’ve let ourselves be led for too long.

When the longing to be our true selves stretches over horizons

like the auroras of the North

and the live oaks of the South

where the East and West are equal in their stature –

no horizon is different than any other but rather

to the awakened mind

the horizon is simple and pure

appearing ever clearer on a clear day.

~

On a clear day, we inquire:

Why must we who have lived through so many sunless days feel false under an illusory sky?

Why must our youth who have seen their first gray morning retire in defeat before the midday sun breaks?

~

On a clear day

we realize that too many laws are drafted under a damp and heavy sky

legislating the sun to all

and for many who follow these laws

they believe them into being bright enough to light narrow forested paths to limited freedoms.

But even the forest of constitution needs sunlight

the human will of the silent

to survive.

~

On a clear day,

sunlight is a commodity in an economy of supply and demand

to be traded openly among all of society’s investors

to ensure that the value of humanity’s dollar is strong enough

and that the wage of tolerance is plentiful enough

to eventually feed the poorest

most fearful

and most intolerant

whom we pass along our journey to the marketplace.

~

On a clear day,

we can reflect on those who led us through many uncertain tomorrows and tomorrows

with the conviction that one clear tomorrow would eventually come

even while its leaders remain in yesterday’s glow

unforgotten.

~

On a clear day,

enlightenment prevails

redefining history

not keeping us in safety but in caution

that its presence is fleeting

should we not maintain its cause.

~

On a clear day,

uncertain mothers and fathers cling tighter to their wide-eyed children.

~

On a clear day,

we step outside freely – out of our guarded interior.

~

On a clear day,

life in its intricacy reveals all of its detail, even from its margins.

~

On a clear day, we smile if for no other reason than knowing we can say to ourselves –

Finally, it’s a clear day.

About the Poem:  On the morning of June 26, 2013, the US Supreme Court made its ruling on DOMA and on California’s Proposition 8. Simply enough, I was on a flight to New York that morning when, as the plane ascended above the Southern California marine layer, I could see a clear sky. So I pulled out my journal and wrote. Though this work is a bit more figurative and representational (think Whitman or the Romantics), it reveals some of the emotion behind the long, still-evolving  journey to gay equal rights. Originally titled “On a Clear Day,” I added the subtitle “The Summer of Tolerance” later to reflect how other social injustices (gender, race, economic, socio-political) have also contributed to social consciousness during the hot days this summer – and perhaps the season is a preface to more clear days ahead.  

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~

under a full moon near the end of june

a coyote wails for companionship in the foothills

the moonlight in all of its splendor halts the dark breezes for the night

to portray the spotlight spectacle that the world expects to see

~

echoes of a coyote cry seep into fissures in the soil

where the moon can’t reach

until tonight

as if to follow the cries with curiosity

~

the moon only shows its bright side

but is eager to explore the dark

endlessly nascent in the belief that balance is found from seeking the unknown

in hidden craters

in crevasses

in coyote cries

~

would the full moon disappoint the world by turning itself

the coyote would continue its dark journey unseen

both content in hiding from the world

their light

their cries

their bodies

their hunger

eternal expectations borne unto them

~

I didn’t know how to tell time then

but every day I knew when

you came home from first shift

I was with mom all day

she needed to make dinner and sat me in front of the tv

to watch Sesame Street and Mister Rogers and Electric Company and Villa Allegre

like clockwork the villa appeared on the screen

with the accompanying chorus of la lala la la

as you pulled into the driveway in our pale green Continental

it was the same Oscar-the-Grouch green

as the Frigidaire

and the carpet

and the bathroom towels

and all of 1975

you walked in the backdoor

clomping in your work boots over a mud rug

you placed your lunch pail on the kitchen counter

queres comer?

I ran from the living room in time to see you exhale

you picked me up in your dirty arms

smelling of machinery oil

and cigarettes

and sweat

and a faded scent of Aqua Velva that was still stuck to your jowl

I nestled my forehead into your neck

you laughed trying to put me down

I grabbed your arms and pressed my face into your lips

you showed me your teeth

as you clenched your Wrigley’s chewing gum for me to see

I leaned in with my mouth like a little Robin pecking for a worm

you gave me your gum before you returned me to the floor

you had to shower before supper

a daily conversation between father and son

in a wordless ritual

I returned to my other ritual in front of the tv until supper

singing la lala la la

between my tongue and my chewing gum