Moon Eyes

Seven minutes: My eyes have changed from gaudy kaleidoscopes to half-moons

that witness the world as a dream.

There is an angel in my hair

who guides my fore-thought, my wisdom,

my knowledge of body and the pearls

that rest within it.

Enigma angels offer questions

and warn me of

my Pharisee tendencies,

my judgmental stance,

my narrow focus at the hem of

the Jehovah angel, who has sternly restricted my breath.

Have no fear for there are flowers, and the devil with the pitchfork

is small like a gnat.  Mama Angel love me, make me feel loved and blessed.

Make my moon eyes trigger the flowers.

My Heart is at the Window

 My heart is at the window.

I lean with longing on the sill.

I am at the edge of expectation,

Waiting, waiting

to see the future form, the grace

I have wished for, the humble steps

of hope, the whirlwind ready to kiss my cheek.

My heart is at the window,

I have been here so long,

the horizon has been hidden by the leaves’ ornamentation, by pages of years, by my too small courage.

My heart is at the window.

I pray that love sweeps down the lonely road

and breaks open my heart, so sadly patient,

into the seizures of a streaming sun,

shattering me into the light that taunts my vista.

The Scent of Violets

The Scent of Violets

My palms form a tent

over distant cities as I pray

and I want violets to rain down,

and to smell healing oils

instead of sulfur,

and see angels pour the waters of peace

from their place of mythic origin,

no angels on backs of apocalyptic horses,

no plagues, nor rumors of war,

no masquerades of death,

and to hear that myths of sacrifice

are no longer allowed by the laws of Heaven,

the testing of Abraham eased from human memory,

of Isaac in peaceful slumber, no vengeful Lord

waiting to see how far a father will go,

no knife raised above any altar.

no offering of children to slaughter,

no cruel jokes of a jealous god,

not even a scapegoat desired,

and for prayers to rise to Heaven

on the scent of violets and answers given

as rain falls silently to a quiet Earth.

From my chapbook Threshold, Meeting of the Minds Publications

Galaxy Girl

There is a question next to her,

a small dog’s face,

loyalty to what she carries,

a cluster in the sky.

She is a new constellation,

lead by nebula light

and a galaxy brain.  ‘

Shy girl hiding her face beneath stars, exposed with her large naval,

all the dark matter of her belly, the crook of her arm, womanly hips.

I am in love.  I believe she would carry me to the dimensions of dreams,

through the night as minutes pass.  Call her Midnight and be done.

Sad Elephant

  Sad Elephant (seven minutes)

The winged insects flew

in from another world.

My stomach churns diamond shards

but my tears only drop red paint.

I step into the desert half crazed and wary.

I was a dandy but now I am old

and heavy with stars, scars on my skin.

I look for the palo verde and hope for healing.

My tears become little men

who pick the palms.   I’m leaving the wild ocean

for temptations of rocks and yellow sand.

I am blessed to wear elephant shoes,

but I grieve the water wings

I leave behind.  Cacti rattle hymns

for the predetermined God, the One who lives

in arid spaces.  I’ve gone to listen for him.

The ocean was too noisy.  My birth jungle brims

with confusing myth.  My tears speak of the wild gifts

buried within my heart.

I pray erosion will uncover them,

the crazed animals, dear unformed art,

the unknown blessings.

Les Eason, My Dad Aug. 30, 1906- Aug. 3, 1978

Stars Falling in August

Daddy, the stars fell when you died, skidding across the night

Like chips pealed from chrome, carried by burnished wind across the sky.

The creosote was drunk in the dry desert air.

And though I wasn’t there, I’ve imagined how you flew from your soul,

Leaving your daughters like thistles blown over the chaparral,

Our breath thin as the stems of the palo verde that grew stunted in the yard.

The house filled up with uncles.  My boyfriend and I slept on a cot out back,

As we made love, the stars became silver nighthawks,

Fish tails swimming through the blinding air.

I was numb like the space between stars that are too stable,

Refusing to stray from the safety of their paths.  I didn’t  feel the meteors

Of broken glass falling to earth in silent breaths.

Daddy, thousands of stars have tumbled since then,

Streaking through the heat of a hundred nights. Each second

They have been in the sky, these variegated strands of burning air

Have burned open the portion in me that closed

More than twenty years ago.

Now nights stay sober save for the drink of starlight,

And the odor of yarrow and summer grass.

But the sky will never be shorn of star flakes,

Nor the earth of burning sand. The stars fell

When you died, carried by the wind luminous across the sky.

Bastille Day

Bastille Day

 

Resist writing beautiful words if none

are called for. Admit that your knitting needles

click at the bottom of the guillotine. Freedom

is formed from nightmares, made from the messy

soup of the chopping block, in breach births,

and in the haunted souls of the stillborn.

Liberty is written as the mad harlot’s song,

rising with the smells of the boudoir

as she gives birth to the blind child

who will one day cast silhouettes of hope.

 

Lies must be digested and shat in the gardens

of darkness, decomposition igniting light. Resist

all beautiful words if none are called for.

Do not trust overlays of light not yet explored.

Go free. Ring ounces of pretension

from your nakedness. Kill the aristocrats,

and then have your enemies as dinner guests

in rooms purged, made spacious enough for light

to filter through high arched windows. Resist

beauty if you can not find it in despair,

in the clenched fists clung to barbed wire, on walls

upon which the graffiti of limits are written.

 

Resist beauty if it is false. If it remains in palaces

instead of on the streets. If it exchanges terror

for cosmetics laced with lead. Your sole may leave a

bloody footprint as the baskets filled high with heads.

Offer yours.

 

Resist.

It’s still July 14th on my side of the world.

I wrote this poem a few years ago for a reading I did at Cafe Arrivederchi in San Rafael, CA.  Subsequently, it was published by THE DICKENS, the wonderful literary magazine that Copperfield Books put out for a several years.  It won the Eugene Ruggles Poetry Prize, sponsored by the magazine.

 

Open House and Wild Things

We were hard at work making our Wild Things when news came of Sendak’s death.  This is first grader Braxton’s poem he wrote the day before:

I am a wild thing.

I look at the cheese moon

That is bright and hairy.

It chases a star squirrel,

And then Max came along,

And Boo came with me,

And Sam did too.

Here are all of the Wild Things,

some animal conversations,

and, finally, a couple of our habitats.

A Poem for My Sister

My sister Gwyn has been gone almost 8 years now.  She’s been on my mind a lot lately.  Though Celeste, in Heron’s Path, is not a bit like her, Gwyn did inspire her, the relationship between sisters.  She was the bright one, I was the dark.   She’s not in the collage, but I made it while she was dying.  The little boy is my dad, Leslie Eason, picture taken around 1909 or so.

For Gwyn

Madonna is all dolled up. Her glittery eyes look down at the baby

resting in her henna hands. The Queen of Heaven’s ready

for Mardi Gras. Instead, the graveyard stones slant below

her sparkling gaze, too quiet for a party, too white, too gray.

In the other picture, four dancing-girls do what they can

to divert  barbarian hoards on horseback, spears full tilt

as they rush in for attack. The girls dream of feet free

on desert sand, far from the soft red carpet of the harem’s floor,

far from the bad manners of these sweaty men.

In the morning, I look through my scratched lens

and sit with Andrew as he drinks chocolate milk.

Must I meditate on death with this child at my desk?

On the decal of the shuffle skeleton on the car we passed?

The white rose so quietly growing on the vine?

My sister drowns in a hospital room. In her morphine dreams,

divas dance on the walls.  From chairs by her bed, little black boys

speak to her of heaven.  I pray her rose unfurling.  Her petals.

Her wings ribbed with glittery adornments.

I think of deserts carpeted with red flowers, the mosaic spots

on butterflies, girls with bare feet spinning, All things transforming

and unfolding. I write HEAVEN in my book and underline it twice.

Swan Lake

 The ballerina was going to die anyway,

Swan Lake and all,

But the war babies went wild.

Their chubby little bodies

belied their supposed innocence.

Look at their faces,

creepy and middle-aged.

Frustrated baby-men with weapons.

The black chorus looks on, marbled and unmoved

at the premature death.  She had

such great bone structure, and I bet

she spoke both Russian and French.

Cupid’s army, black swan queen,

a randy hunter in the wood.

Doomed from the first note,

the first flight, the first arrow

dipped in the shadows by little men

trapped in infant skin.  Doomed

by all who cannot abide the power

of one woman’s dance,

a swan alive in the world’s wood.