Love Song

Oh Prufrock,
you never really listened.  Did you ever think,
to wonder
all those days in parlors with your coffee spoons and peaches
if maybe one of those lovely sirens just

out of reach,
may have had a few silver strands in her flowing hair?
(We don’t get much Clairol down here.)
Maybe a few deep laugh lines beside her eyes?
One or two (a gentlemen doesn’t ask) extra pounds from loving
to enjoy skittering crab claws a few too many?

No, you always look to the young mermaids,
those still so new girls
who want to sing to men with fire
still in their souls.  They want the ones who leap first,
the strongest,
the ones who fight hardest to swim back.
All those young men ever talk about is themselves, (or their cars,)
once we catch them.
No wonder we drown them after one single breath of sea.

For me, I could sing, sweetly,
for a man with a few regrets.
A lost love, a missed chance.
Perhaps a failed dream.
Someone who remembers older songs.
A little Classic Rock, perhaps.

I might even find a reason to teach you how to swim
how to breathe a different breath.   To remember
lungs that filled with fluid and did not die,
to live another life beneath the sea.

Human voices are not always the ones to seek.

KAW Jan 13

To Want

Jealousy curls up in my heart,
a cat in a warm blanket.

She makes herself comfortable,
stretches, laps cream
that doesn’t
belong
to her
with a rough tongue.

Purrs.  Her fur is silky.
Her claws are sharp.

KAW Oct 12

Observation

Monday
morning is regret.
A dropped favorite coffee cup,
a broken garden sculpture.
The pond inexplicably empty of water.
Cramps and headaches,
and remembrance of one last scotch.

Even the crows call
in the rainy gloom,
for some other day to
show its face.

Cold.  Pull the covers back
over your head, wait in the dark
for a friendlier day to smile at you.

Kaw Oct 12

Lessons

My daughter wants to learn
to play the piano.

It is a worthy goal; music is a path to many
wonderful places.

She doesn’t like to practice,
however.

She wrote the names of all the notes on her
keyboard, with a sharpie, on pieces of tape.

She wrote them wrong, and has been playing the notes
a little off.  E follows C which leads to A at the wrong moment.

At practice, after trying, and failing, to fix the error with
another sharpie, we resolved to tear away the tape.

The tape stuck tight.  Refused to budge.  My daughter gave up.
Left to play with the computer.  Said “You finish it.”

I think of the looks the piano teacher gives me,
her suspicions of my lacking parenting skills.

Like a mom trying to be good, I continued, doggedly, to pull at the
shredding scotch tape.  Little “plinks” and “hums” of electronic
keyboard answered my efforts.

It sounded like some frustrated improvisational Jazz.
Coltrane, but without the theory.  Or talent.

I thought about my own music lessons of many years ago.
How I hated to practice.  How I never really did it, but
was good enough to fake it.  To mix with more loyal musicians.  To have fun.
To be in the Symphony.  But always,
at the edge of being revealed:  fake.

Remembered Tchaikovsky.  The victory of the final swell of marching music.

Think about hating to practice anything.
Get the labels wrong.
Jazz.  That’s what it is.

KAW  Oct ‘12

On Loss.

I once wrote
a poem for a friend’s lost marriage,
the hot kisses of temptation that chased love away,
she, a small horse bolting from the herd.

And one for another
whose lover’s kiss of betrayal
landed her not one piece of silver,
not one memory of comfort.

There was another about my own young love
and what we held close
       dying in the summer, unnoticed.
This one was funny.  It made
people
exclaim
with surprise at its
final sentence of reversal.

I’ve written poems about sex, about death, about
sonogram pictures.  About tears
about rage about tiny
green lizards tasting
white flowers
and bee laden hummingbird feeders.

You know.  Innocence.  Experience.
That story.

There are too many about Goddesses.  Especially
the ones that taste red fruit, find it worthy of winter.

And so, trying to sit, and write about
the loss of a friend’s mother,
(too soon.)
Trying to find comforting words
something to soothe the tears, the need to push away
knowledge of being the root, now, no one else
above to shelter (us) from that last long breath.

Only the sky, and clouds, and a moon that is still there.

So.  Instead of something needful,
I find lost poems, like a little lint in an old coat pocket.  

KAW, 2012.

Perigee

Rising, golden through the trees: the moon.
A bride revealing herself slowly, shy, peeking.
We stand and
we stare. Like children,
we are moonstruck,
never having seen
something so magical before.


Remember that,
people still cry, fight, die, shun, include, live, breathe, exclude.

All these same old battles return to us again and again.
this never ends, this longing to know, to feel, to share.


The moon again reminds us that we are
only this,
small, we are only ending, finite.
And yet, we are always here.


We can see each other, sometimes, but not touch, not know.


And we envy the moon.


KAW may 12

Dandelions

She brings me dandelions
every time she sees one.
The yellow ones,
especially.

This little girl,
this small goddess, small
star
her heart so large so kind.

She writes books which she
illustrates
herself.

She fights
back when someone is mean.
Meows like the fiercest cat you've ever met.
Extends claws that catch.

She shivers in her sleep
when she has a bad dream,
curls up like a bean next to me.

I want to pull out anything that scares her, but
know those things will make her even stronger.

Dandelions grow everywhere.
Lion's Teeth...
She brings them to me, and for that,
I can never, ever
be anything other than amazed.

KAW March 2012

Fall

the morning is cool

the grass is wet

summer has let go, finally.

the sunlight is somehow slanted

its intensity simpler, soft.

I dreamed of small mice hiding. 

Of water rising and covering everything.

Of my mother, and planting trees.

If there are any fairy tales in this,
they are the kind that do not end with an easy moral.

Kaw  Oct 2011

1988

I am not in this picture.

That girl is not me.

I've met her, but she never likes me, at
first. 

Sometimes, I grow on her.
Sometimes, not. 

I am probably still at home,
obligated. Eternally third place.

I still look for signs that you miss me.
Find none.   
Why did I never notice, before?

Undone

It sneaks up on you
the tiniest of moments
the smallest of acts.

and there. again. a broken heart.

the summer heat, the green shade,
the cool splash of water against your skin

but all this and nothing
else
all this is loss, again.

it's been an entire year of cruellest Aprils,
falling hard into beauty but finding you are not there.

Still.
Not there.

The Siren Gets a Haircut

Really. She couldn’t explain
why
it was such a relief
to spend fewer hours
combing through those
salty green tresses
with starfish combs
and pinning
it up with mother of pearl pins.

This short
sassy
bob with bangs
made her head feel
     light.

She seemed to think more
     clearly.

Like, for example:
why waste so much time
singing sailors
into the rocks?

Maybe, instead, she could
      read a book
      write some poetry
      take a lover
who didn’t
drown immediately.

Learn something

      about the sky,

for once.

Already she could hear
   the strains of
      Revolution in the air.

Kaw.... May 2011

Meditation

My garden
full of weeds from
Fall and earliest Spring
calls to me. I hear
the quietest of pulls, sigh, circular
breath.

The beat-up Buddha statue, the angel who watches quietly,
the trellis choked with brown, crispy leaves.
They leave no messages for me anyway.

The red-headed woodpecker who demands more more
sunflower seeds and
waits impatient, for summer's abundance of bugs
perches on a nearby tree and flits his wings.

I cannot bring myself to pull and neaten
and organize rows
of perky flowers.  This Spring,
the weeds seem more loving
than hopeful busy, demanding flowers.

I will pull them all up, plant grey
rocks and
small bonsai trees and tan sand.
But not today.

April

Greengold trees, leaves budding,
remind you of Eden's first dream
the one of unity, blissful innocence,
the bluest skies touched
with black birds whirling in pairs
tandem dreams of eggs, nest, beak.

This is what it means to heal--
winter's ice has gone, its stinging blade
a memory still fresh but less so. Less so.

The air is not yet touched with heat
the sun still feels far away
the skies do not press down upon our eyes
a flash of negative turning us into
shapes, blurring out
individual features.

For now, it is easy to forget the frenzy
that will follow soon,
the too much of everything--pollen, blind kittens,
bees swarming for new queens.

To lie still, to dream
--of seeds
turning
in the newly warming soil,
to begin to forget the grief of winter.

Unraveling

this word has been in my head all day
and I pull at its ends
the shreddy bits
tie them off until
they find another way to shred.

I can't remember how to get there
and I never learned how to knit.

Red sweaters
fuzzy and a little itchy if the weather is not cold enough.
That's what I would make.

Your Own Path

Let's set the record straight:
the truth is,
you weren't always a very good mother.

You drank too much.  When other moms
were baking cupcakes and going to PTA meetings
you bleached your hair and wore too much blue eyeshadow.
Worked late nights. Had noisy sex when you
came home
in the mornings.

You laughed too loud when I was a teen
people would stare at you,
dancing as though
no one else was watching.  Embarassed me almost
to death.

You always loved the wrong men.
Including my father, who left
 and never really looked back
at us.  Not until
it was way too late.
You forgave him anyway.
Did not forgive the one who hit too often,
dropped it all and flew off in the night with me,
sleepy in the back seat of the car.

You grieved too hard.  Got angry
fast.  You could yell like a man. Fight dirty.
Spent entire days reading long novels and
ignoring the housework.

When the time came, you let me love the wrong boy
didn't say anything you would regret later,
and learn what that felt like. 
Stay out all night.  Ride in
fast dangerous cars when I should have been
studying.

There were loud fights.  I sometimes
wished you were not so brash
so rude to rude salesgirls.

You blew smoke into the blonde chippy's face
when,  16 at a football game, she coughed and
complained about your cigarettes. 
I looked at the other frumpy mothers
selling band candy and wearing brown shoes
and wished you away.

As we got older, and things a little easier,
all my friends liked hanging out with you--
It kind of annoyed me.
I said "she's not your mom."

You've had a tendency to rewrite history,
talk about how many flowers you planted,
how often you cooked home meals for me.

You did not age gracefully.

You do everything the hard way.

But the truth is:
now I know why. 

I've always liked Magdalenes better than Marthas.
And I am not embarassed to have loved you
for
all of those things.
Never
in spite of them.
***************************************

Breathing

You know the story of Pandora's Box, right?
All the sins and ills of the world, and
it was hope
that flew out last?

It is a terrible thing. 

Hope. 

I used to find comfort, in that story.

Holding on to a single golden truth:
The idea that something could be hopeful
meant it could look up.  Get
better.  Improve.
This place was
as bad as it could get.

But I didn't know how hope could be used to tease you,
push you right into a limbo of doubt where you hang and cannot let go
--just this one more test, we'll try, just to see
maybe, maybe, maybe.
she'll turn around.  Maybe
this will be the one.

I've been kidding myself that I was
a goddess of plenty,
of summer sun and bees dusted a frenzied yellow.

When in truth, I know so much
better-- this--
chill of the bones
this, pinching of the mouth
this,
loss.  Not yellow plenty but bitter brown.   
Bare branches and curled leaves. 
A swirling wind that leaves you
breathless and
tired, birdbaths overturned,
summer far away.

The last thing that flew out of that box
was as much a curse as a blessing.

As are all gifts that come in secret boxes.

KAW  Feb '10

Koi in Winter

they barely move
jostle close, ontop of
each other.
dig
orange, white, gold,
fins
tail mouth
into black leaves, stir silt
desperate
for the warmth of earth mud rot.

alien elements offering barest promise of summer to come.
it is still a long long way from here.

the water is martini-cold
straight up
clear.  clean.

the cat drinks, loving the taste of old
moss and fish breath

the fish sense watching eyes.
panic.
swirl breathe spin.
the cat does not notice.  drinks,
saunters away.

dark warm leafy stillness
is forgotten in cold rushing.

kaw jan '10
*****


an evocotive picture

Drunk

I want
to be rolling drunk
poised
on the tip of
the sweetest

ecstasy,

not yet released, just before the waves take me--

Not intoxicated. 

No.
I want the Anglo-Saxon version. 
Rough.
Careless.  A little crude.  Of the gutter.

Forgetful of myself
trusting in others to

remember.  For a little while.

Painless-- never reaching
the place
where the balance is tipped
towards regrets.

Constantly giddy

dizzy-buzzed.  Like

a honeybee
in a meadow filled with
golden suckleweed, lillies, roses, sweet sweetness.

I want that moment
captured in
those time-elapsed photographs

at bloom's pink peak

still. . .
before. . .

imperceptibly reaching, shivering,
holy holy holy.

How it Was

there is no place for what is missing here
no empty spot to poke
like a child with a lost tooth

there is no thing to be done
no weeping or rending
of clothing

there is only this silence
this refusal to be there
there is only this word
that will stay unspoken

and yet I search anyway
send out feelers
remember a time
when there was something there

and I can't, for the life of me,
be sure of when that last was.

I pat myself down, like
someone
looking for lost keys.

I just had them. Right?

There is no way to say this.

You are gone. 
And the sky is still blue.

Undeliverable

There used to be a place
for dead letters.

"What a terrible room to work"
we said, reading Bartleby.

Now so much is electronic.
The email comes back undeliverable.
Instantly.

No lingering paper scrawled in a dusty box
in a dusty room
for a sad man to file.

How rapidly we learn of
       our disconnection
now.