I know and forget

I know and forget, I know and forget, like the tides

Walking inside my body, I seem to move always ahead

I know and forget, I know and forget, like the seasons

Love me for my secrets, the backwards looks behind me

I know and forget, I know and forget, like the wisdoms

I am a burning library and I cannot be saved. Shrieking languages

I answer and ask, I answer and ask, like the poems

Collecting, collecting. Don't let the words slip away

I answer and ask, I answer and ask, like the histories

Forgotten females, underground memories, stilled

I answer and ask, I answer and ask, like the gravestones

Who are the names? What are the lies that they told?

I love and I fight, I love and I fight, like the marriages

How many houses, how many children, how many years?

I answer and ask, I answer and ask, like the songs

Front-page fears unrecognized in the lullabies

I know and forget, I know and forget, like the jungle

Glossy green triumphant, civilizations lost

Up time

Hello, sweet sleepwalking self, grab the chimes! It's wake-up time

You have to leap free of the strangling creepers that snake up time

Look at you smothered in messy minutes, blanketing blue belief

Come sweep clear the seconds, straighten the days, rake up time

It's a snow-white world, you can scribble all over its drowsy face

You can dream up the mountains, glory, you can make up time

Make yourself large, large, large, big honey, go huge!

Occupy the oceans, swallow space, take up time

Count every sidewalk slab you step on, live in every blink

Chop the instants into lives, slice apart the night air, break up time

No bangle will stay quiet, no anklet will stop shimmying

You have stomped onto all the stages to shake up time

Keep hankering and wanting, you wished-for child

Hunger through the deserts, yearn down the years, ache up time

A walk

I went for a walk dressed only in loveboots and tabloid memories.

I went for a walk across this country of mine, stopping where I bloomed.

I went for a walk through airport colors, the worn path of old shaking

Retraced the steps of the phone calls: two doctors, long holds: your mother.

I went for a walk across the azaleas, proud loud visitors

I walked. I walked through the stories that growl and purr. I danced it with you.

I am walking straight through right and wrong, clear across the grief and delight

I walked through the night, pirouetting on the clear driving emptiness

I went for a walk when I had no legs. I had no clothes. No reason.

I went for a walk across this country of mine. I have no country.

sonnet

feet and houses. bodies, trains, old friends

chatty seatmates, scary losses, sleep

deadlines, daydreams, blurry streaking trends

hours and backpacks, things to maybe keep

old addresses, bookshelves, sunlit dirt

ugly secrets, sudden cramps, old aches

slip-ups. things to trip on. things that hurt

glimmers, mirrors, triumphs. sharp mistakes

dolls, boxed games, old papers. grimy things

poems, tunes, and faces. fighting songs

paths. deep cupboards. root balls. hidden strings

mudcloths, bathrobes, nightgowns, silk sarongs

who draws the pattern in the mute uproar?

who hears the answers that have gone before?

all the yesterdays

all the yesterdays have been building a thing tomorrow is perched on
all the yesterdays have been digging a hole tomorrow is hurtling into
look at me standing here slaying the yesterdays zap! zing!

yesterday had its own true, its own alive
and already I am torn in two between then and then
forward and back, yearning backward and forth.

things that did not seem to belong together fly at each other hard and stick
I am gulping the vanishing tomorrows, clearing a path
through the loud, bright right now. it cannot be spoken fast enough

when I feel my shoulders hunch I say shoulders, relax yourselves down!
when I feel my untruths ballooning I try to catch and burst them
when I feel my rhythms marching me hard I trip them, I skip them, I brake them

the ticking threatens and beckons, it looms, it croons
it doesn't know it doesn't matter so it does, it does
the voices it speaks with layer their echoing calls

Birthday reunion

Tonight my family's faces kissed, talked,

ate cake and s'mores, told stories and sang.

The room rang with the names we were given.

Our faces rhyme, our stories have walked

all over our crisscrossed memories. This gang

is our gang, the names are the names. Embraces

flickering, stories lovingly felted. We've driven

mad, wild to be this us. To touch and watch our faces.

Slow magic

The light is changing. The day wheels

over the pounding city hearts

heels machinery. Fast street smarts

meet slow magic and boom, it feels

torn all ways. God's own highlight reels.

The angles race snick-snack, a slap

where right meets wrong, shadows a trap

in deep corners. Why this house, this

number, this shadowy ghostkiss

of old sun, shifting contour map?