Mona Lisa Moon

they blasted the moon today
--our protector--
the he-she entity
with a scientific one-two punch.

i tuned in,
glued to the tv
keen for satellite images
of exposure
in the expected
six-mile debris field.

newscasters during the countdown
said that discovery of ice
would shave billions off the space program.

human greed in a soundbite.

disbelief. dismay. depression.
the moon doesn't behave as expected.
there is anger. some scientific embarrassment.

later,
i look up into the ink
and study the moon's revolution.
so sly, this mona lisa moon,
grinning through rotation
and safeguarding truths from men
who rocket slap her face and are bewildered
when she does not yield.

Shakesperian Toe Tale

damn.

i catch a glimpse of my right big toe
and notice chipping paint and uneven lines.
i am annoyed.
so, i bend over and let my thumb
remove hyperbole from naked nail.

i schedule a pedicure
and let mood dictate color.

today it's romeo and joliet.
i like the implied tragedy in the name.

days later,
paint flakes when life rubs.

joliet wonders where romeo has gone.

so do i.

Brand X Religion

it's laundry day
and i'm using an ultra concentrated detergent.
what a modern marvel!
cleaner clothes in 1/4 cup!

i gloat as i sort,
clapping myself on the back
on not falling for those flashy brand x versions
promising to do more with more out of my pocket.

isn't religion the same?
we distill god down to
a word or a book or a vision
and we applaud our efficiency.

hell, with all this concentrated power,
we need less!
we marvel at our creation
and wonder if this version of god
will still lather us of our sins
and keep us cleaner, longer.

THANK GOD for 2x Ultra God!

Enlightenment in a bottle
and specially formulated for
high efficiency human machines.

Charnel House

i push into loamy earth
that holds a thousand bones.

my fingers wiggle through
centuries
that pile
and hug
and caress
below the epidermis.

life and death
mingling in a great orgy
as ancestors cavort with strangers
and prim echoes of "indecency"
and talk of a savior
are muffled by soil and rock and worm.

what does it matter when we all reduce to chalk and dna?

and what stops the greedy mother
from sucking marrow
and breaking bone into food for the unborn?

Prophets and Men

there are men who sit on the desert floor
and wait for god.
but there is no god but time and its various expressions.

shadows shorten and lengthen
and the moon cackles at the unnatural displays of immobility.

and in that moment
when fear and calm marry
and man is uncertain
"god" settles nearby and whispers mystery
into his ear.

a shout.
a shock.
revelation tickles.

trembling with an unknown feeling
dust is raised
as legs raise and move from the remote.
running now.
running from the promise of ecstasy
like virginal lovers in the first blush of fever.

Birthing

I've got a couple poems forming in my mind's embryonic fluid but it's not time to birth them yet...soon. For now it's enough to feel joy as each new word flutters into existence.

In moments like this, I turn to other writers for company and inspiration.

From Proust's Swann's Way:

"When I saw any external object, my consciousness that I was seeing it would remain between me and it, enclosing it in a slender, incorporeal outline which prevented me from ever coming directly in contact with the material form."

From Annie Dillard's Holy the Firm:

"Esoteric Christianity, I read, posits a substance. It is a created substance, lower than metals and minerals on a "spiritual scale," and lower than salts and earths, occurring beneath salts and earths in the waxy deepness of planets, but never on the surface of planets where men could discern it; and it is in touch with the Absolute, at base. In touch with the Absolute! At base. The name of this substance is: Holy the Firm."

From Forrest Carter's The Education of Little Tree:

"Granma said that the spirit mind was like any other muscle. If you used it it got bigger and stronger. She said the only way it could get that way was using it to understand, but you couldn't open the door to it until you quit being greedy and such with your body mind. Then understanding commenced to take up, and the more you tried to understand, the bigger it got."

From Linda Hogan's (Chickasaw Indian tribe) story "The Feathers" found in Reinventing the Enemy's Language - Contemporary Native Women's Writings of North America:

"There is a still place, a gap between worlds, spoken by the tribal knowings of thousands of years. In it are silent flyings that stand aside from human struggles and the designs of our own makings. At times, when we are silent enough, still enough, we take a step into such mystery; the place of spirit, and mystery, we must remember, by its very nature does not wish to be known. There is something alive in a feather. The power of it is perhaps in its dream of sky, currents of air, and the silence of its creation. It knows the insides of clouds. It carries our needs and desires, the stories of our brokenness. It rises and falls down elemental space, one part of the elaborate world of life where fish swim against gravity, where eels turn silver as moon to bread."

Wisdom from John Muir

John Muir, Platinum Print, c. 1910, National Portrait Gallery, Washington DC

I admire John Muir. Always have. Watching Ken Burns' "National Parks" documentary made me feel as if I was with Muir in the Sierras, in Yosemite and Alaska, in the West...taking time to stop alongside wildflowers and inquire about a particular flower's day...breathing in the air that hugs old growth pine...rambling along trails and off trails, led by a boundless enthusiasm for all that IS.

Here are some of my favorite quotes from him. Enjoy.

"When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the universe."

"There is in some minds a tendency toward a wrong love of the marvelous and mysterious, which leads to the belief that whatever is remote must be better than what is near."

"If my soul could get away from this so-called prison, be granted all the list of attributes generally bestowed on spirits, my first ramble on spirit-wings would not be among the volcanoes of the moon...My first journeys would be into the inner substance of flowers, and among the folds and mazes of Yosemite's falls."

"Let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life...All is divine harmony."

"The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains--mountain-dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature's work-shops."

"Clusters of peaks stand revealed harmoniously correlated and fashioned like works of art--eloquent monuments of the ancient ice rivers that brought them into relief from the general mass of the range...Nature's poems carved on tables of stone."

I woke up laughing this morning

It's in the wee hours of the morning, and I woke up rather early thanks to the rumbly engine of a car outside my window. This is not why I woke up laughing. I laughed because the engine also woke up a bird (affectionately named Bentley the Bachelor Bird) that lives above my apartment, encouraging it to begin a passionate 5 minute chirping diatribe against said engine. THIS is why I woke up laughing.

I imagined it grumbling about the neighborhood (chirp, chirp, CHIRP), the ridiculousness of some engine noises (CHIRP!), and why in heavens name were people up so early anyway...on a THURSDAY (CHIRP! CHIRP! CHIRP!).

It made me giggle and I am still giggling but also slightly envious. After chirping off, it managed to fall back asleep but I'm up...for good, methinks. 'Tis okay...it's the first day of a new month and I'll be up to welcome the first rays of sunshine.