poem for/by judy

I've always wanted
in the course of writing you
I'm going to do my damnedest to
demonstrate strength and agility
dress up in a ridiculous outfit

you define present twice;
a voluptuous, lovely young thing
some hapless soul
more vulnerable and honest

even by moonlight
able to flirt
you tempted to show
my body

that's what I think, anyway.

I need to be giving more
do double duty
submit to saran wrapping
water the lawn again

I've finally collated all
how so much depends
the last shot, I kept hoping
anxiety to the sweet,

but no luck.

[dec 05]

Buonavita

12/13/05

David,

I'm sorry Richard and I did not get to see you around the time of the reunion. I would like to have been able to report that the reunion was at the least pleasant, and it probably was, but at this point all I can remember are fat people with too much oil in their hair or makeup on their faces trying to shake it on the dance floor. Any attempt I made with the old acquaintances to try to reminisce substantively about the people, the social dynamics, the classes, and to express even a bit of earnest joy or remorse about that time was met with rigid, botox-induced smiley faces and offers of business cards and realestate deals. I can't say I didn't enjoy it, but I did so mainly as an observer, not as a participant. I guess it was like looking in a mirror -- it was a reflection of where I'd come from and where I am. This was all confirmed by candid photos I got from the event, within one where I can see myself looking just as old and tired as the rest did. In my mind the highlight of the evening was seeing my junior high school crush Monica Buonavita, who was still quite pretty and putting up a beautiful fight against time. I would have fallen in love with her again if she'd transformed herself in the intervening time from a bland, suburban beauty into a sassy, erudite urbanite wearing narrow, dark-rimmed glasses and early-adopter second-hand pants, talking about protesting against the World Bank in some European city. But she did not, was not, and I redeemed the night in my mind by feeling lucky to have found a free parking space next to the hotel.

-John

circumstance

My trips to El Salvador changed my life not by directing or inflecting its course, but rather by permeating it, or weaving many new strands into it that I have worn since those days. El Salvador was nothing more than a name to me -- it wasn't even a distinct spot on a map -- when my advisor told me one of his ex-students was looking for someone to do a bit of environmental consulting down there. I was existentially exhausted from several years of work on my dissertation, and going to Central America to finally practice something that I'd been studying forever was just perfect. That it was known to have fantastic surf and the gig was to $300/day made the decision to go just unquestionable. What I had accepted as a series of brief work trips turned into years of revisiting, friends gained and lost, development of professional interest, an expanded understanding of otherness, cultures, poverty, indigneous history, human rights, the ability to speak broken Spanish fluidly, and visions of black sand, afternoon downpours, empty highways and 15 cent bus rides.

My arrival was just as if it was staged by a set designer: I walked off the plane at night into a large rectangular baggage area, which was cavernous and empty like the rest of the small airport. I saw nothing through the 2-story windows except pitch black night, and just then thunder exploded and rang like it came out of speakers, and in the momentary illumination I saw palm trees bending and throngs of people waiting outside in the humid night.

I fell in love while I was in El Salvador. On my first weekend there I asked the company driver to take me to a surfspot that I'd read about. I paddled out into overhead waves by myself, and some time later was joined by a friendly young guy, who pointed at a cinder-block shack on the beach. Hotel Kilimanjaro, $2/night. I was told it was dangerous to walk across the beach at night to the nearest restaurant so I asked to eat dinner with the caretaker family, who gave me a plateful of whatever they were having that night, for $1. I stayed there every time I went to El Salvador, until one day the hotel was sold to a wealthy businessman who razed it to build a $100/night hotel, and the caretaker family had to move away. I met beautiful Canadian volunteers who worked for environmental groups, surfed and travelled with them, took photographs of them as they swung lazily in hammocks, and wished I could be their boyfriend. I met Americans wandering the region, Americans who drove ambulances there, shared meals with hippy South African surfers travelling from San Francisco to Panama, and David ("Dah-veed"), a cool friendly Frenchman from Toulouse who I last ran into again in Madrid. Many sunsets from the half-built wall of Hotel Kilimanjaro, splitting a beer or an anona cluster with Saul, the young guy who pointed out the hotel from the water, who was the caretaker's son. During the week I worked in the capital, and I always went with the native technicians, instead of the foreign consultants, to local restaurants. At work I would get long, innocent and passionate emails from a girl I had just gotten to know back in Amherst, and at night the phone would ring with her desperate calls. Eventually I fell in love with her and we were together for many years.

καταστροφή / disastre

Two winters ago on a windy day I capsized a small sailboat with my friend Paul.

Well, Paul and I capsized a boat again. We were on Paul's folding kayak this time, trying to shoot through the cave at Emerald Cove in La Jolla. The cave is one of many caves that dot the cliffs at La Jolla Bay, but it's special in that it cuts through the base of a small, pointed headland, and if the tide is high enough you can paddle small watercraft from one side of the cave to the other. We saw people paddle into a narrow mini-fjord, and just before they hit the end of the fjord, they'd make a sharp left turn into the cave, and emerge on the other side. There were 1-2 foot swells, and they surged through the cave but rarely seemed to break within the length of the cave.

Just before we got to Emerald Cove, we had come upon another large cave in the cliffs. This cave was large -- the opening area formed a 50-foot diameter cavern, and behind it you saw two separate caves leading to small, dark beaches. In the outer cavern the water seemed deep, and in the middle was a natural pillar coming out of the water and reaching to the ceiling. I was a bit concerned about waves surging or even crashing through the cavern area, but before I had even finished saying Whoa Whoa Whoa, Paul said Let's go and steered the kayak into the cavern. We tried to circumnavigate the main opening area by going around the pillar, but instead made a right-angled turn right into the side of the cave wall. That didn't register in my mind at the time as a lesson about the boat's turning radius.

Just after that we came upon Emerald Cove. We didn't really know anything about the cave there until we paddled right up to it and other kayakers shooting through the cave. We sat the mouth of the fjord watching two kayakers go into the cave. I was tempted and thought we might be able to make it but was hesitating to commit. As we sat there the surge of the swells slowly pulled us into the fjord, and, well, I'm not sure exactly how it happened but I heard Paul yell something like Charge Ho! or Damn the Torpedoes or something, and I found myself paddling straight into the fjord. At the end of the fjord we attempted to make a sharp, left turn into the cave opening, but made only 1/3 of the required turn and ran into a cliff wall. At that point a swell surged through the cave and hit us diagonally-broadside and the kayak tipped at about 45 degree angle.

A funny thing about disasters is that time slows down as it happens. In that slowed moment, mothers lift cars by themselves to free their babies pinned under cars, policement dodge bullets aimed at them, and young men dash into burning buildings to pull out sleeping victims. In my case, sitting in the front of the kayak tilted at 45 degrees, with a wall of water pushing on the left and a cliff face to my right, I wondered, Could we balance ourselves? Could we push off the bottom with oars to prevent capsizing? What would happen if we did flip? Is Paul deftly making emergency maneuvers to save the moment? When that slowed moment was over, time returned to its normal pace and I felt the boat lose its balance and spin upside down. I found myself standing in shoulder-deep water, and when I looked behind me I saw Paul swimming away towards the beach.

Actually, Paul was right there. We spun the boat right-side up and it was hopelessly filled to the brim with water. We pushed the boat to the boulder-strewn beach, and tried to pulled out over the boulders. The boat felt like a thousand pounds and we just could not haul it out over slippery, moss-covered boulders. A folding kayak is structured like a tent -- a (waterproof) canvas skin is stretched tightly around a frame made of aluminum poles and plastic spacers. Imagine a small tent that is completely filled with water, and trying to haul it out through breaking waves! As we floundered on the boulders, we were hit by a series of 2-3 foot breaking waves which flipped the boat again and knocked us around, and I was afraid the boat would come down on one of our legs and break it! One big wave knocked Paul way up the boulders, and as it retreated it sucked me and the boat a bit off the beach. At that point I knew I couldn't handle the boat by myself in the impact zone, nor could we haul it out over the slippery boulders, so I swam it further into the sea.

As I swam the sunken kayak out of the fjord, I turned and yelled and motioned to Paul, who was sitting on dry boulders. He looked wet and stunned, with his cap sitting crooked on his head, and though there is no other way to get out of there, he seemed unwilling to swim out to me and the boat. I yelled out an offer for him to spend a night with Vanessa Paradis, but he came back asking for something more Greek, Portuguese or Mediterranean. Anyhow a spark was restored in his eyes and he swam out, and we were met by a large German-sounding lifeguard woman, who then called a jetski to tow the boat to a rock-shelf used by snorkelers and sea-lions, where we were able to haul out the boat, drain the water, and paddle it back to our launch point. The boat suffered several broken parts and a bent rudder, and Paul and I each got a few good bloody scrapes.

[ca. July 05]

Two Poems from an Insurance Advertisement Pamphlet

ERNEST HYDE

My mind was a mirror:
It saw what it saw, it knew what it knew.
In youth my mind was just a mirror
In a rapidly flying car,
Which catches and loses bits of the landsacpe
Then in time
Great scratches were made on the mirror,
Letting the outside world come in,
And letting my inner self look out.
For this is the birth of the soul in sorrow,
A birth with gains and losses.
The mind sees the world as a thing apart,
And the soul makes the world at one with itself.
A mirror scrached reflects no image--
And this is the silence of wisdom.

- Edgar Lee Masters

FIRST LESSON

Lie back, daughter, let your head
be tipped back in the cup of my hand.
Gently, and I will hold you. Spread
your arms wide, lie out on the stream
and look high at the gulls. A dead-
man’s float is face down. You will dive
and swim soon enough where this tidewater
ebbs to the sea. Daughter, believe
me, when you tire on your long thrash
to your island, lie up, and survive.
As you float now, where I held you
and let go, remember when fear
cramps your heart what I told you:
lie gently and wide to the light-year
stars, lie back, and the sea will hold you.

- Phillip Booth

Memorial Day 2005

On a thousand small town New England greens,
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic

The stone statues of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year-
wasp-waisted, the doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns…

- For the Union Dead, by Robert Lowell



"Firebombing is a bombing technique designed to create a firestorm in the target city. This technique makes use of incendiary bombs to start a massive fire, and can also include a preliminary bombing run designed to prepare the city for burning."

• Hamburg, Germany, July 28, 1943: 42,000 civilians killed by the British and the US.
  
  
• Dresden, Germany, October 1944 - April 1945: 25,000 - 35,000 civilians killed by the British and the US.
  
  
• Tokyo, Japan, February - May, 1945: over 100,000 people killed by the US.
  
  
• Kobe, Japan, March 17, 1945: 8,841 residents killed by the US.
  

- From Firebombing at Answers.com

Weather Memories

Listen to the rhythm of the rain falling,
Say you're gonna change your foolish ways.
Make a promise, break a promise in the same day,
It goes the same way, anyway.
- From Stray, by R. Frame

Riding my bike into town for a slice of pizza, then stuck there for 20 minutes under the shop's awning during the downpour. I alway liked the coolness of air that follows a thunderstorm.

The feel of warm brown paint on my bare feet on the veranda of the old research house at Plum Island Sound. That old house smelled musty on warm days.

Sleeping in my old Civic in the small parking lot behind Nauset Sports, in Orleans. It rained all night, and I left a window cracked open. The rear seats were folded flat and I lay diagonally across the back area. My head rested on a pillow on an updside-down bucket placed behind the front-passenger seat. I didn't feel rested in the morning.

The rhythmic splattering sound of sleet against the window. Old windows in old buildings were always heavy, and they never slid well in their tracks because of the many coats of paint. The heating pipes at 14 Russell St. always ticked and frequently banged.

Whenever it snowed the porch at the Historic College Inn in Northampton was covered with a thin layer of snow. The porch was recently painted grayish blue, and it was always slippery. I'd open the door, check my mail -- nothing ever but my New Yorkers -- and the stairway was always dark.

[ca. June 05]

3 consecutive days on the edge of the sea

TUE
A NW windswell. Shifty peaks were breaking head-high over the north reef. Six people out, although only three were actually catching waves. The thick, glassy curls were gilded orange and steel blue by the setting sun. I forgot my wetsuit. The instant I jumped into the water I began to shiver, and could not stop until I was half way home with the car heater at full blast. The water temp was 65 F, and there was a 5-10 mph onshore breeze. I have been in colder places.


WED
The same spot. Paddling out in warm, dry air over jade-green waves, I felt like a movie-star. A five-foot high tide and a fading swell resulted in slow, rolling waves. Again, six out, three riding. Exiting the water at high tide requires paddling up to a large, flat rock and scrambling up its side during a lull in the waves. I screwed up the timing and got pushed against the rock by three waves. Bruised my knees. Broke some skin and a skeg.


THU
A wide sandy beach, clouds were arriving overhead, and on the horizon the sun's rays punched through the clouds and struck the sea. The waves were breaking waist-high on two main sandbars 50 yards offshore. Periodically shoulder-high waves arrived. From the shore they appeared to break all at once as a single wall. In the water, at the peak, you aim the board down a side, and you make it. Things always look different from the shore. A hundred surfers bobbed along the coastline.

[ca June 05]

Counting

[I ran through the streets] counting the breaths between each house and lighted window. counting the breaths between each glimpse of street.
- K.W.


But I say we've been counting since birth --
the heart beats and lungs breathe,
leg bone goes before the other,
and eyelids flutter.

I can even row the air
with my elephant ears.
A poly-rhythmic orchestra,
a jangling mantra, repeating,

the body counts the path
of its wandering, the hope
of its lungs, the scenes
of its centripetal vision.

It's midnight. Constellations rise
and fall, conducting a sea
of sleeping bodies heaving
and resting, like wavelets

that cover the oceans.
We touch, dance and rise
against one another, together.
We are each lit by our own moon.

[ca. June 05]

My Name Is Red

I, SATAN

I am fond of the smell of red peppers frying in olive oil, rain falling into a calm sea at dawn, the unexpected appearance of a woman at an open window, silences, thought and patience. I believe in myself, and, most of the time, pay no mind to what's been said about me. Tonight, however, I've come to this coffeehouse to set my miniaturist and calligrapher brethren straight about certain gossip, lies and rumors.

- From My Name Is Red, by Orhan Pamuk



I, THE EGO

Fuck. I knew this was going to happen, the stutter, fingers cold like Popsicles, trembling when held up, and sweat beading up and spreading into a Rorschach test on my shirt. It’s a good thing that I wore a dark shirt! And another good thing -- she was late -- because I had a chance to turn my chair into the early evening breeze and cool my hot forehead. Just before she strolled up to me, I had a moment to draw several deep breaths and meditate on those melancholy memories. They always steady my nerves, plant my feet on the ground and calm my mind. When you remember all that has been, there isn't room for much else.

That I attempted to insert myself into this situation again is no surprise –- how can I repulse the incessant whining of Neediness and the blatant sales pitches of Hope -– but that the attempt has succeeded this far was a total surprise. Careful! I shouldn't flirt with the word “success,” for what could the word mean? At this particular point? Or ever? What could possibly be attained by what I’m doing? You have to think about what is beyond now, today, next week to three years later. Passion persists only in ignorance. Naïve idealism will eventually transform itself into comfortable disdain, hours filled with petty negotiations and reluctant compromises, shopping lists, balancing checkbooks, perfunctory nights together and vacations spent arguing. But what about singleness? Pee-stained underwear and dinners eaten over the sink.

Look, just hang in there, see what happens, you have little to lose. Chill. Just be realistic. It's all about playing the odds.



I AM CALLED ID

It matters to me little that she turned out to be not like what I had imagined. Behind the fronds of a potted palm I saw her walking, swaying, and my eyes measured the outline, and though her face was a blur behind the palm fronds waving in the evening breeze, I knew it was her.

What can I say that would not be said by all men in my shoes? I relished all the curvatures, the full lips, and the twinkling gray eyes. Men spend hours imagining moments like this but to have it actually happen –- to sit across from a beautiful woman and see, hear and smell her –- is magical. I’m reminded of the first time I heard a full orchestra in a real symphony hall. The sound waves filled the space; I felt the vibrations in my chest; music resonated within the hollow cavity that is my body.

Wait. Were the eyes gray or blue? Blue-ish gray, I think. It doesn’t matter. It doesn’t bother me that I can’t seem to remember. In fact, all the particulars are already fast fading way, and I’m left with just sensations of memory, and in the end that’s all I care about. I don’t need to remember the object of my memories: the color, size or shape. I just have to remember the feeling of perceiving, the pleasure of the moment. I can feel a deep, slow vibrato of hunger in my spine as I remember feeling the texture of her skin, the timbre of her voice, and smell of her body across from me.



I AM SUPEREGO

I felt myself absent from the situation the whole night, but that is how it works best. I don’t want to be heard aloud. I blend myself into the thoughts, mesh myself into the machinations and subtly guide the actions. What if I was heard aloud, as a single, narrative voice? That would be too egotistical! I was exactly that some time ago –- I was God, a bearded old man with a nasty history. That was a good arrangement until he let himself be confused by philosophers. He needed that because he was a coward and could not deal with me face to face. No matter, I’m still here.

My most basic task is easy: strike down the wild impulses, send them back to the subconscious cellar. Make the idiot keep his pants on and prevent him from making some hopelessly grandiose declarations. But the job could get a little more complicated than that. He knows the obvious offenses, so he sneaks around, taking a circuitous route to that which he knows is trouble. A kid heading for the adult magazine rack never goes straight to it; he winds he way via the milk case and the aspirin rack. The dimwit began the evening well, opening doors, keeping his mouth shut and keeping his hands to himself, and I expected smooth sailing for the night.

Trouble began when, at the supposed end of the night, he managed to invite her up to his room. What was obviously just a friendly visit, an earnest attempt by one person to commune with another –- for what is more tiresome than an endless internal conversation with oneself? -– the imbecile took it as some expression of attraction and reasoned that it was somehow wholesome, right, and even desirable to be true to his base instincts and express them. No, I didn’t have to wrestle him off his guest; he’s too much of a coward to be that impulsive -– but I saw him inching towards her on the sofa and I, jolted from a sleepy inattention, immediately filled his head with doubts. Doubts about himself and his grasp of the situation. This isn't the most forthright way for a superego to work, but I’m not here to adhere to principles, only to affect them. The buffoon's voice cracked, his fingers began to tremble, and I knew we were safe again.

[ca. June 05]

Numbers and Attachments

1998-
Argentina on 3rd floor,
Swing, one two cha cha cha,
A '91 for $4500, frantic calls to El Salvador.
53B Gulf Rd. and a vegetable garden.
50 Milk, 279 Belmont, a convertible and winter.
14 Russell, 617-773-2950. Half a mile to the train, 3 blocks to the sea.
2002 -- I don't know, maybe 2003 -- after 3 years, across 50 states.
Once a day, once every other.
That night, 2 a.m., "I don't know if I can ever be again."
Once a week, once now and again.
Now is 2005, 3 years.
Once two.
Once.

[ca. May 05]

El Olvido

Ya no la quiero, es cierto, pero tal vez la quiero.
Es tan corto el amor, y es tan largo el olvido.
- Neruda


Angel, she was the one.

The one who stood on the curb and cried
because she wanted me to leave and not leave.
and three hours later when I crossed the Hudson,
golden in the afternoon sun, I still could've turned
around and gone back

and told her I loved her and it can work.

The one who called me when I was
out of range somewhere in southwestern Kansas,
across the Panhandle and in some twenty dollar
New Mexico motel. The one who-. After wheat fields
graded into hard boulders,

deserts and a gas station in Ocotillo,
then standing two miles from the opposite sea,

I would have turned around.

[ca. May 05]