Diophantine (ef)

x^{2} + y^{2}
If I worry the page
With ‘I love you.’
One million times squared –
Would you read each rendition
And feel my need in each pass of the pen?

Although I lived my life a long time before you came along –
Would you know how much I ache
When you are away?
How I can’t wait for you to return again
So I can watch your eyes and hands
And listen to your lyric voice
Play a story for me?

My friend and lover
No one thing illustrates Forever
But when you’re spooned against me
So many nights over these several years
Our history is a sum greater than the parts
Whose result defines what Forever is:
Losing count
After one.

Ortegrity (ef)

This aubergine democracy
Of spongelike texture
And disagreeable taste
Noise experts – tut-tutting without wind
Still blowing out candles
Poor traits to pass along
The struggle to survive
Withering intelligence by degrees
By moonlight this fruit seems hardened to the world
But it won’t last the winter
Without the song of the frog & cricket
Pixie – your trick too late realized -
Lost on a familiar road
A fine environment for thinking
Surrounded by the purple night,
Silently, I breathe out.

We Won't Stop Dancing (ef)

Lo Nafseek Lirkod

In the years before I came to live here
There was fool’s gold in plastic cards
Little promise of things to come…
No regard for bombs, hatred,
And a world at war,
Today is an outdoor brightness:
A day of lapis skies
The world
An emerald tablet.
Have I come to my master work –
Each moment spent
A delicate liquid-solid,
Each passing lifetime
Measured by the people
I spend it with?
For now, I am here
At the soul of the world
Challenged to speak
So much less than I listen,
To stay still and tune in to my heart
While my legs and arms are itching to dance.

Birds of a Feather...

So here's today's episode - Mr. Ireland's Mum and Brother are staying over for a few weeks:

Akethan: Did i tell you about the bird juice?

Sister: uuugh

Sister: bird juice?

Akethan: Mr. Ireland's brother - K - said he needed a few things from the store - crispix, milk, white grape juice... so I picked 'em up and they were here for him when he got here

Akethan: after the first day or so - he finished the white grape juice off

Sister: ok

Akethan: everytime he goes for juice - he gets a new glass - at the end of each day there are glasses all over the house.... i keep

Sister: <~~~skerred

Akethan: collecting them and washing them and putting them away

Akethan: then -- yesterday i noticed they all had a red juice left in them

Akethan: i looked around and couldn't figure out where this red juice was coming from

Akethan: so when they were all sitting in the living room (Mr. Ireland, Mum, K)

Akethan: i asked - "Hey, what is this red juice - ?"

Akethan: everyone just sat there and then K got up and came over to look

Akethan: i asked - "Where is this coming from?"

Akethan: he stuttered that it was juice he found in a jar in the fridge

Sister: oh no

Sister: hummingbird food?

Akethan: puzzled i walked over to the fridge and looked inside and then bust out laughing

Akethan: he had finished off a gallon of hummingbird juice

Sister: oh my lord

Akethan: *can we have a 'grandma f memorial moment'*?

Sister: uhuh

Akethan: we were all in tears. he's mildly Rain Man - and got a bit flustered.

Sister: when do they leave?

Akethan: i said - now K, it's just sugar and water - no harm to you - don't get yer feathers ruffled.

Sister: i would say poor man but cant bring my self to quit laughing

Footnote = Grandma F - a dear soul who liked to sit on the sofa for days watching PRICE IS RIGHT - was found munching serenely on dogfood which my mom kept stored in an old Charles Chips can. She didn't bat and eyelash when I told her that wasn't a snackfood but kibble. She lived through the Depression, she informed me.

Rainstorm (ef)

Rainstorm
A spray of cologne
On the skin
What summer smells like
Afternoon storms
My love for you
Again & again & again
A strip – a tester
Holds the spores
So fine & fragrant
Slipped in a breast pocket
A return ticket
The transport – a nose
We’re back in summer
Cold rain on a hot wind
Our hands & lips
Again & again & again.

Sabado (ef)

In patterns on your back
Your fingers outsides
Left gaps in sunscreen
With no rhyme or reason –
Just where your reach
Couldn’t achieve complete coverage.
Somehow the sun designed
A dolphin.

***
At the end of a cloud-stretching tether
Dangles a tourist…
White-legged, white knuckled.

***
Those braids, darling –
Vacationary nightmare
Temporary tattoos
Allow the traveler
To cut loose.

Puerto Vallarta, i (ef)

The Mexican sun is a crazy star
With an untamed whirling mane
And the maddest, laughing eyes
The most beautiful part of any flower
To my eye, a burning calyx.

Neck-lace
Is an ugly word
Hard and soft in all the wrong places
Chopped loudly from the throats
Of wandering vendors –
They follow, expectant faces
Like boats I tow behind me.

This sun and these words,
Things that bite and sting,
This skin that burns:
An afternoon in all it’s complicity.

Letting In (ef)

We are not terrible enough
To qualify for godhood.
Maybe for minor demons
we could pass...
As we go our bad proliferates:
A willingness to
Drink entire oceans,
Push under entire lands.
Prerequisites to the trade:
Letting in a little good -
Mercy versus a change of mind.
So, divinity evades.

Queen for a Day... or Two

If I were Queen... I would smite some folks - and verily.

> The hands-free headset in-duh-viduals. They who wear their hands-free "safe as houses" headsets while they drive - but still, they are holding the cellphone in one hand as if it were a communicator pad or they're triangulating. Use headset. Place phone in lap. Hands on wheel. Drive. Talk. Stop it!

I've had some weird moments in stores standing next to someone who bursts into laughter or asks a question out loud -- the first thing I look for is that wire snaking from their ear into a pocket.

> "My kingdom for your cracker!" Yesterday a woman zigged into my lane and I into the shoulder lane. Then she zagged back into her own lane and then slightly back my way again. She was reaching for something in the passenger seat. As I drew up next to her, it was to see that she was wrestling with a sleeve of saltines to get a cracker free to munch on.

Your life - ahem - my life is worth a cracker?!

Let the smoting begin.

Defense of Marriage

As for the Defense of Marriage - what the heck are people thinking anymore? It's all very separate - your state can approve/disapprove your legal union; your church can approve/disapprove your spiritual union. You make your choices accordingly - pick your church; vote your state into your way of thinking. In theory - right? In a Democracy - right?

A friend sent this to me today - and I thought I'd add it here:

*Ronald Reagan - divorced the mother of two of his children to marry Nancy Reagan who bore him a daughter only 7 months after the marriage.

*Bob Dole - divorced the mother of his child, who had nursed him through the long recovery from his war wounds.

*Newt Gingrich - divorced his wife who was dying of cancer.

*Dick Armey - House Majority Leader - divorced

*Sen. Phil Gramm of Texas - divorced

*Gov. John Engler of Michigan - divorced

*Gov. Pete Wilson of California - divorced

*George Will - divorced

*Sen. Lauch Faircloth - divorced

*Rush Limbaugh - Rush and his current wife Marta have six marriages and four divorces between them.

*Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia - Barr, not yet 50 years old, has been married three times. Barr had the audacity to author and push the "Defense of Marriage Act." The current joke making the rounds on Capitol Hill is "BobBarr...WHICH marriage are you defending?!?

*Sen. Alfonse D'Amato of New York - divorced

*Sen. John Warner of Virginia - divorced (once married to Liz Taylor.)

*Gov. George Allen of Virginia - divorced

*Henry Kissinger - divorced

*Rep. Helen Chenoweth of Idaho - divorced

*Sen. John McCain of Arizonia - divorced

*Rep. John Kasich of Ohio - divorced

*Rep. Susan Molinari of New York - Republican National Convention Keynote Speaker - divorced

I may not be the marryin' kind - I like it out there on the open prairie (?) - but if I wanted to marry one day or form a legal union with a consenting partner - WHY DOES IT FRIGGIN' MATTER TO ANYONE ELSE?

In The Neck

I am in the neck
from my last life
of wide horizons
into my next
it being endless
in its possibilities.

I am in the neck
pressure building
toward an awaited spasm
an excruciating anticipation
of future, of fear
of the letting go.

I am in the neck
much like other
pinches of past
and premonition
I will recall
the width and hours
my mark will be left
my skull reshaped
inside & out - reborn
into my next tenure.

At the Age o' 33

...tiptoes in...

I had this boss - a fairly good-looking 50-something gentleman... balding, wrinkles, normal wear-n-tear.

He went on a two month "vacation".

He returned with a blondish-orange crew-cut rug. He returned with raised cheek bones, a slightly hooked aquiline nose, a be-dimpled chin. And he returned with eyebrows raised to the heavens. Some kind of tattoing process?

He never mentioned it. He acted like we couldn't tell and as if he'd always looked this way.

To me, he had lost his character. And - it actually felt like a bit of his soul, too. He was obviously concious of his changes, but really carried on as if this was the set of features he'd been born with.

So I always wonder... at the age o' 33... what would I do? What will I feel about myself as I age? Will it be easier than it seems or harder than it ought to be?

And at most given moments, I just try to go with the flow, take care of myself: exercise, eat, sleep, learn, and laugh as hard as I can everytime the opportunity presents itself.

Mouse or Elephant?

I read today that "the recipe for a mouse is much the same as the recipe for an elepant."

Yet they differ.

Some in my family speak racism with comfort and ease.

I ask if my discomfort stems from my disagreement with their views or an echoic sympathetic twinge - an acknowledgement that this is the stock I am from; so is racism a part of who I am?

If someone's dander is raised at the lowering of another confederate flag, a flag stitched in haste to represent a potential new nation whose core philosophy was an independent will to preserve its historic industries. At the cost of human life and dignity. This new nation's flag was intended to wave high its own beliefs, its separate strengths and disparate weaknesses. And it's right to dominate the beliefs and strengths of another people.

It is a waste of fabric to continue to sew this flag in this day and age. It is only a "tradition" in its deliberate perpetuation.

And if you're angry that the general public cries, "Take it down and put it away."

Take it down and put it away.

"It's just something else that THEY'VE taken from us."

What is being taken from you? Your heritage? Something to be proud of?

Something I should be proud of?

I love you and admire you. I aspire to be like you.

I am you. Your recipe.

Are we mouse or elephant?

Nile '03

Waving at strangers,
which god is at your side
fluorescent minaret?

You are a match struck
beside four-thousand year old
fading pigments.

You are a twist of pale grey
beside a sky of smoke, of history,
of farmers burning fields,
of Cleopatra's cigarettes.

Luxor '03

What really pisses
god’s fanclub off?
Egyptians.
They beat you to it.

History can brush off the youngsters –
Unitarian, Muslim, Baptist.

But Egypt
wags a stony finger in your face
jabs deep in the Christian heart it’s sting:
You blew it.

TETHERS

Six o’clock this morning when
Death caught up with us and decided
the whole world would go untouched
but for you my tawny friend

I think Death was a little spiteful
since we’d snatched seven hours from yesterday
when he arrived where you should have been
to find I’d stolen you away

Unbound you lay by my side at home
my belly against your back
breathing soft, purring low
my fingers across your pain

Six o’clock this morning when
I heard a small chime ring – I woke
in time to watch you steal away again.

Rome

I thought you needed my help
waiting for my shining moment
to don armor, to mount steed,
to heroically jump in…

Don’t worry – I’ll let you know when.

I waited a long time to hear you ask
your eyes raised to mine
a brow in curled question
an honest second
of bit of hope
a word:
Help.

Don’t worry – I’ll let you know when.

I’ve worried myself into bitterness:
I wouldn’t spit on you now
if flame burst from your
head and hair.
I might even applaud
and yes, I would stare –
and if ever I could play fiddle,
I would, then and there.

Don’t worry – I’ll let you know when.

It's Not the Wind

New year comes on eight legs
and lifts them to test the air and taste the wintermoth -
but the moth is a sweet moon dancer...
and spider a starving lurker, or worse, a hungry walker.

With dusty fluttering wings in my ears –
no, its not the wind
it’s the foolery of the short-lived
as they make their mark early and quick
flying fiercely at the moon or sun
at dizzy heights to be crisped and ruined –
to land – they come – to ends again –
landing softly in outstretched webs.

I wait safe & sound:
a personal guarantee to live long.
Cocooned in a stringy nest,
ravenous.

Poem: STREETS: BALTIMORE (ef)

She said what I saw –

the streets of Baltimore

sparkle under streetlight

something broken

and rolled into the pavement

sparkles so brilliantly

in the dark

and makes us mind our feet

passing over a field of stars

careful not to tread

on the brighter bits.

 

Promises lay in layers

obvious welts where

each winter puckers

the lengthy blackness

that scratches itchy chunks

from its twinkling hide

to be filled and patched

by the careful keepers

of promises, of pavement.

 

She saw what I said –

that something broken
sparkles so brilliantly
in the dark.

07.13.02 eaf

ADA Ruling

Supreme Court Narrows Reach of Disability Law

I heard this on the radio - and it made me go, "Hmmmmm."

I see three sides on this coin - two as a business and an employer. I have several times been amazed at how 1 individual's needs can bend an entire company. I am not talking sweeping changes that can accomodate many needs (ramps, automatic doors, etc.).

I also know personally friends whose needs have or have not been met by employers and how a change in their lifestyle and a lack of bend on the part of the employer truly CAN effect the person's daily life so the ruling seems to miss that fine point - that state of employment for most of the population goes hand-in-hand with daily life.

...the law only covers impairments that affect a person's daily life and does not apply to conditions that prevent a worker from performing a specific job-related task...

Case-by-case things should still be considered and weighed. I hope this doesn't give businesses the opinion that they don't have to even consider making changes/accomodations because the law says that they aren't required to.

And that works as long as the individual in need understands that an employer can only make so many accomodations to allow them to continue doing their job.