|
home { contact { about me { writing bio { playshops { performing
Below is a sampling of poems from my newest book
To order a copy of my book, please click image for details
I Cannot Write a Poem About War
I Cannot Write a Poem About War
I will not organize rallies, pass out leaflets, knock on doors.
I am just a woman who loves her husband, likes sleeping late on Saturdays, enjoys eating soup for breakfast, sings often and a capella.
I cannot write a poem about war but I will say it is wrong, march with others who believe all the men, women, and children of the world deserve to live.
Do our so-called leaders truly believe they can mete out mass destruction and escape unscathed? Their Swiss-cheese souls they sold long ago—they cannot pay their way to grace on the backs of a billion dead.
I cannot write a poem about war because that is a poem about loss, a poem about sorrow deep enough to swallow me whole.
I will write a poem about not writing a poem about war. I will write about faces. Eyes that crinkle at the corners as mouths stretch wide in smiles; noses that wrinkle at the latest gifts a million babies deposit in their diapers; foreheads that furrow when children everywhere scrape their knees; cheeks whose color deepens when countless lovers confess how they really feel; faces in whose features peace can be read when their owners are wrapped in dreams.
If our so-called leaders remember these faces—Iraqi, Israeli, Afghani, Hindustani, Pakistani, Palestinian, Iranian, Chinese, Japanese, Egyptian, Kurdish, Somalian, Zimbabwean, Venezuelan, Chilean, European, American—perhaps
the sabers will lie quiet in their scabbards, the gauntlet will be picked up, bombs and egos will be deactivated
and when I say I cannot write a poem about war, it will be true.
As our troops free the Iraqis from the cages of their bones, and, to our young soldiers, this same freedom becomes known
do we see the gross futility that always lies in war, or do we dip our chips and pop our tabs and beg the screen for more?
There is no need to ask what the media will gain— they will garner higher ratings from the scrubbing of our brains.
When they’ve done their washing, they’ll have their fondest wish: what’s left of our independence will fit in a soap dish.
Cast off the spells of these Svengalis. It's time to take a stand! The instrument of our deliverance is right here in our hands.
Let’s stretch our thumbs up, press that button, turn the tube off, find surcease from pernicious propaganda, which is not the way to peace.
While threading a needle, I daydream the taste of sun-warmed oranges bright upon my tongue. I close my eyes, instead of orange trees, see a face.
Patrician nose, pale skin, eyes dark and depthless as the roiling sea— a stranger to my sight, yet not my heart.
I meet him on a warm, windy, presidio afternoon, know him at once, remember him, love him— Nikolai. His name shivers through me and I become a guitarra singing.
He comes from a cold land where no oranges grow, uncountable months and miles across the sea. In our handfuls of days together, we love to fill a lifetime.
The night before he sails away, I dream a great serpent sunders the surface of the wide, blue sea and swallows Nikolai whole.
The next day I stand upon the shore, mantilla dancing in the wind. I watch until his ship sails out of sight.
No earthly love will claim me all the long days of my life. No other name will run through my blood like a song.
Ride into blankness like a white page. Suddenly, she is written— this sinful city named for a saint.
Stroll through her curried nights, breathe deep her lemongrass twilights.
Her days, mist mottled, pocked with misery. Cold winds kick crumpled papers and crumpled men down downtown's landfill lanes and avenues.
Her nights redolent with salty sea, with coconut milk soup, with poetry.
Her days are smogged, fogged and golden-gated. Sometimes blue-skyed, sun-dazzle bright.
But at night. Oh, she is a jewel at night. She drips with star sapphire, Brazilian emerald, red diamond light. The scent and feel of her are sweet. Her art, her music—good enough to eat.
I see her foibles and her flaws— her flash, her beauty and her claws.
I see her nights, her days. I love her both ways.
Yet it's at night she truly shines, turns on her charms. And when she speaks, I believe anything and everything she says.
Sometimes you need to go far away to see something that was up close all along.
I look out, open-mouthed, at snow falling from platinum Chicago skies and you are the only one with whom I want to share this.
I walk down South Wabash through furious flurries of white and want only to be warmed by your arms.
light and cutting February wind, so strange to me.
I needed to go far away to see truth that’s been there all along—
how insufferable life would be without you.
How very much I love you.
How lucky I am to possess such abundance in a world that can be so bleak.
|
