some daily language

The tide line between, first, loving someone so that their sand becomes intermingled with your sand until there is only one shore, and second, keeping yourself whole and distinct, with an ocean inside that cannot be claimed or even sometimes shared with any other, the line between the two has just the transience of a tide. One wave demarcates a limitation that next the sun will evaporate or another wave will overcome. There is constant flux and variance and progression. One wave may stop short of the last even in a rising tide. Either we hesitate to bring another person into certain compartments of our lives, or else we find ourselves desperate for them and unable to have places content without their presence.

I don't know how to contentedly look at the mysterious places of another person, the places I have not been brought into, or given access to, as I say, the places where she "recurls from claiming my names."

I wrote this fairly cryptic poem in a moment of desperation about how we can not always claim another person, or be claimed, the way a flame cannot claim a breath without being extinguished, and the mysteries that each person harbors as a result.


THE WAY THE FLAME BENDS


The way the flame bends around my breath
you have not always seen.

I record inside the blur of world rising
as I submerge my limbs below the surface
of a bathwater, because I feel the pain and courage of activity, loss-- all
the things that make us turn I feel

so naked I hold it in.

Below the black of your river's
currents I have not often seen. How many bridge railings
I have looked from staring, I suppose I am still

only some man in certain ways to you.

Every place recurls
from claiming my names and the fragile sound
I call out over the field.

Please would you return to me with a voice.
Return silence on your lips to me that swallows
flame.

I would breath to you
a fire I keep. It is the one thing

when the trees shout about the wind
to the black passing of birds flying in gray
towards a forever south.
It is the one thing when the trees let go

their leaves like an autumn dress
in a pang. It is the other world that holds

its breath at the sight of it:
how I would kiss your accepting mouth.

domestic violence

She wanted to see that ass hole behind bars: the father of her unborn child, her boyfriend of six months, a parolee out of county prison, the man who had made her left temple red and swollen with an open hand "plenty of times. I just never said nothin or called the police or any of that. but now he crossed the line. that bastard." She was crying. "I have to do something. that bastard! I knew he was cheating."

He admitted it. She threw his beer on the ground. He did what he does. She called the police. We found her outside crying and bruised. By that time he was gone. So we waited for her to pack her things and then took her somewhere safe.

"Have you caught him yet?"

No. I was only calling back to ask if she wanted the report to be confidential, that way, he could never find out where she went to stay.

"Yeah, I want all that confidential stuff, everything. He's crazy."

"I don't know, I could be wrong" my training officer said later that night as we were driving back to the station to finish filing the restraining order. "These women though... you'll see, in a few days or maybe next week, she'll be back with him."

deployment

I was recently informed that I might get deported to Iraq, not because I'm Iraqi, but because they need people to fight in a war over there, and since I've been stealing the U.S. Army Reserves' money for five years, spending every penny on a private college education, and only sometimes attending monthly drill.

Apparently there's a whole bunch of sand in the Middle East. I write a lot of poetry and in the past sand has often found its way in to much of what I've written. Somtimes its desert sand, but mostly when I write about sand I like to have a big ocean nearby so that when the sand gets too hot on my feet or too monocolor with its limited shades of brown and tan and beige I can remind my readers of cold salt water and cold shades of blue or green, and also of trash in the surf. But I only mention the trash when the poem's really more about the depravity of western civ than about the ocean or sand.

But I don't think the middle east has water, much less a pacific ocean. I doubt there's even a Colorado river to divert out there. Apparently there's oil though. I suppose I could use images of oil to convey the depravity of western civ. Although the market for that theme has already been pretty well cornered by the democrats. so I might have to think of something else.

I recently saw the movie "Jarhead." Man, that was some serious oil.

Sand, even at the beach, has always been good for two things: making castles and digging. But you have to have water to make castles with. And you have to have waves to wash the castles away. It's always better to get washed away than to dry out and crumble of your own accord. So, castle building will probably be mostly out in the Middle East.

That leaves digging. At the ocean when you dig in the sand you find the ocean. In Iraq, when you dig in the sand you find the deep earth tensions of oil waiting to explode.

It's a little odd how the world tends to congregate around its tensions, so eager to dig.

social science

Don't believe the lie that you can't take your own popcorn, produce, etc into the theatre. Shoot. We really, as Americans, need to get a little more looney. In general I'd say the blogging community does fine on that front, and maybe I should just speak for myself, but goodness gracious, I just have to wonder how many rules I go about obeying when, there's no reason for it.

I walked in to the theatre tonight (AMC no less) with a freakin silver bowl full of homemade popcorn, buttered with Tillamook sweet cream butter, lightly salted with some kosher salt. the ticket guy even looked like a management hopeful (slicked back hair, tie with a plaidish shirt, a little first growth for a mustache) but he didn't say a word. I was even prepared to go crazy with deception and deceit and lies-- I would have broken down and started crying to get that popcorn in the theatre... I have a health condition or a phoebia or some such nonsense.

People couldn't believe our style when we walked in. "Can you do that?" I'm not joking. I heard them say it.

In similar fashion, I've often wondered about the legitimacy of not driving the wrong way on a one way street. I doubt anyone has ever gotten ticketed or been in an accident on account of driving the wrong way. if anything people pull over to the side of the road for you to point and make fun of the fool who made such a silly mistake. but what if it's not a mistake, man!?! what if you drove the wrong way on all one way roads all the time and on purpose. you'd have the stinkin cops pulling to the side of the road to laugh while you avoid who knows what sort of congestion.

but this is all conjecture. I'll need to take this to the labortory of life, my friend, that's right, the labortory of life, and then get back to you.

l. a. p. d.

Among the many lessons learned this week, I now know that it does not take any cruel or cold human being to attempt to kill another person. I saw a man's stomach with two stab punctures in it. I looked at the face of the man who made those wounds and tried to make more: rough shaven, his eyes a little sunken from age and probably from all the days he's lived as a shop owner down in south los angeles, short and stocky, a quiet older man with the work ethic of a Latin American immigrant calloused in his hands.

In the city the space is so small and we can not resolve ourselves with everyone else, and people go crazy, people with small folding knives go crazy because a man has yelled at his wife or called her bad names.

Partly I understand. But the craziness I don't understand. Trying to make a man dead I don't understand.