Tinder Box

By all means;
kiss me tinderly, mother-bird.
for too long now there's been
a tree growing in me
so thirsty for last season's rain
that its leaves are all yellowed
and its boughs are growing withered.
Place your scavenged twigs
into its deepest crooks.
Weave them loosely as you like.
Line them with fruit peels
and fragrant petals.
Make a nest for yourself
just here
where the wind can push all it likes.
You'll be comfortably preening your feathers
through most every storm.

And should some day an hurricane blow,
one of those cleansing squalls
who's winds and rains
make the ground into porridge
and uproot that dry old tree;
then I'll cleave to the heart
of the fallen trunk
and from the wood there I'll make a box
where I can place what's left of
     --your gathered twigs
     --your fragrant petals
     --your cherished fruit peels.
A box where I can keep
your tinder kisses.

     Have I ever told you
     how much your touch is like
     striking flint?

Rainy Season - Day ??

[re:Stacks by Ben Foster]

I set down my cup,
you fill it up.
I drink, set it down,
you fill it up again.
We do this until we are both
laughing madly,
dancing and smiling.
Only I am too drunk to see
that you are not drinking;
that you were never dancing;
that you have stopped pouring
and we have nothing to laugh about.

How long have I been the only drunkard at the table?
Did your lips ever even touch this wine?
Did you ever even crave a sip of it?
Or was all your pleasure in the pouring
and watching me dance
and laughing?

Rainy Season -- Day 14

Tonight
it will be just the city and I. 
Just a street lamp dripping dew
and giving me silver and gold light
tonight. 
No moon face to remind me
of beauties far away,
of loves unattainable. 
No shattered shards of space-stuff
to dirty my view of the sky. 
No constellations in the shape
of faces we mourn. 
And no angels.  No.
The choir is at rest. 
It will be just the city and I,
and a blank slate sky. 
The hills send me fog to touch. 
The sky sends the rain. 
They sing to me till I wake in the morning
when my city will be new again.

---

My city is new today.
It has forgotten, for a time,
its heartbreak.  Its loss.
It has spent its allotted time weeping.
It has bathed itself inside a moon house
made of thunderstorms and mist.
It has flushed out
even its most private of crevices
and stepped out renewed.
My city is pure again.

The dirt of its streets
has been washed away. 
Not simply swept aside but driven
out by spontaneous rivers. 
Driven out past the hills,
carried over the valleys,
and swept out to sea. 
My city's houses are still damp. 
This is alright with us. 
Let the warmth of home dry them out. 
Let our bare feet feel mud again. 
Let the bucket tip
and the mop sop and soak
and sweep out even the insides. 
Let the city be clean today.

Let the parks know
that they haven't been forgotten. 
Let the grass be cut and mixed
with warm breezes and sunshine. 
And of the perfume made,
let it be the bouquet of
just-budding flowers
from full, verdant trees. 
Only, do not place the oil
behind the ears of the city
or between the breasts of the city. 
These secret places are for us
that have found them intimately. 
Do not let it drip down arms like juice
from the fruit of your neighbor's yard. 
Do not let it spray along cheeks like juice
from fruit of your own yard. 
Let it waft, instead, across the body
and through the streets.

If the city is as leaving Eden;
innocent, naked, and pure
but just for today;
then let this perfume be as entering Nod:
east of nowhere,
wandering everywhere.

Rainy Season -- Day 13

[Pallbearers by Br. Lawrence Lew, O.P.]

[The Pallbearer Reflects]

Death in the morning makes a poor breakfast. 
Makes you never want to eat again.

We ask ourselves 'Were they always so small? 
So light? 
I remember a much taller man.
I remember a woman made of stone.' 
And the grave, why so huge? 
If we could could slide our dead
between the spaces in the rocks
or fold them
neatly
into crab holes,
if we didn't have to dig graves in the ground
as big as the spaces in our hearts
and in stead just let the marching ants
handle the procession,
then what would man do with all this grief? 
We can't really walk around with it. 
We can't really walk at all. 
Its too great a thing, this rock of sorrow
on our chests,
weighing down our ribs
and only letting us breathe deep enough
to shudder,
to weep again. 
These chains make our hands useless
except for wringing. 
These feet are bound to pacing
through halls and empty bedrooms
like ghosts. 
And at that point
we might as well be.

Rainy Season -- Day 8

[The Sound of its Own Stillness by Otto K.]


It is quiet in here.
It is loud with the sound of humming
It is cold in here.
My skin is wet.
But I am warm.
And if I could live and live
until the day I choose to die
then I would choose a day like this.
With a heavy blanket of rainclouds
weightless in the sky
to keep my cooling body dry.

Rainy Season - Day 4

In the night,
I would love you.
If the circumstances
were different.
In the night
I would love you
with my eyes closed
and my hands open,
searching out
something warm
that isn’t
my self.
And when
I found it
in the night
I would hold it
in place
under the weight
of my lips.
Maybe
in the morning
I might let up
and see the thing
that I have found
for what
it really is.
But morning
is too far
And may never
Really come.
So for now,
in the night
I’ll hold it
steady.
Steady
As a rhythm.
As a beat.
Steady
As a groove.
Steady!
Don’t move!
Or you’ll risk
waking her up.
In the night
I wake up every
thirty minutes.
Steady.
Outside
You’re coming down
The same way
You have been
For the past
four nights.
You’re not heavy,
But you’re steady.
Steady.
I stretch out over
cold sheets
And try not
to think of how
your beating
On the rooftop
And the windows
Makes the room
Sound so empty.
Sound so hollow.
Sounds, so steady
In the night.

Rainy Season -- Day 3

You think you can fool me?
You think you can come and
rough me up one day,
leave me bleeding slow the next
then come round and smile up
and pet up, and sweet up.
“Ay, cooch.” And “Do-do-dahlin”?

I had a grandmother
that had a separate bed
in a separate room
behind a door with an inside lock
because I had a grandfather
with a separate love
for another young brown thing.
(Fifteen years in an oak barrel?
Baby, me and you
we gwein bruk out!)

I have a puppy weh been a puppy
bout eleven years now.
when ih see me kick off my slippers
all up to now ih run.

So weh mek you think
a little bit of half-assed sun
could mek I come out
in short pants
and no shirt?
Cho!  Might be fool di talk,
but nuh fool di listen!

Rainy Season -- Day 2

You can’t trust a gray morning.
You can’t put your trust in anything
As big as the morning,
As big as the sun moving
From one sky to the other,
As big as the song of everything-that-is
Rising into a higher key,
If it stumbles and falters
And can’t make up its mind.

When I open my eyes I want to know
That I wasn’t the first to do so today.
I want to see that the angels
Have already been hard at it,
Painting the bougainvillea and hibiscus.
I want to forget that
Bird nest nuh got no roof
And think them hollery one in the ficus
Mussy had brukdown all night
And still cyan’t done.

My morning muss mek I want
Missing things.
No, no shower today.
Too cold.  Too grey.
And the sound of falling water?
Much too common today.
No cleaning today.  Might need that dirt
To reach the street side
The way this water rising.
No talking today.  No singing.
Too much of that babbling
In the drain outside.
And too much rhythm on the rooftop,
Accompaniment for too much frog song.
Too much laughing.  Too much drinking.
Too much sighing, gulping, thirsty earth.

Rainy Season -- Day 1

You ever hear something coming for you?
Like the wind rushing around to make way
for the hand of God to come 'round
and give you one good bitch lick
to your ears-corner?
Well that's the first day of rainy season.

When you could stand somewhere so high
That you see the hills surrounding 'Pan
And watch the mists rolling
Off the mounds where Mayan bones are kept.
When you can hear the trees' whispering
Grow to screaming out your name.
When the wind blows at you from side-on
And press you up against a wall
Saying:
Yow, Fam'ly. Which paat yuh think yuh gwein?
Then yuh know the rainy season come.
And yuh know seh it come just for you.