Living Like Possums

(You remember, don't you?)

From the deep sleep of oblivion to the dreams of awakening
You opened your almond-shaped eyes
A possum
As still as can be.

In the daytime you hunker down
hiding out to the point of
invisibility, obscurity.

But the evening dusk is an invitation to roam.
The hunger in your stomach gnaws, signals
from your primitive brain.  You want to eat
anything.  Preferably grain or dog kibble.

Rural legends have it that you move slowly-but
that is wrong.  You scurry along, legs moving faster
center of gravity low.

One possum's ears stick out away from his head; he also
has a wide-eyed gaze, plump and somewhat hairless.  He's known
as Melvin.

Another has more commonly "good looks"--
ears almost pinned to his head, eye sockets reaching
back towards those ears.  When you speak to him, he
gazes up at you as if to say, "Really? Whatever." This one is not
a teenager; still he persists in a droll fashion, like an older
British gentleman.

Nothing surprises nor cajoles him.
His name is Clive and his expression is either contemplative
or defiant, perhaps even detached.  The ambiguity here is unnerving.

There is another, almost cute and young, Annabelle.  She is small in size
and her curious gaze bespeaks her youth.  Who are you?  What are you?
Are you made of grain or dog kibble?  Can I stay and be
comfortable in your midst? Are you a possum I can count on?

A part of me indeed wanted to be that for her.  But I wondered
could I be counted on, after all?

Annabelle's body has long, sparse but coarse hair growing here
and there--those few long hairs meant to cushion and protect
her on her inquisitive prowls, from sharp-edged corners or an occasional
claw of a playful sibling.

At random moments Annabelle might snuggle
close to the human face; this possum's face warm and soft
fine body hair covering it after all
everywhere after all.

Even her breathing can be heard, felt a
rising and a falling.  Some faint snorts and a few
spells of guttural gurgles.  Then there are the nearly
 inaudible sighs of contentment. And silence, a source
of consolation, even solace.

(You do remember, don't you?)

You remember, but oh too well
the fateful night on the gravel road
you and your mate were scurrying along
wild with greed for the seed going wild
in the early Autumn season.  Too late
the lights flashed the tires swerved
it was your mate, your friend, your partner
in possum life.  Lying dead, a gash, some
innards spilled at random.  It was all a
random act.

In fact all of it is.  Living life as a possum.
You stayed by its side, the primitive brain trying to
fathom what happened, A random act in a possum's
life.  You stayed, can't remember how long. You looked like
a fleshly statue by your cohort's side, frozen in non-comprehension
and a wondering even without the brain to articulate that wonder.

By morning you were gone. Wonder where you went.

(You may remember, bits of it now and again-- perhaps?)

Rusted Moon

rusted moon

why so shy

just a sliver

above the tree line

twice

tonight

it took

a friend

to find you

it's okay

shine

when you're ready

but you

know this

of course

One-Sided!!!

Dear Bella

So after my article on Agent Orange Day
Was published in the campus newspaper

Professor Lang
Came up to me at Fatemeh’s Cafe and said

“Why do you only talk about
How the US and South Vietnam were

How come you never mention
How rotten the Viet Cong were

How they killed children
Terrorized women

How they jailed Buddhists
Made so many people flee on boats

You’re one-sided
You should show both sides!”

Even though Professor Lang
is highly esteemed in the Pol Sci department

Not even he can read everything
Worth reading

Seems he must have missed
(Or forgotten)

Those lines from George Orwell’s
“Notes on Nationalism” (1945)

The nationalist not only does not disapprove
Of atrocities committed by his own side

But he has a remarkable capacity
For not even hearing about them

Which reminds me of
Matthew’s gospel–chapter 7, verses 3 to 5

See, Jesus has been on my mind
I’ve been reading that history you gave me

On Yiddish writers’ perspectives on the Galilean sage
Holding it all (or trying to)

Perry

–work-in-progres, Our Heroic and Ceaseless 24/7 Struggle against Tsuris

On Susan Sontag, Trip to Hanoi

Journal, July 2005

Susan Sontag spent two weeks in North Vietnam in 1968, and wrote 90 pages about her experiences. (Perhaps I will cull from those notebooks I kept in Gaza and the West Bank to feed my imagination as to what the truth is about Palestine.   Would it be a long essay? Would it be something that I work into a novel, with all my students mixed up together? Will it be a series of short articles that I post at CTSA?)  I wonder if Sontag didn’t just brainstorm a list of questions and then primed her pump thereby, so that her notes responded to  her questions.  Ah, to have her Surplus Attention Disorder, her “moral appetitiveness and lust for variety,” her “intense, uncomplicatedly attentive concentration.” I don’t think this is the same thing as Mindfulness, though.

Sontag is “a stubbornly unspecialized writer who has so far been largely unable to incorporate into either novels or essays my evolving radical political convictions and sense of moral dilemma at being a citizen of the American empire.”   And  she admits she is “one more volunteer in the armchair army of bourgeois intellectuals with radical sympathies in the head.”  Still, she went where she was not supposed to go, even though it appears that she could not get out of her head for very long.

A Provocation 
     for Cameron

It is as simple as this:

Say the old prayer of rough love

As John Donne prayed

“Batter my heart—three-chambered God”

Open both arms, fall towards the ground

Like one of those fainting goats in a trust fall

Until the true shape of your own face appears.

   or perhaps--

Call forth the Body Electric of Walt Whitman’s poem--

Come back to a place even

Before the seed of you began. 

There was once a me, a you; even the I/ Thou

 Jewish mystic Martin Buber writes of so lovingly;

along with Yahweh, Buddha, Lord Shiva, Mohammed

indeed, a host of heavenly others.

Every assortment of faith on your lips prospered, then;

even the agnostic and atheist tenets rang true.

Then, as now, prophets will come forth in the land.   

Did you know that Moses

was modest? He did not view himself as a prophet.

Moses shrank back from his calling; yet it came to pass that, even as a fetus,

blindly, he fingered moist, uterine walls with comfort but hesitation—

indeed, what else might be possible? He pondered.

What else might be born?

Eventually, he stepped off into the burning bush;

they say, his fervor lay in his clapping hands. Everything was in reach of his

clapping hands, he discovered.

Why, happiness is in reach of anyone’s clapping hands, he said, incredulous.

 Even still Moses traverses mother earth, she

Bare-backed and supine, guarding our wounded selves.  

can be counted on to traverse tentatively with us

these wounded selves--fingering the scars of our neglect.

Feeling once again the tincture of its sting, the reprehensible

sting of any particular regretful act, including but most especially

forgotten acts against one another.

Bearing witness—

a forgotten act recedes even

while chiding us with our indifference—

we shirk our natures to look, turn aside our gaze.

but as if an invisible hand forces our heads straight forward,

then to.... look!

A dead and drowned Syrian child sears our conscience-- its image

retreats even as we wish to make it not so; if only it were a part of

what did not happen! 

The limpness in his body is unfathomable. Look at

the tennis shoes, so purposeful and carefully

placed on his small feet.  Someone, somewhere, loved this child, tended to his needs.

Dressed him for that fateful, last voyage. And he had a name! What was his name??

     “Dance, dance, wherever you may be, I am the Lord of the Dance, said he.”

So the body explodes, every cell wants to know what it doesn’t want to know. 

Sweating away the toxins, the formidable acts relished or not;

acts known or left as strangers on our shores. 

All the beheadings, rapes, fraudulent ways, small boys used as human shields--

it is so and more, but as if it were

settled, they will eventually come for you,

running will not suffice. 

Out of this cacophony of living dead visages

 "Body Jam," a jazz, dance sacrament takes form, 

Whitman's Body Electric revisited.

 Like Communion or Baptism or any other tribal ritual

it is this third entity we yearn toward, a kind of salvation .  

Very much a dynamic friend who 

enters a party, like a new idea hopping.  

And all relationships change.

The dance, Body Electric! Enters. All burning bushes ignite

within reach of our clapping hands.    

 Dance, dance, wherever you may be 
I am the lord of the dance, said he 
And I lead you all, wherever you may be 
And I lead you all in the dance, said he.

A Safe Place

I had a vague sinking sensation I was making wrong turns

so I slowly laid aside the google map

and went instead with my gut instinct.

An iron claw gripped my gut as I

drove by structures grim-faced

bearing the neglect of years.

I tamped down my

internal voice which asked—

Can I find the way?  Will I

Find the way? Where is a QT with the sign, Safe Place?

(never mind a man was killed in the men’s bathroom stall

just a week ago).

Turning indiscriminately, other cars passed like

ghosts from another realm.

My shoulders tensed, hands gripped the wheel.

Would I find my way? I pushed this fear down.

My tight throat seemed filled like a mouthful too big to swallow.

I performed a U turn and could imagine being

Arrested for being this wrong person in this

Wrong neighborhood.

Then I saw her striding up the sidewalk--

a tall, lean figure dressed in bright colors—a vest, gypsy shirt, sash around the torso.

Her colors made her stand out amidst drab urban blight.

She wore no blouse under her vest so that

every other step her bare breasts would sway outward as if

coming up for air or reasoning or fun then would

retreat hidden within the folds of her vest.

She didn’t seem to mind or care or be fearful or

concerned. What did she seem?

Meanwhile, she gained ground

continued with her purposeful gait, her heels clipping along on uneven sidewalks.

Her skin shone the dazzling darkness of black so dark it seemed

green like deep foliage growth where no humans had been.

Then another moment it carried a deep blue cast like

the lapis lazuli favored by a pantheon of gods.

Meanwhile, she stepped lively up the hill, not winded or encumbered by her heels

though precariously leaning one way then the next with each step.

She talked to herself. She sang as well.

Where was she going? Did she have a home?

Her clothes appeared makeshift, yet artistically draped around her body

as if to say in a self-conscious manner, “Look at me.  My name is……”

I wanted to stop the car and speak.  I wanted to race up the hill and say, “Hello

My name is…..” I wanted to make her acquaintance as I felt I would be well-received.

It didn’t seem to matter so much that I was decidedly lost at this point.

Didn’t know from whence I had come.

So I kept on all the while as my internal compass said this way

then that.  Even as I was making these wild turns in abandon

I saw her round the hill and keep going a particular distance.

She walked as if she knew the way.  I kept tabs on her journey even 

as I arrived at my destination.

The door opened. In the face of my host I saw behind

To the blocks beyond, to the streets where I had just driven. Now deserted

I had an eerie feeling I was losing my connection with her.  Where would she

Be heading next? Would she find a safe place?

Writing to Wake Up Lineage

1.

Natalie Goldberg: I also place on the altar a photo of Allen Ginsberg in a yellow wood frame, sitting in a white shirt, cross-legged, his face captured in an uncanny smile. He is our muse of raw honesty for the week. An essay of his written in 1974 is titled “Polishing the Mind” and connects the study of the mind with poetry. When I read it, I knew I had found my wiring path. I wanted to document and structure a practice for others to follow, a way through writing to wake up. I consider Allen Ginsberg the grandfather of the writing practice lineage.

2.  

Allen Ginsberg: The only things we “know” are what we think in the moments we give ourselves away, “tip our mitt.” 233