traffic jazz

"Are you waiting for time to show you some better thoughts?" - William Stafford

The answer is yes. Yes please. Give me time, give me better thoughts. Tell me if I should wear something else to the party tonight. Tell me if I should move to Portland, if I will marry someone else, if I will play basketball again, if I will fall off my rollerblades one day. Show me better thoughts. Show me how to knit, how to bake bread, what to do with all those potatoes in the drawer. Tell me what I’m working towards, whether the poetry will pay off, if the spring will be filled with appointments and catering jobs, if I will get caught in the rain, if my car will survive another few trips without the oil change, if I should look into Sausalito, if I should be a better friend, sister, lover, if I should look into classes, anything, ceramics, swimming, yes tell me if I should be swimming, if laps would do me good, tell me if the year will be kind, if my health insurance will actually cover any of my dermatology bills, tell me if the DMV will right the wrongs of my driving record, tell me if my credit will be enough to buy a house, if my love will be enough, if my desire will hold. Give me better thoughts. Give me more sex. Give me whole evenings of touch, no telephone, no plans, no nothing. Give me focus. Give me flexibility. Take the numbness out of my feet entirely. Rid my body of whatever ambivalent toxins remain. Show me how to fall on my face. Show me clumsy and large arms swinging. Show me dancing after the argument. Show me how to not be so angry when I’m angry. Tell me how to step away from the fire. Show me proper distance. Remind me what’s mine and what isn’t. Remind me how to write, often. Remind me to make the phone call. Tell me to press the numbers even if I’m tired, have nothing to say, feel guilty about my absence. Show me to be present, to present myself, to introduce myself as is, faulty, unfocused sometimes, easily disappointed, injured, afraid to say it. Show me how not to be afraid, how to call the words forth even when I’m afraid. Give me better thoughts to say things with. Show me the street, the precious lost quarters, the small toy in the gutter, the jazz playing somewhere in the distance. Show me a jazz note, trembling, warbling, then sliding, swishing its way down river, show me the way it fuses into the other songs of the street, the garbage trucks, the call of a homeless man, the traffic, the windows in the cars all closed, show me how a note like that wends its way past noise and closed windows, show me the lightness of that note, the ease, the pliancy, the willingness to sidle in between garbage trucks and traffic and slip, unseen into a closed window, where it is then seen, and felt, and all at once, understood.

unwatched

To the geese gliding in single file:

A miracle to agree like that, to have such a desire and willingness and instinct to make order, to create union, to format oneself for the purpose of the group, to shape shift, verge, merge, put aside differences, the hunger, the possibility of freedom….I wonder if I could ever really do that.

I'm thinking “Oh, geese, how selfless you are, how wonderful it must be, how powerful the urgency to come together and fly together. How do you not complain? How do you drop the thought of finding your own meal, entertainment, patch of grass? How do you put that aside for the gift of being in traffic, of finding yourself at the end of the line, or worse, somewhere in the middle, having to keep up the pace, work past the fatigue, stay aloft until sunset?

Geese, I envy you. I envy your great flapping of wings, your throaty revelry, your group-ness. Is it as seamless as it looks? Is it that easy to give way to the demands of a life lived together? Are you made less lonely? Do you enjoy the companionship that much? Do you mind not having your own space? Do you wish for a solitary afternoon, feet clacking in the mud, unwatched?

compassion

It's taken me days to write this,
for the mud to wash off
and the air to clear enough so I
could say, with certainty:
I am still here.

Maybe the mess we make
is just temporary weather and not the sky
itself, its blue wholeness, its constancy, its wonder.

Maybe it's simply that your wings dip into pools of patience
while mine rear up like lions,
beating the air of oxygen.

But, now, breathing again,
and having survived our bumbling collision,
I see you, in resplendent aloftness,
alive with tender, easy buoyancy.
And I see myself, just a bird
who longs to soar above swishing treetops.

I hear our feathers whispering
with invitation and promise:
Come closer, love. Let's fly this wind together.

dizzygirl

in the dream i am all thumbs
helpless as i watch the wedding party
sit down to an unmade table, salt shakers
in their water carafes, not enough chairs,
a rental contract littering the flower vases,
and oh my god, where is the salad, salad for 100,
and no plates set out, no lettuce mixed, no sliced
avocados, the waitstaff gone, disappearing
into the evening for stolen cigarettes, a chat
with the valet parkers, guests pouring
their own wine, looking around for someone
to straighten the tablecloths, and why this
receipt linking ink on my napkin, and a million
other wreckages unfolding inch by inch.

in the dream, i am dizzygirl, the perilous center
of a whirlpool, collisions, upended furniture,
the metal scrape of table legs against a wood floor,
everything steps from chaos, disassembly, near-undoing,
and it's terrible to stand there watching, mute,
stuck there with a clipboard in my hands and
all the boxes unchecked, noticing the empty water glasses,
a pepper shaker where it shouldn't be, the slow drama
unfolding and impossible to stop except by waking.

Except I don't want to.
Because even in the nightmare that is this dream
I have no choice but to ride alongside my despair,
cozy up to the tragedy, let my eyes fall
to the floor as the room begins to shatter at the seams.
There's nothing to do but wait for the balance to tip,
for the weight of this disaster to swell and explode,
and standing there frantic and anxious, I feel an odd thrill,
a leveling shadowy calm that washes through the room
reminding me that I simply cannot hold it all.

In the dream, I fall under the spell of this momentum,
and I am relieved when things finally split apart,
when disaster strikes, the darkness
bearing its teeth down at last.