hands

sitting outside the pockets of my body
are my hands,
they are young                they are not without words

the still curled fingers
are strips of flint,
the veins cording
the joints are ivy                    why should i speak?

let my mouth retire
on yours,
lush muttering
is in our fingertips
like the pale intent green
of trees
in Spring

faces

I do not know how many faces you have, or why they each appear,
like fish on the surface of the water, fish flitting toward sunlight
on the surface. Your face changes
like glimmering moving scales,
a coin turning in the air,
and falling, finally, on heads or tails,
almost telling me what you wanted.

getting older [day 2 - p. a]

1.
as a child, missing school,
i'd think about my empty classroom desk,
feeling something like guilt or sadness.
instead of being there, i was someone somewhere
else, watching cable at the neighbor's house
so many channels i kept losing
the movie about a girl witch
and eating pasta from a can
in the air conditioning,
even children want to change
their hearts and bodies.

2.
after a long day in the high vent lighting, wording things just so,
looking at people just so, not looking, at anybody,
it's time to go home, the sun is gone, i am no longer curious.
i have to walk myself through the heat of the air
with the nothing duty of a nothing soldier--
i am full of ongoing unspoken promises to keep.
the dishes in my sink, the coffee
I'm going to buy, the papers on a desk,
the food always waiting
at my mother's table. i keep showing up.
i am keeping to a plan i heard nothing about, i'm signing the cross
the father, the son, the holy spirit
as if i went to mass and knew each pause,
i am whispering unintelligible promises.
when i come home and the lights aren't on
and i open the fridge and know what is in there
what i thought and planned to buy, and did,
i take out a can or bottle of beer
and it opens with a soft hiss,
or a bubbling sigh, i know
that i am older, now, and i drink
what no longer tastes bitter to me.

counting steps

one two

three four

five-six, 

seven-eight:

my hair

my heart

is green

and grey

[from the archives - park/pope]

central park. helicopters, loud metal flutter, man sits homeless across from me. he's peaceful, enjoying the day just like me, we both have pretzels, the Pope's motorcade is a few blocks away, I have somewhere to be in a while but the man still sits there, across, and I can't, want to give him something, and the trees are dusty pale green, new green, it is April, the end, not Eliot's, but almost May, and we sit while the copters circle around the Pope me and

this man, alone on different benches, among the birds and the strollers, women and dogs, children and tourists, all around us, pollen thick in the air, it coats our tongues, our nostrils, he leans

to one side, hand on his chin, the other on top of his thigh, he is pensive, or maybe just weary, and I feel something watch me over my shoulder, something knows, maybe he knows, maybe we are sitting in the park, not too far from the epicenter of the Pope, averting eyes and writing poems about each other (he has no paper, but maybe that's not his style) while the Pope in his drape-white, smooth, moves outward, outward

into unknown masses circling, nucleus to the helicopters and the crowds, but this man and I, we only need spring, need bits, flashes of understanding, we are alright, unmoving, with our pretzels and our loneliness, we are like the sea, not the rivers that penetrate it.