Poems, Prose, Photos & the Art of Being Human
The only courage that matters is the kind that gets you from one moment to the next.
(I don’t know what caused that bird-god-Mayan-like shadow as I swam in an otherwise empty pool. I only know I gasped when I saw the photo as if it was Mystery’s reflection, as if it was Divine revelation guiding me if only I could decipher the language.)
The idea of wilderness needs no defense, it only needs defenders.
I awaken each morning torn between a desire to serve and a desire to savor the world. This makes it hard for me to plan the day.
A writer is a writer because, even when there is no hope, even when nothing you do shows any sign of promise, you keep writing anyway.
Carpe diem! and O Captain! my Captain!…phrases that Robin Williams so fully embodied that they inspired our loyalty and people of all walks to seize the day in our blink-of-an-eye lives. On August 11, 2014, we lost one of our best…a man with the courage to make us laugh and the ability to ignite our humanity. After Robin William’s death, impromptu memorials emerged as a way to express our palpable love, appreciation and grief.
He portrayed the complexity of existence even as he blindsided us with laughter and tears.
Robin conveyed our shared stories through different slants: the loving dad with a failed career and marriage; our shared fragility and resilience from the perspective of a teacher, doctor, therapist, lone leader living on the street, radio hero and his solo performance on Broadway, all of which raised our spirits and deepened our compassion.
Robin Williams was the most brilliant comic of our era with his mercurial mind and physicality. He disarmed and enlivened us with rapid-fire humor and astute observations and connections while making us laugh in the face of our mortality and circumstance.
Though suicide affects a family for generations, perhaps Robin saw this quick death as the most loving choice rather than “burdening” his immediate family with the ruthless decline that Parkinson’s exacts.
I can only imagine how difficult this choice was given his depth, courage, exceptional mind and generous heart.
And he treated others with an exceptional kindness that has been attested to repeatedly by family, friends and co-workers.
Both College of Marin and Julliard drama students benefit from Robin Williams scholarships, and he regularly broke the “normal” separation between film “artists” and “crew,” such as when he offered a crew member half of his candy bar. As he split the candy, Robin said, “Look, two bars in one!”
I offer these photographs from a memorial in front of the house in which Mrs. Doubtfire was filmed. With gratitude and love to Robin and deep sorrow for his family and loved ones.
Oh, Captain, my Captain, thank you!
And may each of you seize the day!
GALLOPING
when I ride give me not a saddle but the force of blood-filled muscles moving against my thighs and salt- wet hair rubbing moist threads from jeans let me not ride to save myself from walking but to fill with wind and thunder as we gallop pressed so close hooves and breath our mine
Thank you to the editor of Something Like Homesickness for first publishing this poem.
There is no way of telling people that they are all walking around shining like the sun.
DIG
Caught between Kerouac and Marilyn spawned in me the language, fearless pain as my mother, wrapped in mink, walked the edge then past as I watched then ducked smashed shards and men wanting to be sucked, degenerating the innocence of life and saints and promises made;
and where is Christ, the Buddha, ohm mani padme ohm when thousands of children die each year in America alone at the hands of their parents caretakers life-takers, when fathers teach their daughters the art of Kama Sutra, how in all this to distinguish any act as wrong, when killing millions in moments preserves the American way and what of generations born in winds of mushroom clouds,born without limbs or eyes to napalm women,what harm in being sucked by unlined skin—
the brain numb too short a time, too soon the blackout ends, too soon Marilyn raises her skirt, her breasts, her legendary grin, too soon barbiturates and lithium and caffeine caffeine—can’t sleep, won’t sleep, bring in the kid—she won’t remember anyway the feel of heels and calloused palms, slip between her unfledged lips like snow, like angel wings, then retreat to the oblivion of drink. What’s sex in this rhythm of hate and fear, in the mutual acceptability of mutual destruction? The Buddha uncrucified cannot exist.
And I know these people, this violence spawned of invisibility, sexuality hiding fungal lingams of death, sublimating the need to think of consequence when consequences surround us not of our own making—why control ourselves when we ourselves have no control in this atomic-Ku Klux Klan-raping world of sawed-off shotguns in the hands of eight-year-olds who need a fix, a blow, enough to know they are alive, enough to dull the tense despair of being alive
but this is my world too and the bombs of mutual annihilation have not yet dropped and I do remember the jazz-nuanced hipster world that spawned me behind Marilyn’s angel grin concealing desperate dreams turned nightmare horrible, and I
we carry these in symbols of anorexic models and crucifixions to bars and steaming baths and schoolyards filled with meth and smack, bliss only in the mind, the body sharp-edged and clutching.
Yet under these streets flow fresh-water streams—chip away with hammer and nail, dig through phlegm-stained concrete with fingers till whitened bone shows through, dig for water to wash us clean, past wanting more cars, more clothes, more love than we feel, dig for truth beyond lies that tell us drugs and sex, shaved heads and tattoos, fast tech will save us for only we can save ourselves yet if each self is saved we will save the world.
Thank you to the editors of Squaw Valley Review Poetry Anthology 2012 for first publishing this poem and to the community and poets who make Community of Writers such a rich and fulfilling experience.
CONFESSIONS OF A NATURE LOVER
Back then I was going steady with fog, who could dance like nobody’s business, I threw her over for a leaf that one day fluttered first her shadow then her whole life into my hand, that’s a lot of relatives, this leaf and that leaf and all the other leaves hung around, I told her I needed space, which was true, without it I’d only be a soul, and no one’s sure that whisp is real, that’s why we say of real estate, location, location location, and of speech, locution, locution, locution and of love, yes, yes, yes I am on my knees, will you have me, world?
(from The New Yorker, May 14, 2012)
One cannot discover new oceans unless one has the courage to lose sight of the shore.
Elizabeth Oakley Weaver 