Do you scuttle lithely sand and stone,
peek out from rocks through half-shut lids
while others' hands are clasped in dance
beneath the bone-white crescent slit?
Are your eyes autonomous,
right darts to lips and left to toes;
as softer flesh sips steamed orgeat
do you watch the spoon, the ankles cross?
Do you begin each day with push-ups
then shield yourself from sun in shade;
when threatened do your muscles flex,
your speech reduce to a chortling hiss?
Do others comment, How cold your hands,
how dry your skin? Do you dream of
grasshoppers sweet in your mouth, or
screaming wake from the jaws of a snake?
Thank you to the editor of Something Like Homesickness: A Zapizdat Poetry Anthology for first publishing this poem.
COMMUNION
Dividing an elementary class into
boys on one side
girls on the other
invites each to imagine the other group has
cooties! cooties! cooties!
and leaves each vulnerable to those who thrive on power
yet united, we eliminate disease, produce
thriving meccas of cultural exchange,
launch ourselves through the universe….
If you think you’re invulnerable to ads and rhetoric,
think about a lemon—
thrust your teeth through thick
yellow skin to release zest’s
zinging scent and swallow
tart
puckering
juice.
That saliva now beading your gums is stimulated from the reptilian
brain targeted by an arsenal of ads and six-second sound bites that
riddle information till deception sounds like truth, our sanctity
plundered by those who weave their children in the woof of power
while snipping out poor to be fodder for war.
Girls-boys, red-blue, hick-elite, white-colored, gay-straight…
I can keep going since division perpetuates itself and
blinds us to our need to be touched and to touch
for we are not spiders, autonomous from birth, but must be suckled
once the thin film of mucus is wiped from our mouths;
if we didn’t thrive on touch our exterior would be hardened shell
rather than this overlay of neural sensors telling us when to swat,
run, rest, embrace
the Pleiades in every cell,the bell, the smile, the knife—
yet the nourished thrive amid those with hunger that
sinks skin between bones as the body
digests its own flesh to survive—
this inequity perpetuated through our mad divisions—
yet madness is tricky. We think of it as
moon howling
running naked through streets
invisible companions
but true madness skulks where plans are laid
to destroy this planet many times over
as if this could be done more than once
as if this is the best use of our lives
madness in the reverent joy of orchestrating Armageddon
as if some are connected
and others not
madness in numbing ourselves to suffering
in ways that cause more suffering
but before squaring off into us and them
remember glass houses
and heal thyself
for unraveling the madness of this world begins with me.
It begins with you.
Yet how do we wrap around the odd ones, the violent ones,
the ones who’d sooner slit a throat than say hello?
I know only that we start with kindness and cherishing
the children we create for they are our future, inheritors,
providers, while we are holy catalysts for communion.
If we choose to eliminate hunger, rein in our mad greed for power,
cherish this blue planet’s miraculous life, what force could shatter
our bond for each life is no more than kidney, cell, atom,
of the same body coalesced from stars and seas—
dust to sky to ocean to algae to fish to bird to human,
we are one being
the Pleiades in every cell,the bell, the smile, the knife—why not live as if we chose this sacred life?
Thank you to the editors of The Tishman Review for first publishing this poem.
LAST DAYS OF WINTER
War settles like dust for there is no other side
when winds blow particles from Sudan to
Hiroshima to icy rivers that wild coho
struggle against to lay their bright eggs.
On the first day of the first war declared in this century
the Asian Art Museum opens its doors with stilt-walkers
dressed as emperors and geishas, and with musicians
from Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, for music and art
transcend transient politics and borders. Even
the museum’s map of Asia’s Buddhist centers
proclaims Tibet’s sovereignty within China’s
yawning border. Across the street a demonstration
swells before City Hall to protest a war
veiled in an amalgam of virtue, misinformation
and covert interests.
Something ghostlike transforms this city.
While most stores close, in others clerks
focus like compulsive-obsessives just
to get through the day and homeless
walk the streets as if San Francisco’s
sole inhabitants. One woman, hair
plaited with a plethora of mismatched
ribbons mirroring her clothes, crosses
against red. She zigzags mostly between
the yellow lines while drivers remain
uncharacteristically patient as if
acknowledging the difficulty of accepting
war without dissolving in a despair that
threatens one’s ever-transient
connection with life.
Within these museum’s walls images of Buddha,
Bodhisattvas, White Tara embody prayers for all
sentient beings and symbolize compassion,
wisdom, the acceptance of suffering, as well as
our ability to skillfully control rather than be
controlled by our mad-wraith desires.
It’s no longer a matter of us versus them,
good versus evil. We are all messengers of God
and we are all godless. Energy is neither created
nor destroyed. All those who have lived and
don’t yet live share our bodies through the food
we eat, the air we breathe, the cells that ferociously
regenerate throughout our lives. Prayer wheels
fill these halls with unbound intent that passes
through the walls, the streets, the world: may all
beings be healthy, may all beings be happy,
may all beings live in peace.
Elizabeth Oakley Weaver 