Dean Asleep

Here is my friend:
slack, soul turned inward
betrayed by blood
and he is now apart from the world
in a cocoon of grace, the white sheets,
and the strange cold key of machines
their pumps and whirs, the pulse
of birdsong bleating
he's losing weight spendthrift,
can hardly afford it
he is on the tracks, facing down the years
facing down another lifetime
before his wife, his child,
his ordination
facing down the past of desserts, cigars
and coffee,
of hard liquor and bad drugs,
of a tough Norwegian father,
and the years of wanting.

I can see him asleep, even though
the door to his room is closed.

He has staff; he'd be gratified.
Code Blue twice,
and they give him a girl with a sequined
sweater, and a laptop,
on a desk with wheels. She watches only,
she's in Continuity.
As a theater man he'd understand.
Her job is to watch.

I sing and sing.
I hold his hand, and though God
is his co-pilot, I only know standards.
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly.

I kiss his hands, which I've never done,
would never do.
I love him and love him, and hope
he will wake.

spirograph

the moon sets again
and again, a spirograph pattern centripetal spin
pushed along by my hand on my landscape
horizon, black on blue, and the sinking disk
goes down, goes down again, goes down
each moon phase a face of some one
that I love, and these loves
these orbiting satellites pulled to my breast,
my gravity, pulled into ovals and circles
repeatedly, overlapping paths, a design,
some grand design, the lines that shift and shift
minutely as the weeks and years,
as I spin at my molten core, keeping them
always in view, the ones sometimes cold and
distant, the ones that veer close to me catching
my breath, my heart pounds,
and the small moon of my child, here in my out-
stretched palm, always circling --

I am turning my back on myself forever,
knowing they can only be this close, or that,
but my face needs their light, I only can see
by that light, by their faces turned to me.

Lover, turn to me -
husband, turn to me -
friend, and friend, and friend --

child, who will only look over his shoulder
who sometimes suddenly rises before me,
full faced expectant, I am the plain,
I am the flat river before him, reflecting,
and he is the sun, the center,
the only thing that really matters
anymore.

change

pray the roof stays up.
pray for rain.

i used to hang work in a gallery,
two thousand funky square feet in a hundred
year old building, second floor -
Athens, Georgia.

sometimes, if the weather was heavy
as it often was, the water
ran down the walls from upstairs
where a broken skylight
admitted pigeons at night -
streaming behind the wires that
held the frames of pictures,
wetting the floorboards.

I'd lay in bed, listening to the rain,
and pray (to the God I didn't yet believe in)
that we wouldn't be sued
for destruction of property
by some starving artist.

now i'm with the church.

I still work under a leaky roof,
petition a sky that won't cooperate,
and lay awake -
listening for rain.

* * * * *

resurrection (through the wringer)

a seamless tunic, gambled for and lost
before that, a towel around the waist

a purple robe, a torn curtain (rent asunder)
two bloodied linens, and before that
a folded dinner napkin

endless loads of laundry gathered, stinking
hauled in heavy baskets down the stairs, down
staggering into darkness, into rank despair
gathered, sorted, waiting there

pressed upon the backs of folded flesh
rows and rows of them in pews, fresh scrubbed

or stiffly into creased and thin-stretched worn
by a hungry child, served not or serves himself

what came out, what whiteness blinding
sewn whole as cloth was first conceived, no seam
no binding, no warp or weft except what time
allowed; if you met Christ on the road
what was he wearing?

here in the basement, I brood among the piles
I search the scent of life's decay, for the hope
no bleach could hold, and I listen to the drum
of the dryer as it rolls

I imagine the flapping of a woman's garment
as she runs, through the moist morning of
my Midwestern spring,
as she runs as stumbling children will downhill
her mind a blank, clean bandage or a flag
a white flag, my surrendered reason

he is not here
he is risen

magic 8 ball

I cannot hold you;
Not even the idea of you belongs to me -

separated by a ruler's length of conscience
that spans a lifetime.

Every morning, I buy a cup of coffee
and while I wait, I shake the Magic 8 Ball.
Yes, it says. Absolutely. Every time.

stirred

"What good is cancer in April?" -- Lou Reed

unruly my bones
ring together stirred

on my clothes line
five or six sets of chimes blow
and a whirligig or two goes too
set in the earth by the garden
pinwheels and fans

unruly my bones

Jon was spared in the last round
of layoffs but says he felt the breeze
of the axe, as it passed him
by

Chris' MRI came back, clean

and my bones
ring together stirred unseen
like a baby moves in the belly
impatient with spring

The wind blows where it chooses, and you hear the sound of it,

but you do not know where it comes from or where it goes.

-- John 3:8

seashore

I wonder if Zen mind
is as good
as the seashore 15 minutes north of Jacksonville.

I'm talking about
the eternity of a horizon
and the waves of the womb.
The smells and sounds of sex and death that merge
into sand, that lose their name in the long stretch
of sand, of ocean basalt
and microscopic creatures hewn
unto the infinite, the atomies;
of God in everything.

When I am taken.

When I am taken up,
my mind will be like this -- emptied.
Devoid of person
and filled instead with the world
devoid of metaphor.