California Dirge

I've tried my best to be true 

to the nature 

of my beauty state. 

Not to wake the dream of the poem: 

Don't spit bits of broken tooth and disrupt the 

vapors- 

my beauty is for you after all, all of you

this is all for you, all of you, 

my dream translated for your pastime, 

all of you, 

And

I don't want my last refrain to be some

California dirge:

but sometimes it feels like 

all of my little bones are crushed, and 

I think about that sparrow, flying wild

into Grandma's big window

beneath the balcony on Dublin Avenue. 

Here's the truth: 

I am at least a thousand years old. 

And no one I have ever loved,

will ever know,

how deep it goes. 

And no one I have ever loved, 

will ever see,

what all the losing, 

and gaining,

does to me:

what all the fluc-tu-a-ting does to me. 

And I'm sorry Grandma but I can't seem to take it easy. 

The daily billowing and sagging, 

seagulls feasting on trash, 

poison wafting through the city. 

Sometimes this love digs into my side

like the hilt of my own

half-concealed shank 

(all the elders call it a pen knife;

I'm full of 

doubt)

and I do talk to her ghost when I'm grappling 

with the usual procession 

of kindness and kindling,

the loss,

the bereavement,

sweet clarity.

The bare breast struggling like 

a sheet pinned to the line, 

I try to breathe the wind in and it skips me every time-

I see us all standing around, 

palms full of irradiated seashells, chalky 

cage armor. 

I see you sleeping, hugging 

my leg like a bear.

And I wonder if this is 

another relic

I'm going to have to throw into the tar pit.

The translucence of my loneliness

in spring, summer, winter, fall, 

clarity. 

Live, die, lose, gain, reciprocity.

Love, hide, reveal, clench your teeth as you cry

he doesn't want me does he. 

She doesn't want me does she. 

And oh gosh!

There goes the sadness again, 

a low kingfisher sweeping, 

"The scenery without you fails to amaze me. 

the whole panorama fails to faze me." 

And sometimes the tune is so vague 

I can hardly hear it. 

And it doesn't even chink the armor of ignorance. 

And I achieve nothing with my own mind, and feel that

I'm the cyanic heart. 

But when a new morning is gentle, I can almost see 

a more honest anatomy. 

I remember the heron sanctuary,

the blue lungs of the old estuary. 

-I feel a little woozy I think I'm approaching 

the hands of god here.-

They look exactly like my own mind 

when I'm not in my way. 

They look exactly like that fat marine layer on the bay-

the opalescence of familial love

the wish for a softer future

and the earth is giving us an awfully knowing glance,

as it grasps its bleeding side 

in the dirt