Sleeping in
August 25, 2009
There is nothing like sleeping in which means that you don’t have to do anything. that you can wake up dreaming. David Ulin is the new book review editor and I woke this morning dreaming that he was declaiming from a podium. He had become Steve Wasserman only with grey hair and that smile Ulin has. It’s hard to explain. I like Steve, but maybe I want David to be David. But that’s the thing, if you have time to dream, who knows what country you might wander into? And that’s the best part of life, waking in another country, with another person who is altogether the same person, waking in a different language with a different body. I think that sleeping in is a gift to yourself, a gift I wish I could go on giving forever.
Kauai in blue
August 15, 2005
There were no reasons. The sky was heavy on the ocean. I could not think of anything but air. There were no problems. Or if there were, I could not see them in the bright air. The ocean opened wide like a space where anything could happen. Monkeypod trees. Leaf. Rain. Waiting. I took off my clothes and ran into the ocean. Pink. My skin afterward pink. My back already brown, but below it. Like I was some little masochist, a professional submissive being spanked most days and loving it, I was in the pink. Skin that does not visit the sun on a tea-and-toast basis. Papaya summer ripeness of the days that piled onto each other. Out into the ocean. Snorkel ready for the world of nothing to do but chase more fish. The reef was full of fish before they put in the golf course which leaches terribly into the ocean. The clown fish rise in clouds now, but there used to be more clown fish than you could swim into. We destroy the clowns and fish for a bat of a ball. I am not a golfer so I do not understand. I pour some rum over a mango and I think of all the fishes. The sky is unbearably beautiful and for a week I have had enough sleep.
Swan Time
August 3, 2009
Swans rush into clouds
Find their cygnets adrift
Find their cygnets adrift
don’t know why they drifted
but the swans aren’t perfect
sunshine is everywhere
under the swans’ wings is darkness
some cygnets like it better that way
darkness
just silence
which is better anytime
the water is everywhere now
the stars are falling
under the wings nothing
feathers warmth
I am not a swan
just a rush of feathers
that wants to grow up
into clouds
clouds have it all going on
even moisture
which is everything
depending on where you are
the water rushes around the feet
ask me something
I won’t answer
I’m swimming
no longer an egg
no longer whole and encasedÂ
