Lekshe's Mistake

Poem in Baltimore

Looking out over the harbor's sunny surface

Nothing is known.

Some ship, some white ship

Whose captain I will never meet

Passes slowly by.

(Rooms full of faces,

leaning forward to hear some word that will save their life.

"Don't look in my direction," I want to say,

But they do, as if, as if.

I have nothing to say and I know it. I am the white ship.

I am the water in the harbor, the clouds, the green grass along the banks. Who knows what I'll say next.)

("Even the simplest things baffle me." That's what I want to say.

I am undone again and again.

    You cannot open me over and over.

    You cannot take all my belongings.

    You cannot leave me stranded without a place to put down the one black anchor.)

I am the white ship, sailing out to meet a horizon that doesn't exist.

I have nothing to say that the gulls and the wind don't say, that the white ship doesn't murmur, sailing out to meet a horizon that doesn't exist.

"Listen outside the walls." That's what I want to tell them.

Listen to the water in the harbor, the clouds, the green grass along the banks.

Who knows what they'll say next?

Body of Milk and Air

Body of milk. Body of air.

The sky wraps you in darkness.

Things hidden

come out

in the light of the moon.

Someone is waiting, are they not?

You are enfolded in the arms of life,

and delivered an apology --

but not the one you wanted.

This gesture

prepares you for death.

along the border

precarious against the
steep mountain of your heart
the noise i thought was my life

evaporated
leaving the spacious quiet
of a question laid bare:

What is the distance between dreams and oblivion?

snow answers in a cold voice
darkness illuminates traces of knowing, buried
beneath deciduous syllables of light.

i am waiting for something else to happen
rivers to melt, rushing towards spring,
asking directions
to the distant possibility
of something more innocent,
climbing towards light
scattering transparent code
inside the border
between mist
and sky

a bridge

you think i have written about you but

i have not

i have used you for a bridge to a place

i can't go otherwise

a ticket to a play

as yet unwritten.

you will say it's not love but

ask again tomorrow and tell me

on friday if

you still think the sentence makes sense.

you have a key, that's all that matters.

let yourself in.

no one else even knows

the address, the days of the week

when the windows are unlocked,

where the opener is

or what to do when they find it. 

all of the faithful

all of the faithful

have left for better venues, bigger gods

and a more fruitful creation.

only the stubborn crouch here on flat ground

under a starless sky,

waiting for the birth of truth.

messengers move among us

hanging notes in the sky

leaving offerings on the alter

of our indecision

i am arriving at a juncture of

no choice

though the ways are two

(i can love you or

i can love you.

what's to decide?)

i came to tell you

but when you stood up to go

i remembered the taste of your

fingers in my mouth

and i remembered the

sound you made

just before

you said no.

this is a prayer

asking god for wisdom

this is a prayer, asking wisdom

for mercy

one more

the idea goes on living

with all its veins

pumping the same blood as reality

sweat

simple in your black shirt

plowing the garden,

refusing a hat,

despite my reprimands.

sweat marked the

strong arc of your intention

a fine trickle along

the straight path of your spine

disappearing inside the waist

of loose cotton trousers

a heart this steady is bound to grow something good

but you were not concerned with

even the future of vegetables,

when you leaned into the curved edge of the shovel

and sighed

it would have been a good time to ask for favors.

i suppose you knew that.

the bind we were in

out along the overlook,

shuffling among lies

truth clings to me

concealing the more interesting details

of a life traveled slowly

certain images on the upper slope

lay flat against the damp grass

and will follow me to bed

will leave marks on my skin

as they disappear unkissed

between the strong arc of your hands I

remembered a story untold

of how all the ideas

I abandoned were still living somewhere,

moving among the undiscovered

but not forgotten in the soft folds of your pauses

i will not walk further nor will I stay here

remembering that we once danced on a place

very much like this–falling finally into the wet grass, laughing

at the bind we were in by each having a body

under the same moon

in the same lifetime

Cutting Through

I shall not be well until

I stop eating poison

stop craving poison

stop mistaking poison

in all of its lovely disguises

for dessert.

I shall not be free until

I unshackle myself from devotion to illusion

shall not be opened until

I no longer mistake a lock for a key.

I shall not be awake until

I stop loving the dull slumber of habit.

Kind lama,

free me from knowledge.

Throw me lovingly into the fire

of hopelessness.

Slam shut the door

with the swift and perfect mudra of completion.

Obliterate my conceptual mind

leave me like a flower under the sun–

always facing upward

open to the infinite sky of what is.

the way the moon does

Insubstantial music disappears

a hand print listens from the grave–it’s all alive

this time of night.

inside the bible

a saint takes his place in present form

thomas merton, asleep beside me

without name or judgement

opens to the right page

I have loved you

even though you said to never use those words

I use them now

because they apply

your breath makes me breathless

your breathlessness makes me breathe

the world has no idea

what it would mean to

pass disappointment

on the way to better choices--

the way the stars do,

the way the moon does.