Lekshe's Mistake

All Hell

listen, we are running out of shame

     I am sorry but I had nothing else to do.

(saying thank you thank you

with nobody listening

we are saying

volumes filled with carefully scribed

lines of code)

     you were trying to say something

     yourself, I think.

     trying to link your present to

     secrets that beg for sleep.

we laughed and I

and filled the water glass

with the skeleton of a hollyhock.

     the mind, being quiet,

     is copied into books,

     vocabularies of strange objects

     on false horizons

     that claim us

     lesson by lesson.

we need maps. orientation tools.

you will set sail

you will go.

     all of a sudden

     all hell will break loose.

It's February

You love the

small narrow path that is the past.

The steep amble up a worn gully

resolutely treading, head down,

not really breathing. Not yet.

It’s February. There’s daphne out on the high ledges,

spilling perfume into the wet morning air,

birds picketing the phone lines,

rain filling up my boots.

It’s Oregon, but you live in another state.

I’d come to visit but I’ve already lived there so long

I wore out my welcome with the governor.

I’d rather have blisters than kisses, anyway.

I’d rather slip on a muddy hill than ride anywhere in style.

I heard the alarm. I want to wake up.

Time to shake off opium dreams and risk reality.

Glimpse

i saw you today,
leaning back in your chair,
staring into space,
considering something,
not forgotten, quite, but missed.

mind wandering then,
past the hum of the computer,
past sheetrock and glass, to open space.

you're a making man, aren't you?
pushing ideas around.

you moved your fingers across an empty page
reading the braille of space.
listening with those dear hands,
then gesturing with your pencil,
as if to speak in air.

then
capulted by the memory of
something invisible
you bolted--paused at the door and turned back.
Your mouth opened, as if to speak.
But no words came.
You smiled, remembering something?
turned and left the room.

Imagine

imagine
that you do not have to think.
imagine this puzzle will sove itself,
that it is already solved
or in fact, never Was.

and so i sit.
stubborn, reluctant dunce
looking for the invisible, essential pieces.

continual kind jewels appear
fragile and momentary glimpses
discovered/undiscovered.

effort has nothing to do with it.
infinity is precisely everything,
repeating itself
never the same.

one question
rises up & roots itself in thought.
i let it go, thinking it will die.
but in the letting go, it blossoms
gone, not dead (see the difference?)

    in-breath
        this and only this
            Exist
& nothing
    outbreath.... "one"

a car goes by
and i remember
anything there is to learn is everywhere.

what is the Voice that speaks
without words?
the experience that comes of doing nothing?
the death that is Alive?

this One has no halves
every piece is the Whole through
which infinity breathes.

Drink

I tried to tell you this.

I tried for years to speak in clever ways

of clever things.

I tried to use my scholar’s brain

to do love’s work.

One day, you grew tired of all that.

You pushed a chipped cup across the table

and said,

"Send your intellect out.

Give us a vacation.

Drink this."

The empty cup was the message.

Everything I wanted to say

was liquid, disappearing.

Love swallowing love.

Late Birth

Mary's Note

I come tattered like everyone else--
in pieces, blind.
My whole self, rent by my own hand
grasping what doesn’t exist.
A beggar, surrounded by riches.
A king, lost on the road.

Who has loved me?
Only one.
Did I receive it?
No, I was dreaming.
Did it go?
No, it remains.

Time runs out.
Fall turns to winter,
water to ice.

I am old.
It’s time to be born now.
Death is fine midwife,

after all.

Ruinous

Placid ruins
of imagination
all image
no location
heavy boots
leave tracks
trample suggestion
unspeakable questions
cast reason like seed
before hesitation.

I am fragile now
amid tangled shadows
pretense of propriety
left for dead
whisper hoarsely "yes"
what's more
your advances
left marks along my form
uncivil instructions
for a beautiful war.

Dalliance II

without words asking
just once
let’s not hurry
i have all day
all week
forever

Dalliance

there, three slippers, one upturned
beneath a sea of sheets unfurled
a window opened wide
to an even wetter world.

Beside the Point

Bashful girl in a red cotton dress
hair falling in random curls
solemn face of angel
wide, brown eyes
have seen everything
before they closed.

Some time ago, their story says,
she lost her voice.
(she cannot speak, she’s shy or sick)
don’t ask. Don’t ask why.

It is not true.

See how her fingers
move inside her pocket?
She is making a poem
choosing the next safe play thing
rolling perfect marbles
back and forth
back and forth to make a story
with a different ending.

One day they came
into the house
drunken men and
soldiers brave and stupid
full of stories
endless tales
only half true.

They used the kitchen
to make a meal
they used the table
to play cards
they used
the couch to catch
elusive sleep, strangled dreams
tangled in all the dirty deeds
all the images left dangling.

they used the bathroom
they used the tack room
they used the little girl
blindly in the dark
fingers grasped
eyes asked
as if to find their own innocence again
asking her to say something, anything
but hearing instead the shrill carol of grief
against the crackle of burning chaos
each in turn trying to erase
a past that didn’t match
their original intentions.

She didn’t understand
she was so still
she was unsure
even though the moon
said no, quite clearly
before they closed the curtain
before they closed the future
before she closed her eyes
to save herself from seeing.

she tried
to use her voice
to say wait, to say stop,
to ask why
but no one was listening
no one was noticing the years
slipping through her skin
stealing her baby dreams
thin white slip with
a small blue flower
moist lips
the colour of strawberries
forming words stuck
in the delicate arc of a
neck inclined beneath
an unwelcome kiss, she
choose to breathe instead
looking away
deciding then and there
that talking was
beside the point,
she quit

and now she only writes things down
beginning each time
on a blank page
all the mistakes still
waiting to be made
even so, she will sign her name
before she burns the paper
before she writes the names
of the six men
to whom the even the moon
said no, never.