Tragic Bee

The teacher had a block of wood

with different items attached to its sides;

a pipe cleaner, sandpaper, a cotton ball;

including a soft furry bumblebee

stuck on with a pin.

It was a lesson about touch.

When I told my mother about it

she lamented the bee as though it’s living body

had been cruelly impaled by my heartless teacher,

never considering that the bee

might have been a treasure my teacher found

and wanted to share with us.

This was a story my mother told me

over and over again,

the spin she put on

every experience, mostly I guess

because it was a good story, full of pathos,

with clearly defined victims and villains

and haunting regrets.

The hero always dies, beautiful and tragic.

It was and still is extremely important

that I understand the suffering of innocents

and do whatever I can to save the world

by knowing everything there is to know,

but no matter how hard I try

I will still discover a tragedy I failed to prevent

or one I will soon cause by my selfishness.

I, like most of the others, was afraid to touch the bee

even though it was dead

and the teacher assured us

it could no longer sting,

but I touched it anyway, and it was very soft..

Our teacher was young and new to the job.

It was the beginning of the school year,

and she was trying out the things she thought of

over the summer to make teaching

new and fun. She was surprised, amused, and a little disappointed

that our imaginations were so powerful

the mere thought of a stinger

made us shiver, depriving us

of the beautiful softness

she wanted us to know, but she was soft.

I felt disloyal. Maybe my mother

was trying to be sympathetic to my squeamishness.

What I said wasn’t what I meant.

I wanted to know if it was safe to try something new and scary.

The answer was, not unless you want to crucify someone.

Thunder

Dreaming each night of thunder

the small girl floated in the air.

The window by her bed

had an invisible ladder

to escape the flames of the burning house.

Between her bed and the wall

were bags of what she’d take

things she could sell, maybe,

on the road to some great adventure,

some deeply felt existence where fear

dissolved into home.

She wore her clothes

under her nightgown, so she’d be ready.

Before she slept she went over in her mind

the route she’d take down the roof,

leaping to the ground unharmed.

She poked through her bag, examining

each thing, deciding again

what was essential, but began to feel

there was nothing there

she could use, there was nothing anywhere

that would ensure her safe journey,

the disaster she waited for

had already occurred, she was too young

to hit the road alone, and there was nowhere

she knew of to go.

It must have been sudden,

the change from plans for escape

to resignation, to digging in for the long haul,

watching for signs everywhere that would mean

an end to the suffering.

“It’s time to begin your life,”

the signs would say, “go ahead and stop

being afraid, stop

hiding your face, slouching

against walls and in corners, hiding

behind your long hair.” She pretended

she was grown and nothing could harm her,

grew a bright shell

that despised and defended

weakness, a life-like shield

made from clothes that seemed

to protect her, a stance

and expression that prevented

attack, words so quick and clever

no one thought to wander behind them to see

who was there.

Still, she always slept in her clothes

and kept her bags packed

and all her favorite stuff close,

in case a family of gypsies or acrobats

gathered under her window

and called for her to come home.

Whose Large Eyes Catch the Light

I’m throwing open all of my windows and doors,

singing a song to the cold night air,

a beautiful song, to invite all the animals in.

I want to live with the furred and feathered,

the wild, the sincerely ferocious, the always hidden,

whose large eyes catch the light.

Small, soft animals will look cautiously out

from the pockets of winter coats.

Birds will nest in old shoes, in the morning

they will fly up to perch at the top of the bookcase

to see what I’ve been reading.

When I sit at the kitchen table

eating a bowl of cereal,

slurping the sugary milk

from the bottom of the bowl,

I’ll look up and see a large crow

flying across the room

saying “Caw! Caw! Caw!”

Little birds will cling to my hair,

their feet will poke my head

when they ride along to the store.

Foxes will cough from shadows.

I’ll sleep with bears

dreaming of stars

and caverns.

Bobcats will sit on the roof

looking out over the city

thinking their high up thoughts.

When wolves howl a river of sound,

I’ll ride along.

When I tell people stories

about my lucky life full of wildness

everyone will wonder what voice I used

to call to the animals so convincingly.

They’ll think, what’s in her heart

that makes her so fond of savage beasts?

Does her house have a dirt floor, is it

mossy and crowded with rough branches

crisscrossing the rooms and reaching past

tables and lamps and couches and chairs?

Do they hang their wet scarves and mittens

on twigs by the fire?

Do stars peek

through the open roof between boughs?

When I’m sad

love and warmth will surround me.

I’ll be soft as fur inside,

and won’t need words,

or lies.

It smells like diesel fuel in here, and something else. It smells like the sky, I guess, the sky that comes in when the overhead doors open. Heartman used to cock his hip and toss out the old coffee in a brown splashing arc, spin on the forefoot of his duct-taped cowboy boot on the lip of the walk along the office wall and head back in to fill the pot with fresh water. Skinny as a praying mantis, with aviator bifocals, bad teeth, held his hand over his mouth when he smiled. Over on the side wall, on one of the beams, he stacked all the rosters from every day he ever worked. After he died nobody wanted to use his truck, but they’d go over and get his lighter to light a cigarette.

Poems to my Skin

Inflammation

The fire is

an image of fire,

wound-voice

calling out, but not

the original wound,

which shirks inspection,

dissection,

interrogation--

criminal self

lurking under integument,

emerging wet, bloody.

Crusted over with shell--

parody of protection.

Sad self, weeping

through walls.

When protest is smothered,

fire goes underground.

Our Lady of Sorrows,

boss of neglected realms.

Distraction

I am an expert

in meditation,

able to take refuge

in sensation,

following the furls

of paisley

on a quilt, the varying widths

of the spaces between floor boards,

the dancing motes in a sliver

of late sun.

Able to find snags--

scabs,

dead skin--

to remove

with precise maneuvers,

divided attention.

Stuff

Theft of Suffering for the Sake of Art

1.

Dear old Darger, he were a good artist,

and fair to steal from, what with being crazy

and now gone. What was his is yours, no soul

but what was peeled out of a dead man's book.

Outsider artists who borrow brushes

from genuine freaks, being freaks themselves, but

less likely to be cold, lonely, or in

a lot of pain, ought to admit their sources.

Darger feared the storm of a strangled girl,

he warred, he raged. In the orphan home he

survived. Lost sister, mother, father, then

his only friend; far off, but kept in mind.

The Vivian sisters were his soul in

dresses, his heart in blood-painted flowers.

2.

Why was I so pissed off when a fellow

artist enthusiastically copied

a great dead nut-case's art, that saved the

nut’s life, or made it, more like, when what is

loved is inhabited by the lover

and is honored by the habitation?

What crime is it to lift out of the soup

of images some beautiful frail bit

of lost longing? Where’s my soul’s voice, my missed

gift of devoted copying, enrapt

coloring, living in? Art made by nuts

is art from the heart, bloody and full scale,

a gorgeous mutant, born of want, beloved

avenging monster with butterfly wings.