Today abstracted as a glass of milk forgotten by a kid who went into this interminable rain to play, I was reading up on the science of tracking the movement of birds through spring. It seems just as for us says Professor Martin Wikelski of Princeton who each night for six weeks with his team of researchers captured and carefully injected thrushes with double labeled water ampules, for the birds a long spring flight is painless relative to the fighting at rest areas that can really drain the migrating out of you I have so many questions. First the doubly labeled water technique. If on a cool day a bird at rest a nonflying bird staying warm consumes the same kilojoules as two-and-a-half wind tunnel hours, how many isotopes does it take to tremble in the researchers hand? What happens if overhead in the clouds or laughing at a joke about penguins someone loses the birds? Each morning the researchers inject a small portion of double water, each evening the blood reports, to where they are going the thrushes move closer, the researchers follow, soon they can go back to Princeton Twin Rivers or Hightstown, say goodbye thrushes, and it occurs to me in my snow globe surrounded with rain on Water Street by the sea, its possible all this capturing daily was for some other purpose. Put down the paper.
Im sure I can see each week the team growing increasingly tender holding the small thrushes they probably had to name. Go, Jerry, soon you will be in Canada where Neil Young was born.
Thank You for Being You
Poetry begins here. Brand-new summer faces the academy of youth. Gold division buys gold. Everybody grew up in a subculture, overcoming presentation.
Explosive subjectivity, anxiety loops, available light digging Manhattan. When things sound alike, does it make them sisters? Come dancing bitter city, its only natural. Carousel with its horses removed, suddenly I dont feel so abandoned. I want to communicate with you, Im trying as hard as a human, but the white space always stops me. When they found him he was holding a shovel. When I loved you all afternoon, you were absent, the neighbors woken, your cries were the actual miracle.
Defeated, I tell endless bedtime stories, bounce off others, understand power. Even feedback can be helpful. Move the radio to a slightly bigger basement where it wont be too proud. Restless spirit, its you. You are family, you are dark mysterious helpful time for time to pull in a little, curl up with some reasons, and shut out the world.
First Time, Long Time
Those big oily birds cleaning their feathers on the roof, what are they called? The radio crackles.
All over the city installations open their white walls to greet us with mystification. Blind the grey arthritic cat leans his clouded head on his paw waiting for footsteps. Wind plays the chime. How can it be the first and last time all at once? The old woman hobbled out of the school bus. So much sun, dead middle of summer, worse than its ever been. I love baseball, it makes me angry and hopeful for justice.
I once rode a boat all night past the dark islands, my fingers were playing a tiny violin everyone heard, no one knew what it was, they thought a music box in the luggage had opened. I remember holding a coin, but not why I said I too see the lights of Tunisia, Brooklyn, Spain, it took ages to cross three avenues through the morning to where I could sit down like an American and start writing this for you.
The Lark
O green rolling mind of the hills the telephone is raining a little carved of late morning shed where a little blond body behind an opaque white curtain fails inside it to translate rain and grey into something useless enough to be useful to the fable drinker in the park thats me thinking some people in the park when they run through me look like theyve always been glad to be running from something. Others seem to have just gotten up from placidly keeping bees in a structure built of the feeling they should be feeling a need to leave the valley. Last night some hazy conversation drifted down the careless hall to wake the newlyweds inside me. Let them never make a sound.
Let them be closed until they open their eyes at the same time and try on old hats in silence. Is that what they do said the little blond body to the fable drinker here try on old rain inside me in silence try on not trying on that old radiant silence try on a longing for music not to be used just take two steps into the o useless around the ancient mountain revolution that it may gather a few kilowatts of your wanting inside it for the king who sleeps to keep him warm and grow his beard for power. O take off your solemn head and bang a little music for longing not to be any sort of ship that sails anyone into the ocean inside him of you know this rain is for us no longer. You know sadness hurts because music actually right now in a valley of differential green recalcitrant sadness inside you hurts. You know you drink too much night and you say O night you drank too much homemade night some death wish daughter from a bunch of mother resembling gestures concocted and woke still inside me thinking Im night before remembering Im a sweet green balcony morning over the market breathing people. from two you loved failing to be quiet O caring and not caring outside me quiet pass me the green hat with a feather in it O feather falling in love with the world
There Is a Light
Whenever behind your windows I look from my balcony down at you you are open, at any hour among the pyramids of eggplant and whiskey albanian shadows drag their shadows, I could watch this shadow clock for hours and do, it is timing me, and each time your doors part my lips hydraulical silently clatter o solemn untamed maternal albanian market why at this fucked time of night are you open locked within yourself and asking the same thing of me, small leaning over the balcony figure watching your painless hydraulic scar from both sides open releasing silence, in silence you have been here forever since 1993, you assure me with your calm ancient terror, you force a man who looks on you to doubt his sleep and lack of sleep, o most magnificent pregnant man, you give birth to things surrounded with chocolate and things with chocolate buried inside them, you give birth to pine scented dishwashing fluids, you give birth to placenta which some people eat, you give birth to etceteras every pleasure in every hour, o low market wearing the naked dress of windows lettered with emerald translucent letters, what pale green inside me memory dress now gives birth to the story of you giving birth to the story of me giving birth to my awe of you at 3 a.m. giving birth to a mother of her sleeping children young and free who with pale green arabic music leaking from one of her earrings looks up with her gaze and unlocks me then turns into her drifting toward the opposite and therefore holy direction