Waking season

in a dream we sit together
on the stairway and wait
for the storm to go away.

we talk about God knows what
because this time, I am just visiting
and I cannot control my mouth.

we are average people,
we need our sorrows,
we long for our vacations,

we say bad things about
folks we believe to have
nothing in common with.

you tell me in the kitchen
you have lost someone
I am lost for words

I fail to disclose that I write
to keep my ghosts manageable.
I am telling you now.

We are the great danger

A cycle is to an end
- the water says.
Let it be old grief,
I am so tired
I cannot cry,
small sadnesses
clump up inside me.

I've lost a shoe
walking the
flooded streets.
I was and am afraid.
My bones did and do ache.
None of these
stopped me.

We are the great danger. Psyche is the great danger. How important is to know something about it, but we know nothing about it. (Carl Jung)

The house of sure things

I built it around myself.
High walls,
heaped imperfections,
bruised knees

and clay.
They tell me you can
count on nobody
these days.

There can't be
such thing as
trust in the invisible,
they say.

I care very little about many things.
I have to.

I inhabit a dream
with my own name.

Sunday ends

I lie in bed in savasana
for not everyone can be a starfish.

The untrained circus monkey mind
swings from one thought to the next.

Anticipation

Coming home after work
I anticipate you for 12 miles,
twenty-eight traffic lights.

The miracle of love
is that of
everyday things,

of breathing things
like open windows
and turned pages,

of things that move
with the wind and change
at the pace of clouds.

The Golden Rule

It's not about what people do to us,
but the way we react to what they do to us.
A younger me would have confronted the lie
and the man behind it with torn heart and teary eyes

because what could I possibly have
done wrong to be lied to?
Have I not been honest enough,
open enough, enough myself?

A younger me wouldn't have been able
to deal with a man assuming her to be
less than her clever self and therefore
would have confronted the man and the lie.

I have now lived long enough to know
It's not about what people do to us,
but the way we react to what they do to us.
This is the energy we send out in the world.

Upright

A fourteen-year-old
eyed me unblinkinly
around the classroom today,
as if instead of his plump,
clumsy English teacher,
I were one of the ballerinas
of the Royal Ballet,
flying over the desks
in a grand jeté, 
and offered me a hug
in the end of the class,
for he was carrying
no bouquet.

The art of walking upright here

is the art of using both feet.

One is for holding on.

One is for letting go. 

~ Allen Curnow 

To build things that matter

Don't stay here
if in your heart
you plan to leave
when in a dream
I need you to
just sit in silence
by my side and
you need to be
somewhere else.

Dreaming

My heart searches for
a peaceful spot to
open itself up.
Careful!
- I say.
A word at a time
or we'll scare him away.
Are we still dreaming?

The itch

They see me from afar.
They see me and think they know
what I am made of.

linen, lines, lies on storage -
they think they see me from afar.
They think they think.

They think they see
for they have been granted eyes.
A heart, a mouth and a mind -

They have also been granted these things
and left to discover how to use them
for themselves.

They think they know how to.
They think we're made of the same stuff.
They think we do closeness.

The letter

It doesn't say much.

I say everything in poems,

I hope you know these

are my best words, 

that they live in paper

before the cloud,

that I mean them 

for you. 

Upward

When by truth you mean
a house on the hill.

The people in the house are three,
sometimes friends come over.

The days in the house, the hours,
they are memories you never tell me about.

But if we had met then,
if we had played outside

when streets were still safe
and children could play outside

for hours before dinner was ready,
before having to walk down the hill with

your voice carrying me home
a thought of you showing on my lips.

I would be true for you then.

All of this is hypothetical

As if there could be
a world
where a man couldn't rely
in the sense of sight to
know things.

He does this:
he wakes up
and immediately tucks his head
under the blanket
to be sure everything is on its place -

his toes still count ten,
he is still a man,
there's no evidence of a
third nipple.

He eats the news for breakfast
trying to remember days when
the food was tastier.
He walks to work
reading people on the streets,
graffiti on walls,
watching  for cracks on sidewalks
he could fall through, better be safe.

He is now part of the things
his eyes have captured,
they are part of him as well -
children's smiles, war tanks,
cirrus clouds.

But me he doubts.

Been thinking about maybe
improving my knowledge
of political science.
Maybe learning a few jokes.
Maybe challenging
the altitudes of existing.

The first woman to swim across the Atlantic

Make it September 15,
this year or
maybe the next.

This woman I am
will swim across the Atlantic
cold, violent waters,
my heart
pumping anticipation like blood
throughout my body.

Meet me at the beach,
let's say Walmer, in Kent.
Let's say at 9.15 a.m.,
when silence still covers the peebles.

Dress me with arms and smiles,
I will remember this.
When I tell my accomplishment to the papers,
to my grandchildren,
I will tell them all
how I did it
for you.

Encounters

Itanhaem/SP, Brazil

My first spiritual encounter with the sea was 

in Kent one grey morning, we walked 

side by side down the shore in silence, 

you allowed me space to process its hugeness,
my smallness. 

My first physical encounter

with the sea was in Itanhaem

this week, one grey morning, 

you watched me from a spot 

in the middle of the vast blue

I watched you, 

a wave,

come into being and die,

come into being and die noisily, 

repeatedly.

Repeatedly
I came into being
and died
calmly
with you.

A shard shared

(Tiete bus station, São Paulo/SP)

There is a word
for every face in the crowd

a reason, a story
he teaches me to imagine

so I can move among them
and be not afraid of them,

so they can't hurt me but
can still change me.

(In response to this poem) 

Monsieur Fat Pig

Monsieur Fat Pig,
renowned artist to whom I have
been canvas several times,
apparently likes my frame.

He would have me hanging
on his office wall, but he's got a wife
and kids - "these things consume
a lot of money", he explains.

These are days of cheap copies
and easy pleasures,
because I am costly,
he bargains.

I have run into many men
like Monsieur Fat Pig lately.
My disgust for their sexist,
insulting behavior, sustained.

Unfashionable

I woke up feeling petty and
helpless this morning
put on a faded smile and my old
laconism no one appreciates.

I couldn't care less about
being fashionable.

Sunday afternoons

I am very careful about
writing on Sunday afternoons,
especially in the summer,
when I sink in bed alone with my thoughts
under temperatures as high as 35°C
and I can find no use for blue skies,
I haven't worked hard enough on my metaphors.
I can't be anything but ordinary on hot days.

Never too much, just enough

There is a word left unsaid
for every three I tell you.
Girls learn to speak prior to
and more quickly than boys,
therefore they gain knowledge
of words to be omitted from
their speech a lot earlier.
It's only natural you sense them,
you know them well enough.
They are hiding, not hidden.