A violin is curved wood and four strings. It needs a person to make noise, an artist to make music, love to sing. Just like us.
Tag: love
My Garden
He lives in my garden; only I have the key. There is no gate, no lock to un-lock like those posh private parks, just a tree and some grass, balloons from a story and maybe an old bottle of wine we bag before law comes spinning around, on the hunt for happiness. Over there is our first kiss on the stone pier they said Cortés built, stretching out into a tequila moon; and where that old lady sits, remembering or forgetting: a flight to somewhere, one screen lit in the dark, yours, watching the same movie, three times. He is my garden; only I have the key. No sock-puppet politician or fisting Missouri FratBoy can trespass our grass, mock our tree, pull down those balloons. He is my garden, eternally lost except to me, safe like drunk wine and watched movies, invisible to those who don’t speak love, far from parched howls and Christians, close as breath.
*Dedicated to Josh Hawley, who thought his own hand was up in the air as he declared war.
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For Now
The sun feels good in this world,
warm,
wide-windowed breeze
and your brown clone sunglasses
with golden wire frames.
I think I’m falling.
With you, my skin is tanned to sand,
porch-picnic-ready,
your mom asking “So is he
treating you good?”
When I say yes,
she gets that twinkle
so I know what she means.
I nod, shy; she smiles,
proud of her son.
I sit in your world
and we all eat chicken and talk
about school and
TV and
how you know when you’re in love.
(They had a lot of wine.)
Here, your parents are mine;
they don’t have to say
I’m welcome.
Now I remember:
Mom hides fear in her smile
while dad tries hard to forget
me,
sewn up tight as he
feasts on fury.
I am a billion sand-pieces
waiting for glass.
“Come on,” you say.
“The road’s too cool
for that.”
So I wrench out of then,
kiss this
forget that
for now.
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Victory
“Stand back, stand by.”
I am about to know I have loam and rock for a back and blue-grey sky for a head honor an orange sun yellow and gaze purple into ink rest in love as I have done all these years, wake to heartbeats and sleep with all sighs. Then when unripe Boys rape in dirt and shoot dark; masturbate dry pricks blood-smear voided genitals kill this body gorge on dull meat eat our kind burn our memory; then my arms Earth and Sky my companion-Sun my love this man envelop me pierce this hell carry me home.
Mine
He’s a poster. He posed for it, flexed. Baseball player who’s won — wife, kid, God, arms. Good. Yes. I wish him well... and then plod up my empty street soaked in past and full of dark. The house is on the right. A light is on. He waits for me. Posters aren’t made of me. My triceps don’t act like that. Fans? No. My shy love and this quiet plot, beautiful, mine and silent and home. I’ll choose mine every time.
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Just when you thought life was over, …
“Speechless”
How do I sift history into sound
cut pain into letters
spell you with words
that cleave night from day
right from wrong
lie from truth?
No.
Awe floats —
leaf in windless landscape
breathless birdsong
your heat —
and so I burn my noisy nets,
kiss my love,
praise
silent hands.
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Home
Missing pencils and half-used cakes of board wax margaritas mid-afternoon on an old blue-painted porch the dog is sick but the vet says he’ll be okay “Do you ever miss Los Angeles?” Yeah, some friends, memories trouble is held back by the rocks protecting the bay.
for Dave
Triptych
“Isn’t it just so awesome, Chandler? Topanga said hi to me!” We’re both named after streets? “Why do I talk to you anyway? Whitsett will love this story!”
The phone stays belligerently still as I remember saying nothing.
The well she stands behind is called Love. Her job is to scream each time a fool gets close, a brutal, wicked scream that scatters birds. The wise, she makes no noise. They pass on their way, carrying water.
The path
Rembrandt and Shakespeare, Tolstoy and Gaugin, possessed, I believe, powerful hearts, not powerful wills. They loved the range of materials they used. The work’s possibilities excited them; the field’s complexities fired their imaginations. The caring suggested the tasks; the tasks suggested the schedules. They learned their fields and then loved loved them. They worked, respectfully, out of their love and knowledge, and produced complex bodies of work that endured.
Annie Dillard, The Writing Life
After teaching for three decades, I believe this: the only thing that separates the good from the bad is caring — about your students, about your field. Not about the weight of your legacy, and definitely not about product (test scores, “outcomes,” sales). Why? You can’t measure what you love. You can’t even direct it. Love is the absence of measurement; who wants to see the receipt from a child’s gift? Go into a classroom with an outcome in mind, students will know there’s a plot afoot…and only those okay with becoming pawns will succeed.
The teachers I know who love what they do and who they work with are artists; all the rest, drones too afraid to find something else to do. Same thing for writers, and parents, bus drivers and painters: if there’s no love, there’s no art. Just activity accompanied by an agenda.
G Beckman 