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Authors: Lucia Perillo
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step over a human bone while following a deer-path
you want to step over another, unless you are not ruled
by curiosity as I was ruled. Or had already seen a skull
mossy in its entirety, with three holes (eye sockets
+ the nose) + the palate on the duff.
Into which the green teeth bit, the moss
covering it all like luminescent car upholstery,
what do you do if you are just a dumb American,
I can usually figure out how to behave, but require years
to come to my conclusions. Now
the fact the reparations have come due
is being made clear by the photo of the skull
I took when I was young and dumb, this anti-
luck charm emanating green recriminations,
though I notice that I do not take it from the wall.
I Could Name Some Names
of those who have drifted through thus far of their allotted
fifty or seventy or ninety years on Earth
with no disasters happening,
whatever had to be given up was given upâ
the food at the rehab facility was better than you would expect
and the children turned out more or less okay;
sure there were some shaky years
but no oneâs living in the basement anymore
with a divot in his head, thatâs where the shrapnel landed/or
donât look at her stump. It is easy
to feel possessed of a soul thatâs better schooled
than the fluffy cloud inside of people who have never known suchlike
events by which our darlings
are unfavorably remade. And the self
is the darlingâs darling
(I = darling 2 ). Every day
I meditate against my envy
aimed at those who drift inside the bubble of no-trouble,
â what is the percentage? 20% of us? 8%? zero?
Maybe the ex-president with his nubile daughters,
vigorous old parents, and clean colonoscopy. Grrrr.
Remember to breathe.
Breathe in suffering,
breathe out blessings
say the ancient dharma texts.
Still I beg to file this one complaint
that some are mountain-biking through the scrublands
while she is here at Ralphâs Thriftway,
running her thumb over a peachâs bruise,
her leg a steel rod
in a miniskirt, to make sure I see.
Cold Snap, November
That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.
JOHN BERGER ,
The Sense of Sight
In 2006, in Ohio, Joseph Clark raised his head in the middle of his execution to say, âItâs not working.â
The salmon corpses clog the creek without sufficient room to spin:
see, even the fish want to kill themselves this time of year
the therapist jokes. Her remedy
is to record three gratitudes a dayâ
so let the fish count for one, make two the glaucous gulls
who pluck the eyes before they fill
with the cloudy juice of vanishing.
But donât these monuments to
there
-ness
feel a little ostentatious? Not just the gratitudes,
but also what they used to call a hardware store
where you hike for hours underneath the ether
between the ceiling and the dropped-down lighting tubes,
muttering
I need a lock-washer for my lawnmower shroud
â
huh? You know
you should feel like Walt Whitman, celebrating
everything, but instead you feel like Pope Julius II
commanding Michelangelo to carve forty statues for his tomb.
When even one giant marble Moses feels like a bit too much.
This year made it almost to December without a frost to deflate the dahlias
and though I stared for hours at the psychedelia of their petals,
trying to coax them to apply their shock-paddles to my heart,
it wasnât working. Until one morning when
I found them black and staggering in their pails,
charred marionettes, twist-tied to their stakes, I apologize
for being less turned-on by the thing than by its going.
Not the sunset
but afterward when we stand dusted with the sunsetâs silt,
and not the surgical theater, even with its handsome anesthesiologist
in blue dustcap and bootiesâ no,
his
after
âs what Iâm buzzed
you want to step over another, unless you are not ruled
by curiosity as I was ruled. Or had already seen a skull
mossy in its entirety, with three holes (eye sockets
+ the nose) + the palate on the duff.
Into which the green teeth bit, the moss
covering it all like luminescent car upholstery,
what do you do if you are just a dumb American,
I can usually figure out how to behave, but require years
to come to my conclusions. Now
the fact the reparations have come due
is being made clear by the photo of the skull
I took when I was young and dumb, this anti-
luck charm emanating green recriminations,
though I notice that I do not take it from the wall.
I Could Name Some Names
of those who have drifted through thus far of their allotted
fifty or seventy or ninety years on Earth
with no disasters happening,
whatever had to be given up was given upâ
the food at the rehab facility was better than you would expect
and the children turned out more or less okay;
sure there were some shaky years
but no oneâs living in the basement anymore
with a divot in his head, thatâs where the shrapnel landed/or
donât look at her stump. It is easy
to feel possessed of a soul thatâs better schooled
than the fluffy cloud inside of people who have never known suchlike
events by which our darlings
are unfavorably remade. And the self
is the darlingâs darling
(I = darling 2 ). Every day
I meditate against my envy
aimed at those who drift inside the bubble of no-trouble,
â what is the percentage? 20% of us? 8%? zero?
Maybe the ex-president with his nubile daughters,
vigorous old parents, and clean colonoscopy. Grrrr.
Remember to breathe.
Breathe in suffering,
breathe out blessings
say the ancient dharma texts.
Still I beg to file this one complaint
that some are mountain-biking through the scrublands
while she is here at Ralphâs Thriftway,
running her thumb over a peachâs bruise,
her leg a steel rod
in a miniskirt, to make sure I see.
Cold Snap, November
That we find a crystal or a poppy beautiful means that we are less alone, that we are more deeply inserted into existence than the course of a single life would lead us to believe.
JOHN BERGER ,
The Sense of Sight
In 2006, in Ohio, Joseph Clark raised his head in the middle of his execution to say, âItâs not working.â
The salmon corpses clog the creek without sufficient room to spin:
see, even the fish want to kill themselves this time of year
the therapist jokes. Her remedy
is to record three gratitudes a dayâ
so let the fish count for one, make two the glaucous gulls
who pluck the eyes before they fill
with the cloudy juice of vanishing.
But donât these monuments to
there
-ness
feel a little ostentatious? Not just the gratitudes,
but also what they used to call a hardware store
where you hike for hours underneath the ether
between the ceiling and the dropped-down lighting tubes,
muttering
I need a lock-washer for my lawnmower shroud
â
huh? You know
you should feel like Walt Whitman, celebrating
everything, but instead you feel like Pope Julius II
commanding Michelangelo to carve forty statues for his tomb.
When even one giant marble Moses feels like a bit too much.
This year made it almost to December without a frost to deflate the dahlias
and though I stared for hours at the psychedelia of their petals,
trying to coax them to apply their shock-paddles to my heart,
it wasnât working. Until one morning when
I found them black and staggering in their pails,
charred marionettes, twist-tied to their stakes, I apologize
for being less turned-on by the thing than by its going.
Not the sunset
but afterward when we stand dusted with the sunsetâs silt,
and not the surgical theater, even with its handsome anesthesiologist
in blue dustcap and bootiesâ no,
his
after
âs what Iâm buzzed
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