TULIP

Email to the Buffalo

2/27/09 6:27 AM: Bersone

It's a long draw these days, my man, stretched into a zone here, with no day off and the mind numb from superficial details and hectored by deadlines: interfered with soul: so what: well, you could say you're in space, finally, looking back, thinking maybe of a lawn you once knew as a kid, and now, a piece of the earth shot into orbit unlikely to make it back causing an odd grief, for the earth for you, a piece of her: so then an idea: you're a seed, shot out, an eye and brain: your viewpoint your achievement and duty even to attend to: that necklace of stars just junk on a bar slopped with beer and reflections and sprinkled with false laughter: the mix-up: then the cool, the buffalo in the snow, alone by the frozen lake, the plumes of his snorts pumped out, determined, asking nothing in return, his back like a mountain, rooted not rooting for nothing. Antidotes everywhere and always available. Antidotes and doseydotes and little lambee ivy: lots of frills, but the shadow-frill of a manta ray flying quietly relieves the human world.

just saying howdy. Attaching a little still life. Thinking of
cummings and monk, the iconoclastic stubborn bastards in common


Tulip

The pink is disappearing
the bloom opening
like a hand, held
down and
bending the green stem
lower
as I eat my cereal

saying here, here
I am
dying and
leaving a roomful
of pink

you can just feel

all this without a word
amidst the disarray
of the table

and the woman
who occasioned
these flowers has gone
for the time

being

suddenly very quiet
around here



2/27/09 12:34 PM: Buffalo

No matter where you are, my friend, there is the refection of the stars, the moon in orbit, hellgrammites under rocks. We carry everything with us in a knapsack on a pole over our shoulder, hoboes following the rail. Nothing is ever left behind. You might be hiring twelve rug-kickers from the union hall, or writing a poem. Nothing changes. You might be diving to the bottom of the pool beneath the waterfall, or sewing labels in tee shirts, or scratching the left side of your chest just under the collar bone where the pacemaker ticks under the skin, wired to the heart, or reliving in absolute clarity that moment in the Jazz Workshop when you stood just a few feet from Thelonias Monk as he danced to his own music with his back to you, in another world. We are everywhere at once, and always nowhere. The craft is balancing on one foot, or one arm, or one eyeball, one thought, one song. “Last call!” There is no such thing; there are a million Last Calls twisting out into the universe like DNA on a rope. You are a seed, indeed. You are the buffalo by the frozen lake, the manta ray, just as you are the High School dropout, the Father, Son and Holy Fucking Ghost, the old lady pumping gas into the Toyota. This is why we love, because we are everything, everywhere, all the time.

Peace and love, peace and love, peace and love, spare change?
Peace and love, peace and love, peace and love, have a nice day.
Peace and love, peace and love, peace and love…

“Tulip” is a love poem of the highest, clearest order! Thanks for speaking my words for me – the ones I couldn’t find.

I saw a tee shirt today that said on the back:

PEACE
LOVE
PINK


Buff