bienestar, or: the true skill

1.

she had come out of the womb ready
is what she told the lady in the pantsuit
with the red lipstick
and the inviting smile
out of the womb and into the office, she said
meaning the words all the way out of her mouth
right into the petite little ears
of the lady in the pantsuit
with the red lipstick
and the inviting smile

who picked up her pen and wrote something
and didn't stop with the inviting smile
which made the smile look less inviting

2.

"three weeks is when you stop hoping," said her father
who had a big beard and lots of job experience
three weeks, he said, is when you know
it's time to start again

"where is mother?" she asked herself
but mother was still dead
(these things don't change)
and besides, she was only recalling what she had said
to the lady in the pantsuit about wombs.
she had come out of the womb ready
but was beginning to be less and less sure what for.

she did not apply to another job, but she did by a set of paints
to pass the time.

3.

ten weeks is when a man with a large mouth
and rosy cheeks
and a pantsuit (which everyone just called
a "suit") asked her, "how much is that one going for?"
and she told him two hundred bucks
and he wrote check right on the spot
but she missed the painting once it was gone

when the man came back she had another painting
and then a woman came by, and then another
by the twenty-third week she stopped counting

she always kept one for herself:
a gray little office with perfect corners
and a reflection in the window
of a lady in a pantsuit
with red lipstick
and an inviting smile

4.

when the lady in the pantsuit
with red lipstick
and an inviting smile

finally called her after seventy-four weeks to say
"we have your records on file and would like to
offer you a job"

the lady in the floral dress
with sunburnt arms
and paint on her fingers
giggled a lot and stuck her hand right into a paintbucket
and said, "no thank you, i'm talking to mother now."

pilot light

there's always the question of:
how to get from sweaty, grimy
fidgety, nail picking
to that shiny-headed, blissed-out monk
on the cover of "dharma magazine"

do i emerge overnight, as a butterfly does
from the cocoon? or is it slow and subtle
and if so, do i get to see the progress? is it linear,
or is it like time? can i see it in a mirror?
can others see it? do they see it before me
or must i bear first witness?

five minutes on the cushion probably
will always feel like eternity
oldness, newness, pain, quiet, all
scrabbling around in the sand
like children who still use the word
"forever"

i think the thing that changes must not be
how long i can sit
or what my body does or says, or even
how any of it makes me feel
i think the thing that changes must be
how comfortable i am with eternity
and how comfortable
i am with me.

cerrada

la puerta estaba cerrada
y vos, como si supieras
exactamente donde estaba yo
dijiste: "si no abras la puerta,
me voy."

y fue simple - no abrí la puerta
y vos te fuiste
y la puerta seguía cerrada

ahora, en el campo, el aire es libre
pero todavía mis pensamientos son
invadidos por apariciones de puertas cerradas
bocas cerradas
toda cerrada
y me han perdido las llaves.

if you don't shoot it

my first love
killed a bird under his boot
and it took me two years to understand
that broken wings meant broken lives
that a broken skull wasn't too far behind
the night of the dead bird i ran home and cried

my second love
said, "saru mo ki kara ochiru"
spoke to me in japanese
words that meant, "even monkeys fall from trees"
then pushed me off and watched for me to fly
a little bird, with a brittle wing – he watched for me to fly

my third love
full of whiskey and rage
told me of his psychoses
long before they came to play
all of the weight of the disaster of our love
mounting until i could push him off with a grieving shove

my fourth love
found me on the ground
on a cool fall evening, and picked me up
and walked with me, and never suspected a thing
until he looked under my coat and found a broken wing
so can i blame him?

the cyclist

things spinning round
and this time
he's spinning, too.
his calves will grow
stronger; the rain will stand
still. the hill will go
down, the waves will break.
this time
he's spinning, too.
a sinusoidal elipsis, a
soul-wrenching friend
a gasp for normalcy
or an uncertain end.

wake

eyes attuned to the familiar tune:
a floating world, caught between
the lightness of being unkept and the
gravity of being unseen.
between blinks, the world keeps along
the pushy yellow light of the kitchen
invading a grey awakening
in a foreign room. i am here to avoid
pictures, notes, frames i have yet to touch
(unwilling to, unwilling to make this an ending)

four pillars

i live in a plain white world
serene and so, so clean
skinny boys tote power tools around
drilling artwork onto walls, drilling walls into
smithereens with no repercussions.
a wall is a wall; it is common in these parts.

i miss the dusty faces
the hot and humid places without
whirring blades for comfort
or indoors and outdoors as so distinct.
i miss the world in which my footsteps do not echo;
there is nothing to send them back to me
beyond the distant assumption
of a world held together by sheer will.