Then & Again

For Theresa and Jeremy

2007-08-23T23:53:00.000-07:00

In the weeks after our friends died, we emailed our friends who were still alive. We offered picnics, drinks, dinners. We said: we must see you soon. RSVP for time with us while we are still here, it felt like we were saying.

In the weeks after our friends took their own lives, we thought about how to break the news to our friends who had lost loved ones through natural causes. We didn't want to tell them: someone intentionally died. Not so soon after they were thinking: the hardest thing is what we are feeling now; at least it's no one's fault; God or nature did this.

In the weeks after our friends committed suicide after being so in love with each other, one, 10 days after he found his lover on the floor of their apartment, we thought about: till death do us part. We thought about ultimate loyalty. What about the widows who jumped on their husbands' funeral pyres in Indian mythology and in the backward communities who still took that mythology literally? What is the noblest response when you lose a lover? We both told each other: don't do this if I ever kill myself. You don't need to kill yourself too. We thought about tragic and famous lovers who died together. We thought: in fiction it goes, it works, like a director might decide that this particular pairing of action and reaction might make for a cathartic ending, or an editor on the cutting floor, or a writer with writer's block might say: yes, that would explain why so and so felt the way he did. It was just not that justified or interesting in reality.

In the weeks after our friends died, who were artists and lovers, both, in every aspect of their lives exceeding the imaginations of their families of origin, we thought about whether art was as meaningful as we had made it out to be, in our open manifestos and secret hopes, in our cocktail party chit chat. We thought about Icarus and we drove along Northern Californian highways in silence, thinking: what do I do now? Will I too become mad if I give everything to art? Will the only way out be what our friends decided – is that the inevitable act once you get that close to they mystery of creation?

In the weeks after our friends took their own lives, lovers, who were artists and who were presumably getting more paranoid about the world around them, we thought about the luxury of being naïve and felt a mixture of relief and shame. We thought about the effort it takes to construct an elegant conspiracy theory and about whether we were mentally healthier or simply lazier in our analysis of world events than our brilliant, dead friends.

In the weeks after our friends killed themselves, I remember listening to everyone more patiently, and at the slightest moment of prickliness about what he or she was saying, the way one gets when someone makes a remark that you simply want to laugh at or scoff at or ignore or roll your eyes at, I thought to myself: let me listen to you, because all you want is to be heard and loved. I can give that to you in this moment, at no cost to myself, so I will. Underneath your coat of armor and your glamour and your beauty and your intelligence and your wealth and your worldliness and your power and your family's name you are just "n" (and maybe n is the number right before infinity) steps away from what our friends did. Let me be kind to you in this moment and let my kindness merge with the kindness of others into a blanket of kindness over the world.

1979

2007-02-21T15:21:00.000-08:00

I remember the chickens we killed for the wedding,
and the ladybugs, motionless, on green leaves after the rain.
I remember the goat slain in the bathroom,
and the partridge you shot and the rabbit we ate.
There was the scorpion we captured and hung from a string,
the bandicoot you chased with a scythe,
the rooster call that rose above the city roar,
the cobra that swayed to the vegetable man's pipe,
the shy lizards that ran across walls while fancy guests dined,
the black crows that held court on electrical lines.
I remember the bony cows and the lame dogs
the monkeys on the hoods of cars.

I didn’t know it was poverty or politics.
I didn’t know it was unhygienic.
Then, it was safe for life to brim
and for the unfenced wilderness to spill onto naked streets.

My Grandmother and Nagamma

2007-01-30T15:20:00.000-08:00

Nagamma ground spices
sitting on her haunches
next to a grinding stone
as big as an elephant’s foot.

Her mouth, blood-red from years of chewing pan,
made her look like she had eaten her way through a chili patch
or devoured a small animal.

My grandfather swore she stole from us
and my grandmother defended her
but not necessarily because she disagreed with him.

Nagamma and my grandmother fought about the price of milk,
about who left the gate unlocked,
about overcooking the rice,
about why there was less change than expected
when she came back from the market.

Behind her back, my grandmother would make a swigging gesture,
her thumb pointed toward her mouth.

My grandmother slept alone in the house after my grandfather died.
She would lie awake and listen for the sound
of Nagamma bumping into pots and pans
when she came home drunk in the middle of the night.
When Nagamma left the gas on by mistake
and neighbors suggested it was time to send her away
my grandmother insisted it was something that could have happened to anyone.

I saw Nagamma during her last years,
a bleeding, smiling Durga
my grandmother still making light of her drinking
until it got worse and Nagamma staggered home
stayed in her room behind the house for days and died.
But my grandmother reminded me
in her characteristically even pitch,
at least it was in a home and not a ditch.

Delirum (After Mary Oliver)

2007-01-29T20:00:00.000-08:00

I am washed and washed in the river
of earthly delight

And what are you going to do
- what can you do about it -
deep blue night?

I.

I didn’t think I’d amount to much,
now look at us.

He said,
In the big house
we’ll have a separate room
for the piano
but it didn’t fit through the door.

He squeezed her hand tight
at the wedding of the 20-somethings.

When her hair is short,
and she wears it in a clip,
she could be a school girl and
not nearing sixty.

His hair is sparse and spiked.
He wears an odd glove to protect one hand
In the sun they share a chardonnay,
he can’t let her out of his sight.
This is lovely, lovely.
What are you going to do about it
deep blue night?

II.

Enormous intellect
incredibly high functioning
He is losing function,
losing function

They let him keep working
A prince of a man
A deadly combination
He fell in the bathroom in Hawaii
He doesn’t see it,
doesn’t see it

He said,
I just keep doing things
to prove I’m worth something.

III.

They go for walks
make veal from Tuscan cookbooks
and read things aloud from the newspaper
in the castle they built
for when they were old
and together all the time,
with the goldenrod in the fields
and the piano’s notes
alighting on the window sills.
He holds her in the stillness.

I am washed and washed
in the river of earthly delight.
What are you going to do
What can you do about it
deep blue night?

His children come to say goodbye,
one by one.
The house is messy
with their generosity.
She says, awake with me
just before morning,
while it is still dark.
I'll make the coffee
and we’ll listen for the sound of that bird
that only lives here on the preserve.
We’ll cup our hands around the warmth
and listen, listen really hard.

Girlfriends (after Satyajit Ray)

2007-01-15T15:17:00.000-08:00

The loyal heart
and deep struck love
a little bit of crazy
a little bit of blood
in hopscotch
in double-dutch
with chalk and beads
and make believe
on windowsills
in bud vases
over cats cradle
and séances
you see them in pairs
pink lipped, shadow exchanges.

I can’t remember the details now,
the precisely folded notes with curvy letters
and initials full of code and promises.
Everything was deeply believed.

I will lose you someday
and we will forget
the frightened hours,
the new sweat.

It’s the reason the director in the old Indian film
held the camera on the girl's face
in the scene of her childhood friend's wedding.
Just her face,
with the sound turned off.

The Invitation

2007-01-10T15:12:00.000-08:00

Candela, a light is on in the village.
Come with me and rest the night.

Tomorrow, we will wake before the drunken revelers
and walk over the hill to your father’s house.
We’ll say you lost your way,
and stayed with us - you were safe.

In the morning, the world will be fresh, green
and Candela, you will be wearing red.

For Bill

2006-12-30T19:02:00.000-08:00

Taken by angels is a nice way of saying
that it seemed unusually severe and perverse
to stop a man in a race at the 24th mile.

The chairs in the café are still as we left them.
I can replay each word of our sidewalk stop and chat.
You left us with one too many mysteries.

That morning, as you got ready in the dark,
what milestone did you think you were about to reach?
Most peoples’ days hadn’t started by the time your heart stopped.
To be taken in such a perverse way.
And yet the idea of angels.

Then and Again, I Love You Forever

2006-12-30T15:24:00.000-08:00

Hemingway says, “Write the truest sentence you know.”
I think what is true is suddenly felt,
like your eyes widening in silence
as I walk past the light in the room.

The truest sentence I know
is about a train leaving a small, unnamed stop,
and the life it ended, and the lives it started.
But that is for another poem.

It is that the same thing can be beautiful everyday,
and there is terror in the smallest act of love, knowing life is finite.
The truest sentence I know begins on a bicycle -
I am following my daughter on her way to the store
I’m going to see how far she’ll go, she’s four.
and ends with my cheek on your forehead,
no part of us disconnected in sleep.

It has words like remembrance and big toe.
It describes the mystery of a plain white egg.
The truest sentence I know is that sometimes it doesn’t get better;
but hope is the air that fills our liquid lungs.

Requiem

2006-12-21T15:23:00.000-08:00

Meet me on the lake
before the last bit of evening light goes out
and night wells like a sob.

In this dreamless rush
between night and life,
I want to touch
your fingertips just once.

Around the lake, the wild lilies turn
and open their conical mouths
to catch the one or two words
you may have for me.

In this moment of brief unfastening,
we will stay for a while,
our paddles lapping
till night returns once more
to claim you as her own.

Reading Louise Gluck

2006-12-21T15:22:00.002-08:00

Reading Louise Gluck,
on a train, in a narrow tunnel,
I learn what it must be to love only the earth,
to seek from its brown, sodden silence, a resonance.
To replay personal truths and falsehoods,
in a lonely musical arc.

As a young woman
buoyed by my loves,
I see Louise in the doorway,
conversing with the snow,
the songbird and the frozen trees,
then moving inward to tend the hearth,
and I vow that if I were to someday lose my loves
I would learn the succor of nature
and feel the reverberation of many souls,
as I walked barefoot on the earth.

California Dreaming

2006-12-21T15:22:00.001-08:00

You sang California Dreaming on All-India Radio.
A pious dove in white.
Otherwise a regular love story from 1970,
men on two wheelers,
the occasional pipe,
counterculture lite.
Of all things, it was the moon you named me for.

We wish we could be remembered
for what we want to be remembered for.
For all your good works and your intentions,
what I kept all the while -
your Audrey Hepburn sunglasses,
your Saint Dolores smile.

Approximations of an Indian Woman

2006-12-21T15:20:00.001-08:00

The perfectly round chapatti
The ceremonial whole
The arc of aarti
The onlyness of aum

The Bandit Queen

2006-12-21T15:19:00.001-08:00

For Phoolan Devi (1968 –2001)
Activitist, murderer, Member of Parliament

I am thirteen, but I look small for my age.
Not too small to be married.
Even though he didn’t force the issue,
the air smelled of it.

I ran for home, but home turned me away,
toward the desert and the unsheltering sky.

The days that followed were days of rocks and monsters,
of hot sand and midnight massacres.
My friends were beasts and birds of prey,
I took from simple, white-clad passers by
what should have been mine anyway.

And they began to tell a story
over cigarette smoke, at dusk,
of a woman Robin Hood,
whose path it was terrifying to cross.

If there was ever going to be a chance of surrender,
it would have been because I found a lover.
He was like silver stars, and each night we sang for hours,
by the light of the campfire.

But they found him first
and in a dark and barred up room,
dull men dealt lonely blows.

September 13th, 1976. The sun would set
on the bloodiest day yet – it was predicted and
expected that I would avenge his death.

And in a second passing – mine - I watched myself
paraded in front of a thousand eyes,
glowing with the hunger of the underworld.

***

I am riding a commuter train with a copy of Harper’s
reading an interview with her as an older woman.
The title of the article, “Bandit Queen” seems awkward.
In the picture, she sits large and serene,
with a diminutive husband in attendance.

I want to ask her, “How did you leave it all behind?
Does your former self follow you into the bathroom,
showing up as you wipe the mist off the mirror,
your rough curls escaping from under an orange bandana,
the color of saffron, of marigolds, of warriors?

How do you stroll through the aisles of your local market
picking up plastic bags and airtight cartons,
when the smell of fresh killed meat
once rose from an open desert fire?”

Bangalore Lanes

2006-12-21T15:18:00.001-08:00

Commercial Street
Residency Road
Where the good doctor lived
And so on and so forth
Past Russell Market
Where a beggar girl held out
Six lemons like orbs of gold
Past the Cantonement and the Jesuit school
The pig shop and the book store
The Catholic cemetery
and the cemetery for everyone else
The provisional badminton court
on a quiet dirt road where once I saw a man
kicking his wife’s head into a garage door.

But it was not all like that.
Once, the workers by the construction site
gave me a yellow chick
to take far away from their makeshift lives
where pots of food sat next to refuse
and I would rescue one small thing
in a larger charcoal sketch,
bring it back to our neighborhood
by the train tracks and the mosque
where the imam would sing at four
so loud it would rattle the teacups
in our Christian house
marking the end of afternoon
constant and commanding it would go on
as Mummy picked lemongrass,
Mr. Hanif took his stroll,
Mrs. Aria, the Parsi divorcee
lit a cigarette on her balcony
and the exiles from Mizoram
brought in their laundry.

Nearly Neruda

2006-12-21T15:16:00.002-08:00

We pass the magazine section
over-whisk the egg whites
as if we know that on the other side
of this ordinary morning
is wine and deepening
but for now is enough the warmth and covering
and elemental things like kiss on your mouth
and cheek on my breast.

We circle like two paper boats
in an enclosed sea,
until we will once again reach beyond
sink into the endless well
float past the velvet wall.

This poem is not about love

2006-12-21T15:16:00.001-08:00

This poem is not about love.
It is about the countless moments when the self,
driven like ocean waves,
grows, advances, crashes and subsides,
while in the background, the sun rises and sets.

The Affair

2006-12-21T15:15:00.000-08:00

I am lying in bed
with an empty space to my left,
which you will reclaim tonight,
while I am softly sleeping.
You will wonder who
I’m dreaming about
(because you left,
door slamming)
and why in silent repose,
I’m smiling, but darling,
it is just the lilies of Oliver,
the myths of Cummings.

Tell

2006-12-21T15:14:00.001-08:00

Inside a wooden home, in a field of snow,
nothing moves, as if cemented down.

Then, a demented kettle lets loose,
and you, shirtless man, survey the land
through a stained pane of glass in the bedroom.

Behind you, floorboards creak,
or is it a woman’s labored breathing?
Now, you are leaving
a single trail of footprints in the snow.

You walk in the company of shuddering, leafless trees.
The footprints won’t be footprints soon,
as a slow, bleeding blue covers everything,
the kettle’s yell, the damned bedroom.

Father, Motel, Sugarland, Texas

2006-12-21T15:11:00.000-08:00

Asleep and the black birds
pass over the oilfields and truckers.
Turn your back on the black and smoke
when we were brother and sister.

Nothing you can do,
Nothing you can do
will make you a lady.

You rode their backs,
brown and black,
trailer park lunch snack.

And the sign says
And your red eyes say
And the bolt moves
And the boy shifts
And the soul grits its teeth

We are here to wipe up your mess.
We are open for business.
I am your goddess.

Arabian Nights

2006-12-21T15:08:00.000-08:00

My friend asked if I had encouraging words about this war.
I think of the Arabian Nights, Scheherazade’s Dance,
Ali Baba and the 40 thieves.
The Middle East of my bedtime stories was not the minefield,
the chemical storage bunker or the flag burning in the streets.
It was eyes lined in kohl, and caves of gold.

Venice, Los Angeles

2006-12-21T15:04:00.001-08:00

The artists talk about the war
in their home on the canal.
Outside pomegranates fall
like dull bombs on a blue deck.

Books lean like tired children on weathered shelves.
The small dog stares directly at me as the fire burns.

We’re divided in our views,
not from each other, but within ourselves.

Eventually, the focus of conversation turns from war
to a small television where Steve Martin opens for the Oscars.

The Jewish Museum, Berlin

2006-12-21T15:01:00.000-08:00

Fifteen years since the wall,
the footage is of silence.
A man is breaking off pieces of a drinking glass
one snap at a time.

In Saxony today, 17% are unemployed, 9% are Nazi.
They call themselves borderliners, they start smoking early.

My dreams here are of the insides of things,
of the sounds of Friedrichstrasse and Sachsenhausen,
where once a madman got drunk and prepared for his suicide
while others prepared for his wedding.

Standing still in the tower,
with no opening for air or light,
there is nothing to deny.
There is just this,
death dark quiet,
in the house of goodbyes.

The Photojournalist

2006-12-21T14:57:00.000-08:00

The photograph in our living room,
of men on satin horses with blades raised,
in the dust and afternoon sun
is of war. reenacted.
You shot it before your breakdown.

It was in Rwanda.
You were running to safety,
when a young boy’s eyes caught yours,
and he asked you to adopt him as your son.
For a second you saw an image of your childless apartment in Queens,
with a writer wife who could barely manage you,
It was an unfinished thought,
but you turned and boarded the moving bus
leaving him behind in a cloud of exhaust.

And you kept running.
You didn’t pick up your camera again for two years
as if you had something to confess, but couldn’t name it.

None of your mythic pictures
photographs that went deep into her green eyes,
the pink sands and whitewashed houses of distant deserts
had ever asked anything of you in return.

They say the stories that can’t be told are wept,
and you wept in her white arms,
on couches and over your drink.
You forgot his face, shelved your fame,
and shame was a coat you drew around yourself.

Until a morning by a window.
You were fixing your tea,
when a yellow butterfly landed on a sunflower.

You reached for your camera,
and your coat was turned inside out to face the sun.
and just like that you were back,
you let yourself be overcome.

The Argument

2006-12-21T14:36:00.000-08:00

No matter how much sorry we rehearse,
for every erasure,
words like soil
bury us in layers,
leaving us with mummied mouths.

Legs McNeil and the Pornstar

2006-12-20T19:00:00.000-08:00

Her cheeks were sucked in and high boned. She said something mysterious about “what he gave me when I did him in the bathroom of CBGBs in 1970.” Was it a disease or drugs, we wondered.

The reading had the intimacy of an orgy, at least 30 people who knew each other for 30 years showed up; you needed as much for an oral history.

Legs was a professional. He wore his 58 years in dog-year multiples. Most recently his much younger lover died of an amputation gone bad; these were the gory tales that seemed to encircle his friends and they made sure you knew; they liked exposure.

Awkward and doddering in daylight, they were about the brush with the law, about superstition and paranoid intelligence. Somehow the subversiveness had to be linked to the highest levels of the government, but if it was as simple as liking sex or your body or plain abandon, you were welcome too.

This was a story told by people with just parts of the puzzle but Legs was the Kaiser Souzai, the figure behind the curtain controlling it all, but in the moment, disarming with his chain diet cokes and jitteriness.

I can’t say I knew much of the sexual awakening of the 70s. I remember posh houses with Playboy magazines displayed in the bathrooms. As the writer for the New Yorker wrote, it was less important to have seen Deep Throat than to be able to say you saw it.

And these were the people who lived it. It wasn’t all tragedy and pathology and like any other group bound externally by an informal label, that eventually became an industry, they were single individuals pursuing personal needs who came to be collectively defined and edified through story.

They were part of a private trafficking, the other network, a hidden web of knowing, that only in daylight is cheap. We were there to hear them, if for no other reason than they were witnesses to the most human, the most intimate of changes in our recent history.

I imagined the pornstar even older, grandmotherly – the grandmother who fucked guys at CBGBs and the skinny old men who were denied by her, still rubbing it in. There is a certain glory in looking back at a hard time, in recasting pain as passion and need and fear as guts.