Somehow, Things Made Sense, My List Fell Away

Holiness in meditation upon his bed. Dead.
And orchids burst into bloom.
Cross-legged body warm,
emanating inexplicable scents of incense, jasmine.

There was this:
circumambulate the kudung,
the monastery.
Mantras, smoke offerings.
Beggars, butterlamps.

My world melted
into butter
coagulating into flower petals.
Statue faces shifting to sad.
Rainbows to slice your arm through.

He’s in a box, on a palanquin, on a truck, in Zangdopalri. Packed in salt.
Still.

After,
everything was lit. Generators whirred. Strings of colored lights dangled from the roofs of temples, stupas. Eyes pressed to windows staring in at the statue that looked sad the night he died.

Prayer wheels click.
Pop of insects on ceilings, floors, sudden rain.

Home,
there’s just ingredients.
Just photos and dreams. And imaginings.
Just flour and sugar and bread.
Blood whooshing from my arm.
Want to find figs and cardoons.
Burrs and Mandelbrot.

Closed up. And in.

His Holiness Penor Rinpoche - Rainbow Appearing - Raw Footage.

Unfolding

into sky,

time dissolving

until touch of leper hands,

taste of embalming salt

there was the ruined face of the tall lady, blowing blood, billions of fake flowers

the amulet round the neck, his prickly skin rash, the string of jasmine above the mirror

400 butterlamps flicker the deer man’s hoofed-legs

suddenly the cuckoo

chatral rinpoche’s coconut

the rigor mortis cat in the gutter

the barefoot street boys huffing, crazed wobbling on the sidewalk

the small goats on the roof

they spooned mindrup into our hands

the truckloads of maoists yell, wave flags

children play in the street

finally, sun

the barebreasted woman on the roof of her house—dark pendulous breasts

how flora goes to the south of france in the summer and tans, how she wants to know if marike eats lots of strudel (marike says no, that’s german, not dutch)

the small monks are unaffected, saturday soccor outfits donned

she said it would go, the way a shoe slowly wears

still, it stuck like a sock on a wet foot

desire

could you know there’s no heartbone here?

but there were bodhisattvas

among us, cows fat on garbage, feces everywhere

amongst girls in orange-sherbert colored clothes, burning bandh tires,

amongst the insects, people, cars, horns bursting—the cacophony of dogs in the night

there, like a lump of sugar dissolves into tea

*Already posted this on my other blog, but I want to get all my new poems in one place...

It Was Andy's Birthday

there was a thin girl in a pleated skirt, flowered blouse, long blonde hair who'd just been married. they talked, (awkward in the doorway), of travel. "oh, was it a haiku?" she asked, blushed. "i mean a coup!" told of being in ecaudor and being reassured it was so safe there, that if someone stole from her they'd kill them, so she shouldn't worry. she volunteered with orphans 10 hours a day and they were hanging the dead in the streets. she told me how they knocked on the door, asked if they could pick the little plums, made jam. 

I've only ever had two recurring dreams

when I was little I dreamed again and again of a playground that didn’t exist. it was in doyle field’s football field. it was the elusive playground I could never reach—the most wonderful of shining playgrounds—the dream always the same. It was across from priest street school—across from the playground where a man stood at the edge of the woods, his penis poked through his fly. wiggled at me. beckoning with his finger. i looked. i was four. i shook my head no continued playing.

but that wasn’t the recurring dream, just the playground part.

what I dream of now is waves. enormous furls of water about to crash over me. i run, I drive as they encroach. i see them rising towards me. but I am safe.

is it because I was supposed to be there? our hotel gone.

i was supposed to be there, waves rolling over my head. watery insides. flooded breath.

it was the south of thailand. khatoey-ridden phuket. we fled to singapore then planned to return. instead, off to india—our hotel destroyed.

it’s always the waves.

three years after the tsunami we found ourselves in thailand once again. on phi phi island. how many people died there? everything seemed back to normal, but sad. there was the happiness of so many clusters of green coconuts at tops of trees. the green green green. the clear turquoise water. the bobbing long-tailed boats. and the wind. there, in the andaman sea.

the tree outside our thatched bungalow scattered tamarind pods on the ground. they burst beneath my feet. the light filtered through bamboo. it was hot. the gecko on the ceiling-chirping.

A Certain Melancholy

Pema Rinpoche

Little, in Lhasa, you’d squat in dust, play with rocks, piling one atop another to form wobbly stupas. By your side, the red man only you saw.

You were ten the day the search party arrived. Three monks trying to find the reincarnation of a certain Khamtrul Rinpoche—the 9th incarnation--tests to see if you were he.

Three malas, three bowls, three vajras lined in a row. You chose—and your life transformed—left days encapsuled in mountains, sky. Soon, you and your parents on a bus towards India, a new home in Mindroling. The red man by your side.

In India, the Dalai Lama confirmed you were the one. You donned a shaved head, plum robes, no longer lived with your parents. But you had teachers, toys. When you misbehaved, your tutors prostrated, beat you.

Years later in Darjeeling, people wanted locks of hair to wear in amulets round their necks, your urine to drink.

But later, in Boulder,
you were another 23 year old immigrant washing dishes in a Chinese restaurant.

And even I,
let you rub my feet.

Everything Neatly Folded

1.
but the jigsaw mind unfolds
2.
when with a smile, she tells me there are dead bodies everyhwere, sticks out her hand for a shake
3.
they say not to think too much

Thought Bubbles

the long gone strawberries. the cowboy who castrated himself cause his balls got in the way. the menace of facebook. what if my mom has ovarian cancer? and what of the heirloom tomatoes? how i am afraid of goals, how i can't stick to a schedule, how i am so white bread. should be like--what was his name? oh yeah, david dorje in pharping who worked at chatral rinpoche's house all day doing whatever saraswati and the attendants told him to do, doing so many prostrations a scab formed on his forehead. and it always comes back to asia. the flowers, the sweetslice cucumbers, my sore throat, the flooding basement. how i can't break out of my writing funk. "Vag bleed"--overhearing keith's doctor talk--anthony's horrible stories of psychotic patients. missing montana. the bear ate a man. the khyentse yangsi. old faithful. heiress of quaker oats. the wolves in talia's yard stare at her domestic dogs in confusion. and eleanor's step-son and wife who keep rabbits, slaughter them every few weeks, put the pelts in the freezer. how talia and jesie shot an elk, dragged its dead body home through the woods behind them, how they hunted morels. the giant slow moving buffalo in the road. moontime. 7 cucumbers. 6 tomatoes. cofee pops. nectarine pops. herbed suntea. the circus of boulder. will i become a peon in the university library system? "So did he expire?" keith asked. making 8.50/hr working part-time with a worthless masters. anthony talking about catatonia--being frozen in panic. will i truly be okay in tibet next time? the red cords 'round the wrist. the charnel gorund of my porch. fall in the air. and someone just shot themselves in the head. i told k i hoped they were okay. "they're not," he said.

White Bread Dipped in Tea

White Bread Dipped In Tea

yes, there were nomads, and daggers at waists.

gobs of coral and turquoise in women’s hair. there was trundling through the grasslands. but mostly—there were mountains. there was rawness. there was fear. it was so unbelievably beautiful—the blue sky, the jagged peaks, the turning leaves, the rushing water—rainbows of prayer flags, giant stupas and prayer wheels on the sides of roads, mantras carved into hillsides. we went up and up and up.

so there was that. and then there was the fear. there was me breathless just sitting. there was the bus, about to drive off a cliff? crumbling dirt roads. there were massing clouds. there was a whiteout at the top of the pass and our driver scared chanting mantras. there was me, standing at the bottom of the hill screaming.

so we were in tibet.
it was bright. i wore the snap-on dark lenses I’d bought in chengdu. the ones I got in tibet-town and had sanded down to fit my frames. the ones I was embarrassed to wear cause they reminded me of old men. only I couldn’t afford prescription sunglasses. so we were in tibet. it was dry. my lips cracked, throbbed. they hurt. so I used lots of lip balm but it didn’t help. i tried to drink enough water, but I didn’t want to have to pee on those 12 hour bus rides over the passes. we were in tibet. we were on local chinese buses. boys blasted avril lavigne through cell phones. the bus full of smoke as we went up and up and up 16,000 feet and it was snowing. and we were on the top of the mountain. and I imagine it was slippery. and it was a one lane road and a truck came in the opposite direction. and the road was so narrow neither of us could pass. and we were stuck. there, on the top of the mountain.