Poetry

On a humid, dark, cloudy summer night,
Temperature still in the high seventies,
Streetlights not working,
I step out the door as a huge fluttering bug
Flies smack into my lips.
I do not see it.
I know it is not a moth or mosquito,
More a furry flying beetle of some sort.
And just as I do not see it, I do not hear it.
Rather I feel its flutter and the soft thud
As it crashes straight into the very center of my closed mouth,
Smack in the middle of my pressed lips.
I blow and brush it away quickly,
Feeling its dimensions only slightly.
I respond in surprise and shock,
But without fear or disgust.
I know at once that I have been sweetly touched
Not assaulted or attacked.
And though my rational mind recognizes it as probability expressed,
A happenstance of fate
A random intersection of invertebrate and human,
I am aware instantly of having been kissed by a beautiful stranger,
A princess living in the body of a bug,
The light but explicit tap tap tap of god’s finger
Calling forth my attention.

“Hey you,” the bug commands with her furry kiss,
“Wake up, we’re in this together, man.
Live life fully aware
And appreciative of me,
Fly around in the muggy dark night
Kissing strangers with me,
Let’s be in each other’s company as much as we can bear.”

Later I stand inside the rushing waters
Of a mountain stream
Spray frosting my face
Pulled along by a frightening, exciting, inexorable flow to the sea.
I am the water.
I kiss your lips.

The most unattractive woman I ever made love with –
I know you think that unkind –
had a seizure disorder and took dilantin,
but had a wonderful mind.
Her teeth were rotted,
she was short and quite plump,
had stubbly hairs on her face,
wore glasses, even in bed …
and bloomers.
 
Her hair was a mess,
her knees were knobby,
when she opened her mouth
saliva stuck to her upper and lower palate.

She was an English teacher
in love with poetry,
romanticism,
Bharati Mukherjee
and Alan Ginsburg
 
She even looked like Alan Ginsburg,
laughed like him,
turned in onto herself,
aware of who she was,
and how she appeared,
and the fact that she had you in bed
and was going to enjoy it.
 
She had slept with my best friend Henry,
who I also adored.
She even loved him,
as did I.
He was so handsome
so beat,
and just the right mixture of
longshoreman and literary intellectual.
I was clearly her second choice,
as well it should be.
 
Her mind was brilliant
Her hands were a mess
Her clothes were a mess
She was brutally honest
Lovely in her way
Especially naked.
 
Her courage was more daunting than Henry’s
who is still in hiding,
her thighs softer,
she made nicer noises,
and never belched
or maybe she did.
 
I don’t remember everyone I ever slept with,
but here’s to a beautiful woman I do remember,
her name, in truth, was Linda.

Bharati Mukherjee

1.
I have earned and care for a small plot of land
A small cottage
A dog
Sometimes a woman
My son.

2.
My daughter has found a good man
She has love, wisdom, and a daughter of her own
If they keep loving one another
They will be lucky
That’s what the owl in my yard says

3.
In the yard are Tibetan prayer flags.
Brought and hung by my sister. 
When the breeze blows in off the bay
The things I’ve wished for come to me
The smell of the salted air
Birds at the bird feeders
A sense I belong
That I do not consume more than my share
Some seaweed, some flax seed
Though I give back so little –
Juice for the hummingbirds
A house for bats
My flesh to feed the worms and earth
in a pauper’s grave
by a sacred lake

4.
When the breeze goes out 
it takes my hopes and wishes with it
they ride over the Tibetan prayer flags
and are made holy
My wish for peace
for relevance
for the happiness and well being of others.
my compassion washes over the banners
carrying words I do not understand

5.
These words reach the bay
where small fishes
are being chased by bigger fishes
chased by men 
in boats with two hundred horse power engines
towed to the beach in three hundred horse power cars
to catch one poor fish
to remind them of the hunt
the cycle
the natural order 
of the big eating the small
forgetting the grace of small nets

6.
And beyond the bay 
Are the wars I finance
Fueled with jealousy, envy, hunger,
The wish for relevance,
An inherent primate consciousness,
And a sense of mission,
A desire to be of use,
to turn oxygen into carbon dioxide
so that plants too may live 
shivering in the majesty 
of immense rolls of summer thunder
stretching out to remind us
of our tasks
and our roots
in the heavens.

© BRTaub – 8/8

She asks
How is it possible
She has loved one hundred men
And at their impaired age
This is the best love making she’s known.
He says it’s an illusion.

She asks 
Can he make her taller
With blue eyes
And unwrinkled skin
And can he really unearth the dead
But what she is really asking
Is that he hold her
And promise to never let go

She says
You are so solid
And means the flesh she draws near
And the man inside the flesh 
With his flaws and foibles
And a willingness to be weak 
Standing in his power and strength.

Then she says his name
Speaks it into the ether
In ways he’s never heard it spoken
Radiating out into the universe
Before she herself goes out
Radiating who knows where
Although before getting far
She taps on the glass
Peering in through the window
And again mouths his name.

©brucetaub – 02/08 

Cheerio box speaks of love and nutrition
and makes the days I share with her happy,
as well as providing a reduced risk of heart failure.
She uses all three parts of her whole grains,
a serving of nutrients,
the strength of iron,
all allotted in half cup servings.
She is enlarged, whole, overflowing.
contributing her non genetically modified ingredients
into the very depths of my being;
– though trace amounts of engineered materials
may be slightly present –
all a result of unavoidable cross contact
with others, with sugars, 
with omnipotent grains of corn.

See how she makes my mornings
with a positive start that brings forth my happiness,
that invites me to consume her,
and to love her back.
Mi amor Integral.
Sharing positive enhancements
my Cheerio box explicitly tells me 
that her freshness may be preserved
and that the essence of her character
ought be measured not by volume 
but by weight,
the truest measure of her contents.
Enlarged to show her soluble fiber in detail
any one patented serving
contributes to my limited recommended daily diet.
Best if used before her expiration date.
She welcomes my questions and comments.

V1
The Eastham Turnip turned its feathers toward the sun
And said to her friends
Here’s the day that I am done
Sitting like Buddha on my root in the Earth
I want nothing less, nothing less, than rebirth.

V2
It’s purple it’s yellow
Takes two years to grow,
The soil that feeds it is new as we know
Left here by a glacier that created this shore
It’s yellow, it’s mellow
Who could ask for anything more.
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh

Chorus
It’s stew for you, it’s steam that we wish
We want nothing more than to end in a dish
After the first frost we get richer and sweet
Let us grace your table
A thanksgiving treat.

V3
Stay for a while in this sacred ground
The winter is coming
And we all stay around
Spring and then Summer is the time that we play,
But “No” said the turnip,
“Today is my day.”
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh

Chorus

V4
This turnip was lifted from the earth to the air,
Her feathers were plucked off, her essence was bare
Washed by a hose as she road in a truck.
To be prized down in Eastham
Is a turnips best luck
Whoa, oh, oh, oh, oh

Chorus

I am here
Caught in the headlights
Frightened and calm
Not knowing where best to run
But sure I can get there
Well, mostly sure.

It’s that damn cat I bet
The one with the green collar
That tasted so good
And then those signs springing up everywhere
With pictures of her!
Like mushrooms after rain
Stapled to every tree it seemed
Saying the foolish thing was missing.

Missing?
You mean consumed, my suppliers
I know where she is
Just check the scat.

And yes, I see you too
I see you all the time
You’re in my dreams
And in my myths
As I’m in yours,
Friends all around
Right?
So turn off the damn lights
And let’s slide into the woods together.
© B.R.Taub, 10/07

There had been small craft advisories,
Their boats were fewer,
Seas ran five to eight feet
With variable winds out of the northeast
Gusting to forty knots
Moving with the pod
Warm southern waters flowed into the currents.
As the storm abated and seas subside
We pass Provincetown
‘Round the horn
Passed the buoy
Into the sensations of the bay
Seas two to four feet
Sun obscured and waters warm
Echoes echo over the distances
Off the top and bottom
The floor and the air
Wave action pushing me toward land
Been in these waters before.
Now slightly disoriented
Separated from the group
In too shallow water
The waves are foamy
Something’s not right
Sensing hazard
The tides confusing
I bottom out
Helpless and alone
Sand below and around me
Socked in on my belly
I do not wrestle
I die, fin up,
Without struggle,
Resigned on the shore.

Gospel of the Redwoods – A Song
V1.

When the poet asked the redwoods

About their long past lives

They laughed so hard their seed cones

Came afallin’ from the skie

We never die, said the mothers,

To the representatives of youth

Our roots they keep on propagating

New generations of same old me

And when we fall tall over

We’re still standing don’t you see.

Chorus:

We told this to the Yurok

And they quickly understood

No beginnings and no endings

Ever conscious, ever wood.

V2.

And what I asked of happiness

Are you only old and wide

Or is there something more to know 

Of what goes on inside

And again the mighty redwoods laughed

From their roots up to their roof

You humans are such dizzy folk

We’re not quite sure you’d know the truth

Our branches are in love with light

We’re earthly bound and heaven sent

Surrounded by our friends and kin

We see and feel without lament

Chorus

V3.
You know of height, you know of light
In each of which you take delight
You feel some things I’ll never know
You know the grounds on which you grow
You know of weight and health and kin
You never stop nor quite begin
You’re a continuum of life and pleasure 
A gift for which there is no measure
Not in weeks, not days or nights
You are the mighty redwoods, 
Lovely objects of delight

Chorus

V4.
Our talk then turned to consciousness
And I’d much more to as
As I tried to wrap my mind ‘round them 
and failed in this task.
“I weigh 500 tons.” one said, 
“Yet feel quite light and thin
I’m tall and straight and happy
When I play with the north wind
I stand erect on one tap root
And dance with moons and stars
And point the compass of my passions
Toward Venus and toward Mars

Chorus

On a humid, dark, cloudy summer night,
Temperature still in the high seventies,
Streetlights not working,
I step from my car as a huge fluttering bug
Flies smack into my lips.
I do not see it.
I know it is not a moth or mosquito,
More a furry flying beetle of some sort.
And just as I do not see it, I do not hear it.
Rather I feel its flutter and the soft thud
As it crashes straight into the very center of my closed mouth,
Smack in the middle of my pressed lips.
I blow and brush it away quickly,
Feeling its dimensions only slightly.
I respond in surprise and shock,
But without fear or disgust.
I know at once that I have been sweetly touched
Not assaulted or attacked.
And though my rational mind recognizes it as probability expressed
A happenstance of fate,
A random intersection of invertebrate and human,
I am aware instantly of having been kissed by a beautiful stranger,
A princess living in the body of a bug,
The light but explicit tap tap tap of god’s finger
Calling forth my attention

“Hey you,” the bug commands with her furry kiss,
“Wake up, we’re in this together, man.
Live life fully aware
And appreciative of me,
Fly around in the muggy dark night
Kissing strangers with me
Let’s be in each other’s company as much as we can bear.”

I dream that night I stand beside the rushing waters
Of a mountain stream which calls to me,
Bids me enter,
To be pulled along in the frightening, exciting, inexorable flow to the sea.
I imagine being in the water.
I imagine being water.
I am a furry bug
I kiss your lips.