Stilll Haven't Found

Dissection

Licorice Legs

As you held me I thought
Finally
It's been over a year of waiting
But it was more of a visit to
the Dean's office to discuss a grade change.
With your mother.

Pulling around the covers, it was a dream, so I'm svelte,
Pink, soft, the works...
You exclaimed,
"What's coming out of the back of your legs."
That usual kind of work you do
To help me through the difficult moments.

Damn, bad shaving I think, who looks
At the back of your calf.
(oh...A turn off, another circuit thrown.)
This was a little different kind of problem.
Black sprouts like spaghetti or that super thin licorice

I looked straining my neck backwards
To see these thick little flexible black tubes all hairing
Out of my leg. There, in the back.
That's different. How do I get through this?
I did what any good self-surgeon would do
Yanked them out on the spot. (Still feel that sensation.
Hours after not really doing it.)

Leaving these awful leg scars.
Another attractive feature.
You were so out of there.
I'm preoccupied anyway.
To be truthful we can't do this anymore.
(I've gotta face that- together too long
Nothing hot bikiniwax will fix),

But I was investigating what was happening
To me and my backlegs
Growing this handfuls of wiring
or tubing, tubules?
Looking on the internet
"black tubes, legs, skin condition, parasite"

My concerns were kind of strange
To see if they left implants in me that would
Triple and quadruple
Into a body of new strange black tubes to multiply.
Like the head of a tick works.

I woke up
And beside me at this computer.
Are some pretty fair specimens.




What Am I Doing?

In a dream
You can fulfill a wish
You never knew you had
Or even if you didn't
If you tell the dream to someone
They will tell you it was your wish
Disabuse you of innocence
And the dream was a fulfillment
So either way if you dream it
You want it.

And you can't get to it.


That's Embarrassing

To be caught in a dream
With your wishes (that even you don't know about)
Or denials
Or some psycho self you didn't know existed in you
Is feeling this want
A well to be sure. (Opps, in you go, watch where you are going falling)

So it was this last night
When I got a little too close to a teacher
That actually kissed me right on the mouth.
It's a funny thing because I know
It won't really happen.
It wouldn't work out like that
It's embarrassing.

We were in a nice secluded big old
Victorian manor home but
Doing the Luncheon on the Grass
I had on my outfit. But it was idealistic
Talking about his family (yeah) or something to do with oral history
And he just did this thing

Because I would say this
I said,
" I have awful breath I don't know how
You can take it." Running dialog.
And he said, as he would, "I don't know either
It seemed like something we both wanted."
He said a whole bunch of stuff that if he did ever say that
I'd have to leave here to live in the Alps.

The trouble now I'm having
Is returning to here and now
Not lugging along that
In my picnic basket as I encounter
A totally uncomprehending fellow in la de dah land.
Whilst I'm finishing digesting the "way we were."

Valentine Songs

Your Call

How can a voice a person hug with distant arms?
Or writing alone assuage the desires I've known,
Absent the seeing across a face does distance harm
Through its intractable empty space?

Here in the now the morning doves speak to each other,
The chatter my comfort from a night alone rises
With mate they fly looking for a shadow cast one to another
Watching, hiding my heart here in one of her disguises

Am I a writer penning poem of delighted dawn sky?
Being rather now mother pouring batter on griddles to heat
Making my days sweetening the tea with honeyed syrup, hiding lies
That in the this of now can I be complete?

For love to hold embraced in this vast limbless void
Remember my dream where held, your actions were enjoyed.



Taken Seriously
Each breath of life this day is taken so seriously
The rain has chilled the morning to reveal the air.
Our mountains again whitening as rain falls coldly, life perilously
Awaiting the blossoming of our spring when loves' breath is there.

Crisply washed, fresh, new the day reaches out to greet
The chatter of birds gathering here, insistent on nourishment
Despite the season chill, deathly awareness, they meet
Here on my concrete seeded floor, their flock flourishing

A little fellow struts audaciously up to me watching him
Spitting angrily he's chirping fury over wet feet, my presence
In giant furry lined boots I'm shamed, breathing in.
Slide inside through my back glassdoor, enjoying heat, it's pleasant.

In body the inhalation of dawn a gentle life celebration
Chilled today by raining watery song drops absorbing winter's meditation.





There Swims Love
Bathing this earth in the waters of our lives is love,
Liquid hope seeded through, the waters lapping shores it rushes
Onto our coastlines, feeding our clouds, rain falling from above.
As water for life is required, so life love touches.

A stream of thought my flow to you releases
Prose drops that unite in still cooled reflective contemplation lakes
Catch skies with our endless charged time breaking pieces,
This ice of winter, the glistening rise of summer's wake

The river of meaning brought love, flowed you to me,
Our lovely still pond we meet fishing and slowly drink
In clear refreshing palm we hold our water as we
Fall in the pool, loves clear depths buoyed, I think.

Steam rises heated by our sun, this joy in love
Evaporates to clouds, grey skies, the cycle of sweet doves.


I'm Sorry
You wrote me a poem of love,
But it was also angry, full of fury.
I hold the disappointment
In my petty pointing
To my empty arms

While you fill my mind
My days with furious expressions
Of meanings that
Take the breath away
Move me to wanting the
Touch of your hand in mine.

A Random Act of Service ....is the love our actions do.

Kiss a frog.
Dress your sister's doll,
Climb an Everest in your way,
Give something to everyday
End this in a hug
Or Dig a flower bed
Or put a little spice in there instead

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.

Drop the subject
Carry her backpack
Plan a project
That sends blankets, its all healing logic
Go to places where people have lost homes.
You could cook
Take it over
When your grandma's all alone.

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.

Get a shiny quarter
Collect a dulling dime
Gather pennies in your shoe
It not a very hard
Thing to do
send them over
To someone who just really, after all, needs some more of you.

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.

You have your two hands
And a beautiful face
You can be so helpful
In this earthly space
Clean a beach
Wash a car
Your actions can go so far.

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.

Bending over
To pick up a spill
Is a way of saying I'm here
For you ever still
We serve each other
In the actions that we do
Every minute of our life what we do must be true.

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.

Pick a pansy
Make your bouquet
Volunteer your time
There's nothing like today
Brother Martin, he is here
Seeing the actions that you do
Proud of the helping and especially of you.

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.

Make a friend
Reach out to those homebound
Take a bit of energy
Make o bit of synergy
You can be the answer
To the problems of the times
Give a little love and watch it spin around.

Any way you see it
When you look around
You can change the world
By serving those you found.


A random act of service is the love our actions do.

picture poems in sylvias birthday exhibit

Roses

In a glass I placed the roses
That you brought last night
The ones that looked so much like
Those grown by the neighbor
They are full of the scent of the evening
Richly filling my mind with images
The layers wildly velvet
Now the pastels holding
My gaze against this dark night
Tonight, when I sit alone
And wait for petals to fall.

A Wall of Eyes

A wall of eyes is watching
Me, as I'm looking for
You, seeing everything.
They know that just
As I force my gaze straight
Ahead and pause to
Secretly scan for your
Shadow, my subtlety is
Lost. The eyes see,
They know everything.
I cannot hide my heart.
I'm naked looking for
No one in a room full of
Seeing eyes.





The Ocher House

The front entry had ocher tiles in a
Spanish design, linoleum with black lines
In my first house. The one rented
From a guy named Keith who seemed
A degenerate. After scrubbing the tile
Applying several coats of Johnson's Wax
The brown multi-colored shag came into view.
It was greasy to the touch, always
Even after the rented rug machine took it's 12th
Run at the dirt which filled the canister.

This house had all ocher appliances
A stove that burnt the babies hand
A stairway set of mirrored tiles too.
I broke one, one day when I lost my aesthetic
Senses and threw a potted plant at the red
Felt fuzzy wallpaper and missed.
In the ocher house over the vermilion tiled fireplace
Sat a painting of "maybe" nudes in a fire bird stance
One had a cigarette in it's bellybutton.
In the house we once rented on Palma Street.








Hans Hoffman Color My World

Happy Birthday to really bright puce
Sticky splattered tangerines
Wild flying strawberry cerise flaming
Through the blueberry cobalt
That Hans is screaming about in a wall
Of color in a museum on my birthday.
Hey Hans, I'm 18 finally today
Your color theory looks like
A crayola box meltdown in a bad 70's flick.
Chartreuse, fuschia, wicked aquamarine.
Color me baby with a liquid lime green.







Get the ZLed Out

Son
I just dreamed
We were in an open building
On the coast on a sunny day sort of
Doing the things you do in your dreams
Which means we were doing some strange
Though ordinary kinds of activities, something to do
With something I forget now and a podium, when the coastline
Blew up and smoke went up for miles and I grabbed the baby, that you
Now were and headed with grandmom to the car in front. Parachutes were all around
It's still not clear to me why people in camo were all around us running
But there was a Zeppelin tune playing kind of through this.
In the way of dreams it's possible I'm imposing
The music into the memory but still
It's a pretty clear piece of lyric
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind.

The guys guarding the staircase
In the art museum
Told you today
That at 12 and looking younger
With your beautiful face
You were too young for the Zep.
You laughed.
Sure.








It might be contained in a myth
But the woman bearing
A red horses head on her
Shoulder looking at a flying fish
Under the full moon
Has got some problems.





Lewis and Clark

(Every time I wonder if I can make it through "sports day" teaching
Or some other inane thing I've gotten into like the time I hiked
At Big Bear , and hemorrhaged, I think of Lewis and Clark and scenes like this.)

Lost in time and melting into days on a trail with no auberge grape oil baths
No hot water, pillowtalk and nothing easy looking out over something magnificent
That a nation hasn't yet gotten the urge to possess, yet.
What lies ahead is a question in a wilderness and a team to huddle through the pass
Together bound and led by a desire to discover

Here a first morning has begun to warm the river bend
As artist brings it new to those far from the glide and buzz of gnat
The swish of moving eyes down this brush made passageway into the unknown
This is a kind of adventure I've known only conjured by these
Discoverers of time journeys, reflected through the canvas projector.

(My daughter suggests the title "Lewis and Clark, 'Secret Lovers' ")





The Lamp Post

Somewhere by a pole stands a soldier Van Gogh
On a march voyaging into the world of Aslan
Where he journeyed once looking for acceptance
And some warmth into his child bones.
A trip that took him to edges of thee and beyond.
But he was a lone man, out of place, unheard, unknown visiting that land
Frozen by his desire of possessing a witching being that held onto his mind
Until he was burned through, mind crushed
And returned home to sacrifice his ear to her altar.







What Did I Really do Wrong?

Instruct me in that.
Tell me.
I welcome the information for future reference.
A future day when I unpack this bag full of shame and hurt.
And decide to listen.

What did I do right?

Could there be a short lesson
On the things that weren't
On the test of yours I failed?
Maybe a review
Before the final









Which Shape Are You?

Looking slowly into my face, holding a worn card
Of a painting, my analyst repeated the question,
"Which shape is you?"

And I thought not this game again.
I'm the white blank eye of the fish.
The place of total rest, where you must look finally.

But I said, "I need some time to think."

He often tells me this is "not a thinking thing".
But deletes the consequences of this or that choice,
In my program of endless correction, opps, support.

Well I'm not the grey shape that looks like a gun.

"You see a gun?"

I'm also not the fenced in horse pen.

"You see this area as a fenced area?"

I'm not the incomplete rectangle or that needle that has something impossible passing through it.

"Here?"

I'm not the Pleiads and I'm certainly not the grey pumpkin (him).

"So you read these as images?"

Nor am I that Dolce purse, the two brown fingers or the piece of lime pie.
Leaving me with that piece of nothing there in the eye of this fish.

"That's interesting that you would see yourself in a non shape."

Not really surprised, he guessed my self on that card.
Looking back out at me wondering what utter nonsense
To look for an out by looking in.






Floating Down River

Floating down river on an old coal barge
I sat up front in the sweat and steam rising off the Monongahela
Smelling the ages old green thick emerald slime
Mixing with the carbon and oil of the wooden planks,
Lay there happy on my belly and hung my hand in the water
Thinking of catching catfish. Here in this river a friend catches 'em
So he and his kin can have some 'real good eatin'
That's what he'd say about the cornbread fried batches
His momma cooked out of this river, full of the ravages
And waste from mining and scarring.
My state forever taken and rubbed raw by this mining, damn,
Now being blown to bits, my violet bed, my west virginia

On that barge on which I got to rest myself on that morning
Saw some whitetail and they stood watching back
In a stand of fading leaves golden and red ablaze in mid-fall.
As we were drifting down the river toward the lock.






"My Interest Is Fading"

Yes, so I hear you say
This day.
Bored by this
Fatigued by that
No longer taking this seriously
No longer able to take that.

It happens.
To us all. Our desires fade, our interest wanes
We as ennui.
Grow old
Lose an ability to bring to our moment
Even a fading one
The inner light and glimpse
Of a place
Where light silently
Dances off
The morning fog
Eating up the sharp edges

Bathing the scene
In such pastel subtle shades, seconds passing
A scene of a morning
On a bridge in whiteness
Blue and a lingering golden in a world
Of dissolution.

Painted and hanging
In a place that
Bores so many to tears
And brings them
To my tired eyes.

As I fade into my interests
In the soft light
Of that dawn.
Filled with that
disappearing moment.















All Day

I stare all day at a woman in a red bra
Across the wooden parquet of this museum floor
Watching as the men drool and imagine
A bed with satin sheets and her unclothed
When they turn around caught in that moment
These men look here with the shame of exposed need.
In my frame looking out they see their grandmother
And their sexual vitality flies out of the art spaces
As if a skunk was spotted in the garage
Or a gorgon had risen from the sea.

My well worn gray face that knew the touch
And feel of hands to hold and lips parting in meeting
In love's embrace have become dry leaves.
This is how it is for all women
I look daily at one exception caught eternally in her frame
Brash and bold exposing her
Power and flesh, seducing the viewers
But I am not seduced nor seductress now.
My time fled upon the dawns that I met
In a life worn by illness, jealousies, deaths, affairs of men,
Babies born and Times of giving
Days of taking, until I'm just a paper pencil
Shadow of an old woman. Grayed and watching
A younger seducer in her timeless art.







Red Bra

A man in the museum was stopped
Staring at this red bra
Thinking about how straight forward
And clear art can be sometimes.
"She's got it, he wants it"
Too bad the space can only
Be opened by the mind
Because he was ready to jump
Maybe he had jumped, it was voyeuristic all around.

He heard me close by
Or sensed my gaze and looked
Utterly disappointed by the reality
Of a chubby staring set of cheeks
With glasses
That was considering his libidinous
Glances

My bra was tan and hiding under
Some pretty ugly cotton
With a stance that looked
Feeble next to a painting
Of a woman ready to pull
Her patron right into the frame
And have a tango for two
And a wild Arabian night.

Turning away
The man went sadly to the next scene
A painting of a melted clock by Dali
Almost but not quite dripping time on the floor
He looked so ordinary then
Like a Dad or a professor of botony
The look of wild confidence fled
I asked, "Did you see that?"
But no one was around to comment.
Except the red bra
And it was busy luring the next man over.





A Baobab

A baobab told me to










"Length or Girth the Debate"


you don your Magnum
Stand, salute harm reduction
special gentleman

No one is crazy
please let's all be a little
blind to thought bubble

again not the length
be hoodwinked by the magnum
handy to impress women

don't any person
that's worth the intimacy
anatomy "is"



"reflections on nudes"
Sylvia Puglisi
* * *

it was hot today
i wore long sleeves
with stripes
because the weather does not rule my clothes.

the museum was cold though, and full of cold marble statues
naked men without penises
blown off in this war or that war
or fallen off
eventually
through the slow decay of time.

the female forms are unblemished, timeless
no gawky appendages to erode
by salty air or
overzealous critics.
they are modest and unashamed.

in marble
the women are held to no unreasonable
standards of beauty
they are fat and fabulous
or thin
or just female with big
breasts and small breasts
thought they are hairless.
the men are hairless too.
not very hairy, the romans
or so they'd have us believe.

the men are all tall and
curly-haired with clean-shaven faces and
well-chiseled abs
and noble poses fighting mythical beasts
imagine that being compared to a standard that no man could ever emulate
who can fight a minotaur?

perfection like that is just tempting fate.
most of the man-sculptures don't have heads.

i like the statue-room because it reminds me of the
uniformity that the female nude room
doesn't have.
25,000 years of women real women
not gods
not minotaurs
women with arms akimbo and tapping feet
and breasts and big bare arms
and beautiful imperfections.

my sisters, my mothers
my ancestors who
posed naked even if they had small breasts and big thighs
because they wanted to stand her before me
in paint and stone
and look me in the eye to say
"remember me, future-child
not for what i look like
but for what i was,
what i am,
what you are."

i remember them.
i am.