A Tribute to Anne Sexton

Here,

In the room of my life

Collected images shape my walls

A tapestry of old faces

Places I’ve been

and long to see.

And faces I’ll no longer see.

Old posters I’ve snatched off bathroom walls,

In dingy downstairs venues late

Iron and Wine’s album cover,

The Shepherd’s Dog

Empty eyes

Yellow almost hollow,

blood red jaws,

it was these subtle ballads

that lulled me to sleep

on restless nights.

A nocturnal drug to pounding thoughts.

I’ll never tire of it of its corroded sound.

It’s as if the ancients of this earth created it

A sound that comes from the depths

of canyons and windswept gorges,

towering spires and burning wastelands.

“Flightless Bird American Mouth”

We live in this constant condition.

Yet somehow,

some of us break the snare.

Find the quiet back roads

Escape the monotony that tears us,

like white lace on barbed wire

Here,

The Buddha

He sits in dust ,

beside pieces

of granite I’ve picked.  Felsic and igneous in kind.

The stone

that lies underneath

and on the very surface of

this town.

I bought the statue for 200 rupees from a Tibetan

He had a silver tooth and an easy laugh

It was raining heavy that afternoon

Monsoon season in the Himalayas,

when monks walk the streets

with bright umbrellas

in their somber wine-red robes

only to stop in tea stalls

for steaming chai

to wait out the storm.

The same summer storm

that sent livid waters

Pouring through

the streets of Rishikesh

flooding the valleys.

The  giant revered Krishna was uprooted

His golden form seen floating

along with the debris.

That was several months ago.

And we’ve all forgotten now.

Their worried faces replaced

by fat, haggard old US government officials

Playing a stupid game of cat and mouse.

Eventually they  all just give up

They shutdown.

They leave us to pick up the pieces.

Here,

The air smells faintly of jasmine and sage

Cedar and dry earth.

A worn hand-printed textile from Jaipur on the bed

the ink runs red and the flowers bleed black

There are stacked books,

I’ve poured over time and again

They are like sacred scripture these words.

White Oleander. The author’s words are like the ocean and the orchid

And the poisonous white flower,

that killed Him.

Her words among others,

are the strong undercurrent that holds my life in bound pages,

keeping my own stories together.

Here,

A grocery bill is tacked near the door

32.50 for a weeks worth

Reminding me.

And here,

A friend sent me a picture of a weathered woman

Her eyes cast downward

Like a similar abstract drawing,

the woman who’s hand grips a chain-link fence.

I like to think we’re all the same,

These mere sketches of women and I

Just waiting for something to happen.

Someone to show up and release us