one hawk

has flown down.

it is cold,

sometimes snow does

not anticipate

wind

though what is not thought

does not wait

in the red hollow

of the bud,

in the squeaking

in the boughs

of the almost

unheard trees

James: So Noah, where was this photo "Clouds Ascending" taken, and what time of day?

Noah: It was taken on the Inca trail probably at around 7:30 in the morning

James: Were there others around?

Noah: Yeah, there were some other people on the trail.

J: Did you chat with any of them?

N: Yeah actually, some of them were really cool. I met this one dude hauling a guitar up there but he didn't know how to play. That was so weird.

J: Haha! Did you play it?

N: Of course haha

J: That's a lovely spot for guitar-playing. I remember when I was in Spain and it had only been like a week and a half since I had last played the guitar, but i was having withdrawal problems. That was when I bought my "quatro" instrument. It took me so long to find a musical instrument shop

N:  Yes. Though I'm all about mooching of other folks, tactfully of course.

J: Who else did you encounter?

Not only the quietly restless, but also the absent
unwaited themselves
in the courtyards through which time had passed.
That night the rain came singing
to quiet the uncertainties of the day's churnings.
Dogs retreated beneath their archways
and the old cobblestones paused in their unchanging.
Time stepped out of herself, her owners
departed for a while, and walked the rainy streets
smiling into every darkened churchyard,
bowing to every slamming door,
her impossibilities, of a sudden, endlessly manifest.
From the orange glows inside
came Salsa's sensual murmurs, wet cries of passion,
a fatigued silence of hidden loneliness.
Tea and Pisco mixed clumsily to fire swollen throats,
while black beer bloated tired bellies.
Everywhere the wanting roamed the plazas,
the back alleyways, the cold stone steps,
clacking their canes, huddling
beneath the awnings of their vacant shops,
waiting upon empty tables, their grand hearths sadly lit.
But she, she was timeless without herself,
beneath her feet old stones sighed out their histories,
the quiver of the night, an unheard lullaby.
That was how it was one night
in that city of eternal wanderings,
where every golden crumb was scavenged from the shit
festering in the streets, where desperation
begged to suck the milk affluence,
where life fed upon itself, continuously grieving
the imperfections that had made it whole.

11/27/08

Unbroken were the steps of summer

as shadows left behind their bodies

and flitted down to meet you,

their bat wings beating without pause.

Nothing felt but repetition.

Loneliness churned silently its echoey sea

with the arms of giant paddle wheels,

though not a sound was waiting,

not a voice you recognized. Even words

forgot themselves, falling from their branches

till the wind had lost its name.

And the summer still refused to leave you.

The days, elongating beneath your feet,

burned away the blankets of the morning

till you shivered, made naked by the heat.

From so many rooftops dogs howled

and you woke at night with eyes of smoke,

coughing desperately.

And still the summer would not leave you.

The dryness in your hands grew deep

as you scrubbed away the dirt,

picked clean the worry of your fingernails,

for you had only what you carried. What I tell

is that you knew, as if somehow you'd remember

the cats that cowered in your corners

anxious for something you might leave behind,

a scent of cold surrendered;

that everything that was yours to own,

that nothing you alone could claim.

I discovered God a few years ago as a poetic device -- my invocation of God in poetry has since deepened my "relationship with God." I'm a nonbeliever, so to speak, but I came to see that I'm only a nonbeliever in specific senses. For example, Sam Harris, a different kind of nonbeliever, loves to say we're all atheists with regard to Zeus. So I'm basically a nonbeliever also in the general sense of any monotheistic God, or any notion of a plurality of gods, and so on and so forth. But it's brilliant to read someone saying we can continue to use this powerful symbol in new ways. Kauffman is on to something. God is so potent. When I was a kid I'd sit on the floor of my room and look out at the sunshine and ask God for some kind of support. I didn't know what I was asking for, or who I was asking. I just had to ask something -- I knew something wasn't right, so I prayed. I've since developed the language and the awareness to recognize the source of some of these earlier struggles. I can recognize, in retrospect, needs that weren't being met, feelings of isolation and shame, love, fear, conflict. I can see my younger self reaching out and speaking to "God" because -- who else was there?

Now when I speak to God in a poem it is much more deeply rooted in awareness -- of self, of my needs, of others. For example, I ask, "Have you noticed, God / that lately I objectify you? [...] Have / you noticed the way / I beat myself up over not / knowing myself as I know you?" I am grateful that I spoke to God at all during my childhood, because I remember how fragile and unclear that experience was. I doubt it feels like this for "believers" -- for example, I sense that believers I know have a relationship with God that is much more coherent than mine was.  But what I can see is what it was like for me to speak to God back then, and what it was like to be an angry adolescent, denying God as an absurdity, and now, to see myself invoking God earnestly, to manage to allow God to stand in for myself, for people in my life, for the nature of things, for questioning itself, and, beyond all that, for God. One of my friends read a poem of mine recently and tried to express how surprised he was that a nonbeliever (his word!) would speak of and to God so earnestly, without being ironic or trying to argue with, say, the Christian notion of God. Well, I admit there is a small sense of challenge in my poetry -- as I imagine it may be challenging for some people to hear me speaking to God as a lover, or as a friend, or as myself. For other people I imagine it may also be exciting, or familiar, or refreshing. (Hopefully for some it would be both challenging and exciting!) Either way, the reasons for nonbelievers to speak of and to God are many, and though I don't take it as reclaiming, or claiming, God -- I take it rather as opening up to God, which is maybe an odd was for a so-called nonbeliever to speak of it -- I do take it that believers and nonbelievers share much more than some often think. The split between us is an illusion; why not allow ourselves to unite in God?

at nighttime i wonder
about all the chilly breezing air i dance

and there is a poem i need to write
that i am afraid will not get written
until my dreamt up first kisses are first kissed

and it is not what i see in the mirror that matters
but whether i see how it is that i see it
otherwise i am lost in my own self-apprehension

and i can't sleep because i'm anxious again
so i just keep dancing, and when i don't get it
i let it get me

and maybe i'll find a new salsa partner
who doesn't mind if i step on her toes a little bit
or if my rhythm is off
because perhaps she likes me a little
and i'd gladly dance with her all night
only there's someone else i'd like to dance with
only i'm not sure what sort of dance to dance with her

and when i feel ill, it might just be because i am
and there are some little gifts in all of this i know
because even a lotus-flower long before blossom
bestowed many little gifts upon me
once i opened to them

even flowering impatience

of her lips when i see this tree i think
whether from the fullness of its bloom or
the richness of its crimson depths perhaps
it is its height this tree stands tall yet
is not proud in fact is a little humble
in its leaning not quite majestic
but grand all the same it still has not
shaken all the green out of its
leaves this tree and though
its beauty points to its own death
and back around again
it does not linger nor
merely return this tree

the first kiss
one can never return home
but must re-create it now of her lips

Happy Birthday, Blog!

It turns out the blog turned one a few weeks ago, but we only now realized it. Well -- happy birthday!!