got my soap
my two jumping shoes of love and truth
a death camp stone
a pen of coral
a monkey sunrise
an African melody and a bottle of wine

I’ve got the shadow of the slivered moon
dancing on the limbs of the ceiba tree
and koi fish nibbling and tickling the roots of the lotus flower
that feeds the finicky bees
that don’t care they are robots

hold on un momento,
someone’s at the door
before sunrise a well-known stranger calling at my door,
a tall, dark handsome hour cloaked in inscrutability
greets me with his sly sordid grin

“Aren’t you forgetting something?”

“Oh, yeah, my goddamn brick wall with ancient murals.”

“What else?” he demands.

“Oh yeah, my pockets lined with a thousand ornate and twisted hours and bleeding perimeters, I almost forgot.”

“Yeah, right.”

I don’t worry
his cloaked presence is more a cover for his impulse to create supernovas,
and he’s the one who gave me one of those jumping shoes in the first place
he always whispers, “don’t linger”
but this morning he introduced me to his beautiful sister:
the silhouette of hours afar filled with moments of mystery

I’m going to need a bigger suitcase

No, that’s not fair on two accounts:

First, he wasn’t ugly.  I’m sure Aysha’s husband Farzeen is good looking to many women.   In fact, he had an olive complexion and stood tall with dark eyes. Add the fact that he was wealthy, successful, and respected in his field and he probably was quite the catch.

Second, we never “steal” another.  I’m sure that is what he would say about me, but deep down we all know that’s not what happens.  Here’s what happened:

We collided.  Aysha and I collided.

Really that’s it, nothing more.  Take it for what it’s worth.  People collide, something either mysterious happens or nothing happens, really nothing in between.  We fell into each other’s worlds as soon as our eyes met, that teasing energetic eye electricity just below the level of consciousness.

Is it possible to see someone crying when they’re not crying, laughing when they aren’t laughing, loving when they’re not loving, and understanding the world when they are just sipping their damn water or picking things off their pizza?

I thought she was from India, which shows you how much I know.  She was from Turkey.  Her husband was from Iran.  They had moved to San Francisco several years ago. That was just after what I now call Act One of what was then merely a drama blindly unfolding.

If were to write a screenplay: Act one: an Iranian man and Turkish woman collide in Istanbul, marry, and become successful.  Act 2: Iranian man and Turkish woman forget they collided, take one another for granted, and plot different courses without knowing it.  Act 3: American-Mexican man and Turkish woman collide, consequences ensue.

I didn’t intend to fall in love with a married woman.  I don’t choose who I love.  Yes, being a scientist, I know it is a by-product of our evolutionary need to propagate the species and chemicals in the brain and hormones are responsible for the way we feel–but what’s not?

That doesn’t explain why it was her with whom I collided.  It also doesn’t explain why I was shot in front of my classroom blackboard.

For whatever it’s worth, I didn’t mean for it to happen.

It was her eyes.  And goddamn it, I hated her husband for the simple reason that he didn’t worship her eyes! She felt the world and I could see that in her eyes.  Dark and wide and accepting.  But more than that she moved beyond the pain to understanding. I knew it as soon as she glanced at me and didn’t avert her eyes like so many dull girls I’ve encountered.  It wasn’t even like those over-confident women who know they are physically beautiful.  Aysha paused in my gaze and I knew that she could understand things with me.  How could this awful, putrid crawl-in-the-mud, broken and bloody world produce something so exquisitely perfect like these dark-café-sin-leche almond-shaped eyes?  They made me not want to give up on this world.

I also detested her husband Farzeen because he barely noticed the poetry of her movement, the way her neck swayed when she spoken with passion, the way her hips moved from behind.  Maybe if I would have gotten to know him, befriended him, it would have been impossible for my heart to yearn for her.  Who knows?

Even in those first few moments I knew there would be pain in this.  That’s not saying much is it?  What doesn’t have pain?  Yet at some level I knew I would pay for my love, and yet I pushed forward anyway.

Little did I know what form it would take.

Just for the record, I’m not a hedonist.  But I’m not a non-hedonist either.  Imagine a world with conquered desire.  No more stolen kisses, no more guilty sugar rushes, or elation and revelation induced by copious amounts of Spanish wine, no more splurging on fine meals that tease your tongue and that you pay for later, no more lazy Sunday mornings.

So please, before you judge, you must know the rest of the story.

We sat down to a very casual dinner among colleagues after a long-day of very non-casual conference sessions discussing everything from new laser medical procedures to prosthetic eyes.  Aysha’s husband Farzeen was one of the plenary speakers and had been a hit that afternoon

“Aysha, you remember Dr. Orozco?” Farzeen said, then excused himself to take a call in the lobby just as the food was served.

Aysha smiled, “Carlos, great to see you again.”

In fact, we had met several times before and had talked that very afternoon.

Aysha and I and the others proceeded to dig in.

I watched as Aysha picked the toppings off her medium pizza one-by-one and put them in individual piles in a broad circumference around her plate.  First the mushrooms.

“I see mushrooms aren’t your favorite.” I said.

She shot a wily smile with her dark eyes and continued with the ritual.  Now the onions.

“Can I have your onions?”  I said, simultaneously realizing that was a strange, forward request from someone you had just met.

“No, I love mushrooms and onions!” she said.

Now the black olives, picking each one and delicately placing it in its respective pile. Then licking her fingers and tasting her lips with her tongue; then continued until all but the jalapenos were off her pizza and in piles on her plate.

“There, ta-da!” she looked up and presented her mutilated cheese and jalapeno pizza as some kind of masterpiece.

“Why didn’t you just order jalapenos?”  I had to ask.

She gave me a look I would come to know well, like a switch, her left eyebrow raised quizzically (is there any other way to raise an eyebrow?) and twisted her mouth sardonically.

I looked at her, shook my head, let out a resigned laugh, and then did something I didn’t expect.

I fell in love with her.

This was all within the 8 minutes before her husband came back and started talking about some paper proposal he wrote got accepted by the American Medical Society.  And those 8 minutes changed the rest of my life.

And my death.

death stalks the nostrils
like spirits of war,
no way to avoid it here
on the banks of mother ganges
the river of life

death in your face,
on the roads,
staring back at you from
ma ganga and cloistered hovels
in the air
as soft ashen bones
and charred flesh
floating its way towards moksha/liberation
or to another spin on this
merry-go-round

people coughing congregate
and dying dogs with swollen nipples
roam in dark narrow alleys
where the fog settles
like oppression
over this “city of light”
where Kali haunts visitors
she demands blood
from her stony face
and greedy red tongue

and she gets it
because she is mother of all

over-dead cows,
bloated, distended tubes of flesh
float by
joining feces and plastic
in these sacred waters

a holy man’s soul released
while his body,
dry brown flesh
clinging to skinny bones
join orange marigolds
in the dark waters
Sinks quickly and disappears

Like everything else

I stumbled down to the cave so early in the morning because that’s where I keep my bunnies. Though the bunnies aren’t really mine; they’re contracted. The bunnies lay all the jelly beans and colored eggs I need for this time of year. My plan was to hide jelly beans for the neighborhood kids and homeless and the colored eggs I was going to sell to the nouveau rich on the streets for $13.50 a pop. And I had well over 50 well-incubated pink and yellow eggs, even a couple purple and green ones, and a rare black one (from the black bunny).

Things didn’t go as planned. When I got to the cave the large boulder covering the entrance was removed. Whoa, tell me what’s-a-happenin’!. I wondered to myself whether I forgot to close the cave the previous night.

But then I remembered I had been at a naked roller-derby expo and hadn’t rolled in until late. But then how did my bunnies move such a large boulder?

I went inside the cave and the bunnies were gone! Not even a trace of fur! I immediately went back inside and picked up the phone to dial 1-800-Lost-My-Bunny, but I could barely speak because I then noticed the tapestry hanging on the wall that I bought in India was torn in two.  That was definitely a sign.

I dropped the receiver, looked out the window. Day had turned to night and I could just barely hear the voice on the line, “Can you please hold…estimated hold time is…4…minutes.”

I didn’t want to wait that long, so I hung up.

“Rngggg!!!!”

I grabbed the phone again. It wasn’t dial-a-lost-bunny, but someone slightly more important: my cousin in Oklahoma. He said there had been sightings of bunnies all over the countryside and the bunnies were surrounded by a faint light and music. People were saying “They have come; They have risen!”

I was shocked and I had to ask, “Well, tell me, what kind of music?”

And he said, “Some say disco, but I swear I heard sitars and tamblas.”

“Hmmmm.”

I told him about how my Easter plans had gone awry, about the crunchy grass and boulder and the empty cave and the torn tapestry. “You don’t think that possibly…” I began.

But we didn’t want to think the impossible. We both were quite creeped out. But since I was tired and day had turned to night, all I wanted to do was to crawl back into bed. I knew I wasn’t going to be selling colored eggs today anyway.

“Well, cuz, I’m gonna catch some sleep. Let me know if you hear anything else about those bunnies.”

I put on some socks and climbed into bed hearing sitars and thinking, I’ll fix that tapestry tomorrow.

still haunts me

my eyes averted to the window

I didn’t want to look

God I wish the sun would go down

Because its brightness mocked the darkness here

But I knew I had to look

For the sake of humanity

both their humanity and mine

shades of black and white

Anything more and my eyes would burn

And my heart would stop

like that time in Delhi at the shrine of a fallen saint

when once again the cold-iron fruits of our violence

seized the moment and affirmed

“Goodness died today”

‘Yomokitu, August, 1945, in memoriam’,

it said in small block letters below

but that part was a mere speck in my eye

because words were silly and pathetic

How could one look at that image

and still?

Skin black like toast you scrape off in the morning…

and still?

Distended, bloated tubes of flesh floating in ashen water…

Look and still?

Did you know they tried to swallow to quench their thirst

But got only fire in return

Look and still?

They tried to find their salvation

from heat too hot to think

From black rain too dark to see

But the water too was poison

But what was not poison that day?

Weren’t even the minds toxic that could unleash this?

and still?

Who asked the woman and child?

whose imprint of their clinging eternally,

rests in concrete

Who asked the animals and trees?

Who asked the old man?

he never delivered his letters that day

his bicycle melted from beneath him

Just before dawn on Valentine’s Day, a fair skinned, red-haired young woman awoke to sharp pains in her abdomen.  She clutched her overfull round belly, then felt something warm and damp between her legs.

It was time.

She was alone.  There was no one to call.  There was no bag to grab because no bag had been packed. She was going nowhere.  From the old bed, she glanced around the small hotel room in the dim but growing light sneaking around the curtains.  She rolled the worn sheets down to just below her knees and clutched the sides of the bed as her second contraction gripped her.

Despite her meager surroundings and swollen body, she felt lighter for the first time in months, knowing that she was to finally rid herself of this menace, this burden.

This isn’t mine.  It’s not me.  It’s not part of me.

She had been telling herself such things for some time now in order to make today easier.  It was simple.  She had known from the first day: she would not keep this baby.

At first she hadn’t known she was pregnant at all.  She had missed periods before, as the result of not eating properly or the drugs.  But as the weeks wore on she began to feel this life grow within her.  It always felt alien, but she could not bring herself to end it.  So she delayed it, day by day, week by week, until she began to show.  It was soon clear that she was going to have this baby.

His baby.  Not mine.

It wasn’t that she hated the baby.  But in time she became indifferent to it.  She hated him.  She hated his hot breath on her neck as he pressed hard against her.

A pain shot through her.  She felt like she was being squeezed and pulled apart simultaneously.  4th contraction.  11 minutes.  Soon she would be done.  It would all be done.

She hated the stale stench of cheap beer.  It seemed to come not from his mouth, but from his every pore.  She remembered the feeling of his toxic weight on her.  Jesus, why was this happening to me?

Light began to fill the room, revealing dust dancing mid-air above the carpet and furniture as old as she felt.  They weren’t hers.  Nothing in the room was hers except a change of clothes, a pair of glasses, a pocket watch her father had given her just before he left, and a single book: The Grapes of Wrath.

She couldn’t read it very well, not because she wasn’t smart, but because she sometimes saw words backwards.  It was a struggle just to get through a page.  But she knew the story well.  She’d heard it told by many people.  She knew it was her story too.  She’d heard they had made a movie and play of it, but she had never seen it.

Another stab cut across her abdomen.  She was supposed to breath, but it didn’t come naturally to her.  She rubbed her stomach, hoping to ease the pain and the process, to no avail.

It was time.  She felt the baby crown.  She grabbed the sheets, her knuckles white, her face hot and flushed, her body sweaty.  But she didn’t scream.  She’d learned long ago it didn’t help.

February 15, 1968 — Evening

Somehow she had cut the umbilical cord herself.  She hadn’t bothered to clean up other than to take the stained sheets that surrounded her, roll them up in a giant ball of evidence of this tragedy, and stuff it unceremoniously behind the ancient and dusty orange ottoman in the corner.

Dusk had arrived.  Now she could steal under cover of darkness with her secret bundle across Washington Blvd, down four blocks on Maple to the corner of Hamilton Ave.  There she would make her deposit.  She had looked up the address of Lutheran Services Adoption Agency weeks earlier.  She had even scoped it out from the bus as it moved down Hamilton.

Since morning she had merely sat and waited.  On the bed.  Alone with her silent bundle.  It had cried briefly at first but then not at all.  Perhaps it learned its lesson early about the uselessness of screaming.  Good boy, kid.

Occasionally she would drag herself off the bed, leaving the bundle behind, and pour her cup full of water from the bathroom sink.  Then she would climb back on the sheet-less mattress.  Her back rested uncomfortably against the plastic wood headboard.  She sat with her knees bent, her bundle just in front of her in a swaddling of plain white, its tiny, ugly, pink face protruding.

There was no matter of getting attached now.  She had already resigned herself to this.  Soon it would all be over.  She had planned to wait until dark.  Then what?  Could there be a proper time?  Darkness felt comfortable.  She felt unworthy of day and besides, night gave her anonymity.

There was no clock in the room so she couldn’t rely on choosing a specific time.  She would have to pull herself off the bed and just begin walking.

There was no telephone either.  Not that she had anybody to call.  She had no one to talk to.  No one to tell of her giving life.  No one to stop her from what she was going to do.

Up until last night, even up until her water broke, she still carried a deeply buried secret wish that she could escape this fate.  The fate, not of giving life, but the giving up of life.  That at the last moment, someone—maybe a long-forgotten friend or family member, perhaps a kind stranger—would reach into her life and save her.  That things could be better.

But that thought, that wish, that need—that things could be better—had carried her to this very moment, for years.  But each passing day proved it wrong and became testimony to its absurdity.  When would she realize that better was not a possibility?

Friends and family were a shadowy memory, gnats swarming in the distance.  Like childhood, she knew she had once touched them, knew them, but its distance made it unreachable.  The people she had called her mother and father had long disappeared.  She lost touch with them years ago.  Her father left when she was twelve.  Perhaps if she tried hard enough she might be able to locate her mother.  But for what purpose?

As she sat silently, the light that peeked around the dusty burgundy curtains began to retreat and she struggled to recall her last truly human, truly sincere contact.  Before her mind’s eye flashed several vague images.  Faces, hands, and eyes from the recent past emerged.  The cashier at the dollar store had smiled warmly when she had purchased a white baby blanket.  The old, Hispanic man had touched her shoulder gently when she had dropped her bag when boarding the bus.  He told her to “take care”.  The woman at the Laundromat Happy Bubbles had told her she must go if she wasn’t using services, but her eyes were warm and she expressed regret and empathy.  She was only passing along the message of her manager, she had said.

Pressing further back in time, an image she took as Donny emerged.  Relationship?  Donny was not a relationship.  He was a year-long curse.  So what if she had loved him and thought he reciprocated.  He was gone and the only evidence of his existence was the dark image in her mind that retreated day by day and the baby in her womb that grew day by day.

Even now, though, sitting as alone as she ever was, it didn’t occur to her that Donny was an aberration.  For her, he was only the latest in a series of curses that was man.  She had not had the fortune to be in a position of knowing that her experience was a wicked combination of bad choices, bad luck, and bad boys.  But she was in a position of knowing that love is a word that people use to get what they want and knowing that a creature was growing inside of her as a result of that “love”.

She recalls those days now like one recalls a former life–hazily.  And how many former lives had she lived so far?  How in the world could she be only twenty years old?  When the bus passed the college, she would look out the window at the girls her own physical age walking along the sidewalks of campus.  The window was like the glass of an aquarium.  Only she could never figure out if those girls, so youthful and girlish, were the specimen in the aquarium or rather—if it was she who was the one on exhibit.  At any rate, they were of two worlds, and she felt reincarnated within this lifetime several times over.

She pulled herself out of her reverie and once more into the bathroom where she filled her cup for the last time.  The hour had arrived. After putting her shoes on, she put the bundle in her arms and walked towards the door, her thoughts heavy but finally clear.

By midnight, this Valentine Baby will have a fresh lease on life.

God is Love (sometimes); God is omnipotent; in God all things are possible;God is 1 in 3 or at least 3 in 1; God knows and hears prayers from Everybody, including Chris Matthews and even those people in the cities of Cantons in OH, KS, GA, SD, and TX; God is Spirit (except when in man-or-hurricane/tsunami form); God is a god of history (though technically outside it, yet acting in it, but not so much that he interferes with our free will, er, I mean…)

God Blesses America. Everybody knows that. Presidents tell us that all the time. But I didn’t know this, that God wanted the Rocky VI sequel to be made: “I felt as though God was moving me to do this.” (Sylvester Stallone)

God sent his only begotten son; God is a “man of war” (Exodus 15); God is male; God likes prophets who don’t eat or have sex much; God is a jealous god (Ex: 34:14) who thinks sacrifices and offerings are pretty neat, especially of chocolate, incense, booze, or Facebook during Lent—which by the way is “brutal, but valuable”(see Wall Street Journal–http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123509424821028985.html); but He just can’t beat the blood ofa good old-fashioned giraffe in a volcano for rain or whatever animal is convenient.

God hates fags

But God is also a yoga-master; God is a Goddess; God has an elephant head; God hates shrimp; God led Bush to be re-elected and to attack Iraq; God helped elect Obama; Go wants socialized health care; God blesses Guatemalan chicken bus-drivers and passengers—at least the ones that survive; God turns Sabbath-breaking Jews into despised apes (Quran 2:55-56); God blesses those who have not yet seen and still believe (church sign a couple blocks from here…really? that’s who is blessed?); “God helped Castro heal” (Hugo Chavez); God told Pat Robertson about the tsunami and that later this year “chaos will rule”; luckily, as I mentioned, God hears prayers; “God said he’s going to restrain the evil but he isn’t necessarily going to restrain it in the beginning. A lot of these things can be reversed – we just need to do a lot of praying.” God is the sun behind the clouds; God likes to be portrayed as a deer drinking pink water; Also God can be interviewed at www.theinterviewwithgod.com.

All of these attributes of God are pretty obvious. There’s really not much room for debate there.

But, here are 4 things you probably didn’t know about God:
1)God wants us to disavow your belief in Him because only those who don’t believe in Him will make it to heaven. God is very, very tricky that way.

2)God Blesses Me.
Before you scoff, I have evidence that God Blesses Me (not that evidence is necessary–they call it FAITH for a Reason):
a)First, how else do you explain the fact that I survived many trips around the sun and to foreign countries and am now back home without any deaths, concussions, scars, or animal diseases? (Wait, I might have to slightly revise that one, because I did get Salmonella in Mexico in December—is god punishing me or testing me? No, he is just blessing the salmonella too, so my argument still holds)
b)Second, many people have told me that God blesses me or at least they prayed for me, (Dios te bendiga!) (really? ahh, “that’s sweet! thanks! now I’m going to snort this cocaine and fuck that girl”–David Cross) I have to admit that this is a weaker reason, because it could just be that their prayer vibes directly entered my bones, red blood cells, and synapses without going to God first, but who knows?

c)Finally, ummm, there’s that feeling I have that God Blesses Me.
(remember that Friends episode with Phoebe who believes that her dead mother is in her stray cat’s body?)
C: a + b + c = GBM

3)God demands vegetarianism and economic justice.

4)Most importantly: God told me to write this and post it
Lucky for me I already I agree with all these things. It’s great having God on my side. I feel a rush already. If someone asks, “Why ….?” for any particular fact, action, value, judgment, etc., I know that God is right there, backing me up. Power, man, power!!!

step 1)choose your words

step 2)because words are food, you taste them and chew on them and let them roll around in your mouth and let them dance over the tip of your tongue, slowly and delicately when you want to savor every morsel and linger on every flavor, or gobble them whole when you can´t get enough. Sometimes words are sour or bitter but you eat them anyway because you know they are good for you.  Sometimes they are rich and delicious and sweet and your tongue demands more–then a little more–until it is completely satisfied, until every sensation is coaxed from the rounded syllables.  You swallow them and rest full at home in the knowledge that the well-enjoyed meal was prepared and served with love, giving sustenance and satisfaction.

step 3)digest

This thought stabbed me as life drained slowly away.

It’s quite surprising what goes through your mind as your blood pools and collects around the shards of glass lying within your crooked gaps on the wet concrete.  Things like, “I wonder what would have happened if I would have been a dentist?”

And “I wanted to at least tell her I loved her.”

And “If I were to raise dogs, I’d raise miniature schnauzers—no, schnauzers of all kinds,”

And “You know what sounds good right now? A grilled cheese sandwich.”

It’s not what you would think, that whole review of one’s life.  I only recall one such episode presenting itself vividly before my mind.  I was jumping off a bridge.  I must have been 9-10 years old.  I was happy. Carefree and happy.  I wore bright red shorts and no shirt and the bridge must have been only 5 or 6 feet high over a small creek but it seemed so high because I was afraid…and exhilarated.  I don’t know why I saw it in 3^rd person.  It was like I had a telescope from afar zooming in on my own childhood fun, but I remembered it so vividly that moment.

If you were a bus driver maybe you would crash and crack your skull and if you were a mountain climber there is a good chance you would freeze to death or fall in a crevasse.  But for the rest of us, it’s a question mark, and it won’t be something exotic either.

“No one knows how it will come, it’s NEVER WHAT YOU EXPECT,” I thought.

But all the other thoughts were questions like “I wonder when the last time was when I had my mom’s peanut butter cookies?” and “I hope they forgive me for dying like this.”

Then I might have let out a chuckle.

The last thing that passed into my consciousness before darkness conquered me was:

“Did they kill me because I fell in love or because I told the truth?”

From the dusty, deserted steppes I swear I distinctly heard laughs carried by the eastern wind.

The wind and the songs of the wind were confused.

“Why do they love death?”  asked the softly-spoken song of the south.

“Maybe they can’t help it,” whispered its undercurrent.

“Ha! This strange animal seems convinced that it is NOT.” The suddenly sober easterly gale.

“NOT what?”

“NOT worthy, NOT of this earth, NOT an animal.”

“To think!” said a whistle in the wind, “A worthy animal of this earth thinking it is an unworthy non-animal from somewhere else!”

“That is the true self-betrayal!” said a fresh bold wind blowing from the north.

“The human–the animal that tries to be more than what it is, yet uncomfortable in its own skin,” it continued.

“and so it is also the animal that creates…

and destroys…

with games such as art and music, boundaries, love, and religion.”

“Through them they conquer their fears…”

“…they are mirrors up set up to see themselves,” said the eastern wind.

“Maybe, just maybe,” said the bravest wind from the south; “but also their love and religion and art and death are all types of standing outside themselves and attempts to re-connect to a community they have destroyed with those very tools…”

“Even imaginary communities are better than none at all,” interrupted a solitary blue-finch in flight from nowhere to the other side.

But the bravest wind from the south continued, “…because this animal doesn’t yet know it but their religion is a form of going beyond that overreaches and flies over the earth’s horizon to live with the dead sky gods that won’t ever steal their fears, and their love is a mirror that lost its face to the reflection of distorted falsehoods in the haunting light of the evening dusk; and their art broke its heart on the edge of the ledger and the lap of the faith and coins…and they don’t know it yet, but their death and destruction is a form of creativity that isn’t yet creative.”