Bridge

haiku

"Bridge"

Between the heart-line

and life-line, there is a strength.

You can find me there.

“Late have I loved you…You were within me, but I was outside…You were with me, but I was not with you. You called, you shouted, and you broke through my deafness…You dispelled my blindness…You touched me, and I burned for your peace.”

~St. Augustine~

"Yet"

I sit down to eat a meal

but I am not hungry.

I am lonely,

so I tread down to the river

and lay on the grass,

feed on the sun

and the lapping water.

The seagulls overhead,

search for something

in wide, white arcs.

I wish I was Whitman

with his stomping leather boots and open shirt,

making love to my own soul on the grass.

So I take off my sandals, try in vain

to avoid duck shit

and feel the tender, giving earth

beneath my soles.

Sieze the grass in my fists

as if it were the wild hair of my lover

and wait.

But I do not love my soul yet.

I look up to the trees,

boughs thrust towards one another.

Bleed in seamless, lilac shadows.

Leaves pursue the rippled water,

consoled by their own reflection.

Out of the mute dark

they labor the whiteness of roots

into a new century.

Allow themselves to be hollowed out

by disease and lovemaking

in order to bear the silence.

Whitman makes me wonder

if he was able to love just one woman.

He craved

everyone and everything

and every portion

as if he were God himself.

My plight roots me here.

But I do love the world,

this grass, my river,

the fat, full ducks

who refuse my bread.

Written by K.

5/29/09

Bare-stript Heart

From "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman

I believe in you my soul,

the other I am must not abase itself to you,

And you must not be abased to the other.
Loafe with me on the grass,

loose the stop from your throat,

Not words, not music or rhyme I want,

not custom or lecture, not even the best,

Only the lull I like, the hum of your valved voice.

I mind how once we lay

such a transparent summer morning,

How you settled your head

athwart my hips and gently turn'd over upon me,

And parted the shirt from my bosom-bone,

and plunged your tongue to my bare-stript heart,

And reach'd till you felt my beard,

and reach'd till you held my feet.

Swiftly arose and spread around me

the peace and knowledge

that pass all the argument of the earth,

And I know that the hand of God

is the promise of my own,

And I know that the spirit of God

is the brother of my own,

And that all the men ever born

are also my brothers,

and the women my sisters and lovers,

And that a kelson of the creation is love...

From "Song of Myself" by Walt Whitman

Risk

"There came a time when the risk to remain tight in the bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

Anais Nin

Exiled In The Midwest

http://www.photoblog.com/kimauman/2008/04/08/north-americas-heartland-a-trip-to-independence-wisconsin.html

Nov 25, 2007
You received my letter today
and I wondered if you opened it
with your opposable thumb
or with a letter knife,
in a civilized manner.

Today, I turned
my palms up for rain,
to quench the thirst in life lines,
ease the drought.
Upon the ceaseless horizon,
the sun flicks lit matches
from east to west,
arsons the stripped fields
with its petty wants.

There are no valleys to trample,
nor Appalachians to curse.
Magic is useless here.
Even the foul breath of doggerels
pumping from the mill stack
dissipates into
this pure air of heaven.

Finding Hiddekel

Written 2007

I might as well have landed

in the dry riverbed of Hiddekel.

There is an epiphany at eleven

that crying cannot save you,

even the gentle persuasion of hands

cannot comfort you,

places where voices will not reach.

Ultimately, gravity becomes your love-mate.

Then you understand fish will drown in air,

floating is only the memory of babies

and for those things

beneath the slick pebbled water.

Written by K.

My Walk

I celebrate myself, and sing myself...
And what I assume you shall assume...

For every atom belonging to me as good as belongs to you.

Walt Whitman (1819 - 1892) Source: Song of Myself

Orpheus' Head Floating in the Wisconsin River

Written April 14th, 2009

I'm drowning my love,
drowsing,
for Selene will sweep me away
on the eddies.
I'm still singing.

But now comes out a
croak, a rasp;
fat juicy bullfrogs,

water bugs
skimming on silver skates
over my face.

While you were living your life,
I was torn to pieces

by the Maenads,

crowned in snakes,

they were thrilled by the power

I handed over.
All because I slumbered

for a moment.
Tired of being good.
Weary of chirping birds,
the adder mocking me,
the deer licking the salt
out of my hand.

Now the eddy
is twisting me towards the bogs.
I am bodiless,

floating past tree stumps,

angel mosses,
by the occasional

bloated corpse,

purling about the sedge.

Heaving towards the duck weed.

I want to know the tenderness of hands.
The flesh over bone,
well formed fingers
and palms soft
over my own wrist,
up to my neck,
where they rest

for a moment.

Seamless,
in lilac shadows,

where I can feel human warmth
emenate from lips.
Then a flash of smile
before the plunge.

You might see me as I am really am.
The very core of me,
the heart of my heart
and not turn away.
But now place two hands
on the back of my neck
and lean me closer.