*
 
 
how I hope to grow old
 
 
The old man treated the cancer as his friend.
He thought of the little DNA codes breaking down
inside of his cells, like the mottos on gravestones -
 
sweetly beautiful as they slip away
into a smoothness of rain-softened stone.
 
And anyway, others deserved
to know the world,
from their own youth.
 
One can be a twilit being. He tried
to have that effect on others, to carry himself
that way, around them: the effect of dusk:
 
so that they might muse a little bit to themselves,
sip their coffee slowly, and not even know he was
here.
 
 
 
 
*
 
 
charity
 
 
It was simple, really. You watched, and listened.
 
You mentioned the dead husband's name quite gently.
You brought up a couple of the old songs.
You pointed them toward something they could be proud
of
 
and let them remember it for themselves.
 
 
 
 
*
 
 
the poet's prerogative
 
 
how beautiful it is with you, here, in the moonlight.
I do not have my own phone number memorized.
I can't even tell you the number of my apartment -
303? 305? But I can tell you that you are beautiful
and I know this, by comparing you
to Nefertiti, and Cleopatra, and Julie,
even though I've never met any of them.
This is the poet's prerogative:
this memory.
 
 
 
 
*
 
 
You bent your legs back
till they tapped the headboard.
 
Later, we each drank an imported pilsner
and watched a silly show.
 
 
You fell off to sleep on the couch.
 
I turned, and looked at you:
 
blue shadows from the TV splashed on your face
like a rainstorm.
 
 
 
 
*
 
 
When we met again, years later,
as I touched your body and felt it move,
 
the echoes of other men
 
felt themselves against me
 
 
 
 
 
*
 
 
After a long, happy day
cooking Christmas treats,
 
in bed, your shoulders
smelled of flour and honey.
 
 
 
 
*
 
 
You sipped your beer,
we kissed and I kept
kissing you till
I kissed all the beer taste
off of your sweetness
 
 
 
*
 
 
In springtime,
the air smells like the water tastes.
 
I jog down the chilly hallway
naked into the steam-bloomed bathroom.
 
Drying off, I smell coffee from the kitchen.
 
There is no difference between how I am now
and how I was then, except, perhaps, that I won't let
you know
if I cry, a little, for joy and loss -
it no longer matters to me
if things in my life are remembered.
 
 
 
 
*
 
 
the geode
 
 
When he was young, once, he took
an assortment of golden pocket watches
his grandfather had given him
and took them all apart, marveling
at their little works and bevels.
 
A silvery spring, delicate,
that rose and fell like a fly's heart.
 
 
Older now, he had
a geode someone gave him.
 
It was not open - a dull gray ball,
it sat on his bookshelf.
 
He left it closed.
 
 
 
 
*
 
 
if you think you're saved,
you have forgotten
the one just like you
who hasn't been saved,
whose effort has come to nothing,
whose car won't start,
whose shoe sole flaps,
whose wife talks differently
to him than to the others,
whose vision seems flattened.
 
If you think you've failed
you forget the one
who is almost like you
except they have connected,
watch as they get lifted, taken
away, into where wherever is.
 
To say something good, and also real -
years ago, I would've said
 
"To say something good, but also real" -
 
 
but contradictions have worn me out.
 
 
 
 
*
 
 
a master
 
 
In reality, all the mage could give him
was a bowl of herb to smoke
and a blue crystal ball to gaze in.
But that was enough.
 
They sit there, watching particles of strawdust
circle and drift in the candlelight.
Outside, through the open window
sounds of horses stamping and snoring.
They pour a little more wine
from the bladder that hangs from a nail.
 
"Let me show you this," the old man says
and, tiptoe on a stool, takes down
a massive book hidden above a shelf.
 
Their two faces close,
they turn the heavy pages.
The young man marvels at the glinting goldleaf
halos in back of the tiny faces
of saints and virgins, delicately sketched.
 
The old man marvels too.
There are some things in this world
which bring us all the same
way from ourselves.
 
Let none of this be lost.
 
 
 
 
*
 
 
chamomile tea
 
 
Sunlight mixed with a woman's voice,
dandelions with thick green stalks.
Fingers scented of honeysuckle.
 
A sad man
thinks of these things
in winter
 
a happy man
holds these things
in summer
 
 
 
 
*
 
 
Venice Beach
 
 
I miss Venice Beach, Los Angeles -
the crowds of folks on the promenade
in front of the beach;
the elegant bald black man rollerskating
while another man tends the portable P.A. setup
blasting Madonna and eurodisco . . . .
I miss the little head shops, the hippie apartments,
the rasta flag hanging over a sunbleached porch,
the fragrance of palms, the way late afternoon plays
across
stucco walls. I miss the tea house
a couple blocks in from the beach,
where I could sip chamomile tea
and write things in my notebook, as I watched
young people come and go
from the front door of the hostel.
I miss the late night bar scene
when ridiculous men in bright white blazers
and women whose faces define loved and lost
sit with light-blue colored drinks in peculiar
glasses.
I miss the gentle entrance
to the Rose Bud Tavern, where poor, sickly men
nurse their longnecks, saying little.
Also the candle dealer
and the man displaying his surrealist paintings,
and the mime in the grimy Blues Brothers outfit
and the man on roller skates playing Hendrix
through an electric guitar hooked up to a tiny amp
strapped to his back.
 
I saw him there one year
and I saw him again another year
thus showing that the place
allows eccentricity to endure.
 
Which gives me hope for my own mind. And I even miss
some patches of Santa Monica beach, up the way -
though not as much - the bums in their sleeping bags,
the ferris wheel out on the pier . . . .
 
Strange, how with places and people I love,
I miss them, it seems, even in their presence,
and seem to forget where I am
as if I was there, in my heart
as well as my body.
 
 
 
 
*
 
 
L.A. sunlight
 
 
How beautiful this sunlight is, in Los Angeles
where my parents walk through rolling streets
of Westwood, back from the university.
Even the colossal Mormon complex
 
does not look too awful, in this light
which plays on glinty little planes
lifting and circling above the downtown
spires
 
and plays on the sleek black curls of the man
who works the checkout at Starbucks -
who knows, maybe a would-be actor or playwrite -
 
and at night, there's a delicious warm coolness in the
air.
That's when I like to drive down to Sunset
and walk slowly up and down the strip
looking at the clubbers, the CD store displays,
the theme bars with their booming music
suddenly silenced when a door shuts.
 
There's even a bookstore, up toward one end of Sunset,
where you might find a used Allan Watts, or beatnik
bio.
 
 
If I love this earth
it will force me to grieve.
 
I like to sip tea, and watch the cats
sun on the porch.
 
 
 
 
*
 
I sit here on my bed naked
in my tiny duplex apartment
at the end of a working class street
not far from downtown Raleigh.
 
I left my glasses at work
and don't feel like wearing my contacts
so I walk around, myopic,
making a cup of chamomile tea,
fighting, shrugging or sleeping
off despair or embracing it in which case it goes
 
as I sit here naked on my mattress,
listening to a Nick Drake bootleg,
still recovering from last night's bender.
Those friends of mine really do drink too much.
 
On one of Nick's songs
recorded on a tape deck
at his parent's house, I think
you can hear some birds chirp
in the background.
 
If you were here, I'd clean up a little,
put on some clothes, I suppose, and
we'd talk about this and that.
 
A flash through the venetian blinds
on both sides of my bedroom -
crack, the lightning is close.
 
Copyright © 2003 Anders