Death of a Beloved- Maya

Alone in the house

for a week,

I thought about it.

What if this were

my permanent condition?

Not a little break, a respite,

a rare chance for solitude,

but the way, the state of being,

the everyday condition.

Finding the house locked up

every day when

I get home from work.

No one to cook for.

The handyman chores hired out

or left undone.

 

It is not a question

of maybe,

but rather one of when.

And who.

 

For one of us

will face this.

Jane Kenyon knew it. 

She wrote –

One day it will be otherwise -

And it was,

for her and Donald Hall,

she succumbing to leukemia,

and he left to write

his poems alone.

 

I loved this week,

the house quiet and all mine.

No struggling over who

gets to use the iMac now.

Cooking and eating

what I wanted

when I wanted it.

Peaceful late afternoons

in the hammock.

 

But always, always,

lurking somewhere

in my mind, the knowledge

that what is treasured now

could be despised later.

 

The death of a beloved,

a ghost of the future

haunting the house.

Maya, 8/29/09, Prompt: Death of a Beloved

BEING UNMASKED

I want to throw off this face
that pretends that I am cool.
Toss these shoes that think
they protect me from movement into life.
I want to burn these gloves
that try to warm me from the cold
calculations of my hands.
And this shirt I want to tear from my breast
so my heart no longer
hides beneath the veneer of fashion or choice.

Even this bodily container is too much to bear!
I want to flay the skin from my flesh,
scrap the flesh from my bones.
I want to dance the flamenco
on the sidewalk before friends,
my sun-washed heels clacking
on concrete like a pair of dancing hammers.

I will dance across the harsh earth
until the powder of my bones blows
across the Kalahari desert.
There, a lone hyaena, exiled from his tribe,
finds my frowning bleached skull laying in the dust.
Taking pity on a fellow traveler,
he cracks the plates
of my skull into thin shards
strewing them over the parched sand.

Then I’ll wipe my brow and notice it’s
still there.
My mask.
Maybe I’ll laugh until I cry,
the tears seeping out the latex holes
of my eyes,
running down latex cheeks.

I’ll cry for 52 years
or until I stop.
Then, one day, like any other,
I’ll go to work and
sitting in my office find the mask washed away.

When I Sing - Maya

Prompt: When I Sing


When I sing
My heart opens
The breath moves, relieved
Ah -- at last –-
To be released --
Why do you hold me for so long?
How can you forget so often?

Breath, song,
The great Ha
Sent forth into the world
In praise in gratitude in celebration.

Song opens, then,
Unfolding, like muscles rippling
in Continuum undulate
Like a gift happy to be opened and given.

When I sing
I wander into harmonies
The fun of higher or lower
Contrasting notes
Playing against each other,
Notes in patterns
Like colors printing themselves
Across a page -
The red over the black
The green twining around the purple.

It’s too simple to say
Singing is a joy
Because sometimes
It’s sorrow it’s escape it’s communion-
That singing
That singing together.

I mean, there’s singing alone
In the car with the radio or CD
And that’s fine and I
Can sing really loud because no one
Will hear me
And I can ignore the looks of other drivers
I will never see again.

But then there’s the
Singing together,
The heart-singing fun-singing-
Around-the-campfire kind of singing,
And the group singing
So full of ecstatic voice that
Tears spontaneously fill up the eyes and
Have to spill over.

When I sing –
When I remember to sing –
I love -- I think –-
Why don’t I sing every day?
Even alone.
Why do I forget
The singing?