Forethought

I was thinking last night about 
our pre-paid funeral packages.

Hoping the business doesn’t go tits up
before we do.

¿Por Qué Me Sonríes?

Work in Progress

A Mexican woman

With a sensual face, broad-lipped,

The right size and age.

Her hair fell 

like a soft curtain on his face 

as she bent her ear to hear

him respond

To her friendly question

“Why are you smiling at me?”

She had asked.

He had had a clear, sidewise 

look at her

from the end of the loud bar, 

and she was often turned

in his direction,

chatting with a female friend—

three of them there

in a party to watch the 

Superbowl— 

the gringa friend’s 

husband making the third.

Against the background clatter,

cresting tides of excited noise were incessant,

Responding to the broadcast fortunes 

of one of the teams or the other, 

but, laying beneath,

there was a fluttering feeling in the crowd.

During commercial breaks especially, 

some of that body 

were unconsciously inspired to quest in their 

surroundings for some clue 

to the greater meaning 

of the moment. 

Eyes were cast about, and, 

in a fraction of a flickering second,

His connected with hers--

They both knew it was coming.

Then it was there and then

it was gone.

They both knew 

that it would happen 

again. 

A spark had been lit,

The usual business

had been disturbed.

You wouldn't--couldn't-- 

walk out on something like that.

A little later, 

he watched her take a shot, 

probably tequila.

He was on his second beer. 

The game droned on, on multiple televisions,

but became more of a background. 

He couldn’t have told you who had the greater score. 

The locus of his feelings was shifting south.

A couple of more passes later.

They locked on again.

And soon after, 

again.

The room had contracted,

The space between them--

Electrified...

He felt tempted by her allure--no doubt,

And frightened for the threat 

to his marriage. 

He had made a decision

to neither deny his attraction, 

Nor his wedding band.

In other words:

the revealing path of 

honesty.

He would let the 

sheer pleasure of her company

be his guide.

It's About Time

It's about Time,

the whole shit-er-ee.

Just thank God

the major appliances

are all still running.

There'll come a time,

I know, when the stove

or just the toaster

will go kaput.

We dodged a bullet with that toaster 

a couple of years ago--

took it in to have it reparado...

...the guy told me he didn't do nothing-- 

in that Mexican way that they have--

and waved his fee away.

Waking Up Worried

The feeling I had this morning:

The hangover of a jumbled dream 

in which I felt bumps on the backs of my thighs--

A malignant keratosis--

Dissolution of the treasures given in this particular incarnation. 

Ultimate poverty.

That's what was on my mind burrowing my face into a pillow
Bracing for reentry into our world and its familiar greedy fears,

This morning.

Bailando Por la Sala

Dancing through the living room

Is a proud and graceful thing to do:

Playing with balance as limbs shift

fluidly in motion, muscles rippling,

Coaxed by some music or something inside

that casts an arm, extends a leg, haunches a hip.

Shapes the edge...Alters the reality...

Now this is where I think it'd really be cool

to see myself in an x-ray mirror as

Mr Skeleton Man--

Moving like a loose-limbed marionette

To some

faded velvet honkey-tonk tune--

Those clank-clank-clanking ashen-white bones.

But we're not there yet.

It's still muscles and ligaments for us.

Fuckin' ligaments!

Under the thinning skin.

Making Meaning

Making Meaning

Making meaning of the smallest things:

The way—for example—one ant trudges

with its brethren, all of them in coordinated colony-wide parade,

in the returning-home-with-the-goods line, 

waving their cut leaves to acknowledge

Accomplishment and contribution,

as they pass their mates coming the other way

having already dropped their green loads to molder 

and turn into food in subterranean rooms 

connected through countless passages—

coming and going—an endless chain

of work in motion from high out on a single branch up in an arbol whose 

roots crack the pavement in the sidewalk and parking lot—

twenty meters along the edge of the connecting wall to the farmacia’s steps…

(How many round-trips from each ant per day, do you suppose?

Do they stay in their little work-matey cliques? Or could their neighbors-

in-labor be just anyone? The guy down the hall. Do they ever take a break? 

Or maybe there is no individual being there, in the way that we know it.)

…At the steps (right where a nursing human mother often sits selling green beans,

but not at this particular time) dual lines either emerge to the 

lively air or descend underground from the sun- and moon-lit slice of

our shared existence, marching resolutely down into their own weird 

dark world of corms and roots, rocks and worms, eggs of something or other

waiting to be hatched somewhere hidden below our everyday feet.

Or, another small thing: 

The way a dancing movement ripples through your body—

The shift of muscles and bones in fluid motion, coaxed by music or

something inside you that extends a leg and haunches a hip.

The ligaments—the fuckin’ ligaments! Et cetera. Et cetera.

Or:

Just before Christmas, 2021

Just Before Christmas

I was teetering on the edge--

The rootless feeling--

Falling into that shit.

Then she walked towards me

through the patio

from our bedroom casita,

Flowers flowing behind her, 

coming from her lips--little birds

with blessings, bringing joy 

And contentment to my heart.