I will bring you a warm and sunny day. Water too cold and green white sand, leached by the sun and wind. that beat upon you, that beat upon me, that filled the space between us, making connections and erasing them as quickly as the wash of the sea erased our footprints beside the pylons of the pier.

Lush and languid. We will sit beneath the awning of some sidewalk pub and sip beer and laugh and marvel at the taste of some exotic nacho dip. Was it spinach and artichoke and jack cheese? It will fill our mouths with a salty sweetness better than kisses and the beer will shiver in our bellies like an excitement we would be too afraid to express and we will pretend we only know each other as strangers.

And the day after, we will be strangers, having forfeited nothing of ourselves to the purchase of our rendevous no one the wiser.

(for a Friend, May 2, 1999)

AngelPie_Mouse (J.B) © Copyright, 1999; All Rights Reserved

Caged birds, a pair--small and white domesticated finches from somewhere...New Zealand? They came with an instruction book and a bamboo cage. They sang by day and chirruped lovingly by night.

I called her Piroette for the black patches on her eyes and he, merely Mr. Finch. Unmarked, he seemed less exotic. I fed them, gave them water, and changed their paper. There was seed every where, but I didn't mind.

The book said to put cotton balls and grass and bits of paper in their cage for nesting. I put a few cotton balls in their cage. Mr. Finch drew threads from the cotton balls and made nests. It seemed as if he were always making nests.

I found him hanging by one foot from his perch one day. I wondered how long he had hung there before I'd seen him. What a terrible caretaker. I cut him free. He lost the foot, amputated by the thread. It made no difference to Piroette.

Piroette laid eggs --small, white ovids that never hatched. There were no finch children, but she brooded those little eggs until she died. (The book didn't say I should remove them or when.)

Mr. Finch stopped singing after that-- A bachelor life apparently was disagreeable-- and not long after, he died. Age, perhaps, or a broken heart. He never told me.

I took down the bamboo cage and put it away. It's still a perfectly good cage for small birds. Maybe I'll try the experiment again some day.

And I expect that's why God gave us free will; so he wouldn't have to deal with instruction books. A much lower maintenance pet. But one wonders what he will do with the cage when we are finished with it.

AngelPie_Mouse (J.B) © Copyright, 1999; All Rights Reserved

The picture above is entitled "VietNam" and was created by Regan Mendenhall, who may be contacted through the website http://www.angelart-gallery.com/ragen. The piece won second place at the national 1995 Congressional Art Competition.

Poised at his shoulder, the angel seeks to lift this burden from him, memories too long carried and not yet carried long enough. This too shall pass and fade with clock tick, faces now too vivid, contorted with the horror of surprise... so this is pain? and this is death? and this is being forgotten? "The past is never dead; it isn't even past," he said. Wings beat in futile effort. The burden is too heavy even for the angels. They were children when they left us; they are old men now, else they shall be buried too long for remembering though we must remember.

AngelPie_Mouse (J.B) © Copyright, 1998, 1999; All Rights Reserved

She was in her forties. An old woman already thrown away. She lived in the streets. Maybe drugged up, boozed up, Maybe crazy from birth, Maybe crazy from life. Never really all there anywhere.

A shopping cart she stole from the grocery parking lot carried her possessions-- trinkets from front porches and yards, from the dumpsters she passed. A flower pot, a newspaper unopened. Anything portable.

She needed these things. Things validated her life. Isn't that what things are for? But not people. People are no validation. People have no eyes to see her. She passes by, a momentary nuisance.

She carried a broken screwdriver. It was her weapon, defense against people getting too close. "Stay away from me you people. I don't want none of you people. People aint no good for nothing. They only take."

On the street, his job. The man cleans up the mess, sweeps away the debris and refuse, makes it look nice even if it isn't, never was, never will be nice. It's just the street.

The people cross the street. The people pass along the street. No one lives in the street. No one works in the street. The street is to be avoided. You don't leave anything on the street if you can help it.

There was no help for her. The man came to clean the street. He looked like people. He sounded like people. She did what she does to people. She took out her broken screwdiver to fix him, them, the man.

No one said he had to let himself be hurt No one said she must stab you before you try to stop her. One blood on the street is enough. Her blood on the street is enough. He/they took out his gun and shot her. Dead on the scene, news at 11.

People who claim to be her people talk now: "it was racially motivated. They shot her for color." People who claim to be her people are suing the city for wrongful death. "She was our auntie, our kind and kin. You, man, had no right (have no right)."

No one mentions wrongful life. No one mentions where she slept, how she ate, what she wore. The nights she spent littering doorways or sewer covers just to stay warm. She was just a nuisance, a thing left in the street.

Petition now before the city council. Rename the intersection, the place where two streets cross, the place where she died becomes a monument to her significance in our lives. We'll call it her square because no one cares about the street.

AngelPie_Mouse (J.B) © Copyright, 1999; All Rights Reserved

He is tired. He lays his head upon my lap. I stroke the line of his jaw, feel the stubbled beginning of beard. He shaved this morning, but not since. Just that excites in me a need. He does not know. I will not tell him.

The curve of his shoulder fits my thigh. Perhaps, we have grown too comfortable. Yet the trust of this moment knots round my heart, aching. His breathing in and out matches my own, or maybe I match his. He sleeps and does not know. I will not tell him.

I had my own labors this day. My arms carried more than I needed for myself. My mind held more thoughts than I wanted to know. Perhaps, that he sleeps and I do not tells me that he is stronger than I am. His will and not my own though I shall congratulate myself that it is he who is now comforted.

Time will slip by. He will rouse himself feeling a little foolish for his seeming weakness. Perhaps, he will find tears in my eyes; perhaps, a smile. I do not know now what I will feel when he wakes. Joy or contempt--he will have earned neither. And I will not tell him.

AngelPie_Mouse (J.B) © Copyright, 1999; All Rights Reserved

All the lights and pipes and tubes could not tell me more than I already knew. I sat on the hard chair drawn to his bedside, California to Michigan in the hard cold January snow, watching eyelids flutter, watching the orbs beneath roll and wondered what REM sleep there was to the final struggle of life.

I took his hand.

It was an amazingly small hand. I could remember fear of that hand, but it had seemed larger then not so slack and spotted, but finely shaped and moving to a symphony of his own music. He wrote the symphony of his own music filled with crescendos and dissonances, hardly ever resolving to a harmony or a rest.

Here would be rest.

Death of a father. You hardly ever remember anything but the demand for discipline. No task required was ever beyond demand, but in all that life time of recrimination, I had never once simply held his hand. I wanted to feel his fingers curl in mine but they were already stone and cold and still he breathed, the machine that had pumped air into his lungs for three days had been turned off.

And still he breathed.

I considered for a moment, if he could hear me, what would I say? "See you in the morning, Daddy?" Image of a white table, a toaster and a newspaper, a small cup with this day's medications, and a large mug for coffee, careful placemats. Order. Would you send me up the stairs to get my slippers then? On that other morning?

"See you in the morning."

Who are you, daddy? Who were you? When you saw yourself as a child, who did you want to be? How do you measure your success? Are you the man you saw then? Are you better than your vision? Did you like the man you became?

Final revelation.

It's alright to die. He opens his eyes after three days closed. Does he see me now? or are his eyes now turned to another world? My mother stands beside the head of his bed. He seems to look at her. He takes a deep breath, ragged. He closes his eyes and the whole world shudders a little more lost without a guide.

That was for "goodbye."

Death of a father. You hardly ever get to ask all the questions the questions you were afraid to ask. the questions you should never ask. the questions that were not yours to ask though somehow you needed the answer. If it had started: "when I was your age..." It wouldn't have mattered. You wouldn't have listened. It would have all been lost. And you would have done what you should have done anyway gone looking for the answers for yourself. But somehow, that it never began, makes the seeking all the more difficult.

"Goodnight, Daddy; see you in the morning." And that was for "goodbye."

AngelPie_Mouse (J.B) © Copyright, 1999; All Rights Reserved

There once was a Canadian moose In love with a migrating goose. When south the goose flew, The moose tried to go too. On the Interstate, there's now a moose loose.

Crested foam flecked curl tumbling toward the milk white strand where no footfall shows where no evidence remains except a black-tipped feather.

It begins quietly-- Fingers laced in the embrace that only hands can perform, then separating. We touch each other. Your hands exploring my shoulders, my neck; my hands examining the contours of your chest, as much in a gesture of "stop" as in the nervous eagerness of "continue."

Your chest is hard and hot and heavy. I feel you labor to lift it in breathing. Your skin possesses a firm compact with muscle and softer tissues. The scent of it fills my nostrils, constricts my throat, awakens appetites I have no name for. I need to taste you.

You tilt my face up, lifting my chin. My body makes no resistance but follows to the inevitable encounter of your lips on my lips. I stand poised on legs stretched too far to anchor me further to the ground. You draw me in to your strength, to your bracing. My thighs press to your thighs, my stomach to yours, my back arches. I become taller, taunter-- a single vibrating string to be struck in drone to some music on some instrument-- mocking symphony to the separateness I want to surrender.

You breath life into my mouth-- expanding my lungs, filling my throat, my belly, my being. I become vessel to contain your trembling. Lips moist, hard, crushing, unyielding. Enter me, fill me, become me. We will be no more separate. But the only blending that I experience is the uniting of my own will-- my mind, my body, my soul-- in the attenuating desire to possess you to own you, to have you surrender to me.

I want this moment to expand, to amplify and stretch to infinity. I somehow feel I should be as large as that, contain as much as that, become immortal.

My mouth aches, the bruising reality. Your hands slide across my back-- drawing me closer, enveloping my body. I sense you trying to force our merging. At the same moment of thrill that your desire is as strong as my own, your will to become all the same, I realize disappointment that it will not be. Elation and sadness, I withdraw.

(Written: July 15, 1999)

AngelPie_Mouse (J.B) © Copyright, 1999; All Rights Reserved

Give me not pale moonlight-- that drains the world of color and obscures the vividness of your expression, your eyes, your smile-- or star-filled skies-- that in their solitary lustre against the icy blackness of space underscore our separateness. In solitude, I may prefer the scent of night blooming jasmine, the silence of the wind, the far away hum of traffic in the night, but not when I'm with you.

Give me not isolated sea swept beaches where the ocean laps uncaringly to erase all that has gone before. I do not wish to be reminded that you and I are mere specks of sand in the universe of time-- one moment together, the next brushed aside.

Come to me in rooms of daylight with white lace curtains against sunstreaked windows, with warm clean sheets, trailing and bowls of ripe citrus scenting the air; or let us roll together on green lawns, squinting at clouds that remind us of other lovers tumbling in the sky; or in crowded places where the world narrows to just you and I can feel the heaviness of joy rising in my chest that all the world must envy me having you. I do not want to be a part of infinity. I want to be part of you.

(Written: July 16, 1999)

AngelPie_Mouse (J.B) © Copyright, 1999; All Rights Reserved

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