Occupyeveryskinnytree

A Dwelling

--And in the central valley, 

people were dreaming of peaches.

Starlings at the scalloped edges off new blossoms.

In the night orchards,

the dreamer walked over hot coals with the poems

and made creation seem effortless--there!

What do you fear in a poem?

(I fear the moment of excess, as in March,

when oxalis comes out all in one day.)

What do you fear in the poem?

(I fear that moment of withholding--

especially inside what I thought was free;

and I feared the poem was just like her,

that it would abandon me--)

--So the poem is the story of the writing of itself.

In the white tent of the psyche

or out there in the normal fog:

the mockingbird all spring:

she looked just like a note herself, 

each bit of music slipping past her

till it stopped--

each time one note missing; 

it wasn't exactly a failure on her part,

she just needed something to do tomorrow.

Same thing with the poem. Perhaps

an idea came with it, an idea of fourness, the yellowness

of spring, a certain belief in the completion 

of a plan. Not so now. In your dream

of wholeness, death began.

So, put yourself in the way

of the poem. It needed your willing 

impediment to be written. Remember the lily, 

growing through the heart of the corpse?

You had to be willing to let it through the sunshine

error of your life, 

be willing not to finish it-- 

--Brenda Hillman, from Death Tractates

I just read this article

Poet Bashing Police 

Bob and Brenda have always cared for us this way. My own copy of Death Tractates bears a little inscription from Brenda on the title page: 

"For Abigail--

With many thanks 

for your sequence. 

Best wishes-Brenda 2-1-01" 

What a corny little poem! And in pencil even, in case I should wish to erase it (wince) and thus (gasp) increase the market value of the book...

She gave our class copies of her little collection of pieces about the untimely death of a mentor and then acknowledged that our classwork had helped to pull her out of a writer's block. "I feel like we should pour gatorade over our heads. We won! We won!," She exclaimed in her tiny and potent voice.

So as I read about my dearest Brenda being severely and bodily disrespected, how she told the officers they ought to be at home reading with their children, how Bob described his own bumbling attempts to rescue her... 

Well, the tears just started coming into my eyes and I tried to swallow them but they were just too many for the barricade of reasonable thoughts I tried to pit against them:

"It's not like she's your mother, for Christ's sake! Don't be so attached to the poets, the poems are still in tact..." 

"She has probably been treated worse for less... She probably knew what she was getting herself into. She used to smoke in the shower--only the best of us can manage stuff like that."

"The whole article is about how they both survived the blows and things are going to be just fine. They're up and going to the gym, so that is good."

But each insensitive thought in my mind just endeared the real, annoyingly sensitive me more and more to their sweet faces and genuine kindness, to their impulse to protect and their attempts to fight for the poetic justice they hold so dearly.

I realize I am just afraid to lose their physical presence in the world; I'm afraid I might have to occupy this planet without their bodies 

...and so, of course, I have once again comforted myself with their words.

If you are not in the habit of imbuing everything with ambiguity you may not have yet tried on the idea that Bob's article is quite cleverly titled. Sure, the cops used clubs but Bob and Brenda have called forth a more powerful force all this while: I can't tell you how many times Brenda urged me to "get my writing done." Those cops have another thing coming if they think they can beat Bob at his own game.

I'm taking my emotional response to the idea of beating poets as a sign that I have been trying too hard to dismiss the police brutality against the Occupy movement. I have been trying to keep it all in perspective because I am daily surrounded by terrible abuses of power and the victimization of the impoverished in my midst. I have been so immersed in bringing up the children in the way that they should go that I have not done my best to put myself in the shoes of the protestors, to put myself in the way... 

And all because I was afraid to add to my own already intense sense of powerlessness this new flavor of futility and frustration. What was I afraid my feelings would do?... Have I not yet learned that these frustrations fuel the fire of my best work? Did I forget how much kinetic energy is stored up in my anger?

Good grief.

Since the skinnytree is my way of reaching out and confessing I thought I should send up my little flare of awareness, hoping you will see it and locate yourself nearby... 

I am posting this little piece so as to be held accountable for asking myself again and again about my fears of poems and poets, of losing a mentor and having to put myself in the way when others can not. In the violent times I must not be afraid of my own voice; my pitiful silence may be the one thing I can overcome... and so here it is, tumbling out in lines and circles for everyone to see

I promise I will try my best to put myself in the way of the poem Occupy is writing

for Bob and Brenda and you and me.

It's a funny thing for me to try to understand the Occupy phenomenon.
For the sake of clarity, here is how I see it:
The people who have been ignored would like to take up space in a visible place so that they my hear and be heard as well as see and be seen. If that is indeed the case, then I say every time you remember those folks living in tents in public spaces, punched or pepper sprayed just for being visible, mention them kindly, think of them fondly or even just wonder about what it is they are up to, you have become somewhat preoccupied, if not altogether occupied by their cause.

It took me a little extra time to get on board but now that I am emotionally involved, I welcome your skepticism or praise (whatever you have on hand) and proudly link arms with those hairy wary crazies who are, as one occupykst member put it, "just occupyin' ever'where." 

The skinnytree is officially

Occupied as only it could be,

as the poet said,

"In the white tent of the psyche

or out there in the normal fog:"

I don't often write love songs... usually lamentations

Probably because I am officially and often in mourning when I realize that I have to get up to go to work in the morning whenever I am painfully aware that my birds are growing--they can't help it, even now, as they sleep through the night...

There is always

((a lurch of honesty and the stench)

ketchup in your smile.

You can't wait to tell me the news:

the front page is caught in the arms

of the trees and you are learning the word for branches 

as you learn the words for miracles like orange and autumn and leave.

I am teaching you to blow kisses, to ask for help, 

to refuse forcible apology 

with grace 

as frailties burst forth and limbs fly.

You teach me to 

walk (slowly) and speak (carefully) and to be (sure)

with myself and a song. 

Today

is for you this one page 

in one book is enough;

we will feel the paper of it under our fingers 

chew on the words and then press them out, sending them out 

blowing consonant bubbles into the stillness

seven times (perfectly)

you will finish what I've begun 

and then you will curl and snore a little, mildly, like a wildly exhausted housecat and promise to 

dance when you wake and

morning milk mustaches portend 

muscular strivings to bake a cake of the sand: with ingredients you had on hand

or pry the clothing off a baby doll

and I am ever in mourning that this will not last; 

we will be lost 

to it?

in it?)

tomorrow.