Diagnosis

                                                     watching the ultrasound

                                                            of my heart

                                                beat from a long-forgotten sea

                                             mesmerizedby the image on the screen

                                                        life’s metronome

                                                 its rhythm a pink fist’s fingers

                                      curling     uncurling      a seateddancer’s spine

                                                       vertebra after vertebra

                                                   unrolling        rolling back up

                                          ora sea anemone      flowerlike carnivore

                                                whose toxic stinging tentacles

                                                 pulse to catch its fishy prey

                                                but not the immune clownfish

                                          which presses itself into the anemone

                                              their bond a protective symbiosis

                                            pressurefrom the ultrasound’s probe

                                                  reveals my pulsating valves

                                             but no secrets from my stented heart

                                                        Homecoming

                                                    I came back alone.

                                                    The cleaning ladies

                                                    were there before me–

                                                    chair misplaced, garlic

                                                    on the butcher block

                                                    not on the countertop,

                                                    theunfamiliar

                                                    in the familiar.

                                                    But then I looked out.

                                                    Windows on all sides

                                                    opened unto wild

                                                    daisies everywhere,

                                                    awhite explosion.

                                                    But at the garden

                                                    they form a border–

                                                    dense, rectangular,

                                                     asif protecting

                                                    the vegetables.

                                                   Sleepless that night, I

                                                   went to the window.

                                                   In the ambient light

                                                   a sea of white daisies

                                                   floating in darkness–

                                                    eerie,comforting.

                                                         Connectthe Dots

                                                                     I.

                                                         The other side

                                                            ofsilence

                                                        is not emptiness.

                                                     When you split wood,

                                                          one side knows

                                                 it belongs to what it has lost.

                                                           Scar tissue

                                                           is always

                                                           secondbest.

                                                                   II.

                                                       the ache to rejoin

                                                           its juncture

                                                         an open sore

                                                       Without loyalty

                                                             betrayal

                                                 hasnothing to eviscerate.

                                                 Without the possibility

                                                         of betrayal

                                                 loyalty remains rhetoric.

                                                                    III.

                                                         The other side

                                                           of silence

                                                        is not emptiness.

                                                        Giacometti said

                                                        “one must try…

                                               to translate one’s sensations.”

                                                                  Skin

                                                            has its own

                                                             vocabulary.

Bill T. JonesArticulates the Universe

                                              The3-D glasses

                                             make the video spill

                                     into the small, dark, viewing room.

                                       Space explodes from thescreen      

                       Linesfast-moving,

                                                         never staying in one place  

                                         thrust

                                                      stab

                               curve                                         arc

                   spiral

                            into

                                 emptiness that is not empty, but a presence

                   cut, shredded, bisected, dissected, everywhichway sected

                                           The dancer’s body

                                       painted with white shapes

                                    floats

                                              twirls

                                         appears          fades

                            in images small                    then large

                                                       disappears                    

                                                       reappears

                                            sometimes the whole body

                                            sometimes just white shapes

                                                  not a body, a muscle

                                            This is life after death.

                                            Thesoul twirls in the cosmos,

                                            changes shape, fades,

                                            comes kick-ass back,

                                       plays hide and seek with gravity,

                                       dances among the arcs, the spirals,

                                       leaps the lines and comes to heaven

                                            where parallel lines meet.