Human Thanksgiving

Bi Janus

I, having waked,

feel you stretching

in contented sleep

as I have felt men do

in contentment,

though you are not a man.

Whether with yang of men

or with nothingness

that is woman’s yin,

I flow to the opposite pole,

and the contentment

just before waking

is the same,

something in the spirit,

if spirit exists,

is the same.

Beneath the heated blanket,

not waking alone,

but not strictly aware

that I am with you,

the sigh and the reach

of your arm to mine

as I draw a breath

is our thanksgiving.

The Boy Confused (1982)

Bi Janus

The meter is inexact

He can’t find a rhyme

in this landscape

He tries, I distract

him for a time

Why him he thinks

He, pupils dilated,

wanting you

he has written the play

Frustrated

when he hears your cue

He must take us

to have you

Shard

Bi Janus

The verse is a shard,

found in situ

in a certain layer.

I brush the dirt away

with camel hair of vocal cords,

slowly sounding its contours.

If I speak other shards,

I may piece a pot together

and hold it up before me.

I cannot know

if the potter was a saint

or a murderous heart.

Questions for Hart Crane

Bi Janus

for Myron Ochshorn (1920-2012)

Were you difficult

because of coyness?

In my youth I struggled

with you, and you

held me tight all the way

into the sea.

In my age,

ashore, you are

the last one who

moves me to weep.

The veneer of indirectness

cannot conceal you.

Whom did you think

you would disappoint,

one woman among

all the men, not enough?

Did you think the Gulf

tenderer than your

own drunken judgment?

And all because you

were on your knees

before those sailor boys

as Winters’ crowd,

protesting the whole while,

was before you unable

to help itself.

In my youth

I thought you

another Blake.

I know better

in age.

Still, while I would converse

with Eliot across

a linen-covered table,

with you I would

sneak to the back row

of a second-run cinema

under the flickering projector

to savor the touch

of your shoulder

on mine in the darkness.

Between Florida and the Cascades, Eli

Bi Janus

How does a man

compete with a place?

What’s the calculus

of the hurricane

and the volcano?

Brief reunions,

twice a year,

would haul us

across the rasp

endlessly, keeping

the wounds weeping

red wolf tears

until our wolves shriveled.

Intimates reduced

to acquaintance, what

would our talks encompass—

the river of longing

between the hearts,

worse, our work,

a holiday mimeograph?

Eli, you saved me

for Ann, and I

you for Justine.

We kept the cake,

eating it, too,

sating the wolf’s hunger.

Are we longtime companions,

whispered to the world now

in encrypted obituary code?

Vivimos dia por dia.

Email is no touch,

yet I look

for yours every day,

and, as to touch,

none is more

than less.

We would not bear

thirty more goodbyes,

thirty more last times.

Sex, the Animal

Bi Janus

Sex, the animal,

is but a small part

of us, he says.

Which way we

are pulled

is no great matter,

the soul weighing

what it does,

he says.

I wonder aloud at him.

You’re a fucking liar,

afraid to admit

how much your prick

weighs against

your soul.

Or, you’re not pulled

so much as stuck.

Sex, the animal,

says he, is

an appurtenance,

a dim signal

of magisterial

humanity.

Let’s pull it out

as we might

a vermiform vestige.

You twit, I moan.

Sanctimony draping

pure electric body

won't give you

respite from looking

over your shoulder

to find the wolf

in your eye's corner

and your fields all

overgrown with lavender.

Hué

Bi Janus

Ty, home in a box.

They told us about

the jungle, not

the concrete

of Hué City.

Your last day,

spent among ruins

like Berlin in forty-five,

among sniper’s nests,

not palms and rice.

Your sweetness lost,

no more glances

in gym class showers

or wrestling in the dark.

Flinching at shots

over your casket,

I wish, of all things,

that you could have found

your way back,

found your way

to love.

My Son at Three (1978)

Bi janus

Under the oak,

on leaf-strewn lawn,

the boy, solitary,

bends, forearms

on thighs, to observe

some insect or worm.

The breeze rustles

hissing leaves.

The boy, unthinking,

among friends,

puts finger to lips,

and hushes the wind.

Jim’s Voyage

Bi Janus

A sea can have mountains,

or a river,

and climbing

is a sidelong journey

against gravity and tide.

Luffing sails before the wind,

hesitate and concentrate,

as a man might rest

leaning on his walking stick

face turned up to a crest,

before the wind takes you

at angles to the goal.

Switching back on the chop,

tacking to shore from shore,

an improbable journey made

possible over a certain length

but whiling an uncertain time.

On Viewing Two Sailors Urinating by Charles Demuth, 1930

Bi Janus

We are cast as the Elders

ogling Susanna

at her toilet.

But you put us

on our knees

confronting the cocks

instead of leaving us

in the greenery

peering down.

Are you bringing us

to concupiscent silence

at one man holding

both members?

Susanna and all

her sisters

seem to sigh

in acquiescence.

As men we should

perhaps understand

the transgression,

strictly a crime,

but understandable.

You gave not

the sailors to women

as Rembrandt gave

Susanna to lechers –

they are for our eyes.

Only in this way

could you make

equal

the transgressions,

as the sailors sigh

but not in acquiescence.

Ripe for Wounding (1974)

Bi Janus

On the couch

while Ann fixes tea

you ask

how you can find him

and what you might

do if you should.

We’ve been reading

Eliot on the porch

and you are a student

with no one else to ask.

Ann kisses your forehead,

murmuring your perfection.

We want love so much

we see it everywhere

often where it is not.

The Idea of Usefulness at Snyder’s Bar (1965)

Bi Janus

No warmth on my palm

sliding over the wood table,

where sawdust is the unction

for a child’s confusion.

At the right hand of a beer

John Joseph sits in conversation

at the bar with an archangel

who keeps his glass full.

The pucks slide without

the friction of our hands held

tight when walking with Dad

to the tavern for quality time.

The silence of that progress,

his guilt heart-locked and leaden,

fashions my rough desire

to find my use in his life.

Would I be useful if flesh

were stripped from me

in a sky burial

and my thighbones

were wrought flutes?

The Boys They Masturbate

Bi Janus

with apologies to e e cummings

Poor Mom and Dad

Wonder, stuck in mild confusion

He thinks the boys not so bad

She keeps a nice delusion

The boys they come out faces flushed

From tiled rooms but can’t be rushed

The boys they masturbate

And never don’t or hesitate

For any time is ripe

When urges pop of any stripe

To have a randy bout

And make themselves turn inside out

The boys do linger nearly forever

And more excuses make quite clever—

more time for reading or meditation

No need for laxative medication

Dad tells Mom they’ll be all right

For he remembers that delight

The boys they masturbate

And never don’t or hesitate

For any time is ripe

When urges pop of any stripe

To have a randy bout

And make themselves turn inside out

Second Commandment

Bi_janus

You have reason

to be jealous,

and we feel Your fear

behind the bitchy rant.

At the beginning,

we ate the juicy pulp.

Did Your fear begin then,

when we outran You,

became, as You feared,

like one of You?

Did Your own intemperate fire

begin to singe Your leaves?

Five thousand years

of pique have not

calmed Your jealous heart,

because You know that,

kneeling together,

entering human communion,

drinking an offering

from the same stem,

sharing the salty spend,

a mana of human devotion,

we hear You aghast

that we know Your heart.

Nagasaki

Bi Janus

Sun bleeds to the line

where sky melts into sea.

The end moves ahead,

a mirage in verdure.

The heat on my back

turns me for an instant,

the flash long passed,

before the fire consumes.

Few see my mouth,

corners turned up,

the grin blossoming

in the sweet psyche

And lost to the world

in the dispersion of vapor.

Nothing is harder than

speaking old verity newly.

Life and death

vary not one whit.

Original Face Instruction Manual for Worrywarts

Bi Janus

Inattentive breathing

or mindful breathing,

step without attention

or mindful step,

all thought and action

collapse

toward the still point in the precise turning

of inhalation

to exhalation.

From the still point in the precise turning

of exhalation

to inhalation

the world that can be enjoyed and suffered

arises.

No object,

no category,

not time,

not this,

not that,

arises in any other way.

23,040 chances each day to attend.

Moon on the First Day of Autumn 2012 at the Columbia River

Bi Janus

Moon in moving water

Moon and water shimmer

Water stained clear

No longer look heavenward

Explication:

In the moment

before you complained

before you looked heavenward

you were beyond now and then

Chasing that moment now

is useless

yet you cannot

let it go

and deserve what you get

Elias Ascends

Bi Janus

The middle country seemed right,

full of spines and deserts,

for a liaison neither of us

thought wise given our parting.

We thought we would age together

at a distance, perhaps finding

others to help soothe the wolf,

love being tended fruit, not miracle.

We did, though twenty years

together, insinuated

in our souls, comforts

all the loves we ever made.

A glistening joy, every liquid

we could exude clinging to us.

Enough about that — the room.

We were boys and old men.

As your namesake did, you ascend

in the whirlwind but on a fiery plane.

Here is what I know of you —

upon my face, an unsighing smile.

The Metaphysics of Suicide

Bi Janus

for Abe Sensei

The oncologist glares.

I’d like to fire you;

refusing treatment

is craven and suicidal,

says he.

No, I tell him—

your equality is in

error.

Suicide itself,

an error

born of

misperception

that the rest of

painful life

is more than

fleeting,

that its own

end is distant

though it comes

the next instant

no matter

what one does,

though not

an unforgivable error.

Loowit (2003)

Bi Janus

Loowitlatkla (Lady of Fire) was, in the myth of the people of the middle Columbia River, an old woman who was made by a powerful spirit immortal, then beautiful, and finally a mountain that white men call St. Helens

The hard paths

vouch us solitude

and we need

solitude to find

what is in us.

On the hard paths

we carry everything

important on us

and we need to see

what is in us.

At the end of day

at the midpoint

of the hard path

we are stripped,

as the thinning forest

is, to necessity.

Unsheltered in solitude

we reach in to see

what we can do

here, naked to

each other

on the mountain,

on the hard path

where no one

other will come.

Your scent and mine

on the hard path

begin an enquiry

in the ancient brain,

the brain of mammals

startled in an act.

We wonder who

takes whom

on the hard path

by the meltwater,

the meltwater almost

flashed to vapor

by what we find

in the solitude

of the hard path

on Loowit’s flank.

Riding Tanner Creek

Mens fortissima sine mens fanatica

For Ann, maybe the last one

Crossways with you,

you, taking a journey

on which

I had devoutly hoped

to carry you,

you, lugging

me up, my remnant

in your pack,

I, once more

on your back,

ferried across

the roiled water

of Tanner Creek,

a lighter burden

now than ever

in life.

Ex cathedrae

of Nichiren Nuns,

chanting the world

into flower, voices reaching

to as much heaven

as men permit,

my ash and gravel,

blown upward

by Wahclella’s plunge,

settle at last,

mingling with earth ash

in Tanner Creek.

From your rooted place

as you watch me,

shrouded in foam, making

a final trek down

Tanner Creek,

will your spirit,

as I devoutly wish,

rush beside me

on rocky incline,

laughing,

into the uncertain world

we made for you?

Hearing the Poet

Bi Janus

A poem is a sorcery of sound

reduced to type,

as old clothing

fluttering on the drying line.

I first read Yeats

when I was ten,

the cabin made and

linnet's wings.

I heard his voice

when I was seventeen,

the meter by force,

chanting the Lake Isle.

Now, I wish

every poet's voice,

chanting his song

as he chanted in room or mind

when he conjured its life,

rippled the air between us.

O-nami

Bi Janus

Sea sounds

rise in the ear

as the snowy mountain

contours before me

mimic swelling waves,

snow into ocean cries,

residue of heartfelt wonder.

The voices of the boys

laughing on the trail

to the Devil’s Elbow

raise you from the ash

crunching under foot.

Bellies on short boards,

we nose over swells

made across the world

by a storm we shan't see.

A couple in the evening,

riding again and again

toward the eastern shore

and our clothing,

we force past the breakers

westward toward Mexico

to more gentle undulation,

and wait side by side

for a wave to lift us.

As I turn to catch, dark friend,

you catch my hand with yours,

keeping us joined and pointed

to the disk of the dipping sun,

every hope and fear

distilled to shared silence,

delaying an inevitable journey.

Return of the Gardener

Bi Janus

The mild surprise,

unconcealable,

almost out the door

between the legs,

a sly pup

pulled back by its tail,

shame-faces

put right

with smiles.

No card to pass

around this time.

You’re looking better,

not so drawn,

a succulent suffused—

epidemiologists ask,

steroidal edema

masking wasting?

The pruning’s

long done.

Now, the poison

for the nematodes

mixed and spread.

The little buggers,

cut in half,

become two each.

In the present case

eradication

is the homicidal cure,

and a flowery

shrub reprieve

is what you take,

a tenuous balance

among things,

proper and not,

growing in the soil.

The bed’s

put right as rain

one more time.

Back to anthrax,

pertussis and E. coli,

influenza churning

through unremarked,

disaster an

intellectual puzzle.

Marshal some strength,

planting season

approaches.

Conversion of the Innocents

Bi Janus

For John, who at least died unashamed

The enervation

of the Sacred

does not follow

from a man

loving a man.

Shhh! So little time

you had in sunlight,

most in the shadow

of a father’s unkindness.

I thought together we would

give you relief,

but, no, only brief joy

overcome by your tears

while my heart vibrated

between our baptismal trysts.

Rather, the impulse

precedes shame,

until Fathers

strike it cold,

when a boy

loves a boy.

Johnno, you thinking

my walls passing strange,

as from them, surfer boys

and Ursula Andress stared,

while the eyes from yours,

watching us cavort,

were above the thorn-wreathed

Sacred Heart of Jesus.

You were the one abashed

when I took your hand

on the street,

and you never quite believed,

even after we mixed it up

with that fine young girl.

No Holy Writ

instructs human love,

alas excepting Solomon,

but we might find the way

if tentative embrace

is not decried

by shame.

Ever Present (1978)

Bi Janus

For Elwin, Ann, and Justine

Changing the bed linen

and then to the laundry room

as we do after each romp

They wouldn’t mind the task

We are too polite

to avoid the courtesy

The women are ever present

something of them even

in our coupling frenzy

Their smiles

and wagging heads

They both have boys

Thirteen-year-olds’ Song (1963)

Bi Janus

Two pups

in twin beds,

talking of

life and sex,

“What’s it like

when you kiss her?”

Come over,

I’ll show you.

After the fun,

my ear

to your chest,

I hear the same song

her heart sings to me.

Mom’s Advice on How Bisexual Teenagers Should Live (1965)

Bi Janus

Sticks and stones

may break your bones,

but not their confusion.

They see you here,

they see you there,

your target always moving.

In Darwin’s joyous revolution,

survivors pressed by evolution,

you have no perverse bent.

So, stop your weepy whine.

Without dichotomy to define,

you have an enviable fate,

twice the chance of a Friday date.

Tulips and Daffodils

Bi Janus

We worked the bed at noon

and in early evening twilight,

consigning tulips and daffodils,

surprised by the excavated

claws and canines in the dirt

until supine and side by side

at twilight in the backyard,

a thin blanket between us

and grass spears thrusting

at our skin

the darkness comes on

relentless to cover us

and you keep us uncovered

In a world translated to ghosting shades,

the wolf's spirit resurrected circles in shadow,

eyes aglow with the moon, stars on the ground,

your song living in his blood,

and he inclines to you always as

your breath in his nostrils sustains him

At rest on the grass

your breath I draw

into my mouth

until shades are but

shadows awaiting the dawn

Next to me even soft edges

of your familiar form

are but reminders, whispers

of your flesh in daylight

as the wolf keens in the night

of what drives us to silence

and rituals of flesh and spirit

in which eyes are superfluous

as they are in dreams

We dream in the twilight of morning

coming on, reaching to the clarity of dawn,

though enough brilliant light

conceals as much as night

A Day's Work

Bi Janus

Only those who have let go

every possession,

every dear heart,

every belief and doodad,

every desire for more,

every desire for less,

every friend and lover,

every parent and child,

every tenet of faith,

every grasping,

Only those who have let go

every valuable and raiment,

having nothing more to lose,

are not cowed in fear

at the dawn of day,

at the end of days.

Yet, this evening,

with relaxed hands

I carry with me still,

just on my fingertips,

her and him.

Perhaps the groan

in the last exhalation

will be worth their weight.

Drifting

Bi Janus

Out on the perilous deep

Where dangers silently creep

And storms so violently sweep

You're drifting too far from the shore

Drifting too far from the shore (from the shore)

Drifting too far from the shore (peaceful shore)

Come to Jesus today, let him show you the way

You're drifting too far from the shore

—Charles E. Moody (1923)

The shore vaguely recalled

the expanse now home

and no clear path

I shall find my own

Storm spun or glass

no avatar strides

the deep ocean

no idea instructs

The great vehicle

carries me on

I am all and alone

boat and sailor

Starless sky comforts

Boundless sea comforts

Shoreless, I came from this

to this I gladly return

For the shore is a prison

You Will Go

Bi Janus

When the music fades,

when you look him

or her

through the windows

of the soul, yes,

the eyes and even after

the eyes close,

so that all the sighs,

the softness

at your fingertips,

the attar of skin,

the savor of sweat

end equivocation,

and he or she,

drowning in love, asks

from whom did you learn,

I hope you whisper

my name.

Whitman Among the Baptists

Bi Janus

“What a friend we have in …”

With own eyes level

between heaven and hell

the boy finds his eyes

in the back of the hall.

Easing against the wall,

water drips from his linen shirt

fresh from some baptismal font.

Both hear the crowd’s voices,

raised as one, rattle

the metal folding chairs,

as, eyes closed and faces

turned toward heaven,

it searches for Him —

it could only be Him.

Bird song over the drooping sun,

beards and loose joints,

muscles and sweat smell

break the spell

as the boy pulls his arm

over his own shoulder, shelter

from the believers’ fears,

his needs too close

under his skin, pressing

against crowd conscience,

pulling him away from Him

toward him.

Paving Stone to Mirror

Bi Janus

In the room decades ago

we saw little clearly.

For you it was scratching an itch,

a relief, and as for me

a waypoint on the road

to holding a naked girl.

May we live so long.

Transgression is its own reward

and sharing release seemed to you

worthy risk until the itch resolved.

Our dawning occupation was risk

and we were stupid about chance.

I might draw a story of this

to make you shudder.

But how could I

without making you wonder?

May we never hurt one another.

Even before cleaning ourselves,

you wanted to forget the moment.

I did not and reached

to the curve of your back.

Left-handed Writing

Bi Janus

With thanks to Bill Withers

Not calling to me

and not insistent.

A story overheard

walking by,

a susurration

on a rainy evening.

I could tell by the voice

he wishes me to sit.

No scold; no lesson,

just a story, the kind

with an ending

you dare not miss.

Once I went awarring,

and he sings to me

as if he might have done.

He sings the surprise

between young men

across the losing-ground.

The lyric reaches

around my shoulder,

just a way of saying

let’s sit a while, survivors,

and look ahead together,

seeing not clearly.

Once, when Baso was walking with his disciple Hyakujo, wild ducks were flying over them. Baso, the great teacher, said, “What are they?” Hyakujo said, “They are wild ducks.” Baso said, “Where are they going?” Hyakujo said, “They are flying away.”

Baso gave Hyakujo’s nose a great tweak. Hyakujo cried out with pain. “Did they indeed fly off?”

Hyakujo’s Duck

The duck knows one cannot prepare.

It is the convenient object of a moment.

I summon that duck from beyond

a horizon of twelve hundred years—

Baso has shared it with me,

I think as a diversion to trip me.

Where has it gone?

The duck, the mind, the place

where I try to stand still?

For if I fail to follow the duck

as it flies I cannot in a moment

answer the first question—

What is it?

They will ask this question

about me soon—where did he go?

I will throw Baso’s obstacle at them.

Sadly, or not, no trick will

startle them to attention,

so they may believe I have gone

and they will smack their crowns

on horizons of their making

as their hearts seek me.

Did I indeed fly off?