Four poems by the co-founder of New York Writers Workshop and a member of Asia Pacific Writers & Translators as part of World Poetry/Prose Portfolio [WPP], curated by Sudeep Sen
Lines Overheard in a Headstand Workshop,
Donate Now
Brahms
I picture him pulling brown suspenders
over his shoulders in a dingy room
above a pub, the bump-bump-bump of a
tuba faint through the floorboards. Behind him,
a well-compensated Schiele-like nude,
her sex enlarged, sprawled on the damp sheets, her
fingers riffling a foliage of gulden
notes. Brahms turns away from his shadow in
the mirror, a black and white thing that haunts
him with reminders of Clara Schumann,
the C-B-A-G-A of her. He pulls
the door closed behind him and finds his way
to the dark staircase, laughter and the smells
of bratwurst clinging oily to paintings
on the walls. The Ode to Joy does not come
readily to mind, but he hears it, and
its spirit drives him through several tankards
and a half-dozen sheets of music score.
Tonight he’ll keep his neighbors awake again
with a lullaby that grows quieter,
quieter, until he can sleep with his
belly over the open buttons of his fly.
His beard needs a trim. It stinks of sauerkraut.
In the morning, in the same clothes, he’ll walk,
hands clasped at his back, offer candy
to children. At the park he’ll hear a weave
of cello and oboe. C-B-A-G-A,
C-B-A-G-A, C-B-A-G-A.
Lines Overheard in a Headstand Workshop,
Triyoga Studio, London, 2010
The middle is not static. It’s not a
destination or fixed point, the middle
is in flux. The midway practitioner
hits the middle by constant adjustments
to whatever arises. Develop
the skill to change. Ongoing things
accommodate flux. The hair becomes white
but the mind does not. Everything arises
at once from the eight directions and
the four realms. How does the mirror reflect
emptiness? Success is harder to
overcome than failure. Go and teach
the gospel, but don't use words. Teach pilates
to a quadriplegic. Only the ill
talk to god, you must talk to god when
you're healthy. People die from the feet up.
The meaning of life is in the moment
that arises the moment that arises
is already gone so ... What? The precious
droplet appears in each moment. If you
try to apprehend the Buddha moment,
it’s already gone. It is. It never
was. It is again. The present moment
is where life is found – don't miss your
appointment. You must be willing to give
up what you are in order to become
what you will be. Prepare to be ready
for the moment that’s already gone. Gather
from the desk the debris of your work.
Visit the mall more often. The archer
pulls back to shoot forward. Pulling in two
directions, pushing down to go up,
centering down, rooting down, floating up.
Fingers on the sacrum, on the heart chakra,
the third eye, the color is indigo,
the sound is om shanti om shanti om.
“Ah” is the negative prefix, “a-ha”
the infinite. Contact the undivided,
otherwise be overwhelmed by distractions
from the four realms, the world of the ten
thousand things. All things have division,
constant differentiation. Embracing
the differentiation. Training in that
which doesn't divide. One can get stuck in
the undivided. Meaning is in
relationship to all other moments.
You are a cork on the river of flowing
moments and you grasp that idea easily,
but can you embody it in breath, in
cellular rhythms? Can you form an
attachment for the undivided? Can
you rest in the bottom of your mind?
And I’m like, dude, I want to do all that
but can you knock the shit off for a second
and just help me stand on my fucking head?
Lines Composed While Sharing the Changing Room at Yoga Shala with Gwyneth Paltrow
Exhale.
Inhale.
Hold.
From a Terrace Overlooking the Pacific Ocean, my Brother's Wife Explains to Dinner Guests How She Once Blew Harrison Ford
“He looked so fucking delicious,” she says,
“all passed out on a staircase somewhere in
Rome.” The guests spit wine over the rims
of Chardonnay glasses. Several have heard
this story before, as have I. They shoot
glances toward the grill where my brother turns
filets of Chilean sea bass over
direct flame. This is his first wife, I don’t
feel sorry for him, anymore. He wanted
a well-born woman and he got one, with
a liver the size of the Frick and a
mouth filthy as a bus station toilet.
I lean against the rail and watch dolphins
breach out past the surf zone—the way they
surface and drop, surface and drop, you think
you can anticipate exactly where
they’ll breach next, until the next time, they don’t.
I’m one month clean and sober, if you can
call it that. I’d gone beyond and below
the nonsense of pride and integrity and
insults to my manhood. I needed help.
I called my brother. How it hurts to see
him humiliated. I’m wondering
why he takes it. Does he think, ah, it’s just
the rich talking. It’s their world, we’re here to
serve and applaud, laugh and clean up. Maybe
she doesn’t mean any disrespect by
talking about sucking some star’s dick. She
inflates her cheeks around Harrison Ford’s
imaginary cock. “The look on his face
when he came to,” she says, slamming her palm
on the table. I track the dolphins down
the coast—specks now, maybe illusions. They
breach near Laguna Beach and curve west, racing
for the deep water. How long, I wonder,
can they hold their breath? Hawaii? Farther?
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