The Apple Trees

The end-of-summer, for us young folk, presages change - the return of school, the loss of a job, changing of friends, movement from place to place. We dread change because we can think of nothing but clinging on to the precious summer days we have made for ourselves, whether we have spent them lounging at the beach, pursuing our hobbies, or taking our first tentative steps into the "real world." Yet we know that the dread of change is always worse than the change itself, and many of us look forward to the resumption of study.

Late July's Weather is a fickle mistress - a natural reflection of the oscillating tides of our minds. Her sweltering days sap our souls, forcing us inside and making us pine for autumn, while her steamy nights warm our hearts. Through the night-steam, life resumes: Lying astride hilltops, moving a friend's furniture, strolling through empty baseball stadiums, or packing the floors of crowded night-clubs, we laugh and accept that change is what we live for, only to toss and turn alone in our soggy beds, cry, and reject the tyranny of change once more. The night air, already crowded with humidity, accepts our sweat and tears as an offering, and should we visit the window, the cloud-laced moon will be there to smile her approval. When the morning comes and we re-visit the window, we see helicopters and airplanes above, cars and people below, and we think to ourselves: No, July Life is not cruel - but it has never seemed so life-like.

Change has rammed our past and future selves together, creating a sudden, spectacular storm.


"The Apple Trees"

For the first time this summer
I cooked your famous
spaghetti sauce

the smell of my lonely apartment
reminded me
of apple trees

and brought back a memory
of you teaching me
how to balance

after Sunday school
under the shade
of apple trees

Last summer, while tasting
roasted marshmallows
my skin shivered

like embers of fire
diving into eyes and
apple trees

I remembered wrestling in the rain
with you, when
the quills of porcupine balls

quickened my heart
and made me cry
under apple trees

Years later,
I twist a stalk of broccoli
on a fork

a few inches in front of my face.
It looks like the original
Apple tree -

and finally, I think of you,
the you that could have been,
and my heart shatters -

But life is a cycle, not a rupture -

I see future summers
blooming among
the apple trees.

How They Look at Evil

Evil is, to them, at first,
a curiosity,
no more than a tadpole
in a pond, to be stirred,
a girl's dress to raise,
or a pear to be lifted
from a neighbor's yard -
a bit of childish mischief;
an end in itself.

As they mature and
become responsible,
Evil then becomes, to them,
not an end in itself, but a means
to more serious,
consequential,
and good ends:

1. They spray Evil all over their bodies
like cologne
to seduce feeble-minded women
and men, the only kind there are.

2. With Evil in hand they bludgeon
colleagues, subordinates, and peons
to keep them on task long enough
till something is forged out of nothing.

3. The best of them
adopt Evil and raise it
into history or infamy -
erecting slaughter-houses
of the body and mind;
sublime pleasure-domes.

But they are not made evil by Evil.
like truly Great Men,
they dispatch Evil itself, like a weak underling,
when it has outlived its usefulness:

I. When their love-victims are smitten
and hopeless, they morph again,
from playboy into suitable husband,
from seductress into wife.

II. When their employees
are exhausted and
on the verge of mutiny,
they take them to lunch, offer a raise,
or merely stop barking out commands
long enough to listen.

III. The adopted self-righteousness
of dictators, celebrities, and preachers
leads them to greatness;
their exceptionalism
creates meaning in the average man's
sad life.

With evil swirling in their eyes
and bulging in their veins -
life is mastered, conquered, subdued,
won.

Drink the drought!
Join the ranks of
the world's true Wiccans,
the weavers of reality;

masters of nature and man.

my heart moves slowly

in rooms my heart moves slowly,
slower than life, faster than death;
it yearns for, and receives,
nothing but stale blood.

inside, the tyranny of an eye
marking time in blinks until
the cold hour of heartbreak
captures another soul
as yourself, ticking,
spinning;
looking? yes.
locking? no!

in forests, too, my heart has moved slowly,
like a mosquito
caught by the autumn breeze,
leg by leg losing its grip
on a precious arm-hair

is it absurd to delight in leaves
while trees are falling?
are we not focused on the slightest movements -
like squirrels!

that is why
with others, my heart remained slow;
faster than sitting, but slower than dance,
when, momentary, hands and eyes lock
and blood moves:

I stopped listening after I heard a rumor that
Poetry wants to marry Dance,
because flowers detest the light of store lamps;
and Music pounds the young Night, every night!

///

deaf man James hears,
gouges out his eyes, and dies -



what is this madness?

the future never comes to the rescue!
and the past is lost!>

I call on you, the undying whale, resurface!

a hook pierces my sluggish heart!
I am dragged through the vast ocean!>

it hurts more than hell
but blood proves
fresh life;



life is now like warm tea,
but memory dies never,
tea turns cold,
and the ocean widens itself!



I freeze
as now
and view
myself, the moon,
again, newness,
Loses another war!

Yet at the south pole,
one beacon of hope remains unlit:

On another July night I will return to the hemisphere I know best
and by my side
she will ask, have we ever budged an inch?

I say an answer will greet your warm hands.>

What is Death but the final movement of Life?