Reconstruction

Reconstruction


One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. I have begun it before on countless scraps of paper. One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. Forgive me. The original order of the words has been lost but for this endless succession of beginnings. I rely on you to restore the details. One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. Forgive me. The original has been lost but I promise to stay true to its drift. One word, one world at a time. Forgive me. The original version of this story does not exist. One word, one sentence at a time, this is its drift. This is the drift. The notes are scattered. No. Not scattered. The notes are lost. Jotted, scribbled. on scraps, in notebooks, on flaps. They were seldom read. They cannot be collected. The words, disjointed, were set down and abandon. No. Not abandon. It is a story in threads. Images, ideas, phrases, paragraphs, the disembodied alphabet reverberating returning, haunting ... but I digress.

asha

Dead Reckoning

Dead Reckoning

A bird does not sing because it has an answer.
A bird sings because it has a song. -Anonymous



WINTER
for Joe & Jim

In the evening we
carry down our dead
they leave our hands willingly
above Dog Star watches
cold, white
as on ancient evenings,
Dog Star
bringer of rain.


SPRING

Listen to the grass
leaning soft green
through the fence
singing.

Listen to the green
crawling slowly
away from the yard
where the bones lie
under their feet,
under the dandelion's,
the yellow dandelion's, feet
listening.


SUMMER

Sometimes we take
our measure from the dead
as from a stone that sits
unchanged amid the changing seasons
like a departed shore the dead mark
how far we’ve come through mystery
and how far we’ve yet to go.


FALL
"Solve et coagula"

The small things go first
over the blue salt edge of the world
followed by a deconstruction
of their tracks
by the wind
that covers and uncovers
the same finger bone
my own
where it fell in confusion
trembling
at the slow moving wheel
of the desert's rim.

asha

Mélancolie Mécanique

Mélancolie Mécanique


Dear Mother,

I was in the world
a succession of strangers.
How was I to know?
The dog goes on her lonely
way. I forgot about you for
years. Morning has me

in her claw; disheveled, vacant.
Before sunrise the hardbounce
re-tooling of the clockwork day
is done and the great wheel set
between the glittering city
and the far-flung sea.

I called last night. They told me
you were still dead and too busy
but I know you were there, silent
as the white owl come to the terminal
edge. Now it is up to chance and the
rain. Y nosotros, tus perdidos.


II

The wind is idling down the road.
It passes with a backward glance.
It is an old conversation, one I can
neither remember nor forget. No
word means the same thing twice.
I miss you. That I remember in the

mother tongue. They will deny
everything. Potatobug begins her
trek across the day. I stop to let her
pass. Ant rushes by. Dandelion opens
to the sun. In this inherited dawn,
first light slanted just so catches

movement, something struggling in
the indifferent gears, washed in by
the collapsing wave, cornflower sea
glass eyes etched with irreconcilable
horizons. Beast or demon? But I am
getting ahead of the story.

asha

La Tormenta

La Tormenta


This is how the world was
lightning on the rim and a small boat
moving away forever
lantern swinging over a veiled sea.

We had the world to ourselves.
I was the boat, you were the shore.
You were the lighting, I was the swinging.
We were the horizon.

You were the sea. You were forever.
I was small. I was moving away.
You were how. I was the veils.
We were the storm.

asha

Holding Pattern
Rainy season


I.
Thunder breaking low over the afternoon pressing

     Tell your secrets to them

a pandemonium of parrots into the trees. It takes a
days worth of rain to relieve the tension in the air
thunder and the curtains lifting.


II.
I am listening to the muttering dark and how much
older the cricket sounds singing at the bottom of the
wall tonight. Rain slides down around the pebbles in my
grizzle root hair that fixes me in the dirt, fixes me
to the underworld and all the voices there.


III.
There are games you lose to yourself. You stay anchored
to the room through one barely open eye, anchored to

     Who you talkin’ to?

the world by a slimy silver line, still as a boat marooned in

     Who you talkin’ to?

a cave, lightening cracking outside, over the night, over
the vast awakening water. You feel the pull of echoes
kaleidoscoping too fast to grab, each mutation a little more
threatening.

     Hold. Hold. Hold.

The sound of approaching footsteps pass and finally fade.
A hand reaches in and touches the mirror.

asha

Costa Rica, 2009

#21

A red fish
the size of a young child
startles up through the trees.
Who, sitting around
the little concrete tables,
will remember it for me?

asha

Border Crossing


Leaving my language behind, I entered the labyrinth. Its streets were narrow, old and crowded with small fruit-colored buildings made of mud and stone. Dogs spoke in tongues and birds, following an alien gyroscope, flew downward into a cloudy underworld. Saints loitered in shadows making deals with passers-by. I was greeted by a cockroach who kindly explained their price, plastic flowers and bottled flame. I could see within the wicker shadows of their tiny huts, each saint stood stoic and faithful before their candles and the litter of past offerings; blackened, shattered glass and dusty clods of petals and wax. But at the hour any nearby church bell rang, they winced in their solitude. I asked the cockroach if anyone else was in the business.The dogs, she answered, adding that I best consider carefully before choosing among them. Before I could ask anything else she scuttled off, disappearing into the crack of a flame red wall.

asha

Jazz

Jazz
-excerpt from NaNo manuscript


I am sitting at Comma Coffee. It is nearly night. Little Cat has finished her nap and taken to strolling around the room again. The same band is still playing the same frenetic tune, pounding horns and staccato drummer smashing around his set, beating everyone over the head, stabbing the audience in the back with his rhythm. The piano player is running down the hill as fast as his long fingers will take him. Bam diddle bam... running up and down the keyboard looking for a way off. Bam bam bam everyone looks around wild eyed. Ha! Smash. Bam. His fingers catch fire and run up and down the keys screaming. More. Bam! His hands are burning. Bam zap run runninggggggggggg around. Bam!

Little Cat has stopped by to check out my feet. The piano player's hands lunge up the stairs, fly around the ceiling looking for a way out. Bambam. BAM! Waves roll through the room sweeping the furniture and people away. The only ones left are me and Little Cat who is smelling my shoe.

Night is settling down outside on the street. The horn is circling around the room like a mad hornet but night is falling like ashes over the city and with it a promise of peace at last, sometime. Peace. The horn is now on fire. It goes bam. Goes BAM!

I have a long way to go to get to the end of this day. I think about the hours ahead and sleep waiting like welcoming death somewhere in the middle of the night. The music has melted into debris awash in a black wave. I look over the creaking pier into the water moving up and down the pilings. There are faces in the waves, familiar faces but I cannot recall their names. Perhaps they never had names. Some faces never had names. The tune has finally ended to cheers and a long round of applause. The audience receives its thanks. I look back into the dark water, faces swirling in the currents. I hear the harbor horns, light house, buoys clanging in the distance.

asha

Chances


Answers are easier to come by than chances but after, one by one, they close and drop carpeting the ground with faded color and you’ve pushed the blade in and your dream falls to its knees, you have to finish what you started and you wonder how it ever came to this but you lean forward anyway until all the pain is gone then you look up to the mountains because they have been there all along and you look to the sea’s returning wave and understand that between these two and the blue blue sky above it is still possible that you have a chance.

asha

Jazz
excerpt from Book of Images

I am sitting at Comma Coffee. It is nearly night. Little Cat has finished her nap and taken to strolling around the room again. The same band is still playing the same frenetic tune, pounding horns and staccato drummer smashing around his set, beating everyone over the head, stabbing the audience in the back with his rhythm. The piano player is running down the hill as fast as his long fingers will take him. Bam diddle bam... running up and down the keyboard looking for a way off. Bam bam bam everyone looks around wild eyed. Ha! Smash. Bam. His fingers catch fire and run up and down the keys screaming. More. Bam! His hands are burning. Bam zap run runninggggggggggg around. Bam!

Little Cat has stopped by to check out my feet. The piano player's hands lunge up the stairs, fly around the ceiling looking for a way out. Bambam. BAM! Waves roll through the room sweeping the furniture and people away. The only ones left are me and Little Cat who is smelling my shoe.

Night is settling down outside on the street. The horn is circling around the room like a mad hornet but night is falling like ashes over the city and with it a promise of peace at last, sometime. Peace. The horn is now on fire. It goes bam. Goes BAM!

I have a long way to go to get to the end of this day. I think about the hours ahead and sleep waiting like welcoming death somewhere in the middle of the night. The music has melted into debris awash in a black wave. I look over the creaking pier into the water moving up and down the pilings. There are faces in the waves, familiar faces but I cannot recall their names. Perhaps they never had names. Some faces never had names. The tune has finally ended to cheers and a long round of applause. The audience receives its thanks. I look back into the dark water, faces swirling in the currents. I hear the harbor horns, light house, buoys clanging in the distance.

Jazz

Jazz
-excerpt from NaNo manuscript


I am sitting at Comma Coffee. It is nearly night. Little Cat has finished her nap and taken to strolling around the room again. The same band is still playing the same frenetic tune, pounding horns and staccato drummer smashing around his set, beating everyone over the head, stabbing the audience in the back with his rhythm. The piano player is running down the hill as fast as his long fingers will take him. Bam diddle bam... running up and down the keyboard looking for a way off. Bam bam bam everyone looks around wild eyed. Ha! Smash. Bam. His fingers catch fire and run up and down the keys screaming. More. Bam! His hands are burning. Bam zap run runninggggggggggg around. Bam!

Little Cat has stopped by to check out my feet. The piano player's hands lunge up the stairs, fly around the ceiling looking for a way out. Bambam. BAM! Waves roll through the room sweeping the furniture and people away. The only ones left are me and Little Cat who is smelling my shoe.

Night is settling down outside on the street. The horn is circling around the room like a mad hornet but night is falling like ashes over the city and with it a promise of peace at last, sometime. Peace. The horn is now on fire. It goes bam. Goes BAM!

I have a long way to go to get to the end of this day. I think about the hours ahead and sleep waiting like welcoming death somewhere in the middle of the night. The music has melted into debris awash in a black wave. I look over the creaking pier into the water moving up and down the pilings. There are faces in the waves, familiar faces but I cannot recall their names. Perhaps they never had names. Some faces never had names. The tune has finally ended to cheers and a long round of applause. The audience receives its thanks. I look back into the dark water, faces swirling in the currents. I hear the harbor horns, light house, buoys clanging in the distance.

asha

Reminiscence

Reminiscence


I am sure it was your face looking down, looking
back at me - your fingers holding on. I knew you’d
come, waited a long time there beneath the surface,
Moon looking in on me now and then. Hello Moon.
The only way I remember you is sadly.

I hesitated as though it would be too easy to touch the
close enough to touch forms, then there was no time left,
just a dream almost breaking through, almost resurfacing
for one last breath, the world somewhere just beyond the
watery sky.

asha