Woman of the vine to Gilgamesh:

As for you, Gilgamesh, let your belly be full,

make merry day and night. 

Of each day make a feast of rejoicing,

Day and night dance and play!

Let your garments be sparkling fresh,

your hair be washed, bathe in water.

Pay heed to the child holding your hand,

Let your spouse delight in your embrace.

(...for death is the fate of man.)

This the advice from the Epic of Gilgamesh, as the king searched for immortality and mourned the loss of his beloved brother and companion. Written on clay tablets 2000 years BC in Mesopotamia.  Have we learned it yet?

My poetry reading nights

Where you read from an unfolded square,

drawn as a handkerchief

to catch my tears

and blow my nose.

Where you whisper

prayers to the gods of life

and rattle charms of beaded and feathered gourds

against the chains of death,

Where your hands press open the pages

awarded satin ribbon markers,

the corners creased

by fingers licked with a chocolate tongue,

Where men chant

as softly as the mother 

who closes her eyes to sing

to an infant in the dark,

Where women bare the shame of 

irregular butts and bloody panties,

and where I have to imagine you 

in your wrinkled and sweaty underwear

just to have the courage to enter here…..

Where a slap in the face

might as well be on my upended newborn butt

and I still find the courage to see you

in your wrinkled underwear,  

just to read to you,   here,   tonight….                                         1-19-2012   DGG 

Lowest winter
sun rose
warming inner
window pane

Wind Dervishes

A rushing

like water falling

calls me.

I try to face,
and brace against
an animalistic air.

I follow leaves

like dervish dancers

leading flight

from trees

who let go

overnight

Oars

"There comes a time",
said the sage
to the drenched woman,
"to use your arms as oars."

"When the mother of all
storms surges its
crushing waves,
pounding and plowing
across the bow,
and tears through sails
as through your lungs,
and against your ribs
like spars,
it's time to reach
your arms as oars.

Your oars are
smooth and broad,
oak old and oak hard,
polished by oil,
smoothed by sweat,
and molded by toil.

They will guide the bow,
align the sheer,
override the surf,
undermine the tempests,
and hold
the old boat
afloat."

WEATHERING THE STORM

Wind pushes loose bodies around, and through them
we are space
Rain blankets down, running rivulets through
we are water
Waxing gibbous moon, one eye open in view
we are light





(funny how life changes make unseen storms in a potentially tranquil world)

Moonless shadows fall

on straight stone paths in stillness

beyond briared woods.