I am dancing
but without legs,
without music,
without a floor,

and you criticize
my fourth position.

But did you see
the shape of my arms
during my tour de promenade?

Did you see how
I was both holding
and letting go

at once?

To the Children

I would give them balloons,
large red balloons that would
pull them, their brothers, their
sisters to teh mountains that
they cannot reach by foot.

There, without machetes to
chop or bundles of firewood
to carry home, we would
sleep beneath the heavy
canopy, drink water
from the hanging gordes.

There in the soft underbrush
there would be quiet laughter,
the strange singing of the
jungle birds, and the heavy
creak of the mile high trees.

But first, we must find balloons,
large red ones, thousands of them
that can carry us all at once,
far from this place with no air.

Mornings here are
a cut canteloupe.

The dogs and roosters
are silent.

The sun is hung
like a picture.

The metal rooves
sparkle like the waves

of an ocean

in which
these people will surely drown.

Wingless- On visiting a Honduran orphanage

The children, with their
sweaty hands, run to the
Americans like geese.

They beg to be held, to
be thrown, to be anywhere
but on the abyssmal ground.

They hold on tightly about
our necks and our ears,
sure that suspended here,

eventually, they'll fly.

Tegucigalpa, Honduras--March 2010

It is dry here
and the forests
are a thirsty
yellow sea.

And the sun
is a sweater
that no one
can remove.

And they say
the mountains
are on fire, but
there is no water.

THe dogs are in heat,
barking like trumpets,
and the cock crows
just after 10 o'clock.

Here, no one remembers morning.

I am a lover
like I am a clown
an astronaut, a
cold-eyed killer.

And I will love
you with this
starry rebellion,
this painted face,
and these hands
taht will strangle
you in your sleep.

I thought of you today
while sipping steamy tea
on the cupboard of my back porch.

I thought about how like a
wind you are and how like
so many fallen leaves I am,
all fiery and tragic,
rustling like a hymn.

Scoop me up in your
zephyrous arms, I pray.
I will continue to spin
in this penny ballet--

a brittle thing that only
lives when held.