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The State Won't Pay
for Alapa’i Hanapi
A basalt Hina squats on a throne of earth,
a calabash of winds at her feet. Her hair
cascades to the ground like monsoon
waterfalls from the Molokai mountains.
Strands separate into ravines of grey
stone gouged by the carver's steel. Hina
ponders unleashing her warnings. The people
wait for winds that prickle skin, flatten
houses, pile waves to drown fathers,
mothers, and children who forgot the aina,
forgot her. The carver waits for the State
to settle the bill. Hina surveys the creator's
lawn, waits to occupy the city library,
guards her gourd of retribution.
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Crazy White Man Parked
at the End of a Dirt Road
His wife’s drunk, passed out in the car.
Her sister kicks around on the ground,
panties dangling from her shoeless foot.
She yells in English and Arapahoe
for her brother-in-law to come back.
Eugene pulls up his pants, stumbles on a rock
and heads for the mountains.
He focuses on a ridge of red sandstone
behind a spine of boulders. A lone pine
at the pinnacle shoulders a pale skin of sky
like the last warrior in the first rays of light.
The beauty of Wyoming: few people, few trees;
it’s the terror, too. Tufts of sagebrush cling
to parched ground. Dust flowers blossom
under his boots then vanish.
Eugene forgot his beer.
Wyoming doesn’t care about beer or water,
or cars abandoned or carcasses rotting
in the middle of nowhere.
Eugene doesn’t care about Wyoming
or his wife sleeping-it-off
or his sister-in-law yelling in the distance.
He cares about a mountain
he may never reach and an eagle feather
blooming in the sagebrush,
a fluttering flag of something lost.
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Dust
I sweep it up,
wipe it up,
suck it up;
it returns.
Come morning
they return.
They don’t think about dust;
where it comes from;
how it falls through air unnoticed;
how it settles in certain places.
What would happen to it,
to their tidy lives if I wasn’t here?
My Bible says we were made from dust,
will return to it.
That makes sense to me.
The whole world is churning out dust.
God’s creation is wearing down to dust.
I’m God’s helper moving it around
so people can get on with their lives.
This is holy stuff I’m brushing into dustpans,
dumping into plastic sacks,
pouring down toilets and drains;
might be somebody’s grandkid.
Ever seen dust been lying there for years?
It begins to clump together.
Maybe that’s the way we were in the beginning—
millions of years of dust clumping together.
Sometimes I imagine it to be
the waste of great and little thoughts.
All that thinking has to produce something
to throw back on the pile;
seems to be the way things work.
Nothing or no one can escape it.
That’s you and me ground up
and gathering in the cracks,
on the windowsills,
behind the files,
under the machinery and furniture,
on top of the bookcases.
I’m here every day making sure
it doesn’t foul up the works.
Yes, I know about dust.
Things others would never think of.
But at the end of the day
I go home like them,
flush the toilet,
turn on the shower,
wash dust down the drain,
then fall asleep
watching it sift through sieves
of morning light,
wondering if dreams turn to dust
and where it settles.
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Crickets And Bees
I pull off the road,
grip my head – a bottle
of yellow jackets – listen
to a cricket out of sync.
I turn in bed nine times.
The sleeper next to me
says, "Love me. Love me."
I hypnotize the bees buzzing
in my head. Smoke escapes
my mouth, hugs the window.
Breath sucked into the night.
I click my tongue. Legs
rub brittle wings.
I stir a poultice of mud,
draw the stinger out.
Chirr – chirr – chirr.
Blades swarm above my bed.
I turn the key, fly away.
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Copr. 2005-2008 The Centrifugal Eye - Collected Works. All Rights Reserved.
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