you cringe when I say you are beautiful.
yeah sure, you mumble, eyes downturned,
rolling, like it pains you to look at me
looking at you.

even in the afterglow of lovemaking,
in the dark no less!
you swiftly pull the sheet to your chin
to step back inside yourself, like a thick, down coat.

but each morning, with the merciful whisper of dawn,
I am finally free to look at you unchallenged,
your familiar, naked body unfolded, like a map,
and what I see are

not the scars of your childhood and childbearing,
not the birthmarks and blemishes of your skin,
not the graying of your hair,
not even the weight of all my burdens upon you,

but the ornate topography of our lives,
stamps on our passport that say marriage, mortgage, minivan,
postcards filling the naked scrapbook of our adolescence,
souvenirs that will connect us when nothing else can

like the drowsy ringlets on your forehead,
your lips blowing a dandelion,
your arms in sleepy self-embrace,
or prayer.

as I creep toward the shower, leaving you
to your dreams of a leaner, younger, more fashionable you,
I pray you will one day see the beauty in your patina,
one day appreciate, as I do,

that great renaissance mapmakers cannot compete
with the simple shadows of the window blinds
tattooed in my memory
by the orange ink of dawn.

          And hairnet says, Boy
I been workin here since 62, seen em all too,
the Duke and the stoned smiles of Miles
and Coltrane, Rollins and Mingus ah um,
even that phallus Marsalis,
takin jazz on his back like Atlas and shit.
Been fixin their drinks and lightin their smokes,
rollin em too, when that was the fashion, and taking the cash in
but boy I aint never seen someone so young and
so white late at night
riskin his dick for this two-bit quartet shit
Splain it to me Gilligan…

       And I say, Mam,
maybe the lights too bright, your hairnet too tight, right?
but white aint no color and jazz
is a state of mind.
See I come for the drums hon, to hear how they steer it,
to savor the swish of the cymbals, the crack of the snare there
as it sets up the sax growl and the horn’s howl, grrrrrrrrrr bop!
and shit,
if that don’t make me forgit
the color of the skin I’m in,
or yours for that matter,
and focus instead on the sounds in my head,
red, like your lipstick, lover,
or yellow, like the hat on that cat over there,
but never black or white,
not even grey, because hey,
for jazz to survive until 2005,
we got to love all hues,
and the only color jazz knows
          is the blues.

Her smooth face, once
chiseled in a rustic hand, now
unreadable, nameless, dateless. Self-
conscious, I dig just a little, freeing
two words preserved by the ground
in which she slumbers:      Child       Fever
As is our custom, I place
a small stone atop hers,
kissing her cheek,
the last mourner.

He insisted we go anyway,
on this great American journey,
joked that he’d survive till we got back.
And in all those phone calls home, Mom never let on.
Said he was fine, just couldn’t talk,
till yesterday, when she asked,
When you coming home?

Crossing Iowa now at 2 AM,
home to cornfields and poets, row after row.
The things we could never say I leave on the roadside.
My great American family asleep in the back,
leaving just father and son to drive through the darkness,
speeding towards morning.

Not a sestina,
perpetuating itself
like a blind weaver,

or a stodgy old
sonnet, sticking to fourteen
guns, the infantry.

Evil villanelles
and that whore terza rima
are easier tamed

than a plain haiku,
moment of awakening,
poet’s nirvana.

But frigging Basho
just breathes, and a universe
appears in his pen.

Form is emptiness.
Zen teaches impermanence,
interdependence,

so with just one breath
this poem does not exist.
And neither do you.