scan

i watch little blue boxes
    fill up lines
unlimited numbers
cluster the screen
in motion, scanning
and i am scanning too
the memory of that night
     when bones were broken
and blood flowed
the plastic tubes
filling blue veins
     with pale yellow liquid
the monitors scanning
the crevices of your brain
the nurses whispered
    and i was empty of words
     scanning your face

the world outside
    is a memory
on a computer screen
   i am alone
while i scan and
the scan disc fills the lines
   with little blue boxes.

a message reads:
              there are no errors

                        close

__________
April 21,2002

CROSS VENTILATION

On those hot summer nights
when her breath could not escape
and money was only exchanged
in a game of monopoly;
she would lie in her bed sweating,
beads dripping down her face
not yet lined by years…
still the secrets existed.

Her father would say
“open the shades,
there is cross ventilation”
By morning
the breeze would flap clothing
hung on a line
strung from kitchen to bedroom windows.
Still she could barely breathe.

During the summer
there was always the cold, clear water
of Long Island Sound
to escape the heat of August.
She would hitchhike to the beach
swim for miles in saline green,
pretending her feet could grow fins
that she could remain submerged
coming up for air only to lure
a sailor from a ship.

On weekdays,
She would watch her mother
scrub clothing on an old washboard;
the smell of soap filling the room.
Then everything was hung on the line
to dry in the warmth of the sun.

At times, she would pray
her soul could be washed too,
hung on the clothes line
next to the white cotton shirt;
its secrets bleached by the sun and
evanesced into its light.
Then she would lie in her bed…breathe;
welcome a kaleidoscope of dreams,
the open shades giving
the cross ventilation permission;
no longer dreading the summer nights.

_________
July 30,2002

THE UNKNOWN SOLDIER

Many young men marched off to war
With rifle over shoulder.
One of them did not return;
And was called the Unknown Soldier.

He served in France in World War One
Perhaps at Flanders Field.
Where he fell in battle,
His lips forever sealed.

Now he rests in Arlington
Amid the marble and sod.
An unknown American soldier
Known only but to God.


GRANDMA ROSE IS ONE HUNDRED

People often complain about mothers-in-law
But I think mine the greatest of all.

And the Canadian Clan and Washington yanks
Have all come today to give her our thanks.

And praise her virtues in song and prose
And honor the life of Grandmother Rose.

Who was born a hundred years ago
In North Dakota, surrounded by snow.

Nineteen twenty-four, she became a bride
With husband Ralph by her side.

Though never impressed by diamonds and pearls,
She chose to be mom to five lovely girls.

There are nieces and nephews and oodles of cousins
And her daughters all have terrific husbands.

Only four girls are left; they adore their mother
Who has no living sister or brother.

But thanks to God's magnificent Grace,
She has seventeen grandkids all over the place.

Most of them are present today
And for Grandma's sake they know how to pray.

So Mom, enjoy the party and fun
We may see you next year, at a hundred and one.*

*(She made it through another half year, leaving us
on Aug. 20, 2002 for a better place).



IS IT TIME?

(Written a day before Hannah Kahn's death. Dan Kahn is now Vivian's guardian)

Mother and daughter sharing together,
Each awaiting a solution to their lives.
The mother to leave this world forever;
The daughter to renew her life far from home.
The child asks, "Is it time for me to leave?"
The mother answers, "Not yet my darling daughter;
Go listen to your music
And dance the night away
And I will let you know
When the time is right."

A day later, the child asks,
"Is it time?"
But the mother does not answer.
God has spoken for both of them.

www.JoanMazza.com
The clash of voices is the sound of freedom.

No Impact

Tanzania.
Submerged in my sleeping bag, I try to rest.
Too cold, then too hot.
I remember the day of Thompson gazelles
Leaping across the path while we walked.
I listen for the sound of jackals.

The sliver of dark moon is
behind the mountain.
Through the tent screen, I am dazzled
by the swirl of Milky Way, highlighting
the Southern Cross.

Brighter still is the lingering
image of the Hadzabe in huts
on top the rocky slope I needed help to climb.
The safari guide cautioned us to give them nothing.
Minimal impact.

The doctor in our group said,
"The three little boys will not live
to see adolescence." The baby cried.
The boy with distended stomach squinted
at us through runny eyes, staring at our cameras,
earrings, field guides, boots,
the magic of a cigarette lighter.

The sun rises above the Soda Lake
And I remember how much colder
it was on the mountain.
No beds or blankets.

Outside our tents,
Two Mangati boys graze cows,
goats, donkeys past us.
Their dogs bark.

At dusk, they will return with their cattle,
stopping as they have each day to peer
at the Land Rovers and camp stoves.
They ask for water and medicine.
We give neither.
No impact.

_________________________________________________________
Published in Möbius, May 1999, and at www.ThompsonSafaris.com

Searching for Enlightenment
by Joan Mazza

Searching for enlightenment,
We took up meditation and yoga.
We sat zazen at dawn and had a week of heart opening.

We had our chakras balanced and our meridians aligned.
We fasted, chanted, and stood on our heads.

We had our auras assessed; we blessed the four directions.
We hired a feng shui consultant and a spiritual nutritionist.

I chopped wood; you carried water.
I got rolfed and you had healing touch without contact.

We explored our past lives and did soul retrieval.
We regressed to repair our childhood traumas.

We did the Forum, Lifespring, and Imago Training.
We became vegetarian and juiced every day.

Now they say our chi isn’t flowing and our prana is stuck.
We’ve neglected the dharma and collected bad karma.

We lost our way on the eightfold path.
Your pot-bellied pig killed my ferret,
My cellulite doubled, and the taxes are due.

Tonight, my love, let’s grab some burgers and fries,
Let’s be naughty enough
For the neighbors to complain of the din
When we rock ‘n’ roll in the backyard.

_____________________________________________________________________________
Published in Messages from the Heart, Spring 1999 and Loving More Magazine, #20, Winter 2000

Romancing the Numbers

Miranda, naked, sits cross-legged on the bed.
She is loving a man with her eyes only
because he does not exist. She has made him
up in her mind and he is the perfect lover.
His kisses cover her body, reach every crevice,
shed new light on darkness.

Miranda rocks back and forth and shakes her head,
counting beats of her heart. She is practicing Love
in the Perfumed Garden, the Arabic way.
She is on number fourteen and by the time
she reaches twenty-five, she will die of ecstasy.
She knows this and does not mind.

“Desire is the wish for heaven,” she says,
her hands fluttering like hummingbirds
around her body. She feels them peck and bite,
knows the power of suggestion.
What, after all, is reality, but a different spatial plane,
a riddle we move to, traveling in circles?

It is not the answer, she thinks, that binds us,
it is the question unasked—
the one where purpose is not a definition
but an adventure yet to be had.
Miranda sighs, lies down and closes her eyes.
Her lover sleeps, then brings her gently to fifteen.

____________________________________________________________________________
Published: HTTP://WWW.MIPOESIAS.COM/VOLUME19ISSUE1/NIGHTINGALE.HTML, Fall 2004

Double Arc of Circumstance

Origins can find their own way out. Life
a parabola of hyper extended curves
intersecting the trials and tribulations
of an ordinary line. Where are the transformations,
the great leaps of dichotomous innuendoes?
Where are the rotations, the quarter and half turns
to which we all move at some point in time?

Look in the mirror at our reflections!
The plane is flipped, all our invariant selves reversed:
symmetrically, to be sure, but flipped nonetheless.
Have we become, at last, nothing more than fractal images
forming and reforming, repeating and repeating
until we are nothing more than an event,
a equidistant function of the same equation?

And what of the circle that surrounds us?
Bisect it, and we are all on one side or another.
Traverse it, and it is all the same again.
What can we do? Ride the circumference.
Ride as if the least common denominator—
what we all are—were a linear equation,
not this double arc of circumstance,
this sloppy slide toward radical expression.
Ride as if you really were going
Somewhere.

___________________________________
Published: www.Posterband.com, Feb. 2002

Evolution: Mother and Daughter

Try asking the wind where it began,
the seas when they started to fill.
Was it drop by single drop
or did the water come in a rush?
When did the moon first turn white?
The first mountain collapse to crater?
When did rose and purple
bleed the colors of dawn and dusk?
If you find the answers
then you might know
how we came to this place,
where we are what we are
bumping stone against stone
each heart harder than the other.

______________________
Published: Kalliope, Fall 2003

Presently (In memory of Hannah Kahn)

Sometimes nights are a ball of string,
tangled, tight and endless.
When I am knotted in such a night,
I take out your gifts, which become
more valued everyday.

Your legacy is crisped in tissue paper,
gilded as the Florida sun. The spider web
pin of silver is strong and dainty at once.
Courage is braided into a silk rainbow of ribbons.

Dignity in adversity your life's example.
It is embroidered on the sampler of my heart.
On a small painted poem you created a grace
of image in flamboyant bouquets of words.

Your advice barely covers the enclosure card;
but it fills my life with purpose.
"Be kind, Love, Write."

That Chicken Wallpaper

Once, during a blizzard, you walked 16 blocks to buy a coffee pot because ours broke, an electric percolator we used then, drank cup after black cup as we papered our new kitchen with bright chickens, a hundred thousand chickens, pink and orange yet, what were we thinking? "It's so not you!" said friends, but I thought, yes it is me: chickens, eggs, farmhouses, the Family Walton, all that went with Woodstock, Vietnam, Mothers-Against-the-War, friends picketing the Pentagon. Our daughter confessed those chickens humiliated her, Ma, how could you? She hated bringing anyone home, diverted them from seeing our kitchen. I still like them, think back fondly to when chickens ruled, surrounding us on snow days with the kids home from school, making new coffee and fresh love. That wallpaper held up well, never even peeled. Until the day we moved, an army of purposeful chickens marched gaily, despite their outrageous uniforms, across our private walls which, under their clawed and muddy feet, had begun to crumble.

__________________
Appears in Luna Prose Poem Anthology

The Woman with Seven Breasts
La mujer kon los siete tetas

How I hated bedtime, especially the nights my parents went dancing at the Egyptian Gardens. I was jealous, wanted to go, fussed and screamed, kicked Tante Suzy in the knees until she outsmarted me with an ingenious plan: she wet seven cotton balls and threw them up to the ceiling where they stuck like glue, and then pushed my head back, forced me to look at them. Mira! La mujer kon los siete tetas viene! Look! The woman with seven breasts is here! I stood mute, transfixed, counting seven irregular white lumps, uno dos tres quatro...they didn’t look like nipples... Was this meant to nurture? When my eyes closed I dreamed a giant sky-mother fell through the ceiling and landed on top of me. In the morning dried-up pieces of cotton dotted the carpet. I hardly noticed. Kids forget everything until forty years later. I'm still a rotten sleeper, still afraid of the night. Still sure that whatever is intended to suckle me will smother me in the end.

__________________
Appears in Luna Prose Poem Anthology

Full Moon, Second Scorpio

And so you think you can save her,
shrink the lemon-sized lump in her lung
with a hex and an incantation, or
by rubbing your "vibrating" covellite stone

reputed to trigger alternate
lifetimes. Summon the Wind Moon
to hear your chant
conjure a day on Atlantis

an evening in Egypt or Xanadu.
Burn that white purifying candle before
Scorpio enters its planetary sign.
Once again comes the hour for magic

when Fate's braided hair gets undone.

__________________
Appears in The Kit-Kat Review

Dandelions Grow Behind My Tongue

Dandelion stems
tangle my throat,
choking the unspoken.

Whose hands are these
that grasp the shears?

Green garden shears,
pickaxes, pointed scissors,
carving knives.

I am gagging on weeds,
puking naked stalks.

Yellow flowers fill
my mouth, and speak
to me of truth.

_____________________________________________________________
Appears in Wavelength, What You Cannot Have, The Substance of Sunlight

Nameless

His body lies on shore    in pieces    the flesh    alligator eaten    in dark and hungry    sleeps
his arm floats    in the canal    behind the banyan trees     teeth marks crunch the bent wrist
angled upward    bobbing on    rip- pulled waves    in the tilted moonlight

before his night-wandering sleep    in his bed    on the banks    he stumbled    shoeless into the canal    cleansed caked mud    from his tee shirt    a spot of ketchup     his own stink

not crying out    when the beast dragged him    into the undertow of    dodged cars
of waved front pages    of pocketing the sell    road-weary in the Florida heat
of gulping the bottled sun    to sear the pain    of death    of a marriage his    little girl    his brother
his parents

not crying out    when the beast dragged him    into the undertow of    blueprints    of skyscrapers shimmering love    a home behind the banyan trees    baseball games    a little brother
a piggy bank

not crying out    when the beast dragged him    into the undertow of    his mother and father
rocking him to sleep    body fed    powdered    bathed    wrist bent    baby flesh kissed    fingers counted

__________________
Appears in Gulfstream