sans titre

Lately
When it rains
It really rains
I mean
It pours
Truth
Lies
Drink
Tears
N'importé quoi.

Falling apart
Maybe
Is
Knitting
Newly together
Or maybe
Not.

You're crazy.
Crazy bored
Crazy lonely
Crazy lovesick.

France.
It's a dream
A hoot in hell.
Ah
But how beautiful
Is hell.

Devils?
Elsewhere.
Broken
Or not
Who knows.

It doesn't rain
Not in
San
Diego
But
In Santa Cruz

Also
No.
Only without.

Leave
Really really really
Leave.
Can't.
Come home.
No such thing.

Lately
When it rains
It's inside
Your
Two
Waters.

Return to Strasbourg

It looks like rain. I have Claire’s umbrella in my bag, but if it rains like it did yesterday, I will have to move inside. The papers have been prophesying rain for a week now. Claire tells me that when it is warm and humid, people look for clouds above the Vosges Mountains. For days now there have been a whole army of them. They arrived yesterday, to occupy the sky above Strasbourg. Yesterday the air went from quiet to thunderous as we sat the little café by Place Kleber.


I said I would come back, did I not?


It is not supposed to rain until 6 tonight. Yesterday I did not have an umbrella or a jacket with me, so I walked from the party to the tram stop in torrential rain. I have missed this rain. It rained a while back in San Diego. I was away.


This morning I took breakfast with Claire. I have missed long meals, where forks scraping against plates punctuate lively conversation.


Bonjour, to the two men sitting at the table behind me. I can see on my screen’s reflection that they are reading over my shoulder. Ah, they are laughing.


You speak English? A little. Well, I must congratulate you two for you eyesight…the words on the screen are a little far from you.


I see. Non, Vous parlez bien anglais. C’est vrai. C’est vrai.


Anyway, I went to the modern art museum just near Claire’s appartment. I took the long way this time, looping all the way around. It was a morning for walking. Warm, but not too sunny.


I visited the new exhibit, lingering by my favorites in the permanent collection on the first floor. Antibes, Le Soir, by Signac. Der Wald, by Campendonk. Kandinsky. Everything Kandinsky.


Good-bye, Charles, Antoine. It was nice talking to you.

Salary

The salt stung,
bleached what was black,
dried what glowed,
healed what wept,
and purged what festered.

Rocks,
shells,
jagged bits of glass,
bit
at toes and ankles
like flesh hungry piranhas
as the tide roared in.

The salt danced
a wild madrigal,
shook out seaweed locks,
like a banshee.

And it becomes like blood.
And like blood,
how freely it flows.

Shut eyes
forgot the perch of the sun.
Salt replaced it.
Salt was the only truth,
the sole surviving reality.

From salt we came,
and to salt we return-

not the sun.