Category Archives: travel

the scent of coffee

currently watching antiques roadshow (love it) over a nice lunch, thinking about what i should post on a day like today. here i am, celebrating that i will be moving to my own apartment and yet thinking about a friend who is coming back to life after a sudden collapse. all of this stews together in my brain…. and, when all else fails, a cup of coffee usually does the trick, hence the following…

The Scent of Coffee

that familiar earthy vapor
compelled by something larger
[by the principle that states hot air
must move on and up]
gently steams my pores.

spindrifts of hazelnut waft closer
with a memory of my mother
telling me of her mother
who would, in early morning car trips,
open a canister of coffee.

oh how it would fill the car
how it would fill them with excitement
those children conditioned to know
that the scent of coffee then meant
a trip to the beach.

slightly cooler, my coffee takes
a shape much like a ghost who,
against its will, is caught on film.
the scene feels just within reach
then quickly vanishes

playful, wistful, gone
rich aroma lingering.

Upon Reading Annapurna

For some reason, I can’t stop reading Himalayan books, adventurous accounts of men and women who have conquered the highest highs on this planet. I needed to jot this down now~ hoping it will lead to a more full-fledged poem. let me know your thoughts!

Upon Reading Annapurna

somehow the ocean child in me
has been consumed by mountains
striking blue glacier passes
towering ice faces
impossible crevasses and
threats of avalanche
Annapurna, a beauty I’ll never know,
doesn’t whisper or whimper
Annapurna roars her mind’s will
imposes all in her frosted shadow
captures us blasphemous ocean fools
and lifts our flat horizon
straight up to the moon.

Vegas Tattoo Blues

Admittedly, this one is a tad* dark (written several years ago, revised today) but I imagine some of you who’ve have spent too much time thinking in Vegas like I have may understand the concept….

Vegas Tattoo Blues

Brown carpet is a
worn threadbare path
rough against my arches.

False air blows brown curtains
cooly, such a drag.

My hands so slim and tender
are steady.

Despite the night,
that mascara running, fishnet talking,
suited pusher, blinking neon,
jackpot empty promise of a night.
It stings.

Pills help, booze too
but nothing compares to this.

My eyes bead with water
like the rows of cars on
Las Vegas Boulevard, every
solitary mark belongs.

I gaze out the window.
Casinos blink approval
and bloat their bellies full
of quarters.

dreaming of Turkey

Today my head is in the clouds. I’m hoping that all this day-dreaming leads to something productive but I remain doubtful. This, below, just had to be jotted down before my caffeine-adled brain skips to another beat….[and if you have ideas for how I can actually get to Turkey, write me!] By the way, ever noticed how some of the most interesting people in the world aren’t the ones writing it down. Man, I wish some of these people would write their stories down!!

dreaming of Turkey

people like
you and me
we don’t need plans
we need dreams
of Turkey
and my hair unwashed
from days on a dusty bus
imagine old buildings
from that cradle of all cities
born, first we see the colors
then the people
their faces familiar despite
miles and years of difference.

Key West Florida (spring break notes)

6am “morning — stupid roosters crowing, house/trailer sleeping — I’m awake again clouds above are so thin drift on like a fine layer of lace on a blue sky dress. view partially framed with large skinny fingers of a green brown palm plant curling around each other in a tango. my feet are really dirty. one big toe completely black the bottoms look like I walked miles without shoes in a charcoal street.”

2pm “play on Jerry, got to love the Dead on a day like today, all sunshine in a cloudless sky light breezes carrying me away sand crawling like ants and the little waves rolling in, rolling on, rolling over clumps of seaweed smelling like the beach whatever that means and it’s probably time, as the song comes to an end, to reapply sunscreen.”

1am “till the morning comes again, we’re gonna drown our minds dissolving our thoughts like sugar into tea sweet colors and sounds become their faces longtime friends and those we’re bound to meet eventually. till the morning comes again with rosy fingers we’re gonna dance legs and arms moving like a slow motion trance in a silent movie white and black the night sky forgetting and showering drinks, drops satisfying tongues like rain.”

Becoming Alexander Supertramp

From the lower 48,
(like me)
from a bustling city
of crime and hustle
and modern wants
it seems that Alaska
has an allure like
cold mercury, it
seeps into the blood
and changes you physically.
Mentally you’re a mess–
you think of nothing else
you want nothing more
than one more hit of
sky, mountain, water,
clean expanse of land
hard living that involves
back breaking work
a daily struggle to survive and
when you walk off, you go alone
one small pack, sturdy boots,
and only the Lights
for companionship. Then
when the night falls hard
and you realize what you’ve done
you will remember
that charm city, that
charmed life and find it gone.
Your mortal self crying, your
new self finding solace
only in the sky.

to you in Bulgaria

Thinking more about paths that I might have taken…. One was a writing trip to Bulgaria. I didn’t go~ for a variety of reasons. That’s the thing about paths not taken. There is always a complex variety of reasons for choosing one over the other (yet we still talk of destiny and fate, how does that fit in?). A million synapses that add up to say, let’s go this way instead….

[It’s like those “choose your own adventure books” although in those I always cheated and left my hand in place to quickly rescind any poor decision].

To you in Bulgaria

Write for me,
oh you in the land of roses
across the great ocean and in the sun.

Write for me,
oh you sedulous student of words,

Write for me,
who stands in high heels dug in
by a bricolage of complex inhibitions—

But wait,

maybe there is next year
in London! A revenant carrying roses,
I come back to you.

I see us then
under the great wheel,
drunk on the ale of white space and
cheering the accomplishments of
26 characters speaking in accents.

Voyeurs are Artists (in southern California)

There, a girl,
thin, in a light black sweater,
green suit bottoms,
legs bare.

She forms
an “O” with her body.
Her arms twisted comfortably,
her head tilted
in
to
her subject.

A shutter clicking
soft
against the backdrop of
waves, and
she
moves into another contortion,
into another
frame of
photographic art.

We, in southern California,
are artists
covered in sand.

Pine in Bryce Canyon (and i’m back from Jamaica)

Back from beautiful Jamaica… and I’m not sure how I convinced myself yesterday to get on a plane back to Baltimore after all that sunshine and blue salt water and all the friendly “yeah mon”s… And since I haven’t finished processing it all, I went back to an older poem from an older trip, my cross country trip in 2001.

Pine in Bryce Canyon

Stretched between tall
hoodoos of red sandstone
burning hot beneath summer,
a lone pine stands. Its
roots strong
to the dusty red ground,
and its brown trunk growing
up and up
and its green needles bursting
from their thin branches. It
heaves a light swaying sigh
of being ever green in
all red rock and dust, yet
after all, this pine
still thirsts for blue Utah sky
and gazes up longingly.

when life imitates art~

In the little known gallery,
I smiled and surprised him into watching me as
I watched him work,

The exciting little things he did for me,
when he finger-painted my belly like an early
Jackson Pollock.
Showering me with volatile reds, blues
that swirled and wrapped around my naked back
like lava
or glacier rivers when his hands were cold.

The words he said,
when we talked in tongues on an Austrian balcony
and the stars were hiding
from the excitement, the fear, and
the thought of flight back home, that blue period
when night dissipates to light.

He captured
the flame from my bedside candle in his arms
wrapped it ‘round my shoulders and sketched in the details.
Those fine lines of
late nights and stiff drinks
leaving their lasting mark.

Somehow it happened that
we can no longer stand to stand apart
and I must have him so
to see my belly rise and fall,
and he must have me to complete his vision
of what it means to be famous.