My words have been forwarded
From Tehran -- what am I
To make of this?
The world has grown small,
My universe, infinite.

What I say today
May be read by Martians
And sit in some dusty server
Circling Centauri or Tau Ceti.

If I took pause
Of all and everyone,
I would soon grow fallow
Like some overstressed
Patch of bottom land.

Bitch, slut,
God-damn
Fucking cunt.
First his words,
Then his knife
Cuts into me.
His breath
Fouls the air
As he rips
My clothes
And flesh.
I scream
As his hand
Grips my neck
And he
Enters me.
Pain,
Darkness,
I try
To scream
Again
Before slipping
Into the quiet.

Welcome to my rodeo, y'all,
Come watch the brave poet
Outlast her twisting ride,
Hanging firm when the words
Attempt to throw her,
Refusing to go down
If the rhythm becomes rough.

Watch her rope a recalcitrant verse
And wrestle its meaning into rhyme,
Cheer at her successes,
Applaud her when she's thrown,
But come back, come back
When the rodeo returns.

When we sleep,
What we grip
Remains firmly held,
A relic from the nights
Our ancestors slept in trees:

We dream as they did,
Make love as they made love,
And surely we too shall die
For we are as human as they.

What strange creature man is
Who thinks that among
All the peoples of the universe,
The gods' only worry
Is this single blue world.

I saw a photo of our universe today,
All that is and ever was,
And saw no hand but physics,
No mystery but those of time's making,
No breath but our own.
I leap upon the starfilled heavens,
Brought to tears by a single image
I never thought to see.

Speak not to me of blasphemy,
Unless you speak as a god;
I have no fear of hell or fire
Or the grave's cold empty promise.

But should you ever creation claim
And have ready your bonafides,
We can talk of the what and ifs
And decide which one of us is right.

Robin, dove, and cardinal,
Lined up along the fence,
Scattering as the poet approaches,
One by one, then back again,
Resembling an animated exhibit
At some Natural History Disneyland.
High above it all, the mockingbird watches
Then returns to his virtuoso performance.

Sitting on the freeway sign anouncing the beltway,
A crow, already at work, watches the traffic crawl by.
Hoping some careless driver serves up
A road fresh kill for his breakfast;
At these speeds he will be lucky
To dine on anything but exhaust fumes,
But who am I to say his actions make any less sense
Than the drivers stuck below him in the traffic.

If I were thirty-five, well , for one thing,
I would still have my gallbladder,
My back would not be stiff and sore,
And my third child would be working on
Being born this December.

I would not have yet met Sharon,
9-11 would be in the distant future,
As would be the two year battle
That was my divorce; not that anything
Was all that simple, I don't remember
Life ever being as nearly as easy
As television and the movies might
Lead you to believe.

My grade school years, which seemed forever,
Were no better or worse than anyone's;
High school was the organized confusion
That everyone remembers, college was college
And more interesting than what went before;
But if you remember some four year idyll,
You must have used better drugs than I did
Or your brain is fried from what you did use.

My working class parents and the State of California
Combined to provide me a university education,
Supplemented by the money I earned between classes
Working in a print shop as an not too skilled apprentice
(And a delivery girl who listened to the radio when she drove).
We were a motley school at Sac State, a commuting college:
The first children of the returning veterans of World War II
Joining forces with the G. I. Bill soldiers back home from Viet Nam,
The middle class housewives who were finishing college,
And white collar workers getting M. B. A.'s, all spiced
With the Civil Right's movement and the first glimmers
Of 60's style activist feminism.

The Beatles were at their peak as was Sinatra,
Drugs were cheap and the music was plentiful,
The Pill was available, love seemed free,
And sex was without a sin antibiotics couldn't cure;
Outside of college, the War, our war,
Dragged on, it seemed, forever, explained ever more
Imprecisely by a succession of unpopular presidents;
Assasinations and marriage were in the near future
But my first child was still a decade away.

My hair still curls in light brown ringlets,
Long past my shoulders down along my back;
My flesh still tans a dark golden olive,
My dimples still flex, my lips plumply kiss,
But most importantly, at the end of the day,
My tongue speaks sweetly, pleasing my muse,
And my brain fires brightly, pleasuring the one I love.