The Black and White Dancer

OLD:

The wind,
being indifferent,
carries old kites.

Grandfather, your kite sways from your neck
like a censer, exhausting a smoke from within,
within the furnace where age is untempered for all.

And with those live coals you take in the faces,
ears deaf to the songs they burn to,
the songs that kindle cardiac-arrested love.

And the words spoken are really thrown,
stones skipping, with gaps that growl
Why isn't there a warranty?

for this gentle twitching,
like the legs of a dreaming dog.
If dogs dream.

I dream but forget when I wake up.
You scream when you wake up,
breasting the sea that is your sheets—

new memories crashing like Pacific waves
on old rocks;
medication sparking amaretto.

Years no longer hold people in their place.
Time, a candle once firm—
and we push against the wax.

And we push against the shadows,
ever leaning thinner.
Mother whisks them back:

tea ceremony for the kamikaze pilot.
Her eyes' white becoming the sky
and each foaming swoop suggests the slapping roll

of waves below, of a drum's leathery edge—
its player pressing my heart—my heart
beating to the cadence of that plummeting thurible.

Though, nose-diving is always harder in mid-air,
harder when the aircraft carrier's lid is open,
the war paint on your stubborn face.

So I tossed my tongue to the cat
prowling in the pews and growing its whiskers
on the uncanny faces in kneeling rows.

I can no longer read anything. Say anything.
The priest's latin chant swells my throat
with the smoking-engine incense

and pulls up the same,
only to fold with the flag.
Oh, grandfather,

you'll always be to me
the black and white dancer
laughing noiselessly.

We step out of hymns
into that lasting silence,
waiting for the ground to thaw.


EDITED:

The wind,
being indifferent,
carries old kites.

Grandfather, your kite sways from your neck
like a censer, exhausting a smoke from within,
within the furnace where age is untempered for all.

And with those live coals you take it in,
deaf to the songs they burn to,
the songs that kindle cardiac-arrested love.

And the words spoken are really thrown,
stones skipping, with gaps that growl
Why isn't there a warranty?

for this gentle twitching,
like the legs of a dreaming dog.
If dogs dream.

I dream but forget when I wake up.
You scream when you wake up,
breasting the sea that is your sheets—

new memories crashing like Pacific waves
on old rocks,
medication sparking amaretto.

Years no longer hold people in their place.
Time, a candle once firm—
and we push against the wax.

And we push against the shadows,
ever leaning thinner.
Mother whisks them back:

tea ceremony for the kamikaze pilot.
Her eyes' white becoming the sky,
and each foaming swoop suggests the slapping roll

of waves below,

and pulls up the same,
only to fold with the flag.
Oh, grandfather,

you'll always be to me
the black and white dancer
laughing noiselessly.

We step out of hymns
into snowfall silence,
waiting for the ground to thaw.