MAJIK’S MALA
( for Harris Breiman )
Majik’s mala click clacking in a quiet room
jerky moves of the bone beads slipping
down the string
Places you wouldn’t think pain knew about
open up, we are re-instructed:
Mother Buddha’s string of beads,
and a hopeful puppet in her sixties
still on the lookout for freedom
It may not come climbing mountains
as before, or plumbing the depths
and positions of sexual nature
It may not come running high speed
through the woods like a dog in the summer hemlocks
May not come trekking out to find death sitting alone
in infinitudes of winter
But in slowly giving up, in the hand unclenched
the personality cooked like soup
inside the skull
Come all you who are hungry
Come and eat.
Too long fixed in place, the body
becomes an ironing board,
a bicycle standing against the wall,
it creaks into use, the slow spokes,
screech of legs propped up in the living room
Locked in a photo frame one has time
to observe mortality click clack
it is not unhappy.
No fixed opinion
when fluid motion is yanked away
it might just as well be heads
as tails click clack
these things do not matter.
Freeze frame of Majik Labdrom’s mirror
the absurdity of us marching dignified
to a graveyard one step two step Oops!
off the curbstone, down like a man in profile
The Punch and Judy Show
to a crowd of San Francisco children
Wap! He’s down! Wap! He’s up again!
click clack click clack clack
An umbrella opens, the taffeta hangs tattered
the spokes like a ribcage sing
in the wind
Fluid moves so rare we notice now
when they come up, like animated movies
Gooy drops his gumball down the sewer
Minnie holds onto her hat as she plunges skyward
off the cliff like a kite.
No references, no grave demeanor
considered opinions melt in the soup bowl
of the skull, click clack
Hey! Comes a moment, Hey!
No limping, no hunched shoulders, no stiff elbows
a body is moving easily over the landscape
Hey, what happened?
Majik Labdrom in meditation
her mala serenely around her neck
each bead in motion, in static grace
each bead in fluid motion.
Majik Labdrom, pronounced ladron,
like a Puerto Rican second story man,
The nice thing about God as a thief
is she takes it from you
willing or not, knowing or not
she takes it, you wake up one morning
and it’s all decided: mobility (or good looks
a perfect ass, a capable memory)
has disappeared.
Coming out of sleep, the chrysalis
kicks off its cocoon, the (choose one)
praying mantis katydid grasshopper’s
arms and legs are littered across the plain
and works of art, the diamond rings
are swimming down in the muck with the snails.
Willow, NY, January 13, 2005
Majik Labdron: Female “Mother” Buddha. Inventor of the chod ceremony, she is often depicted dancing, usually in a graveyard.
Mala: String of prayer beads, worn around neck, or on wrist, or in hand. Each bead can be used for a repetition of the mantra.
Poet, translator, teacher, Janine Pommy Vega is the author of Poems to Fernando (City Lights) to newer titles from Black Sparrow, Godine, and many presses. Long a champion of the underdog, the imprisoned, and the songful, she has made her homes on the west coast, east coast, South America, the Catskills, and traveled much of the world.
