Dark Matter

you stand behind the yellow line
and wait for your number to be called.
they’re waiting on number 403 now,
you are holding number 415,
it shouldn’t be long, they tell you.

half a life later you are still waiting but at least it’s
not your life. you saw them carrying off
the still-breathing form of 407 and he
looked about half your age. what did they do to him,
you wonder out loud. nothing, says 414,

not even looking up or turning around
before speaking. if you qualify, it takes less time
than waiting for it out there in the world
where it’s random. 408, someone calls.
everything moves up. you shuffle ahead. this is fine.

Edgar was a rosebush.
Lilith was a rosebush.
They were the same rosebush.

They answered
to different names
depending on who invoked them.

They ran a little wild and
took up more than their planned space.
The huge blooms more than compensated.

After hours Edgar Lilith did try to understand
who was truly who and why it was so
but in the end they gave up

when their scent shut all that down.
They’d heard there was a quote
about names and roses in some book

but they were proof enough. Didn’t
need Shakespeare or anyone else
to make them love their names and self.

Who was Shakespeare, anyway,
but a bunch of names over time
and just one the world had settled on?

They were Edgar Lilith. Whatever’s
in a name, they were as settled on it
as the people who called upon them

and their blooms grew huge and fragrant
as they grew as large and wild
as their doubled name would allow.

It’s amateur hour here
in the body.

Everyone living within
is confused

about what
should happen next.

All running into
one another.

All dancing mad
tarantella impressions.

Some like to say
the body’s just a vehicle

the soul uses to get around —
no. It’s all one being, though my soul

is a multiple. No binary for me.
The body and the interior world

are one crowd in chaos.
We’ll get by, more or less;

more likely less of course
considering the bruising going on.

But I’m there,
crowd that I am,

body
that is also all souls.

I’ll be there,
joy as a plural, pain

as a plural, saturated
with the plural nature

of the pieces of deity
we hold within.

Just another aging ape in a restaurant
dining on some descended
dinosaur — chicken, maybe.

That’s what I appear to be
to others. Little do they know
who I really am –I can’t

tell them, of course. That would be
unrectifiable. It’s how I get by,
you see — allowing others

to define me by mistake and then
living up to the wrong billing.
All I’ve ever done, in fact,

has flowed from the mistakes
of others. My one true path has been
threaded through falsehood and

this ape, this unevolved fat boy
chewing with his mouth closed
in spite of his wanton instincts,

is satisfied. The chicken is good.
The people who think I’m good
are good with me. What I am to myself

is ridiculous and unimportant
to them. Inside though? Inside
the well fed body, the glittering

at my core would blind them
if they could see. They never will.
Let them think me small and ashamed,

or grandiose and self-important.
Everyone’s got it right as long
as they let me be.

I mention my pain out loud and
to facilitate my healing, kind folk
point me toward a hymnal for the Natural Congregation

of the Church of the Hairy Woodpecker.
Pick it up, they urge me. Go into the woods
and sing along, or better still, just listen.

I do and it’s certainly a lovely rhythm,
but not meant for me. I’ve tried
and the peace of nature’s not my language,

not in my range; I cannot fake it well enough
for the congregation gathered there
not to know and not to stare.

Instead I’ll sit here and keep the windows open
and think about what it would be like
to be rid of the kind folk, to just leave

the windows open and let the Church
say what it will about the one who won’t come
to the service. He’s got his own

God, or hymnal, they might say. If they’re right,
I’ll sit in waiting for that for the rest of my life;
the windows are open. Let it come, and let it be soon.

You make a damaged statement
and every last friend walks out of your home
while you sputter your mystified apologies.

Afterward, in bed, you lie awake just long enough
to be satisfied that you didn’t retire too early;
you sleep well for a change.

Isn’t it magnificent to be completely alone
and allowed to be the freakish, broken dog
you always knew you were? This is what

your family made you for, this angelic feeling
that you would be perpetually misunderstood:
whatever would come out of your mouth,

no matter when, no matter who was around,
even them, you would say the wrong thing.
You get up, offer a whimper, a bark. It’s all

annoying. It’s all the wrong language
for those around you. Hello, you say,
but it comes out good bye. I love you,

you say, but it spills out like a popped
blister soaking the earth and it’s too late
to shut up, to stop; no one’s listening

to what they call your bullshit
You might as well eat acid, a gun barrel,
a Nazi talking point, a dagger cookie,

and a baby one right after the other. It doesn’t matter:
you’re a bad dog. They don’t want you
anywhere other than on the killing table now.