Dark Matter

will not do this for a week
or a month

or a remainder
of life or so. turning away

to practice instead
my eating skills.

find a way to feed
on less (as there will be less.)

writing’s a bad food,
anyway. texture too papery,

mouthfeel, pure ashes.
adds fat in subtle places.

it doesn’t show
but oh, the weight.

when I stop
some will scoff and some

will wave hands and flutter
and some, some will insist:

hey, you owe me. you owe me
all your gifts. 

you call this agony
of process on display

a gift. I never understood
that. I’m hungry. I’m starved.

look at what I’m giving you.
this is what I owe? you want this?

such a poor menu
I have been offering.

none of this
is good for any of us.

It doesn’t matter
how many times
you’ve told yourself
not to share yourself
so easily 
and so often;

you cannot help opening
your barn door mouth,
letting the horses out
to trample the fields.

It’s too late to call them back.

The sunset, at least,
is perfect: red layers,
pink layers, fire glow low
to the west.

It’s too late to call your words
back from their wild run,
but at least it’s warm
where you are
for at least
a few moments more,

before night’s cold sets in
and you have to sit there
silent and alone with regret,
listening to them
galloping far away
without you.

A man burning paper in a dish,
waiting for magic solutions. 

The smoke sets off an alarm.
An entity snickers behind the kitchen door.

Damn, the man says, flapping his hands,
grabbing the broom to reset the detector

with the end of the handle. 
Damn it all to hell, he says, everyone’s

going to wake up and know
I was pursuing such foolishness.

The entity in the corner
whispers to him that he should open a window.

He thinks it’s a good idea.  He thinks
he came up with it. He opens the window.

Out with the bad, in with the good, he mutters.
It’s as much an incantation as “damn it all to hell”

and he doesn’t realize that the whole cascade
of what is about to follow is his fault

for listening uncritically to whatever sounds
like a good idea at the time. 

The good comes in
and the bad goes out into the world.

The entity easily absorbs the good.
The man eventually closes the window.

Now he’s got so much complexity
to deal with, and nowhere to go. 

Magic, he mutters;
pointless, perhaps non-existent.

It’s too late for that, though,
and he doesn’t even know it.

Old saying: cheaters
never prosper.
In fact they do.
They always do.

I don’t know how to trust.
I don’t know why I should.

To ask for help 
is to open my chest
and show all the knives
I’ve stored there —

not in boxes
or sheaths but bare-bladed.
Over time, nicks
have become open wounds
and I won’t show them
to just anyone.

I dream of canyons
the way some folks
dream of oceans:
I want to sit beside them,
stare out over them 
for a long time,
then plunge in. 

I don’t know why I think.
I don’t know why I’ve bothered.

Old saying: what goes around
comes around. If that’s so,
it takes too long. 

What I know of desertion
would empty a book. I know this,
I have seen the library
where they are kept.

It isn’t cheating 
till it comes around
and fills a book
with knives then
tosses the book
into a canyon
and calls it a day.

How does one prosper,
you ask.
One doesn’t,
I respond, all the way
down.

Seeking my place
in this new body, 
opening doors to some rooms
I’ve seen before
and some that are new to me,

a few that were locked away
from me by design or mistake, 

and some that I thought I knew well
that have been altered in some way;
small unclear changes that somehow
have broken my unearned sense
of security, my trust in my able grasp.

Here’s a cracked cup lying
where it has fallen from my numb hand.

There, my guitar with its bloody neck
that I long to play but fear to pick up.

Everything 
fraught with the small dangers
of life — 

I might have a moment later
where I am comfortable here
but right now, all I can do

is keep trying the locks,
turning the handles,
seeking.

Your head
wants to know what to do next,
and you can’t tell it
anything.

You can’t even tell it
who is listening to its questions,
if it is not the head itself. Maybe
it’s one of those old distinctions
at work — heart, head, hands.

Perhaps your hands are talking to your head,
or perhaps the heart has its own voice
and that is what is bugging the head for action.

The bigger question: where are you, exactly,
in the mix? Do we need to pull
the soul into the inquiry? Or perhaps this is
a case of ego, id, superego at play;
anima or animus goading the persona 
to action while the shadow sits aside chuckling.

All this speculation gets you is panic,
is a spur of the moment step out the door
in a T-shirt and pajama pants
in mid-January. You have no idea 
who’s doing what inside your shell;
maybe, just maybe, you’re just plain nuts;

but look: a coyote
trotting down the sidewalk
on the other side of the street,
much to your mild surprise.

It does not look back at you as it passes. 
As if it should. As if in any space
where Coyote runs
you, you hero, 
you man of the hour,
could mean a thing —

you go back inside
shivering and 
brimful of silence.