Dark Matter

from 2008, revised.

What Ed at the door said was true: they were all tired, all the time.
Tired from pushing themselves through double shifts
on behalf of houses, children, better lives —
whatever they had to have.

Half the dancers were former high schoolmates
so there wasn’t much mystery about why they were there.
Half the reason we came was to pay to see
what we’d once tried our best to see for free.

“Brandy” used to dance
to the most radical rock songs she could find.
I saw her dance to the MC5 once. She made me believe
the revolution will be a miracle of taut thighs and dissociation.

You push a commodified body
against the pulse of commodified rebellion long enough,
something begins to happen.
The ones who watch them don’t usually see it,

but I never met a stripper who didn’t understand
the balance of power in any give and take relationship.
What it took to gain power, what was inherent,
what could be assumed, what was the coin of the realm;

all was there in the tall shoes and the soft tummies
of the dancers who didn’t speak
until you’d set them up with a drink or a couple of dollar bills,
who then told you everything in high brisk voices laughing now and then

at some drunk who’d gotten crude with them earlier in the night.
I’d sit there secure in the knowledge that they’d never say that about me.
After all, I only went there for the education and the irony
and I told everyone that, even when I couldn’t stop staring

at Sharon from my math class who whipped my ass in every test,
at “Brandy” and her hip-pulsing anger, at Ed
whose scars and meathook hands welcomed everyone
to the Gardens, even at myself in the mirror behind the dirty bar.

From 2008. Originally published in “Flood,” a chapbook from Pudding House Press. Now out of print. 

All people can be divided into two groups:
those who divide people into two groups,
and those who do not.

We call the people who divide people into two groups
“them,” and we call those who do not
“us.”  Sometimes, we call “them” “the Others.”

Let us say everything we know about the Others:
they are grown fat with their unjust ways.  They
hate us.  They are the source of the Smell — ha,

they are overripe with it.  If you were to crack open
the “O” at the beginning of the word “Others,” it would be
as though a durian had been split in a closet and left to rot.

In fact, the Others
are the splitters of all fruit,
the drainers of all carcasses.

We, of course, are the stitchers of that which is split.
All people, then, may be split into two groups: the splitters of things, and those
who guard that which can be split. We are the Guardians,

and we call the Splitters “the Others,” “Them,” “Those People.”
They are known for cunning, conspiracies, their inability to follow
laws.  If you straighten out the “S” at the beginning

of the word “Splitters,” you see that it is a snake’s spine;
they have been holding the serpent close to their breasts
since the beginning. Venom is their milk; we

are their silent milkmaids, the ones who carry
the venom to their tables.   
It sloshes onto us and we are burned

daily.  All people, in fact,
may be divided into two groups:
those who are burned, and those who do the burning;

or perhaps it is those who are poisoned
and those who live on poison,
or those who worship division 

and those who pray for shielding and healing;
it’s as lamentable as it is observable
that this is how it is: lines drawn between us and them,

them and us, the People and the Others.
In the end, of course, we know that all people
can indeed ultimately be divided into two groups.

and the division falls as follows:
all people can be divided into two groups —
those who divide people into two groups, and the dead.

from 2017

In the middle of the night you wake

and in your mouth is the word
that will save everything
currently in peril,

and you cannot pronounce it,

and soon enough you forget it,
but not the knowledge
that you once knew it.

It poisons your magic for a long time.

Originally written 2007.

1.

The brain
knows many things.
Some of them you know.
Some you do not.

2.

If the brain
is a flower,
you are
its scent.

3.

Perhaps the brain
is a flower,
starving for light, reaching out
through your eyes
for its sustenance.

4.

If you plucked
your brain
and held it to the light,
would you find the mind?

5.

The mind lives
in the brain and
hides in its petals.
The mind is the dark
among colors.

6.

When you sleep
the brain corrals
the mind. They talk all night,
pretending they are
you. In the morning
you are nearly deaf
from the echoes of their
conversation.

7.

It’s not part of the scheme
that you should understand
everything they were discussing.
There are things shoring up
the brain and mind
that would terrify you
if you knew them.

8.

The brain opens its bloom
long after you close your eyes.
The mind rises from its nooks and folds
to escape, moving past you,
playing in the meadows.

9.

The mind drifts back
in the hot late afternoon.
Your head grows heavy
with pollen. You open your mouth
and bees fly in
to take their fill while the mind
avoids being stung
by the danger in the commerce.

10.

When you sleep
the mind and brain bear ideas.
You pretend they are your own fruit.
The brain laughs at you. The mind
strokes you softly, saying,
“There, there…”

11.

You are the scent.
Something plucks your brain
and you die slowly. Maybe
another brain and another mind
recall you for a while, but
you’ll certainly fade.

12.

Anything
fed long enough
on vision, scent, touch,
sound, taste will double back
on its own surety. The brain
makes you sleepy. The mind
makes you frightened. You
make yourself believe
there are reasons for everything.

13.

A night blooming flower
holds its beauty
until first light, collapsing
at the first touch of your hand,
staining your memory
with a scent you can never name.