Dark Matter

Dear Jacob — asking us
what poem he should read
and then saying (when he got
to the stage), “This is by request…”
every time, every time.

Dear man who wrote the book,
“I cry a gentleman’s issue” (whose name
I don’t remember, though I’m trying like mad) —
folded arms holding your cane,
your voice like maybe a god’s voice
saying, “I am the wolf and I am
HUNGRY, ahhh…”

Dear Marcel in French (who was
Belgian, if I’m not mistaken) and indeed
all the dear other nameless women,
dear forgotten nameless men;
you are all a part of me and my poems.
I sit here and imagine you with a divine voice
behind my closed eyes.

What would I not give up
to return to Eleni’s at night,
some rainy Sunday night, across from
the Brown Square Social Club,
careful not to park on their side of
the lot?

Well,
I wouldn’t quit my day job.
I wouldn’t quit my money or my
suffering for it or the machinations
of petty workforces to get me fired,
to get me gone.

But
I would give up
my tenderest moments there
at Eleni’s and elsewhere — surrender
those movements toward ecstasy
as well as my downward spirals —
I’d give up their words I took to mean
so much so long ago, surrender them
to smoke and fog and other miasma,
other distractions in memory’s cave.

I’d close my eyes to them, to Marcel
and Jacob and the guy I can’t name;
I’d imagine them gone, or not imagine them
at all.

After all
it’s not likely that I am
in their heads either.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

To sit without entertainment
or reason beforehand
and then to turn away
and go elsewhere,

to go to a spring in a surprising ledge and drink
ice-cold water and not care about
origins or what it might be bringing
into you.

There are reasons to go
into nearby woods as if there was
nothing to worry about: after all,
there isn’t.

Anyone could pass there
and not be found until too late
for anyone to care more than
a little bit;

other than wringing their hands
over your disappearance, other than
searching for you and then
abandoning that search

and letting you be, leaving you
to be a sweet pang of sadness;
other than that, why not
let you be? It won’t matter,

after all, to you; it won’t matter
after a small time to those
who knew you. In a crisp
New England summer,

in a not unexpected twist,
you’ll be gone. Your loved ones
will turn away after a bit
and leave you there, as you wished.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

yesterday a friend came to see me
and I sat like a sword in a stone all day,
waiting for someone to pull me out
and set me to talking as I always have done
but I did not.

instead I just sat there
like a bump on a frog all day,
looking natural (I hope) but secretly
croaking out a screaming plea for someone
to include me in but he did not.

instead I sat there like an ice cube
in some generic glass of whiskey on a standard bar,
slowly dissolving but keeping very still
while the laughter and the talk stayed
going and going until I heaved myself up
from my chair and ran away silently

with only small purposes: pet the cat,
bow my head, be elsewhere, wonder how long
it will be before I can go to sleep.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T

hands —
I don’t know them —

grown small now —
shrunken —
with veins popping out —
bones working in sequence
as I ripple them — I don’t
know them —
as I reach
to stroke a cat’s calico fur
or to fix them hard upon
a more or less sharp
kitchen knife —

hands — unknown
now to me —
a butcher’s hands

my father’s hands
appearing on my arms
after his death — him reaching out
on his last day to grasp my hands —
my hands —
I don’t know them now —
my mother dying —
untouched at home —

hands lying in my lap
unbound from arms —
resting up until
an end

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T