Unremoved snow
on his sidewalk. His Camry
buried to the fenders
but slowly melting free.
Where’s the old man?
He hasn’t made
his daily grocery run
for at least four days.
And surprised, too,
that he didn’t get out to vote.
Maybe
he got a ride?
We look across at his house
and the drawn blinds.
Shrug, figure he’s OK,
maybe waiting for spring.
At night
our house chills down
more than you’d expect,
considering how warm it gets
at various points during the day.
Almost like the bodies chilling in earthquake ruins
after bloating and cooking in the dark.
Almost like the chilling hearts
of distant citizens impatient for things
to get back to normal.
Almost like the ice sculptures
chilling on partying cruise ships moored
north of the devastation, token supplies
having been offloaded.
Almost as chilly
as the wind blowing attention
to new crises, new celebrities,
old hobbies and old concerns.
As chilly, in fact, as the morning
soon to dawn where ravaged people
on the living room screen will be seen,
shrugged at, and turned off.
(for D.G.)
“There is no object so foul but that intense light cannot make it beautiful.” — Emerson
When we were young we stood too close to each other
to let light in. We huddled with our eyes closed. Saw
everything by touch. Knew ourselves and each other
only by the feathers of our breath. Called
the dark our day and were done with it,
called in pain, named ourselves frustrated,
could smell nothing but our wasted potential.
The details we did not see then
stand up for themselves now, declaring
that we were sculptures. We aren’t the shadows
we accepted then, never were; we were full
and solid, palpable through our eyes if we had tried.
We could not have known this then,
but now, only now, now that distance
and day allow us to pore over our fragile
and mobile pasts, can we scan the slippery
and live velvet of what we were. Not foul,
not terrible; back then we were so lovely
as to stop time itself. It stops now
for us, now that we can see. We can say it:
we were enough, were beautiful,
and we would have known that then
if we could have stepped away from ourselves
long enough to let the light come in.
Dammit,
I’m sick of laying low.
Thinking of the flame around your head tonight —
I’m just putting it out there, even through tears:
Red,
let’s get
world-shiftingly drunk again
and shift the world.
Let’s dance again
to those songs that sounded old
the minute we wrote them.
Let’s get out there
and bop fantastic, weaving
in and out again, the old
schoolers telling the freshmen
how it is. Let’s be wild
as sunflowers, rolling our vowels
like kegs into the sunset
and on through the night
that was always the sacred rebuke
to the next day, which we loved well
in its own way, though it never compared
to the moment.
Let’s pull the bourbon from the shelf
and suck it down,
imagine it tastes like kissing our best lovers
over and over, imagine
the angels not caring what we do,
the devils and imps not caring what we do,
the whole of unfair creation giving up
judgment for once,
because I’m sick of laying low,
waiting for something that I know won’t happen.
Sick of tears and grieving when the sky
is an offering every day, no matter its color.
Sick of dances undanced,
songs strangled on the back of my tongue,
sick of unworn costumes and feathers
that have forgotten flight…
You’re the flame on my dance card tonight,
just for tonight, and I want us to burn
the black back into the corners
and sear the excuses, the rationalizations,
leave them charred and discarded
and forgotten.
There’s a flame on my dance card tonight
that won’t be drowned in weeping,
won’t be quenched by time,
won’t be stopped by anything…
a flame that burns, snaps to the music,
flares and roars and opens up clearings
where the light can come in,
I want to dance again,
old school firedogs racing the burn,
giving no quarter to the rain up ahead.
So
let’s dance, Red;
let’s light up and
roll, Red,
for as long as we both can roll.
Sing them blank blues,
let ’em
freshen, spring up.
Bubble smoke along
the edges of your mouth.
Trill it.
Stink up the air fat
and lovely, bone-in
gristle and rib-sticky.
Chart uncharted,
croon siren chin up in the shallows,
trace the deep in rogue wave,
take the foolish sailor
overboard.
Step out and light up
in a parking lot
full of compensation
and small fights, laughter
of night time forgotten battles.
Back inside,
blank blue beckons again…
spitting demon,
choral angel, something beyond you.
It’s wet, sweat flinging war up here.
Go for it…
on a good night,
God sits in. All that smoke,
incense to the altar. Ticket
written, punched, cloud full of
fixing to be done. PLAY —
get us out of our way.
I wish my arms
were donkeys
pulling carts
full of children laughing
or produce to the country market
in a land without pickup trucks.
I wish my legs
were lungfish
making do in hard times
with air or water
as needed, or that they could crust up
and wait.
Wish my cheeks
were stuffed with mussels
because my mouth was a tide pool.
Smell that, the wet musk
of inhuman kindness?
I long to smell like that —
unconscious and fun, doing
the simple thing, abundant
with no plan.
My
overworked brain screams
protest. “Don’t deny me,
you asshole!” Fuck off, brain.
I’m in love with not thinking tonight —
I fall asleep,
wishing I were a sloth,
home to algae and slow calm,
dreaming of a celery beard,
breathing over
a morel tongue.
I keep thinking
it’s going to stop
suddenly,
in pretty much the way I used to hope
the preacher
would stop pounding the pulpit
with his fist to strike a pose
with a long finger pointing
out at the congregation
at the breakthrough moment
where the souls are saved
and brimstone gives way
to ambrosia.
Sermon after poisonous sermon —
unworthy,
useless,
failed son,
fallen —
I always hoped
for a phrase
or a line to redeem me
before them all.
But the service ground on
with me unremarked
for direct salvation.
Always the implications, nuances
to chide me on, drive me deep
into the bench, sinking down.
If I was still
a praying man,
I’d be on my knees right now
for silence. On my knees,
hoping to awaken
in the arms of peace.
I gave that up a while ago —
instead I think about stealing the Bible
and tossing it into a bonfire.
Nothing to hear there,
nothing worth trying,
not a second time.
You are the cemetery
of brotherhood.
You poke at our faith in
each other’s angelic natures,
demanding spice
and devil noise from us. One minute
I’m sure you’re done, the next
you’re sticking a finger in my eye.
You don’t know anything real.
In your world there’s a ghost named
the perfect past
and it haunts everything.
That there’s no such thing
as that ghost
hasn’t escaped your notice,
but it doesn’t stop you.
The way you talk is ripped lingerie,
salt in a cut, con man sweet talking into
a rape in a hallway.
I’m going to write you a letter
and send you a postcard
and leave you a voice message
and shout at your house after hours.
It’s the way you want it, isn’t it?
It makes you feel
worthy to be my enemy,
to dismiss me,
call me a mental burp…
hey, you got me again, you slick
shit on an oaken mantel. Make of me a trophy
of some white contest for black arts…
and dammit, I play into it.
I need to call you out
the way you need me to call you out:
that’s the game. We do it
for love of our own voices,
the truth
just a secondary gem.
Sure, that guitar
can sing, but
she ought to sting.
Put a bottle on that thing —
let her ring, bring that
tingle between
navel and
nether
whenever,
in sweetness or sorrow,
no matter the weather.
Hand steady on, then shaky, snaking,
limber till it flexes up to
the right note, or maybe just short —
you catch your breath thinking
it’s gonna bring you
home — but then
full stop, back down
low, lower, back up the neck
from thick to high and it keens
like they say the wind does
somewhere, like a train going by.
Sings like
I do when you play me right,
at midnight or high noon, blue
or wild, there’s some kind of story there,
names and places, spirits and flesh
too slick to put a breath on, and still
you go on, tremble your hand
like you’re throwing dice in a barroom
with the whole place gathered round calling
for the lucky bones, and it moans and sighs
that glass-tongued tale of a mourning
gone on too long or a longing going
straight into morning — put a bottle on it,
honey: shake loose that song.
You’re some kind of closet,
aren’t you? Full of
things I saw myself in,
once.
I loved this, wore that
for fashion’s sake,
found that comfortable,
never really liked that
but wore it for another.
In the door,
the sound of age.
On the floor,
dust and silly notions.
On the walls, old newsprint, pictures
and chipped paint.
A rack groaning
with outlived garments…
nothing fits, nothing
worth saving, but if I give it away
who will I see when I look into you?
It matters to some
that they fly.
it matters not at all
to me anymore.
I can still raise a wind below me
and rise now and then…
but long flights
are for others.
I watch them from the ground.
I think of my own migrations,
am glad of the memories…
glad to be on the hard earth
thinking of rest. It’s time
to let my wings fall to my sides.
It’s time.
Don’t set off any earthquakes
or supervolcanoes tonight.
If the world is going to end,
I want to be awake when it happens.
There will be something to see
in those last seconds
before the curtain tumbles around us
laden with stone and flame,
and I just know I’ll be the one
compelled to capture it
and cram what little sense
could be made of it into words
no one will read, but dammit,
I’ll try, and I would like
a good night’s sleep before I face that,
thinking of good things to do in my future.
It’s not much to ask, I think,
to want to be at my best when the worst happens.
The band that sings the Big
breaks open more often than not
spilling hope and ambition
into smaller buckets
but the band that sings The Big
is always the band I want to hear
No matter the way they sing
be it simple guitar or sample bombast
if there’s Big in the reach
I will watch as they stretch
Even if the subject matter
tends to the small
if the band sees the Big
encompassed in the detail they seize
(like a universe in a pinhead
or the history of desire in one lover’s pining
sharply defined)
I’ll gladly pray for their strength and grasp
to hold out long enough
for them to bring the Big to me
for I know the Big in me
and the band that sings the Big
that serenades me large
is my minstrel pal
The band that sings the Big
gets my voice on the chorus
The band that sings the Big
has me from the first
Pretentious or humbled before the scope
of what they tackle
I will honor any who desire
to snatch up a cosmos
to corral it in three minutes
to be overwhelmed by the struggle
to fail
to fail repeatedly
to fail utterly
and still never stop singing
Such a dark and common
moment of purely human
triumph: to forget
a section of your life,
tell yourself in its place
a lie you can live with,
a lie you then come to believe
with all your heart,
one from which you take
your impetus to action,
a lie growing proud as a demon
to set you aflame
with a fading sense of its falsehood
and subsequent absolute conviction —
a lie like that is as good as Scripture,
a Gospel rock on which to build
a fortress, a slaughterhouse,
a beautiful tomb.
In the forest of your life,
you fell a tree and block your ears.
This clearing has always been here,
you tell everyone. Always a barren spot.
See how the light glares here.
Maybe there was a fire here long ago —
in fact, you are sure of it. You insist you were there.
Show off your burns. Use the scars
to chart your course out of the woods.
End up somewhere you never expected
as someone you aren’t, feeling
the gray rain on your ashen skin.
Just a note to all in the Philadelphia area: Duende will be performing tonight at Infusion Tea and Coffee, 7133 Germantown Avenue, as the feature performers for the Philadelphia Slam. 7:30 to 10:30 PM. There will be books and CDs available. Come out — love to meet new friends and see old ones…
Check the “Show Schedule” tab for details or to listen to some Duende tracks…
Dark Matter 