Likely high water mark
and I’m bereft.
Who’s going to answer
for this success?
I got here on a back or two
and it hurts
me. Hurts
more because I’ve been
lazy getting up off the mountain
now that I’m up.
Who were they?
Damned,
I can’t remember.
recent developments:
the sheets on the clothesline
speaking in soft thwaps
and weeds still pretty enough
to not annoy
old leaves now almost gone to soil
the first cigar in months feet stretched up on the stoop
no jacket
spent an hour thinking of this
not because of tension or struggle
but because it felt good
Smoke,
a lullaby
in the air,
curls around
the covers
of the Duino Elegies.
Feet up, coffee at hand,
the angelic explanations
laid before me
and a good cigar —
no,
a great cigar burning.
Thus, clarity
carries on.
Always.
Animals
struck by cars
come back to life
once you’ve passed their corpses.
One in seven million of them
is given the power of speech.
The accusation
that wakes you before dawn
comes from one of them.
In the voice is a paw ticking off every time
you heard a thump below your wheels
and drove on with a shrug.
Under the heavy-armed trees
outside your window
is an army of the flattened,
the torn, the spilled and bloody.
You stand inside, half naked,
reliving moments
of rejection,
ignorance, and neglect
you’ve experienced.
The fur that suddenly emerges
from your chest and back
is sodden with blackened blood
and the tiny cells of brain and lung.
In the car that’s rushing toward you
are your father, your mother,
every easily forgotten lover,
every friend you don’t call anymore,
every colleague you’ve blindsided,
every server you’ve stiffed,
every aimless stab in every back
and every turn of the wheel
that took you over a body in the road.
Headlights ahead,
then it happens.
You in the blanket of silence.
You waiting for
a one in seven million chance
to give back.
My loyal dog,
the night, has no tail
to wag in welcome
when I approach.
You are laughing at me,
I can tell. You say
the night’s not my dog
at all. That dog belongs
to no one and you chide me
for presuming such a thing.
But you’re so wrong. I’ve kept him
on a leash so long
he appears to be free,
but he’s my dog all right —
waits for me all day
until I come home and feed him.
Though there’s no tail on him,
I can tell my dog loves me.
How else to explain why I am licked
by darkness so often?
Tags: poems, poetry, depression
Let go, he tells himself.
You don’t count at all.
You haven’t for a while.
Words count (the speaking
of words is an action and counts
no matter the proverb).
A lot of good people
have been bastards,
he tells himself. Let go
the ties and be. Cut
words loose: write or say
four, pull back two. Do not
neglect the rage,
let go of it. Free it.
Qualification,
he tells himself, is pure
falsehood.
Justification contains
too many syllables
to waste. Let go, sharpen,
make a blunt object,
poison a well.
Let go, he tells himself.
You’re too old not to.
It’s expected now,
your job practically.
Customize at your risk —
words don’t demand
anything beyond utterance.
They will fail you,
of course. Let go,
fall as they may fall.
How far your fate is
from the top is
uncertain. Let go.
Find out.
she was wisteria, i think, wisteria
in its short bloom, she was warm days and cold nights
in mud season when blades come out of the soil
where they’ve been hiding like swords,
mute in moonlight. she was remarkable,
and i was lost as soon as she left me.
it was a night and a day and a night before i cried
for her. a long sweep of hours in numb succession.
if this is grief, i said, it is a cold wind. and a cold
night followed. unseasonable time. the flowers on the early vines
shriveling. i wept in the privacy of the bedroom
that was empty. emptied myself i cried more, the walls
inside me melted and i sweated them out. was paper thin
after. light passed through me and from within i was lit.
this is her doing, i told myself. that i have been
illuminated by her. that i shine. she was more than i had
thought to say of her, some sun of a distant unglimpsed sky
over a world i hadn’t explored, and i cried again as i would
and still do. she was wisteria, forsythia, the very bones
of spring unedited by interpretation, a sun i will not see again
and so i fail and enter a twilight of weeping and indulge the urge
to create and recreate the moment when i lost a chance
to stop and listen and let her expand within me as i should.
the moment of loss is deep weather, a season of interruption
when the simplest answers go unnoticed. i should have been
motionless and perhaps i could have held her here,
or perhaps not. she was wisteria, she had her time,
was gone. i remain. i weep, i shine with her within me
and light nothing around me.
So angry
a plant would cower,
but damned if I do not
hide it in savage feeding
on everything in the cabinet.
Keep it in — hold the line
against the fire. Don’t think
of sharpening the knife —
which of the many I own
would I choose,
anyway? Which should
do the job I dread and desire?
I slash at the eggs to make them bleed
with common cutlery —
it’s not enough, but I will make do.
I’d love to drain myself
tonight. Would adore the sight
of the pool forming in the tub around me
full of bile. I would lose a little
weight, trim down, finally stop caring
how I look. But instead
I stuff myself some more and think a while
on how deep I’ll have to cut
to let this out — put on enough fat and
it’ll be too much work to cut through it,
so I’ll be safe.
Safer but still angry. Still hungry.
Something needs to be in danger from me.
Boredom
softens me
as if I’m candy
in a shut car
in a casino parking lot
whose driver is inside
winning
one hundred and thirty six dollars
on a video poker game
and thinking about getting
flatiron steak at the buffet
to celebrate
then maybe hitting the lounge
for a drink or two
or three
but then he goes
belly up
when feeling flush he hits
the craps table
and comes back to the car
and I’m shapeless
and not
appetizing enough
to be a consolation
so he chucks me out the window
on the angry drive home
where I gather gravel on the shoulder
and am eventually eaten
by a raccoon
who is then struck and killed
by a tour bus
coming up with that story
is the most interesting thing
I’ve done all day
Close your relentlessly
interpretive eyes
for now
and let it be
that what you might have seen
has vanished.
Let the seeming
become
the unconceived.
All is apparently gone.
You might be seen
but cannot return the favor.
You are
loose in unobserved
life.
Freedom
appears as red grains
cycling under your lids.
Press fingers to them
and see darkening.
Feel blindness.
Take one step forward
and blunder into something.
Stay strong and learn it
with your hands,
tongue, nose, chest
and shins.
Can you name it?
Are you now in discovery?
This is what you wanted
when you closed your eyes.
Breaking new on familiar shores. There’s pain.
Create a new word for its color.
Some problems
are small enough
to be solved
over bacon and eggs.
Get to the diner
after the rush and sit
in the fat person’s booth,
the one with the movable table.
Sit a bit stirring coffee.
Listen to the businessmen
who had to squeeze
into the normal booth
talk about
underwriting a risk.
Cover the whole table with the plates
when they come and
dig in to the comfortable
and familiar. Slowly,
carefully, acknowledge
the issues,
sort them,
eliminate distractions,
and come to a decision
just in time with the last chew
of the last bite
of oversized Italian toast.
Leave a big tip when you go
and light a cigarette upon leaving.
Walk to the car
feeling full and prepared,
taking your time. Those homefries
were delicious, weren’t they?
The eggs were perfect, the coffee
strong but smooth. It’s all
going well. It’s all working
out.
a man
became a critter
creeping
over land
not seeing connection
to humans
he sat on rocks
turned em over for moral guidance
he’s a cemetery
of thinking —
left over
animal
reptile brained
chunk of reaction
fight and bite
sleep where it’s friendly
stay out of the cold
of other opinions
screw a little
when called to it
a story so common
you might be forgiven
for pretending it’s
just another legend
until you cross paths with him
while trying to fall in love
My cat don’t know
who his daddy is —
probably a dead cat by now.
He’s getting old.
Sleeps a lot, but always did.
Likes fish. Likes my blanket.
Purrs, and sits in the window
(where he usually falls asleep,
surprise, surprise.)
He knows who his mother is.
I do too. Took her in pregnant
and kept the both of them.
She’s a long hair tortie,
he’s a patchwork shorthair
in grey and white. She’s tiny,
he’s…not.
Doesn’t seem to care
about heritage. Mom’s
a mutt with fur between her toes,
he’s not. Must have got that
(or not got it)
from his dad.
He’s a cat, just that:
sleepy, furry, old, and fat.
Never showed him, never tried
to get a ribbon, don’t know
who his daddy is. Mom’s a mutt,
never tried to prove she was
Siamese or Russian, didn’t care.
A cat’s a cat to another cat,
figure I should feel the same.
I let him be. He lets me be.
Furry bastard fat mutt lump
with a big purr and a bigger butt
he likes to have scratched —
works for me.
You refuse to say
or read or listen to
anything negative,
only speak of God’s love
and the sun, place flowers
in all the corners of your house.
Lemme tell you something:
the cockroaches
say much the same
of the night, the filth,
and the stink,
and those flowers begin dying
from the moment you bend
to cut them loose
from the mulch they need
to live.
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It’s OK, you’ve earned it.
Somewhere a Native American
is smiling from the back of his unicorn.
Dark Matter 