About an hour ago to them
a dancing appeared.
It spunked and spun
and then flung, whirred
a top, laid stone stomp,
rippled it humming a full stop.
Then, a reverse hurdle —
both fell down. Slumped
pile of seem, slipped
a noose of silent, some breathing,
a tad of stir.
It was the beam of
what’s after. Binge
hearty, the long bodies
wrung out and still.
Dilated eye, ruddy
arm and flow underneath.
They were enough for
the night, and were done.
Pretty things
in Madrid, in Paris,
in Santa Fe.
Missing them all
for the pursuit of
now, here, present location.
I don’t see
a clear road to
Madrid, Paris, even Santa Fe
from here. Maybe I’ll see them
someday, maybe not.
I still have to learn a million things
about here, now,
where I am, before
I discover them, so while
I still keep an eye on the road,
will take a ride if it shows up,
I will recite their names —
Madrid,
Santa Fe, even Paris — let them
drift through me, salt me
as I toil here, now,
where I am, becoming
the world beyond by standing still.
Abner and Jeremy poke
around a hole they’ve found
in a vacant lot.
Jeremy says,
what used to be here?
I don’t remember much about it.
Dunno, says Abner.
Maybe a post office? There are
a lot of flags and messages
on the fences.
You’re an idiot,
retorts Jeremy. They don’t
keep holes where post offices were,
they rebuild them. It’s not like
post offices aren’t a dime a dozen,
anyway. Look at how many there are.
You can’t walk ten blocks without passing one.
Well, I don’t know, says Abner. Looks like
some government thing. It’s been a while
anyway, it seems, from the look of it,
so who could know for sure?
It’s a big hole, though.
That it is,
says Jeremy.
That it is. Deep one.
Eh.
Someone will put something up on it,
land’s not cheap and leaving it empty
won’t be an option.
Pity, shrugs Abner.
We could use a little light, some more space,
a few less buildings.
All you see is buildings these days.
I hope it’s a good one, says Jeremy.
Something to look at, maybe some nice apartments?
A school maybe?
Not likely, says Abner,
nobody wants to build a good home
for anyone anymore
unless they’ve got money and a lot of it.
Eh,
they both say,
wait and see what they build.
A good bet we won’t like it.
We sit over the end of a comfortable dinner and discuss the state of all things.
A study has shown that exceptions to popular proverbs, laws of physics, rules of thumb, common knowledge, sensible notions, and given assumptions are becoming more and more the norm. Geometry is shifting. Angles, never before provably trisected, now regularly fall into neat triplet piles. Shelter is losing its place in the hierarchy of needs. Soon, it will be forgotten entirely.
It appears to knowledgeable observers that knowledgeable observation is becoming a lost art, akin to alchemy and divination by gut of pigeon and pig. There are suspected reserves, not measurable, of container ships laden with butterflies who are waiting to change the world’s climate. If there are ghosts, they wear visors and lean deep into ledgers with our very dimensionality at their calculating mercy. Nymphs, fauns, and revenant Pan himself establish Websites and collect scores of followers, who fondle tokens of their avatars while staring at doorknobs, thinking of the potential for rattling entry in the dark.
My love, this world is slipping away into an immeasurable mystery. Nothing we have known to be true is certain. We should sleep with our eyes open now, scanning the dark for signals. And then, when we think we have seen enough, it will be up to us how we choose to live. What we choose to measure. What we count on. How we refine and define the terms.
So if a butterfly comes close, hold your breath. If a god possesses you, count rapidly to one hundred seventeen. If the door rattles in the night, we’ll cast a cold eye on it, pass through the walls, and escape, carrying nothing with us. Not even the meaning of love, or of home. We will come back for them later, or make new ones while holding up our thumbs to plead for rides to new places.
Our thumbs — once the measure of punishment, as the story goes — will become our transport. We will have to depend on each other to carry each other.
Eventually, we’ll forget the old origin of the term and say: a “rule of thumb” measures the distance you were carried before you decided you could live where and how you are living right now, and is only fixed until the next departure.
And then we’ll say: Love is the vector of human travel. We’ll say: Home is the fare humans paid for the transport.
And when we say human, what we will see is aluminum pie plates — when full, flaky and soft centered; when empty, easily flung into flight, shining as they fly.
We polish off the last of the dessert, and leave the clean up for tomorrow as we hurry off to bed.
Tags: poems, poetry, meditations, prose-poems
Surely,
says Abner,
you didn’t want her
to leave? That “Get out,
you make me sick,” it wasn’t
what you wanted?
Eh,
says Jeremy,
no,
not what I thought I wanted.
But the flour on her hands,
grrr…like sand, and all the time.
And I couldn’t stop coughing.
You’ve been coughing
since I’ve known you,
it’s the cigarettes,
says Abner.
Jeremy
pulls hard first on his beer,
then his short still-burning butt,
says,
Eh,
the flour didn’t help.
Tags: poems, poetry, abner-and-jeremy
I want to overforget.
Not just not recall,
but live as though
the thing
never happened.
To get in practice I’d
overforget
bunches of
movies, a lot of songs.
A lot of books. Certain lovers.
Meals taken with those lovers.
Details, mostly. Details
no longer attached to lovers
but which rise and disturb
and damn me to recall —
hell yes, overforget all that.
You say,
there was a movie about this.
I say no,
there wasn’t.
I would then overforget
a lot of animals I killed
individually and by species
whether by bullets, neglect, over-consumption
of resources — no matter the method of their murders,
I’d overforget them. Suddenly
nobody has fur coats, photos disappear
from calendars. I’ve overforgotten them,
you can’t have them either,
for this is not the complete mind-erasure
of legend — I would choose what to lose
and once I had chosen
all trace would disappear from the world
for all. Overforgetting would leave nothing
to stir even a ghost.
You say,
this would be so cruel to the rest of us.
You say,
we’d wander around with our own memories
and wonder if we were crazy to think these things
had ever existed.
You say,
how could you think to rob us like this?
I say,
who are you?
You ask me why I yearn for this?
Really? Haven’t you ever walked
a street in an unfamiliar place
and been rocked by a scent or sound
and dived into your pocket
for the money to buy the cab fare, the flask,
the pipe or the pills
to carry you away from the suspicion
that something you’d forgotten at last
after years of work
was returning
and though you couldn’t quite place it
you knew it was awful and that you’d want
to dig your eyes from their sockets
and rip ears and nose from your head
to keep it away from you?
You say,
but you would lose who you are now
and what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger,
you’re the sum of…etc., etc.
I say,
have we met?
Do you know who you’re talking to?
You say
ow, no, not this,
not this scent of bitter-burnt orange
and sick-sweet wires, raw ozone, dirt of bones,
auras on the wind here,
time to flee;
I say, oh, good, it’s working,
overforgetting,
I don’t recognize that —
isn’t it sweet,
and tangy, and so thick on the tongue — say,
where are you stumbling off to so fast?
Don’t you want to know what really happened here?
Tags: poems, poetry, 9/11-processing
When my hands retired,
I learned to lift things
with my mouth.
Why bother, said
my friends? You know
you’ll drop them, leave them
lying around, and give up entirely
after a while.
It’s good for me, for all of us,
I replied — I let my hands
work hard all my life
and let my mouth run free
and lazy, talking up stupid things
and adding nothing to society.
Now I have to think — how to bite
and hold, how to raise weight,
how not to break teeth and tear lips
and gums…and of course,
far less needs to be said,
or even can be.
I’m committed to this, I continued.
I’ll give my hands a rest, they deserve it,
I’ve abused them so, and as for the dropping
and eventually giving up —
well, that would have happened
anyway, someday; and isn’t it
nice to have the quiet?
The sky’s never looked the same since then
I often look up without breathing
I memorize escape routes
I travel light
I have named all my guitars
I eat carefully
I open doors for dogs and breezes
I dress for running and sitting on lawns
The highway’s never been slicker in the rain
I hydroplane on purpose often and have learned to adjust my skid
I love others when it is comfortable
I forget where the speedbumps are right after I cross them
I stream planetary influence
I articulate every word to ensure understanding
Forward motion’s become a mere suggestion
I sleep on the couch a lot
I’m afraid to sleep too long
I flash the news anchor though she cannot see me
I hear rodents in the corridors of power whispering
When the anniversary comes around I dance frantically
I am certain of the time at all times
I watch the hard freaks as if they were prophets
If there is a place to stand I conceal myself nearby
For I am unable to imagine a time
when I will place the day in perspective
and allow myself an instant to proclaim my witness
or let myself forget the ongoing ruin in my gut and groin
I cannot imagine how I will ever
Let myself fall into the symbolism of flag and anger
Admit empire into my smoldering eyelids
Dust myself back to clean gray flannel and silk tie uniform
Make myself believe I’ll return to being an innocent fool
who doesn’t know how to run and duck and cover and choke
or who has forgotten that such skills are necessary lessons
of the years that have passed since then
as monstrously as the burning of once-privileged skulls
saying to me always
that for some
there will never again be
unquestioned safe passage
reflecting upon myself
in the puddle that always spans
the bottom of the street
after a storm
according to this
I’m unstable
but my feet seem to be
holding the ground
here comes a car to stir the waters
and wipe me out
my feet hold their ground
as I’m drenched with the spray
I don’t care enough to move away
feet on the ground
soaked through
it’s tuesday
rain’s over
car’s gone by
still here
the snow gum trees
in the backyard
continue to tremble
though the wind has stopped
they know
their time is coming
the bare time
when their blanched limbs will blend
into the white that covers the ground
that will then sleep for months
a reflection of what they maintain
all year long
seasonal tribute they consider their due
for holding up against a world
that does not love their steadiness
preferring inconstant green
Tags: poetry, poems, meditations
No matter;
none at all.
All light,
waves of light.
Hostas along the walk,
light; cat sleeping on the couch,
light. Every last particle of this house,
light. Even the dark
releases light the longer
I stare into it, and though
I’m no beacon myself
I am light still, dim at times,
blazing at others. Every matter
I’ve lent weight and mass and density to
is light, only light turning
back into the light I am,
and while I may forget this,
I do not cease shining.
Blue music, blue walls,
blue light in a steeple
by the side of any road
through any town.
Could be a low building
by the road, could be tall and slick
but mostly it won’t be.
It’s always church, though,
inside the blue steeple;
blue walls echo blue music,
blue church is calling out —
and I’m just a passenger
on this bus that won’t stop
as it passes by blue steeples,
so I’m singing along in my sleep,
blue pillow under my head.
I call any place I can hear blue music
my church. That’s not far wrong,
in fact it’s just right —
hear the rafters knock?
That bell? That glory of
singers? That sound
of walls holding in
wholeness, holiness —
and on this bus too, a holiness.
Time means nothing on a bus
full of blue music that’ll end soon
though it will return.
I won’t wait up for it.
Will tuck my head into the pillow
and sleep a while, the song
in me, midnight ringing on for hours.
the remarkable thing
about the national moaning
is its reach — soft as it is
it has been heard in North Dakota
as clearly as it has in Boston
it’s been cleaning skeletons
with its gentle scrubbing
they skip and shine
it’s a beautiful dance
we don’t want to know where it sits
or
who is moaning
don’t want to dance the dance
we just want to be told
the minute it’s OK to moan along
we have dead bones of our own
that we’ve never been able to clean
Yeah,
we got some bullshit in here.
All kindsa bullshit.
Someone painted it pink and blue
so it’s pretty, but it’s still bullshit,
and oh, shit, it’s that QUIET bullshit
that kinda lays there, don’t say much,
stinks up the place.
No one’s got the sense to clean it up.
Bullshit, they say,
is good for the garden, good for the lawn.
Makes it grow, makes it green.
Grass needs sun to grow
and it’s goddamn dark in here, so right now,
this bullshit’s not growing shit.
Except for mushrooms. The good kind of mushrooms,
and that’s OK I guess
but when you’re tired of mushrooms
and cant’t take any more,
you still got bullshit.
And that, my friend, is bullshit.
Throw a bullshit party, someone says;
we can party, and bullshit, and party, and bullshit…
That’s bullshit too.
Can’t party all the time
and when you’re done
you still have…
uh-huh.
So what are we gonna do about this?
Ankle deep, stink on our shoes and in our noses
a lot deeper than ankle deep,
knee deep,
neck deep.
Too deep, it seems, to ever get out.
That’s some bullshit, too.
Only way to get rid of bullshit’s
to dig, and we’re gonna get dirty
(which is, in and of itself, some bullshit)
but I don’t know another way.
Here’s one shovel, here’s two —
one for me, one for you,
work’ll get done faster
if both dig through.
And that’s not bullshit,
first thing in here that’s not
been bullshit for a long time
from the look of this place…
Bullshit, you say? You didn’t make it
this way and you’re not gonna be the one
to dig with me?
OK…
get out of my way,
I got two hands, two shovels,
I might break and fall face first in it
but I’m gonna dig, first the stuff
I dumped and then yours if you won’t,
which is some bullshit,
but it’s not gonna stop me
from finding some place to put it
where it’ll do its part
in making something good grow.
That’s not bullshit,
that’s just
the shit.
They lay in distress,
crying
what has happened?
faces down, palms up,
ready to receive an answer.
It would not come that way,
but later, when they’d risen
and brushed dust
from their good clothes,
they turned back to see
and understood.
There was silence at first
as dust continued to swirl and settle
into crevices and throats,
stifling and muffling
and changing how they spoke,
what words they used,
the words themselves.
It is filthy, some said. No,
it is impolite, said others. It is
relegation. No, it is
stagger unbroken though bare trees
to the clearing and build a bonfire.
It’s hit you, hit them, hit there, there,
there and sign there. Flag here,
scar there, bridge here, bomb there.
They resume the position — face down,
but palms down this time to grab the earth
like loose carpet and say again:
what has happened?
Dark Matter 