Daily Archives: October 18, 2010

If There Is Love

If there is love
that will hold up,
it will carry a brown candle
and smell of sandalwood.

It will reach up to the top shelf
when asked and pull down
an old, soft-worn blanket
to cover up against November.

If there is love
it will not be blind, but in fact
will have uncommon night vision,
will be able to see through and around.

It will not flinch from weeping
at the horrid sight of failure
real or imagined.  It will seek
gold in ruined streams.

If there is love
it will have rough hands
when grip is needed, soft hands
when it is time to let go.

If there is love
it will be small, will find shelter
in a pocket and will travel unbidden
to wherever the journey goes.

It will have a face.  It will
have no need of a name
and will not come when called,
will appear before it’s called.

Love, supple crutch; it will not
do the expected when it is needed.
It will bend as you bend.  It will stiffen
as you stiffen.  It will not hold you up

but it will fall with you, rise
when you choose.  If there is love
you will know it is there
only if you do not feel the most lonely

when you are most alone.

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Big Game

Let’s hunt together
and plan to eat what we kill
and then kill everything.  Let’s hunt
like gluttons, like we’re going
stoned to the supermarket —

OOOh, a whole world meat aisle!
A planet of produce and snack cakes!
Give me the elephant gun, there are cookies
in Afghanistan I’m dying to try!  There are

some lovely cuts of beef in Luxembourg!
And if we work together, we can butcher it all
in the field without messing up our homes.

Field dress the edible population of the world!
We have nothing to lose but our hunger.
We can put salt licks on the islands
and make the deer swim to us

as we lie in wait, naked on the beach.
We can build blinds — hell, the blind
is where we live!  And let’s not forget
domestic production — some of those ghettos
and reservations and all of Appalachia
are good eatin.’  I’m itching to try the cuts
slow-roasted over a fire, right where we drop them,

and then we’ll have a little wine and a little dance,
something to tamp the full belly down;
it’ll help with the digestion, don’t you know?

Why did we make the flag so big and so colorful
if we weren’t supposed to use it to wrap up the spoils
of a good season?  All it takes is a little skill
and a big, big gun and we’ve got a bounty before us —
so let’s go hunting, you and I,
while the big red sun is nailed to the sky
and the biggest damn banquet ever
is still laid out on the biggest table.

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The Other Night

“The other night”
will be amazing
two weeks
or a month from now,

but today it’s only
a blue thread on the pillow
and an ache for more.

Marvelous time
that will not move too quickly
for fear of gently substituting
a too-eagerly desired nostalgia
for this necessary,
melancholy present, for

without today’s blues
how much less sweet
“the other night” will be
two weeks or a month
from now.

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Escapism

Love the West
as it’s painted.

The wind off the prairie,
the wind off the face of Crazy Horse.

The long false memory of lone wolves
under quarter-sky moons.

Movie, movie, movie.
Pulp book footing at the ford of a shallow stream.

Dirt main streets and families
stoic as props.

Something to rely on
when the spirit’s down

and that howl is a wolf
at the door.

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