They stand around, looking for the source of the smoke,
wondering how far away it is. When the first child
ignites, they are amazed at first,
then push through disbelief to try and extinguish
the small blue flames racing up her back. She seems
unfazed, more upset by the frantic patting and pushing
and rolling than by the fire. Once it’s out, another child
starts to burn, and the process is repeated though
the boy’s reaction is the same: no fear of the fire,
discomfort and fear at the rush to put it out,
the prescribed violence of the response. Eventually,
all the kids are burning although they continue
to swing and climb the jungle gyms
as the smell of meat fills the air. The parents
are nonplussed but do what they’ve been doing all along
even as the kids protest and say, “It’s no big deal! Stop!
We’re fine! You’re hurting me! Stop!” A learned expert
proclaims it a generational miracle and says that
perhaps this is the next stage of evolution: a species
of burning humans who don’t care if they burn. None
of the children have an opinion. They’re just kids, after all:
what do they know? Something, I guess,
that the rest of us don’t, with their blue flaming hair
and their blue flaming lips, singing hot songs
as they play and dance
and see the earth
changing.
Monthly Archives: June 2011
Children On Fire
Absolutes
In the bluest eye,
a dot of brown.
In the whitest snow,
a gray morsel.
In the darkest night,
a light shining just to be seen.
In this second,
a small eternity.
Imagine, now,
purity. Pretend it exists.
Pretend flight
is endless, that what flies
never lands. Pretend
you never land.
Pretend earth under you
is invisible — no down to define
up. See how far
you get. In what direction
are you flying? How far
have you gone?
In the clouds,
rain, lightning, hail;
in your wings, now,
an aching for rest.
Poet Wars
They go to war over a word or two,
sharing their opinions and
an unwillngness to bend.
When no one’s looking,
they fire off an angry word or two
about this trivia at close hand —
and then they spit into the wind
and end up damp and vile and mad
over a word or two that no one heard,
yet again.
Rose, Swastika, Bomb
You repeat to me
and everyone else who can hear
that poetry will save the world,
poetry is the full expression of love,
poets are the unelected legislators,
men die from not having the news from poems,
and so on, and so on…
and so on.
Are you serious?
Can you hear yourselves?
Can you hear yourselves
over the sound of the Sharpie
scrawling lines from a jihadist poem
onto the stock
of an AK-47?
Over the loudspeakers broadcasting
“The Eurhythmics Of Ancient Poetry”
to a mass of Chinese schoolchildren
synchronizing their calisthenics
to pre-approved poems
while bureaucrats nod?
Over the grinding
of three chords and hate
as the skinhead misspells his vitriol
in a screed on a screen devoted
to race war?
Over the screech
of a doggerel verse about
the President and his birthplace?
Over death-eyed rhymes of bling
and Glock and casual idolized
gangster dreams?
Can you hear yourselves?
Can you hear yourselves
over commerce forced-pentameter
and the sound of ideals clinking against
sonnets run foul with coin?
How do you understand, how do you explain away
poetry brought to bear on behalf of evil
and venal, in service to war and pain,
built to enflame blood
and rattle down weak walls
in time with the rounds from the guns?
Not every poem springs from love.
Not every poet is a snowflake,
unique and perfect; some write to honor
viler climates, but everyone’s
a poet too. We forget
that men die every day
from bullets and lack of bread;
women die every day
from bayonet rape and circumcision;
children die every day
from starvation and public policy,
and among the killers
there are certainly poets
as possessed by this urge to write
as any of us who see windows
where they see walls,
and gates
where they see razor wire.
No telling what a poet
keeps in the pocket
next to the pen —
a rose,
a swastika,
or a bomb.
Ribbon And Bell
Ribbon on the ground
and a bell on the ribbon.
One of my pets will chase it
if I pull it, leave it on the floor
waiting for me to pull it again
if I stop. The other
will chase it too, but if I leave it
she’ll steal it and hide it
and I’ll hear it later when she pulls it
herself. One old, patient cat;
one young, impetuous ferret.
One who trusts in the future
and in me; one who trusts
me in the moment and handles
the future for herself. I”m so reliable
that I pull the ribbon and the bell
whenever either one’s around.
But I try to remember
to pick it up when I’m done.
Coddle age and patience,
thwart youth and skill —
she’ll never remember it anyway
the next time I pull it for her.
She’ll just chase it around,
waiting to see how long it takes
before memory fails me, and she takes over.
Husks
the Work
took so much from him
that when he finally rested
he blew away.
where the husk landed
was a husk.
a heap of husks.
the Work stepped lightly
on them when it came that way
and they powdered.
they ended up as dust
on the sole of the Work’s foot.
in the steps of the Work
was the dust
of the husks.
if you look,
you can see the whorls
of the Work’s
bare footprint.
if you ask,
the Work has no
one human name.
the husks
remain somewhere
back on the trail of
the Work.
if you seek them,
you will be
disappointed
when you see the pile
and unable to explain
the Work
by sifting the shreds
through your fingers.
you will learn
how little you knew of him
that made him any different
from anyone else
whose husk
is now mingled with the others.
perhaps that news
is on the feet of the Work
but it is now
so far along
there will be no point
in trying to catch up.
Incident At A Gentleman’s Club
She had a last vision
of a Brazilian river.
His last words
were of the endangered
Confederate trillium,
glimpsed in the Florida Panhandle
on a college hiking trip.
Then he lost the marbles
and there were bullet holes
in the pole, the stripper,
the back wall…
fortunately,
they kept a shotgun
under the bar.
He’d just wanted to shoot marbles again,
the game he’d learned from his grandfather…
He was no good as a shooter then.
She’d wanted to see the Rio Formoso again,
wanted to see her mother…
She was no stripper then.
Lost his archaic marbles, then:
bullet holes,
dented poles,
the woman
vanishing. It’s to him
as if she wasn’t there
but she was. A marble
to be shot, so she was.
Wow, said the newspaper.
This is not making much sense.
Why would he do this, was there a grudge
or a vengeance?
A brain scientist will be called in
to explain. It’s fractal, she’ll say.
It’s got
infinite dust
to be cleaned up.
It’s revenge for the vanishing
Confederate Trillium, yes.
Revenge for lost marbles.
He forgot that at once.
She forgot the Brazilian river,
the beautiful
Formoso.
It’s fractal. It cleans up
beautifully. They
cleaned up beautifully.
Nothing new in the story:
crazy person, tragic
person…
just this,
unspoken:
Mama,
are you here?
Grandfather,
are you here?
No one plays marbles
anymore, and
no one here knows
how lovely
the Rio Formoso
can be in the right light —
oh for the right light
once again on the leaves,
through
the translucent
vanishing flowers;
no one here
can explain to anyone else
how beautiful…
A Great Day
Ever-circling demands of sickness and hanging ruin
keep him sitting in the window looking out
at birds and squirrels and the kids across the street.
When a pigeon falls dead to the sidewalk
from the wire, he blames himself yet again
for every natural disaster, forgetting that for nature,
there is no such thing as a disaster
as it contains every death, mutation,
storm, volcano, and flood; puts the emphasis always
on natural, not disaster; shakes everything
off as just another great day. Nature’s
infinitely happy with itself and does not grieve.
Meanwhile, back in the window, our intrepid hero
of despair is telling the ledge that he’s going
to do it this time, he really is, no stopping him…
standing in the window
measuring his potential descent
against the light of morning…it’s true:
nothing’s going to stop him. A heavy soul
always sinks unopposed at its appointed time.
Nature will not stop smiling even as he turns away
and goes to his bathroom.
Whatever happens next,
it’s going to be a great day.
J’Accuse
It’s not fair
that you’re alive.
What desire
is under your foot
to be stepped on
and muddied
beyond recognition,
what stern longing
will not leave you
despite your flight
from it,
what fatal question
will you refuse to answer
if you do what you think
you must do
and never consider
what is present
and screaming for you
before you
and inside you
and in your path?
Can you be any less
of a man whether you
are spitting or slipping
along? When you stop
how do you dare
to move again?
It’s not fair that you are
alive.
There’s no justice in you
for all those who died unfulfilled.
When they look at you,
what betrayals they see
that you are nonetheless
comfortable
carrying!
Are you
even breathing right now?
Can you call yourself
and dare to answer
to the name you were given?
Do you even exist, or are you
a ghost, a broken spoke,
a derailment? It’s not fair
that you’re even alive
when better men
are not.
Everything I Know Of Life (I Learned From Marijuana) — old poem, revised
1. decision
when it was first offered
to pass it
or hit it
made it clear
as to where I would stand
in certain battles.
2. buy
no trust
is complete.
trust
anyway.
3. tools
what you work with
is not as important
as the end result.
4. process
anything worth doing
is worth doing well.
every loose end tightened,
every tear repaired,
clean up meticulous.
anything left over?
saved or shared.
5. sharing
it’s never
100 %
reciprocal; someone
will always
take more
than they should —
share anyway;
it comes back around
often enough.
6. nostalgia
haze
makes everything
golden.
7. paranoia
yes, they’re watching.
you are suspect.
they are too.
all good things
are suspect
to someone.
8. appetite
if you can swallow it,
it’ll do the job. all
that matters is empty.
9. once it’s done
it can be revisited,
but it will never
be the same.
Old Love
Their hands
fold into one another
as do paper dolls:
not two separate but
one continuous; this
is not the love
of silk and
fire
but that of
welded breaks made
strong, stronger
than before,
steel
that may yet be defeated
but refuses to lose,
becomes plastic
under pressure,
reforms, sculpture
garden hands,
could be called
great art if it were not
natural for these two.
And their eyes!
Set into mapped
faces, clear
as seafront mornings
after fog’s burned away,
but they are so still,
so still…
Alive? Yes.
Whatever comes next
they are alive now
and no telling,
they may remain so
after what we call death.
Whatever you say
of this, however you
call out or disregard
the forged hands
and the still eyes,
old love is alive here.
And to prove it,
with his free hand
he
(trembling)
brushes a crumb
from her chin.
Head On The Table
At home in the world,
I frequently sit down exhausted
with my head on the table.
What’s nice about it
is that I can leave it there
and walk away
if I so desire
because in the next room,
there’s a person who won’t mind
my headless stumbling
and the constant
falling over.
She’ll help me set it back
on my shoulders, sometimes
playfully spinning it like a basketball
before reattaching it.
I get so dizzy and rattled
but it’s not all that bad
to be that way
after spending a day
pushing it through mud
and manure and
slop I won’t name.
Love, they call it,
when there’s someone there
to do that for you —
I would call it that as well,
and will
as soon as I get right
and stop giggling.
Knock Offs
House brands rock
They do the job
They meet the need
if not the want
Knockoffs rock
You can’t tell what’s what
unless you’ve seen
real more than once
Counterfeits rock
Maybe they’re cheap but
a cheap watch tells expensive time
at least for a little while
With that Bentley grille
on your Chrysler
you oughta drive it
like you stole it
Oughta steal something
The way you have the sizzle
without having the steak
oughta be a crime
but it’s not
It’s all for the best
in this best of all
probative worlds
Pick Up Sticks
He is nostalgic
for the thing he used to call
his “imagination”
which has devolved
into a game
of pickup sticks
in which the sticks
are splinters of things
he thought long ago
and picking them up
is harder harder and harder
as their sorrow is heavy
as trees felled
by deep earthshaking
and wide airbending
that no longer grow
but lie there in random patterns
where they fell
Grrr
I’m turning around and around before I sit
like a good dog in the old days did
when making a nest before we slept
was what we did
and our every bed was temporary
I follow every habit into the dust where it belongs
Atavism is my slave master and only love
Growling at the other dogs who aren’t of my pack
Grrr, black one
Grrr, white one
I’m a brown one, don’t mess me up
Trying to settle down here the way I always have
Cats don’t even get on the field around here
That’s the only thing we agree on
Game on when there’s a cat
We all go nuts for that little killing thing
Then we all turn around a few times and go to sleep
Ready to pop an eye open for any encroachment
Grrr, brown one
Grrr, black one
I’m a big pure white one
Love on my fur and snazzy teeth
We’re one big canine flash mob
Roll us out an instruction and we’ll show up
Pissing on everything in sight if we like it
Calling on the stock market to justify it
Call us the dogs of war if we’re green or gray enough
Call us rapers by nature if there’s heat enough
Call us good little puppies if we’re cute enough
Call it playing when we rip into each others’ flesh
Grrr, white one
Grrr, brown one
I’m a black dog looking for my own shade to shelter in
I’ve got my suit on
My badges and my gadgets
My portfolio and my ideology
Barking and snarling
Grrr, big one
Grrr, little one
Grrr, grrr, grrrrrrrrrr
Give me a minute to turn around before I settle
I’m a dog dammit shiny fanged and obedient
Blood in the mouth and a college degree
It doesn’t matter how many legs I walk on
Dark Matter 