I woke up and found all my deep work
had washed away overnight,
had vanished somewhere downstream,
and my brain called it a tragedy one time.
Then my body took on the form of a cruise missile,
waiting on a destroyer for flight. This is no tragedy;
as a cruise missile I wouldn’t even think
of this as anything more than a good joke
to be savored on my way to a real tragedy.
Six weeks ago
a smart man spoke of race and told me
that what I said I was, I was not. He talked me
out of existence, practically; thanks, smart man.
Shortly after another smart man spoke of poetry
and told me something else I wasn’t. I’d been that for so long
it left me a little breathess; I blued like a baby.
These poems are not poems, so I’m not therefore a…? Oh. Smart man, thanks.
A smart woman then showed me something about what manner of man I was.
I couldn’t see it at first. A piece of me is still struggling with it
but I know it will come. I know it will. I have to. Thanks for that,
smart woman. Smart people want to help..
Definition, negation, redefinition: smart people
keep setting me right. Keep me smarting; get me smarter.
No matter how idiot I am, I am grateful for smart people.
They’re good at silencing so much of what of me I need to silence.
I’ve been sure of some things since childhood;
I was this, I was this — and I was not this other thing
I abhor. In the new silence I am learning
that I am not those first two things and I am the third.
I will learn from this in silence. I will surrender
my childhood and its lies. I will burn past pages born of the lies
and render them harmless.
I will pull a real man
from the machinery of lies and manliness
and I won’t count myself
as much of anything again,
not for a long, long time.
The last old hawk in this town
just lifted off from the Town Hall roof
and flapped straight over the river,
rising as she went.
I know somehow she won’t be back.
I know somehow we’re somewhat doomed.
How will I symbolize vision and reach
without an animal upon which to hang meaning?
I get an itch in my arms and legs just thinking of it.
It’s not going to be the same here without the hawks.
I’m trying to enslave myself
to other animals’ symbolic value
but they all insist on living their lives.
How dare they! Everything ought to be
useful. The hawks never understood that.
That’s how we ended up here.
Far beyond the river — dim sighting:
many hawks plunging and soaring.
Such teases. What are they telling us?
How should we respond?
Is this, at last, the last great war?
I’m ready. i present myself, representing myself.
Do you have any idea
who you really are
once you get past
the layers of caked-on
all-American way too high
self-esteem?
The only amazing thing about any of us
is that we are each as ordinary as a long day
in a garden, baking and soaking
in sweat; stinking, dirty, and part
of a larger whole no matter what we do.
You are no more special
than the next schmuck, no more
special than I am, and I know
there’s nothing amazing about me
a little hard work and rough time
won’t knock away.
Humble, humble
is the only path
to something better,
the path to losing yourself in the truth
of this astounding world: that you’re a peg
and no more,
just an inglorious, necessary mote.
Providence, his dark bayside muse,
lent itself well to his humors.
He saw potential lovers everywhere,
in the same dank nooks and holes
where potential horrors would be found.
He did not in real life love much or well.
In the long run he did not scare
much either, or trust the devotion
of his monsters to their creator;
in the long run, he only kept the city
as full companion and partner. He was born
here, left and returned, eventually died
muttering about the pain in his gut and
the Elder Race in his dreams, settling at last
on one phrase to capture all his attention:
“Ph’nglui mglw’nafh Cthulhu R’lyeh wgah’nagl fhtagn.”
In his house at R’lyeh, dead Cthulhu waits dreaming.
Think of it: a man so in love with darkness he had to create
new words to chant it free of the depths it occupied
within him, the depths he sensed were present in traces
in the alleys behind the grand homes
of Angell Street, Waterman Street, Benefit Street;
in the drowned eyes that sought him out when he stared into
the rivers that emptied black here from the New England hills.
New words for something at once terrible and inescapable —
something like love, at least to him.
The men of that country
are sick.
We don’t know
why they are sick
or how long they’ve been sick.
Curing them seems out of the question.
Call it a country of sick men
erupting everywhere
there’s a crack to spurt from,
burning their surroundings
whenever they open their mouths.
The sick men appear
to have been rendered mostly mindless
by the sickness.
How else to explain their
comb-overs, wars,
long nosed cars, long reach guns,
filibusters, a weaponized God, hangings,
unfortunate colognes, blood feasts,
the casual seizing of women, of children,
of other men,
the willed ignorance
of lack of consent,
the leveraged buyouts,
the wolf pelts, the blessing of
radioactive oceans,
the balls of old oil
in the bellies of seals,
the blank-eyed drooling
in rooms full of vintage guitars
and game balls,
the blackout drunks,
the hard-engine bikes:
all the exquisite arts of suicide and genocide.
The men of that country are sick,
so it is called the country of sick men.
I was born there, live there mostly,
certainly will die there.
There are women there too.
Some of them are sick too
but mostly, I think, they are sick
of the sick men.
They have stories to tell and
you ought to listen,
but if you want to hear those
don’t ask me to tell them.
My tongue’s more than a little sick.
You can smell it a little
or a lot. I know I can smell it
every time I speak.
To hear those stories,
get into clean air.
Get away from me,
go to the source,
and listen. It will seem
like a different country
forever after.
I will be taking an indeterminate break from posting poems. Please feel free to read through some of the archives of thousands of older poems at the blog itself.
I hope to be back sooner rather than later.
Thanks for your loyalty, attention, and understanding.
He’s like this
at every gathering:
sullen
when acknowledging
friendly words —
contradiction by body
and face of true
response.
Leaves people
guessing: is he for real?
serious? good? sick?
worth the bother?
Truth is,
he trusts few.
Most compliments,
he has found, are backed with
future darts and he has pulled
more than many from his back.
How long ago did that begin…
What a smart imperfect kid.
What a less than complete package.
What a festival of “if only.”
You think
you’re getting past that
with one slender hug
and a few slobbered, slippery
affirmations
because he smiles at you
a little.
He smiles at you a little
because he thinks
you have a limited repertoire
of gestures and
do not know the definitions
of many effective words.
Everyone present
is drowning in pity
which explains
why everyone present
is holding their breath.
When that situation presented itself,
there were things I wanted to say
that would have revealed me to be one
who was being the change
he wanted to see in the world.
There were some damn powerful syllables
and the breaths between them had good clout
as well. There was phrasing
that would have stopped a tank; if a tank
had popped up right then, we would have been fine.
I carry these words around all the time;
in fact, I may be a walking, talking armory.
It’s an excellent game to play. I talk it
well: passing the ammunition, firing off
a salvo, taking rhetorical aim.
Speak the change you want to see in the world.
I know the original phrasing is a little different.
I’m sure this is what was meant, though.
This version surely covers those
with voices as strong as mine.
Of course, sometimes I do not speak.
You can’t claim every battle as your own,
of course. These battles, for instance,
where more than breath is on the immediate line?
I save mine. I sit, I listen, I save mine
for those moments when no one else is talking
because they’re all too busy working, or everyone
is talking because they’re busy working together.
If talk is dear, I fight carefully and pull back
quickly. If talk is cheap, I spend freely.
The important thing: you know
when I’m talking. When I’m talking
I’m saving the world. When I’m talking
I’m sweeping the world clean. When I’m talking,
you should stop working and hear me.
Fuck a ukulele
for being a ukulele.
Fuck a banjo for being
a banjo when there are plenty
of outlets in this messed-up world
to set a musical instrument on fire.
Fuck a gentle instrument, fuck everything
except drum and bass and the rumble strip
on the highway. Fuck the whole notion of simple
and easy. Fuck a depression outfit and a plunky-ass sound.
Fuck a turntable for refusal to stop being an instrument. Fuck anyone
who calls it out. Fuck music in general for being a thing someone wanted to make
and someone else wanted to hear. How dare we stop? Fuck musical people who are not
blessed with a desire for silence right now. They’re probably sitting home in non-silence. They
have a banjo on the wall, a ukulele on the knee, a respect for the simple things, and fuck-all to say.
Ten years ago they talked a good game about something else. Fuck them for being bad prophets.
The trick
to thriving
and not simply surviving
in these gangster days
is to practice
gangster discipline
without accepting
gangster theology.
Eyes in the back
of my head, but only for
the panoramic view. Keep
my hand empty, ready to receive.
Learn to ride
without dying,
call out
every good day.
Let my tears fall
unrestrained when they come,
pour them out unashamed
on my sidewalk, street, and home.
If you don’t buy this?
Step back.
I’ll step back
regardless.
If you can’t or won’t
understand this
I do not know
what will become of us.
when I drive into a city near an airport
and (through what I always hope
is some trick of perspective)
see a long-winged plane appearing to aim itself
at a tall building
I feel something shrivel inside
I do not know which organs shrink
but I know that one organ
that does not shrink
is my heart
that is too full of old blood
to diminish so
it wouldn’t be safe to be around me
if it were to compress so
all I know is that suddenly there’s a contraction
and though nothing’s being born
there is a void where there was something
a clearing left inside
by a drawing back of everything else
while it refills more quickly than it once did
it still takes a while to feel right again
it can’t be good that my innards are so terrified of an illusion
it can’t be good that after each incident I ask myself
what is safety
there’s one video out there of that first strike in New York City
taken by chance by a crew filming something else
I’ve only seen it once
I can’t watch it again without that same void opening within
I know what I would see
I would see once again my coworkers dying
I don’t need to see that
I turn my head instead
toward the farce of a safe space
what is safety
what is safety to those who came through not as survivors
but as beaten witnesses
to those who came through such times
with scars we are ashamed to admit we bear
because really what did we see
what in fact happened to us
compared to others
nothing happened to us
nothing happened to me
except now my organs collapse and expand
I go from hollow to bursting in seconds
I don’t ever feel safe for very long
what is safety
we went back to work
in the building with the empty desks
we put televisions in every corner
in case there was all at once an announcement
of an explanation
televisions on at all times in every corner
we walked around for months in there
with the televisions on
we went back to the building
after we sang for our dead
and the children of our dead
we thought of them as our dead
built a wall for them near the parking lot
built a wall and a garden
where the music is always on
years later in that building
the televisions are still on
all set to the news
waiting for the announcement
of an explanation
that will never come
those few of us who remain
from the days when we walked around that building
as if possessed by those who had seen what lay beyond
speak only to each other of those times
as we would like to speak of them
when we are asked by those
who were not there
we talk a different way
because it feels that
no matter how many people
are present
the teller
is in fact
the only listener
sometimes I have to go outside
to get away from it all
and talk myself solid again
out there I am reminded that
the honeybees are vanishing
as are the monarchs
as are the long winged albatrosses
and who knows
what the world is meant to look like now
or where the safe spaces are
what is safe or sacred
what is worth cherishing
when honeybees and monarchs are vanishing
and the long-winged albatrosses might disappear
when someone asks me
what it was like
a dead weight
on my neck
squeezes a story out of me
in an affectless voice
with eyes set dead ahead
leaving a void
same way every time
I saw it all
still see it all
the broken walls
the broken birds
again and again
the birds
fly into the walls
the bird
flies into the wall
the bird
falls into the field
is there a place where
those long winged birds
land safely
how far ahead
is an end
fact:
long winged albatrosses
fly almost endlessly
only landing to feed
breed
or die
safety
is the only benefit
of extinction
The difference between them
is that the United States
is a density of data
and there are many ways to parse it
into patterns. Everyone
defends their own interpretation
to the death and beyond, while
each constellation
is a paucity of data;
we share interpretations
of them; no one ever dies about
whether we call it Orion
or not. Also, everyone
looks up to the constellations.
They were quietly getting it on
in the last row
and we all knew it,
but we thought back to when
we got it on in the trailer
with friends “sleeping” three feet away,
or when we held our breath in the closet
as we sat in there clutching each other
when a parent came home early from work,
or how we lay together so still in the bushes
hoping no one would miss us from the party
for very long,
then turned our faces away
and tried to handle our own business
without letting on that we knew.
Grappled all night
with nostalgia
until I was too tired
to get away,
so I called out
radio, help:
play “Walk, Don’t Run.”
Play “Rebel Rouser’ ”
or “Pipeline.”
Songs of movement,
no lyric clutter, good beat
plus a pure skin-crawling sense
that what once was
must still be out there;
that’s what I need to have.
I don’t much care
for the music of my youth.
It was mostly lies.
I don’t love it much unless
I need to grow teeth
and gnaw my leg off
to escape
from some bloody crush
of the jaws of time,
and it hurts,
it hurts
but it’s sometimes
is all that there is
so when it happens
Telstar me,
Sleepwalk me,
Rumble me,
Wipeout me;
my longing for those songs
means I’m trapped and they
are the only way out.
Dark Matter 