Take the pain of being yourself
and box it up. Take the pain
of being in love with another
and box it up, put them on
the same shelf in the same
dark room. Take the anger
at all the maddening others
and box it up then box that box
again and again put it in the same
dark room. Did you notice something
about how a poor person prayed
for the rich? Did it sicken you? Box
box box it up and put put put it
in the back of the stifling room. Box
the fear and the residual hatred,
box the last words of any martyr, box
the clean air up in a dirty old box
and box it all into the suffocating heat
of the room where the boxes,
all the boxes, are starting to glow
from within as if the contents, finally,
have stopped smoldering
and are starting to blaze. Pretty soon
they’ll set everything on fire
and there’s not a drop of water
within reach, which somehow
you find comforting and somehow
seems like a release and somehow
seems like what you expected
from the first time you shoved a box
in there, turned your back, and tried
to pretend it wasn’t there as you closed the door
with a smile for the onlookers, saying
well, that’s that.
Monthly Archives: February 2016
Boxes
Deluge Song
After a deluge
the ground dries out
but there are differences:
leaves point in odd directions,
branches have come off the oaks,
rivulets have cut thin beds in the yard.
It will revert eventually, mostly,
but aspects will remain altered
and if you have been paying attention,
you will also be changed in small ways
as what is once seen is never unseen;
even if memory keeps you
from conscious recall
you will shift how you approach
living in a subtle way —
lifting your feet
higher than normal over puddles for fear
of unseen current, for instance, or
thrilling to a gust of wind pushing
a sheet of rain against your window,
wondering with a mix of concern
and excitement if this will be the one
that breaks open the dull box of your life
and soaks it in needed change
that ruins everything even as it renews all;
or perhaps from now on
as any storm gathers
you’ll find yourself wishing
for a Flood and not caring
if you make it to the Ark
as long as enough others survive
to start clean.
Better Than Bullets
Snarls and wars and small divides
grown canyon wide and canyon deep;
scent of blood and old chains
not yet rusted through. Songs
are clashing; rough beats thump
artillery, soul wails sling arrows.
It’s late. Do you know where your children are
and what they’re listening to?
Pray they have fallen in love with dangerous
music. To slide into sleep
on a comfortable lullaby is a sure path to
waking up in hell.
Don’t trust
those who say music should be harmless.
There’s a war on and songs
are better ammunition
than bullets. Songs
change their targets. Songs
sluice their way
through far more than flesh,
cut deeper, break more walls,
tear down more defenses.
What are your children listening to?
If it doesn’t scare you,
they are almost certainly
doing it wrong.
My Pocket, My Hope
In my pocket,
my imaginary country,
a best version
of this one; I carry it
with me tightly
wrapped in hope.
It’s currently populated by
dinosaurs who emerge
as gentle as
a hurricane’s far-side
sunlight filtering into
destroyed
familiarity. If you see
them lumbering
into your path you
will be instantly changed
and unsure: what
is this?
What sorcery is this
that cures
both extinction and
gigantism? If you
mean that you want
to know and are not just
disbelieving your own eyes,
I will
point simply at the hope
and say it’s been there
all along, the magic
which when worked
can change all,
raising the long-thought dead
from a pocket
where it’s been kept
safe against
battering and bring it back
to a sustainable form
and thus save a ravaged landscape.
Not To Say
In the moment
of crisis called
today —
not to say
that all moments
of every day do not contain
crisis for someone —
not to say
that it has not always been so
and that it will not
always be so —
not to say
that this crisis here is not
the result of someone preventing
their own crisis there —
not to say
that some crisis has not been made
by someone to make their own life
comfortable —
not to say
that in fact all these earthly crises
do not have a thread of preventability
and volition tacked on somewhere —
in this moment of crisis called today I
am looking up and seeing it all as a Calder,
a mobile swinging —
huge and weighty disguised as flight
and light but all suspended by a cord
thinner than one would imagine —
not to say
it is incapable
of holding it
any longer —
not to say
it will surely fail shortly
and crash,
killing or tearing up all —
not to say
anything other than
if it were given
a good shake,
today might as well
be renamed
The End.
We In The New Place (Privilege)
When we are in a new place
we don’t know of the concealed dips
in the new floor so we trip
every time we take
what should be a simple path
from bed to bathroom,
counter to table. Getting used
to a new place
means consciously
mapping the territory until it becomes
subconscious work to travel with ease
through the furniture in the dark
without bumping and cursing and
anger and pain. We work at it until
one day we no longer think much
of how complex orientation to
our environment actually is, how long
it took to become masters of
our own comfort. It seems so obvious
yet we seem to forget it the moment
we are faced with someone telling us
we’ve tripped on something — a word, a joke,
a gesture, a look — we once thought
so harmless, so easy, so pointlessly
straightforward that there was no way
for it to cause a bump, a pain,
a damage to another person we never
thought much about in the old place —
after all, the furniture we kicked
never us kicked back —
but we feel like we’re in a new place now
without ever having moved, having to learn
that the map we hold within us
does not truly describe
the territory as it is,
but as we wish it was.
Condescending The Stairs
We’re descending the stairs
side by side and you are trying to comfort me
after another conversation gone bad —
it doesn’t matter what you are, you say,
we’re all human. Don’t let it
bother you so much. You say,
listen, I did one of those ancestry searches
and found out I wasn’t German like I thought,
I’m mostly Irish and Scottish, so I just trade
my lederhosen for a kilt and move on, learn
the Highland Fling, I think I like plaid
better anyway. It also said
I was 2% Neanderthal, no worries, I feel like
that sometimes. It said I was 3.2% Native American,
which is great, I’ve always liked
the feathers. It said I was 5% African, but
then again we all are and I’ve always been
sympathetic to their plight, maybe
that’s where I get it. I see all this in terms of
learning that a flavor, a taste you thought you acquired
you turned out to have been born with. Don’t let it
get to you. In the long run
there’s no such thing
as race. It’s all a social construct anyway.
Condescending on the stairs.
You keep talking. Keep telling me
it doesn’t matter. Keep telling me
we’re the same. All exactly the same.
It’s as easy as putting on a kilt instead
of a headdress. As easy as putting on
a scar instead of a crown. As easy as
putting on a chokehold instead of a noose.
It’s all just a social construct like
empty promises, broken treaties,
unheated rooms; like an argument
among thieves over the division of spoils —
to the victor go the spoils. Everyone
knows that. To casually cast the spoils aside
is also the victor’s choice —
everyone knows that; everyone,
it seems, everyone
except you.
How To Write A Story
The stream leaves the pond
just above this spot,
rolls along picking up speed,
then comes to this plunge
of only a few feet.
It has cut a cold pool
into the ground on its swift way
down and south.
I stop here and bathe my feet
in the stinging water, snow melt
on white sore skin.
When it’s been long enough,
when it becomes too much cold to bear,
I will dry off and re-don
my socks and boots
to continue following water
out of the mountains.
There is a story of how I got here
to the mountains this morning.
This isn’t it. There will be
a story of how I get
out of the mountains. This isn’t it
either, not yet. It’s not even
a story yet, no beginning, no end.
It’s a pool cut into the ground
after a plunge of
a few feet. Enough, for now;
when it isn’t, it may become
part of a story about seeking
enough, perhaps about finding it.
Right now, though,
the water’s cold
and it’s fine just as it is.
A Cup Of Tea
If a cup of some
store-bought tea leaf-dust
is enough to calm you, you should
make a cup. If a moment
before the window, staring into
dirty city snow at drab birds,
is enough to make you feel
a stab of peace, by all means
be seated with your cup
before the window. It’s OK
to turn off the news for a moment
and pretend that there’s nothing
to worry about, nothing to be done.
It’s all going to be terrible for a while yet
and there’s a lot for each of us to do —
but here you are and here’s the tea
and those sparrows and no sun out there
so the gray snow for once matches the sky
and there’s no immediate war to fight —
sit, have a moment, no matter how engaged
your life has been you have a right
to stop now and then, to see now and then a reason
to turn back to the news and the struggle
and the work. See how they are, those birds —
they often stand completely still
for a few seconds at a time
and still manage to fly when they need to fly.
Close My Eyes
I close my eyes upon the world
wishing that it could be for good,
but I have things left to do and no one
can do them for me —
I have said that
so many times
I must hold myself to it.
If there’s no world here
when I wake up, I will
stretch my arms out and
take what I find in first grasp
and make a new one with it —
now I’ve said it, I must
hold myself to it; even if
I am unwilling to build
an entire world from
scraps and pieces I am now
obligated.
If there’s a world there,
a different one or one slightly the same
as the old, I reluctantly promise
to come back in —
there, now I’ve said it.
I should
hold my tongue more.
I should. I don’t like this feeling —
promising myself into pain —
but it’s a habit now, this
eyes-open thing, this
reluctant survival.
What Is Not To Love
The storm is later than was forecast.
The wind hasn’t yet begun to shift
the dunes on the Cape, there’s no snow yet
in the Worcester hills. People
will soon be complaining
about the weather report,
even though it has favored them
so far with its inaccuracy — damn,
don’t you love people? Don’t you find
them as ridiculous and adorable
as infant Tasmanian devils, baby
demons as cute as any little
flesh shredders could possibly be?
The Super Bowl was on last night.
Half the audience hates half the audience,
half hate the halftime show, half hate the
commercials, half hate
that it even happened at all — damn,
don’t you just love people? Can’t you
see them in all their inscrutable glory
asking for absolution for every petty
act of genocide they’ve ever assisted
through the practice of minor binaries
and trivial hatreds?
In the meantime the bees are swarming
less and less and there are fewer to swarm
at all. In the meantime the winds
are starting to change, ruffling fewer furs,
whistling over drier lakes, taking more
bomb dust with them. In the meantime
we’re waiting for the loitering storm – damn,
why don’t you love, people? It’s not as it
there much time left. What could it hurt
to try and love? Except for the proud legacy
of standing alone in a carefully selected crowd
of your well-conforming peers, there’s not much point
in hanging on to it. Why don’t you just adore us,
people, we the maddening mad people? How different
we are from each other, how very much the same?
Neighborhood Bar
They pour a good beer there.
They have a good whisky.
They have low lights and highlights,
a big screen, small talk, regard for their patrons.
People go to the neighborhood bar
to plot revolution in the back booth.
They go to the neighborhood bar
to scheme for sex or connection.
They go to the neighborhood bar
to see themselves reflected.
They go to the neighborhood bar
to seek a knight or heroine.
They go to the neighborhood bar
to be with their people.
They go to the neighborhood bar
to avoid the other people.
They go to the neighborhood bar
to drink alone, to drink in pairs, to drink.
They go to the neighborhood bar
to wonder why they go to the neighborhood bar.
Nothing happens there that hasn’t happened
the night before the night before the night before.
So people go to the neighborhood bar
to hope for a different night or the same night
to happen for the first time or the last time
or this time once only or every time
at the neighborhood bar — a safe world
behind the neon sign and the butt bucket
full of sand and spit and remnants
outside the dark, kick-scarred door.
They pour a good beer there.
They have good whisky, clean glasses,
and nobody bothers you if you want to sit
and drink until closing, come back when it opens,
live there more or less until you don’t,
and when someone asks where you are
there’s a shrug and maybe soon enough
a memorial plaque, THIS STOOL RESERVED
FOR “YOUR NAME HERE”
goes on the bar rail
and after a week no one notices,
it gets busy, new people need a place —
go ahead and sit,
it’s a neighborhood bar,
people come and go.
Get you something? What you having?
Obsidian
Originally posted 3/6/2013.
A man who has never been rejected
is watching women on Highland Street
as if they were ruins in the Yucatan.
As if in the ruins of a Mayan city
these women were exhibits to be viewed.
As if they were souvenirs.
A man who has never been rejected
is shopping for a souvenir among the women
of Highland Street
while imagining
he is a prince of a lost realm
he learned about in school
or perhaps in books from his father’s library
that displayed women as souvenirs
for the taking by princes of the realm.
He is imagining
a backdrop
of old roads and palaces.
Ruins and palaces
and temples for men
who have never been rejected.
Never rejected,
ever,
at all,
because they’ve never asked permission
when they take a woman
as a souvenir of the realm.
A man watches women on Highland Street.
Imagines himself as center
of a useful myth.
Imagines himself glistening,
a souvenir himself,
carved in obsidian.
A Rain-Fed Spring
All day yesterday
words flowed and then a spring
rose from below me —
not from within me. I was
a pipe, a pump,
a pool as clear as light.
Today, there’s nothing.
Dry well, rusted works,
old lines so worn out
they leak dust. I’m a mistake,
a fraud, a blown well,
a drowned lamp.
Tonight I’ll pray for rain.
Whether it comes tomorrow
or the day after that
it will soak into my ground.
What may come bubbling
then is unknown,
but it will come
someday, even if
I myself die before it does.
You cannot stop a rising spring —
neither the water itself nor the words
that draw the water from the earth.
Crossroads
Buddy Guy watches Jonny Lang
play a traditional constipated blues face solo.
Buddy Guy watches Ronnie Wood sliding, slinging,
posing wide armed at the end of his bars.
Buddy Guy praises them both
as he steps to the microphone:
“I don’t know how you feel
but I feel like I’m in Heaven.”
As for me, I feel like I’m seventeen again,
the age I was the first time I saw Buddy Guy
with Junior Wells: Junior all menace
and black leather, briefcase full of harps
not meant for Heaven; Buddy a benevolent
living example of why not everyone
needed a meeting at the crossroads
to tap into the Source. Still got it, too: that smile,
soft as a backwater in August. Those hands,
coaxing out a steady rain. I feel like
I’m in Heaven after having been mistreated
as he lays me to rest.
Dark Matter 