Very pleased to receive my contributor’s copy of “Delirious,” an anthology of poems in tribute to Prince, in today’s mail.
Thanks to NightBallet Press for including my poem, “For You.”
Here’s where to get it, and its entry on Goodreads.
Monthly Archives: June 2016
Collard Greens, Hummingbirds, And Spider Silk
With my eyes lightly closed I see
a river of red circles flowing on black
from lower left to upper right.
I clamp down harder;
that river stops its purposeful flow,
begins to swirl.
I try to see detail of those circles,
or of the black behind the river,
but there’s nothing more.
Press a finger to a lid
and the river lights up
as if I was viewing
a campfire’s light
from around a bend
before coming directly upon it.
What’s the point, you ask,
of trying to see
with your eyes closed,
but also of trying
to describe it well enough
so others can see it too?
I respond, one of these days
I may come around that bend
and see that fire.
Maybe it will be a cooking fire.
Maybe there will be roasted meat,
collard greens, people
at rest around it, songs
like hummingbirds, skin
like spider silk. It would be
a good place to be,
a good place to end up,
but I’d hate to end up all alone there
so this is my way of leaving a trail
to that place you see
when your eyes are closed,
when a final finger
presses them
closed.
Companion
Ahead, wooded foothills.
Farther ahead, green and gray
mountains. White patches
here and there upon them — snow
this late seems unlikely
but it has been
an unlikely year. These
may be instead
well-lit patches of
odd stone recently exposed,
perhaps by rockslides.
I know so little
of mountains, though;
it’s pointless to speculate,
and now I find
a longing within
for a companion
who knows more of mountains
than I do.
I find such longing
within me often this year;
this has been an unlikeable
year and to have
someone beside me
who has seen
such years before
might keep me
from drifting too early
into those mountains.
This road I’m on
will take me there
soon enough,
take me to see
if those white stains are
slides of stone
or slides of snow,
but there’s much country
to cross before then and
to have a guide,
a shadow partner who
could say “calm, stay calm,
all will be revealed in time”
whenever I am transfixed by
dangerous considerations
of what’s coming
would make this journey
easier if not less
fraught with fear.
Such Things
Such things
as a neighbor’s
somber face
caught smiling
for a little longer
than the usual
ghost moment
she allows
for happiness
to haunt her
expression
or the way
a certainly ordinary
everyday unnoticed
shaft of tree-channeled
sunlight strikes
a backyard bed
of gone to seed lettuce
illuminates the pale stalks and
makes them shine
and appear
(for the first time
in a long while
since the last harvest)
quite appealing in spite of
recent neglect
Such things
are becoming
what I need
to get by
Under The Scar
A scar on my thumb tip
that won’t heal underneath —
current marker of my decrepit
mortality — wound whose cause
I’ve long forgotten, stone scar
pulsing intermittently
with small but constant pain
each time it comes into contact
with anything — guitar neck,
keyboard, another finger — this last
the most persistent as I worry
and rub that tiny round
into a nearly constant mini-scream —
why do I do this to myself, why don’t I
get it looked at, perhaps removed,
why do I make it hurt more and more
until the inevitable day
the scar breaks away
from the new flesh underneath —
so tender, raw, and pink — waiting
for its chance
to harden and mound up
and begin the cycle again —
as I do, as I do each time
I rise wounded from bed
these days, latter days
hard crusting over
raw sense — never
healing so much that
I can forget that it hurts —
even if I don’t know anymore
why it does.
Just a cross post…
I mention now and then work I’m doing with our poetry and music group, the Duende Project.
Here’s a link to an entry at our Website this AM about some exciting developments. It includes a sound file of our piece “Trinity,” which may or may not open depending on where you are in the world; not something I can do anything about, sadly.
Explanation #47
the number of times
i’ve been accused by others
of being absurd or out of my place
is large
the number of times
said absurdity was intended
to be absurd
is not
the number of times
i was out of my place
on purpose
is also not
i was
simply
being me
and
my absurdity
was simply
a way of
adjusting
to what felt
to that out of place me
like an absurd situation
see
where i stand is usually
a little to the left of
the frame and cocking my head
is just trying to see things
the accepted way
anything coming from
my tilted mouth
that spills wrong
doesn’t have
much of a chance
of landing well
for Them
Trolls
They think of themselves
as mere campaigners
in a big, big war.
They inflame
wherever they sit. Ignition’s
a self-granted wish.
They have hands full of triggers,
are willing to pull them
to get their way.
They opened up this casket
and now they’re going
to have to lie in it.
They didn’t see that coming.
They never see it coming; it’s why
they never go away.
Look at how scorched the earth is
everywhere they’ve been. You’d think
they’d be longing to chill by now
after all this burning,
but not them, never them.
They dig the heat out of Hell,
swing it around,
then blame the fuel
for turning to ash, blame the burned
for being burned, blame the fire
for burning the burned and
the fuel. Then they
whistle their innocence,
and look for someone to hand them
another match.
Broken Edge
I like to talk about
my broken edge the way
every regretful mouth
still likes to form
rotten words
it once said with glee;
I like to talk about
the old days as if I was
some pioneer fighting off
cholera when in fact
I sniffled far more
than almost died;
I like to nod my head
to songs I don’t remember well
and pretend to anyone watching
that every note is a past epiphany
although I was not present
the first time they were sanctified;
I like to claim what I never was
but only for public consumption;
I like to play the nostalgia game
but only when it wins me what
I didn’t have back when; I like
my broken edge the most,
though you can’t break an edge
that was never there.
Walls Of Bones And Blood
Until you are by law under suspicion
for your face, do not speak too proudly
of the need to obey any other law.
Until you are by law under threat
of becoming slave or slain for walking
your path your way, do not claim
that if you are doing nothing wrong,
you have nothing to worry about. This
is not a tale of unlawful doing, but one of
unlawful being; unless you have lived
where you are always at war, or where war
always simmers just under boiling, do not speak
so confidently of the need for restraint,
do not sternly scold broken windows
in a landscape where everyone’s a casualty
by definition. If you live where that
is not the case, you likely live
in a fortress made of bones cemented with blood
and unless you can see your own bones and blood
in those walls, don’t scorn those who are sick
of seeing their entire past, present, and future there,
and who then attempt to tear it all down.
A Lie
A lie is a lie is a lie.
Long chains hold us
to our pasts. We claim
to have cracked their locks
and are now free of them, but
a lie is a lie is a lie;
we give our faith to
such talk, choose not to hear
those who still bear the weight
we claim to have thrown off;
it’s clear that we are not fooled
but are in thrall to our lies,
and a lie is a lie is a lie;
our lies form a base on which we build
those truths which may in fact be true
in the small scope of our own small lives
but which are bitter jokes in the lives
of those whose backs hold us up; a lie
is a lie is a lie. We lie with our lies
when we sleep safe and sound
in our safe beds; to lie
in those beds is to lie in and on
a bed of lies and what is safe,
what is sound, what is
a sound sleep
when each breath we take in sleep
is matched by those whose breaths
are long since — and even now —
cut off, choked off, stopped
by blood in the throat? How is it
that we do not dream of blood
come to drown us
when we lie down
when our lie is a truth for some
and not all?
If it is a lie for some
it is still a lie,
is all a lie,
and it’s no lie to say it kills.
The Chastisement Of Christopher Eggplant
Christopher Eggplant — so called because he always seems tightly skinned and shiny, and because in the right light when showing his usual level of vague expansive derision at all things not Christopher appears also somewhat purple in flesh tone — Christopher Eggplant may have just given his final lip to a dangerous man; as usual not knowing when to apply the brake to his wit, he has decided to tease a large and surly pale laborer at the next door construction site, a man who having finished work for the day is sitting in his silver Buick with the door open chugging a tall Colt 45 and loudly singing the hook of a popular song in a surprisingly thin and pitchy tenor voice; to which apparent provocation Christopher Eggplant has responded by calling out to the man his sarcastic appreciation of the tune, calling him by a brutal parody of the name of the heart-throb who has made it a hit; the man’s comrades upon the job are starting to trot from their own cars and drinking spots toward Christopher Eggplant even as his target rises himself from the Buick no longer singing but with a strange blank look upon him, almost as if he has become some kind of machine, almost as if there’s something inside him that has turned off any sense of irritation, almost a contrast — although more of a goad — to those who are approaching with anger on his behalf, or fear for Christopher Eggplant as they seem to know that something deeply awful is about to happen, something that only the most depraved among us would be so excited to observe, and as I am excited to observe from a distance I feel thus depraved but will not lift my own finger to help Christopher Eggplant as none of us who know him from the neighborhood will, as time slows to a crawl, as the danger surrounds him, as we take a deep and uneasy satisfaction after taking years of his abuse at the prospect of watching him fall so awfully, so wetly, to the infertile ground.
Decolonized
You grew up as expected,
fit prescribed dimensions. Then
you met some people
you weren’t supposed to meet
and did some things
no one had planned you would do.
You began to grow in some areas,
shrink in others, shrink
from some others while growing
toward others, toward people
largely unplanned for by those
who planned you out.
Now you’re scared of the flag they revered,
scared of the uniforms they obeyed,
and they’re a little scared of you in return —
or so you’d like to believe. It’s possible
that they don’t see or hear you at all now.
Wrote you off, a failed experiment. Wrote you
into a narrative that preserves their own.
That’s how it started, after all:
with you fitting into their story.
Now you fit into it by no longer
fitting into it. It’s all win for them,
and for you too once you choose
to let their story go
in order to embrace your own.
Sad Player
Does not matter
how many instruments you buy
how rare they are
how odd they are
where they’re from —
if you are
that sad kind of player
who twists fingers
lips and lungs
into knots trying
to transcend
by sheer mechanics
the spirit of the maker
the spirit of their time and place
the blood in that soil and
the tears and joy that fed it —
if you’re that player
take a seat
and learn first to sing
Make yourself over into
instrument
Seethe and roil with
your own blood
Then go back
Untangle your parts
from your head
Play now
sad player
See if you have stayed
the same kind of sad
You Could Have Been An Eagle
Suspend for a moment
your faith in the orderly
progression of time.
Discover your first image upon
abandonment of that notion is of
an eagle chick not yet fledged
tumbling from its high nest,
then suddenly sprouting feathers
and flying to avoid the drowning
promised by the lake rushing up
from below to shatter the bird.
Don’t you feel better?
Things, at least in your head,
don’t have to make sense to work. Imagine it
as having left your mother’s purse
in the jailhouse where she died
and going back to find in her cell
baby pictures from the wallet
(pictures of you sprouting wings)
plastered everywhere. In the visitor’s room,
some have been made into posters:
“Have you seen this bird? Have you seen this child?”
It’s got some kick to it, this fantasy, doesn’t it?
It doesn’t have to make any more sense than that.
Go with it, rinse yourself
in the milk of it,
taste the reminder
that before anyone slapped you dumb
with education and indoctrination,
you believed you could be an eagle
when you grew up. How bitter it is
to have remembered this so late in life,
when your mother and father have long
passed and can’t possibly soothe you.
You could have flown, been
iconic, been in this all the way.
Dark Matter 