How optimistic
the dead become with time,
their smiles slowly broadening
down there in the dark;
sensing continuity
as cardinals feed
in the overhanging branches
in their former yards, trees
that were not large enough
to hold a feeder
when they passed;
finding peace
in how muffled
the sound of strife
has become;
knowing water works like hope,
trickling into the earth
after a needed rain;
taking joy
in the presence
of roots.
In case of blackout
keep calm, hold
your edge, stare
straight into the new
darkness as if it were
not there. In case of
storm before that, take
shelter and hunch yourself
into a tight turtle ball.
In case of high wind ahead
of that, move out of its path
and get into the strongest
bunker you can. In case of
light breezes that may presage
all of the subsequent
disruption, turn on all the lights
in the bunker and examine
your supplies, your dedication,
your fear and rage and sorrow —
knowing what may follow,
turn your lights on and
prepare. By the time
of blackout, it will be
far too late.
What has been lost
in the city of rush:
the sound of
water in the gutters,
clean after hard rain.
Second floor porch sitting,
speaking to
every person in view.
Unafraid walking
at night regardless of
actual safety,
yet even when we know
how fortressed
we’ve become,
we find a way
to at least
occasional joy.
You will sneer and tell me
of your small town
where they still don’t
lock their doors
and I will ask you about
what has been lost there,
ask about guns in nightstands,
about how long you stare
at unfamiliar cars;
you will shrug and say
nevertheless, we find a way
to smile and laugh somewhat.
Home is where
fear is manageable;
dark and light
blur into one another,
covering what has been lost
as if obscured by fog,
or perhaps by smoke
from something burning
elsewhere.
Open air salt mine surrounded by trees,
broken skin broken heart redwood dog pen,
I tell you my secret wish:
if you burn, burn clean;
if you flood, flood red;
if you blow sun-high may you be
wiped free of old stains.
Blistered, bruised vending machine jail
overrun with self-guarding inmates,
I sing you my hidden prayer:
if you be hellbound, may you hellhound loud;
if you speak ironbound words,
may they scar you dark and long,
thread you with traces of forgotten railroads.
Oil pan, catch basin, heart butcher to the world,
split window fastback hearse, mistaken, glorious,
I offer you a finback wish:
may somehow you go leaping
through hardening seas
toward the last places left with soft water;
may you somehow turn to ice
and jungle and replacement air;
somehow, may you find safety,
dive deep, stay submerged,
and learn to thrive in the absence of light.
There are so many bodies
between a frog
and its grandfather
they may not know each other
when they meet.
Think of a full pond
of offspring and grand-offspring,
how many eggs, how many tadpoles…
Gramps and Lil Greenie
easily may see each other,
croak back and forth
with no awareness
of genetics held in common.
Lil Greenie grows up
swiftly, turns out pretty
ordinary. One day someone
sketches him badly and
eventually the drawing makes him
famous under a new name — they
call him “Pepe.”
He gets taken
all the wrong ways to all
the best places by some very
fine bastards indeed. Frogs being
what they are he doesn’t care
as long as he gets fed. They put
bloody words in his mouth and slivers
of ice under his skin and he
burps out this is fine thank you
whenever he gets a chance to speak.
If you ask him what his grandfather
or great-grandfather, what
his Original Mother would think of this,
Pepe will look at you with a half turned,
crude smile that says he knows just enough
of his ancestry to be dangerous,
which is almost nothing.
In these eyes, either
mist or mystique
but not both:
either tears or a veil,
blurred vision or second sight.
You ask how those modes
cannot stretch to include one another?
Can you not cry while seeing the future?
In response, I turn from you
and refuse to answer.
I cried myself out about the future
long ago; if I cry now, it is only because
of the moment’s touch upon me.
I cannot allow myself the luxury
of pre-mourning that which I foresee;
there is too much to be done before then.
Don’t you love the look of barnwood
in your home? Wide boards dented
from hooves and heavy boots, or (more likely)
from chains dragged and slammed upon them
in industrial furniture mills until they meet
a mythic standard for anything made to look
as if it once had some harder use.
Don’t you love the smell of incense
in your home? Sandalwood
pressed into decorating the nostrils
of your guests in your barnwood home
instead of perfuming the temples
where it once praised Lakshmi and Shiva
in its rising from soft flame.
Don’t you love the dreamcatcher
in your home? The Assiniboine
net framed perfectly on the charcoal wall
over the bookcase, centered, empty of specters
as far as you know, merely here to let folks know
you appreciate authenticity, found some
on that last trip out West,
and brought it into your home.
Don’t you love sleeping
in your home? Lying at night
on the cotton sheets, on the
bamboo pillow. Your partner
is a shadow on the other side,
more memory than solid figure
in the dark. You wish they’d wake up
and touch you. You wish on invisible stars
for that to happen. You cannot wait
for the day to begin and fill the house
with light so that you can look at all
the pretty things you truly own.
1.
You arrive, there’s
a church ready made
for you. A grand car lot.
Sign spinners
and blinking neon.
Plastic pennants point shaking,
acolytes rump shaking.
Come on down, step right up,
huckster gospel hour of power,
walk on in and be approved,
drive away in your holy wreck,
come back soon for more new shiny.
Like that song says,
ain’t that America.
2.
Stick here long enough
and someone
may slip you a whisper
or maybe you find out
for yourself
not to trust deities
who keep eight decks of cards
up each sleeve. Who invert
at dusk to hang inert
in their Paradise, ignoring
desperate prayers
so they can wake up
refreshed for their new day
at the expense
of refreshing yours.
Who play you when they play.
Who made this house that always wins.
Ain’t that America?
3.
You leave feet first,
they always say,
unless of course you don’t
and you depart while still
upright, walking around in debt
to those gods of the house
with the church and the holy tables
where you laid your life out
and kept betting chunks of it
in pursuit of happiness. Midnight
prayers unanswered except
through the last radio left on
all night in a tired coffee shop
full of other mesmerized folks
singing along. Ain’t that America?
Poem from 1996.
This night of stars that have tunneled through the dark
has kept me up so much later than I should have been up.
A cloud across the moon fills my eyes with tears.
Watching the sun vanish opened up a night of dread.
I sat by the river fearing the dead approach of
this night of stars that have tunneled though the dark
and thrown a wink of infinity against my hope for closure.
I wish I knew who to call. I wish I knew what to say.
A cloud across the moon fills my eyes with tears.
If there were distance to travel that would take me past the lights
to places where I could not see the open sky, I could say less of
this night of stars that have tunneled through the dark
and kept me up so much later than I should have been up.
In an hour the sun will rise but it cannot dim the memory that, like
a cloud across the moon, fills my eyes with tears.
Night, day, the cycle repeats with no hope of a change
until the day the fist of God slams down upon
this night of stars that have tunneled through the dark.
A cloud across the moon fills my eyes with tears.
mixed into night Jeffery Lee
found he was more everywhere than distinct
as he had been formerly and now
that skin guitar had dipped
he saw he had been more music than flesh
abdicating his song had reduced him
he had lost his hands
nothing to grip the old salted wound anymore
missed that possibility
looked up to see star and perhaps skin guitar
if it was there it was no longer visible
Jeffery Lee dissolved at last away
back in the bar where he’d fallen into such disrepair
things went along swimmingly
mistakes were sung
now and then someone played their entire skin
host said clap and wow and blues and love
crowd said ooh and wow and where was I before that happened
at the star heart of what Jeffery Lee had bled out for
all was noted
fool said skin guitar hanging there
should not have taken life so seriously
he carried it in like a wound
he had learned to live with
sat with it infantile
wondering at untutored wisdom
then struck it
and drew forth unfiltered stream
as he played Jeffery Lee
changed himself to be Jeffery Tree
then Geoffrey Spree
exposed his nature first in slow touch with wood
then how reckless with speed
Jeffery Lee and skin guitar a blur union
the listeners sat before him in chairs
and talked of elsewhere and otherwise
Jeffery Lee stepped out from behind the mic
went outside into the night
at that point the host paused the list
for short applause and beer
no one went after him or saw
Jeffery Lee dissolve or his skin guitar
rising away
to the star
Amid the shock and awe at the final arrival of the long-inevitable,
at burn patterns already veining surfaces, at cities that smell like mistakes,
at villages cowering, at collapsing sea walls in hot rising surf, at isolated farms
where life’s winking out as flames consume…you’re here
where deep down you believe all that mess can’t bother you. You’re here
where you can feel the heat and think it’s…nice. You’re here
where you can watch and shake your head in time to the crackling
and you’re here where you can tell yourself that at least the art
may soon be as good as it always is under such stress.
It can’t be helped, you say. It’s the way of things, you say.
Forget the bucket brigade, forget the hoses, forget
pulling livestock and children from the flames. Their owners
and parents should have known better — but they aren’t yours.
You now may wring your brutal, soft hands. You need do nothing more.
When at the end
a summary of my life
came down to a soft trumpet flourish
as I fell away from it,
a quick tattoo
on someone else’s marching drum,
I felt no disappointment, no
deep pain; more an appreciation
for how artfully drama may enhance
a simple, nearly-squalid demise.
All I kept thinking as I sank was
where are you,
choir of disapproval?
Where are you,
angels of warnings unheeded?
Shouldn’t this be your moment?
Nothing came of that.
I fell away from this life
with no mass requiem. I dropped
into ooze below like a stick,
sat on top of it held up by tension
for a while until I finally sank
and vanished into near silence.
Originally posted 2013. Revised.
There is a man
who has 1500 friends
on Facebook.
When he counts his friends
he has to use
everyone’s hands to do it.
Of the 1500 people
this man calls friends
he has met approximately 800 in person.
Of those 800, he’s had
more than passing conversations
with maybe 200.
Of those 200, he’s had longer
and more intimate conversations
with perhaps 40.
Of those 40, there are perhaps 15
who are “friends” in the sense of the word
that existed prior to the year 2006.
1500 friends — 800 he’s seen,
400 he’s spoken with in meatspace,
200 he’s connected with,
40 he would tell this story to,
15 who would agree that they are friends
if they were not vanishing into a cloud.
He no longer sees friendship
as a solid object. No rock upon which
to build. No seawall against which
the ocean can pound. He stares
at screens where all he can see
is a storm on the way.
One day he decides to read
a three volume unfinished novel
titled “A Man Without Qualities.”
He opens the first volume, closes it,
opens it again. He struggles to understand
how there could be
a story three volumes long
of a man who is nothing
beyond what he is asked to be by others.
The book sits on his bedside table
unopened for long spells
as he talks to 1500 friends online
where, if there is a Quality to “friendship,”
it has been absorbed into a cloud.
It is being absorbed. It shall be absorbed.
1500 friends — 800 he’s seen,
400 he’s spoken with in meatspace,
200 he’s connected with,
40 he would tell this story to,
15 who would agree that they are friends
if they were not vanishing into a cloud.
If he desires to hold on to those 15 friends
he will have to learn a new word with which
to draw them forth from the hurricane.
they said to
a frightened man
you are as white
as a ghost
he said nothing
but thought
about the paradigm that after existing
in the skin
he was born to
for an entire lifetime
the fear of death
would render him as white as the ghost
they thought he would become
after dying
thus negating at last
all else he was and had been
in this notion of the afterlife
fear and death bleach all
and the goal of total assimilation
is thus achieved
but the frightened man
did not say any of this
instead silently resolved that
when at last his term was ended
if he could come back
he would come back
the wraith he would become
would haunt all of this
and his ghost
would be dark
Dark Matter
Dark Matter 