have you danced
too much already, beloveds?
did it all when you were young
and had the legs for all night music,
the lungs to scream and raise your arms
toward the summit of your favorite song?
haven’t you aged into rest and being satisfied
to have the dark bright memory
of how you moved along the walls
of the basement club with the dirt floor corner,
the college bar with the lights out
on the long unused top floor,
the unlocked stairway up,
the corner full of the mushroom scent
of lovemaking and trepidation?
haven’t you danced yourself to a point
where you don’t need to dance any more
than maybe one more spin
through one more memory
of fresh human touch
filled with the expectant danger
of rejection, or maybe just your body
not being able, not being close
to able to shake your leg or your ass
as you once did, the ecstasy of fast,
the ecstasy of slow, the ecstasy of
memory, the replacement of current
sorrow with a memory of sweat?
beloveds, don’t you wanna dance
all the way to the end of your time?
Daily Archives: December 22, 2022
Toward The Summit Of Your Favorite Song
Coal Tar Blues
Revised, from June 2022.
As if to spite my being human,
I’m rusting.
Age, diabetes,
long lack of self-care —
I soak myself in coal tar
for flaking on the surface,
the scent filling every space
in all my rooms; then
take pills and talk for
my internal disrepair,
each breakdown with unlikely odds
for repair.
Nothing about any of this
is temporary or acute.
Chronic is my name,
now — we speak of conditions,
not illnesses; talk of status quo or
increase and not of progress.
Coal tar and skin creams —
odors of one failure
to treat myself
correctly, or so I tell myself.
Others say buck up, it’s not
a fault or a punishment, you
needn’t club yourself with that one,
no matter how good it feels
to feel that bad at times —
and indeed, there is a sort of blessing
in the hours after
I step out of the shower
onto an apparent path
to normalcy;
but then I lose my way as I start
the day. I tell the others,
you think so? Then come live in here
and tell me I’m not right
to feel such guilt for becoming hollowed.
I need something to come alive
in my old center, to build
there as I fall apart.
Comes a point when everything done right
is still not enough, and hope
becomes not a right but
a privilege, just a way
of passing time before time laughs
and then kills; as the scent
of sulfur becomes so strong
you can’t tell
whether it is coming from inside,
outside, or both.
Obligatory Christmas Poem, 2022
The signs
they hold up
say
homeless
helpless
hopeless
Many include a sketch
of a Christmas tree or say
Merry Christmas as well
They stand upon
the entrance ramps to
malls and big box stores
where shoppers have to wait
to get into the lot and when
a signer passes their car
they look away or discard
a quick buck out the window
then roll it up
to keep private heat
and the hallelujah chorus
in the car
and no better than that look at me
dropping a heavy metaphor obviously
onto this from on high
as if it ever matters what parallel
anyone draws about jesus
blah blah blah
joseph and mary
blah blah blah
no room at the blah blah blah
merry christmas
or whatever you got
to offer
in light of the sight
of her wet blue eyes
above her sign
his beard
combed out for the season
above his sign
the people
queued up
below commerce’s sign
tomorrow never comes
without posting a sign
of its arrival
regardless
of hopeful prophecy
blah blah blah
Dark Matter 