I’m so tired.
I’d blame anything other than myself
but I’m no liar,
not when it comes to this hard fatigue.
I’m so angry.
I would seek a place to put blame for it
but I’m no hunter,
not when the anger is so clearly internal.
I’m so narrowed.
I’d try and expand enough to fit better
but it’s beyond my power,
no one can stretch me back whole.
This world’s killing me.
I would put up more of a fight against it
but I’m no warrior.
It’s not enough like home to defend.
I’m envious of
this mild drama soap opera
unfolding next to me
in this coffee shop
Two younger women sitting
with two elderly women
over hot coffee in
animated conversation
It is half in perhaps Albanian
based on the neighborhood
and half in English
None of it sounds more
than half-irritated
I’m envious of
their dharma
I’m envious of
generations meeting
in public in camaraderie
I’m sitting alone
The air vent above me
is dripping on my table
where I’m drinking
unsweetened iced black coffee
I keep it covered out of fear
I ought to move but
that’s not how this works
Not another empty table in here
This is where dharma has placed me
among the nominally content
Getting rained out indoors
Sipping bitterness from a glass jar
I overpaid for this drink and this seat
I had to try and see
if people were still people
Was anyone in here
going to be able to see me
I’m envious of all these people
talking more or less calmly
to each other as is their custom
while I am fearful and invisible
Usually I feel like they see me
if they see me at all
as dirt or a stain to be cleaned
Invisibility is a step up I guess
I will follow directions
Bus my own table when I leave
No one’s going to see me go
as no one saw me when I was here
If I die in the parking lot
it might make a fuss when they find me
I will be a remark at dinner later
then forgotten and that will be dharma
Just go I tell myself
Just go you invisible envious man
There will be a purpose to it
Maybe at last you’ll be seen
as more than a stain to be cleaned
I doubt it but one
can only do what one does
and hope someone sees you for you
Revised from 2015
An oarfish came
to the surface
to die, a nightmare-seed
twenty-three feet long.
It entered the shallows
near where
a man was painting an eye of Horus
on each side
of the bow
of his leaking boat,
hoping to keep it afloat
for just one more season.
He looked down
and saw the oarfish —
frilled, silvery,
taking forever to pass —
thought of luck and fate; looked back
at his boat and saw the new, wet, flat eyes
of his old livelihood; considered
how long he’d been here,
how long
he had worked, how long he’d
fished without ever seeing anything
like this oarfish in a net or on a line.
Lord, he thought,
I am so tired, and my boat is so old;
there is so much left to learn, to see;
so little time left in which to learn.
What the oarfish
thought of all this
is unknown for by the eye of Horus
and the eye of Ra,
there was no telling
that tale of a life
spent in darkness
and ending in light.
Such a tale would not have
much of us in it; not enough
of what the gods intended for the oarfish,
but this life could not have simply been
so a poor man would be moved
to change his own life
by watching something
he thought was fantastic die.
In this time of oafs
there are still many
who are grace and poise
embodied; let them hold
their places, let them
hold their ground.
In this time of vampires
there are still many
who stand in the light
unburned, unbothered;
let them be the lanterns,
let them illuminate the sacred.
In this time of slaughterhouse
and butchery, there are still many
whose blood sings with dance:
let them bathe the damaged;
let them hold the dying close;
let them see a good path ahead.
In this time the sound of the clock
is always there behind the murmur
of dead voice and there are those
whose being shuts it down. Let them
sing, dance, heal, stand their ground;
let them hold. Let them always hold.
You lie still and silent
while waiting
for the siren
to arrive
from too far away
You didn’t have the sense
to fall and clutch your chest
a little closer to the main road
and now they are having
to figure out
where the hell you are
even as your party friends
are screwing out of there before
the responders arrive
and bend a knee to your side
Once again you are inconvenient
Maybe one of those friends stuck around
Is watching from a distance and could tell
an EMT what happened if they came forward
But you aren’t holding your breath for that
As it was back
when we were young,
but now we see it;
as it was back
when we were blind,
but now we feel it;
this town’s got a few citizens
and a lot of inhabitants.
Very few ever cross over
from just sleeping here
and mowing the lawn
to being here and present.
This is how it has been
all the time we have been in this place.
People let the town happen
and hang the consequences
unless they are direct and personal.
That’s how the whole country happens,
in fact: in spite of, not because.
So little is intentional.
It’s a town doing town things
in a country
which has slipped into
something more comfortable,
as it was back
when we were blind to it,
but now we feel it prodding
something sharp into
our backs. As it was back
when we were young,
before we could see
how few ever think of this town
as home for anyone unlike them.
What happened to all
the cable-knit sweaters
you got as gifts for birthdays
and Christmas —
thick as shields and warm
as the wood-stove-hot garage
where your father worked on cars
and lawnmowers, readying them
for spring
You outgrew far more than one
but there are
one or two in periwinkle
and berry-blood red
you keep to wear home
now and then
when the weather is ripe
for such a gesture —
armor of a sort and see as well
how your mother’s face lights up
when she apparently recognizes
her own work
on the person of the person
she tries to think of as her son
For a minute she looks past
berry or periwinkle
to ask if you still have
the one in oatmeal Irish wool
you loved so much and you tell her
it’s at home
and you’ll wear it next time
although it’s been decades
and the sweater
is long ago donated
you don’t feel bad
about lying to your mother
do you
not like this
It’s not the first time
not going to be the last
until it is the last time
and you must decide
which sweater to wear
that day
The cat could care less
that I’m distressed
by her refusal
of all offered food.
She just keeps looking away
after a single sniff
as if I’m poisonous
and have transferred that
to the food itself. Disdain
for my concern evident
on the face and tail.
When ten minutes later
she’s cuddling up on the couch
next to me, I don’t know
what to think. Have I healed
myself, become safe — or is this
an attempt at mollifying me
so I will relax as she plots
her escape?
I’d tell you
time will tell, but I’m not sure
how much time there is,
in fact. Everything feels
ruptured, and I don’t know
how long I have, how long
the cat has; how long
this day, this poisonous day,
will drag on.
I wonder again
what death will appear
to me when I at last
pass through that door.
Not for the first time,
not for the last. I’d say
it has been a while
since I began to wonder.
so currently I believe
that it will not appear
as anything we have believed.
I think instead it may be
a vintage music video from elsewhere.
Masses dancing, choreographed
guitar trios, sultry glances,
wild hips, incantations.
Let’s imagine it
will be Bollywood —
“Jaan Pehchan Ho ” or
some wild Italian piece —
maybe that one that’s supposed
to sound like English —
“Prisencolinensinainciusol”
something like that.
It will be deeply familiar
and utterly strange. There will be
so much that feels like
you saw it last week,
so much that feels like
it’s never before been seen.
You will puzzle over it
and agitate in its grasp,
until one day it
will fail to mystify and
you will say …”ah…ah…at last…”
and that day will be…finally…
all right.
from 2005. Revised.
I ride this world as if Ganesh himself
had placed me on his back.
I will fall as I have risen,
and I am content.
I do wish I was nothing again —
just my parent’s desire, strong enough
to come forth and be, too weak
to be more than that.
I wish I was nothing again
for Nothing is worth saving,
Nothing sits in the doorway and thinks
before taking a step either way.
Some of you understand this: A tree falls,
the elephant straightens. A leaf falls,
the tree lifts itself higher. What will happen
if I fall? Nothing, I pray. Nothing at all.
Unthinkable,
but here I am
thinking of it.
Could I put this into
second person, put it
at a cool remove and thus
deny it a bit? Unthinkable,
but there you are now
in this, thinking of it.
Now we two turn our faces
to the third person in here
with us — unthinkable?
There they are, looking
at what’s on the table —
the bottle, the pills,
the long screed that
explains without
explanation. You and I
and them, of course.
It’s unthinkable to be
dispassionate. So
why aren’t any of us
bereft, or trembling?
You start. No, you.
Maybe it should be me.
You go, and take them with you.
Unthinkable to be accompanied
on the way, I think. I’ll
think of you when I go.
Yes, I promise. Now,
close the door, I think,
on the way out. Unthinkable
things require solitude
and it feels so crowded
in here, I can’t even
approach the table.
Such a haze out there today.
We live in a smoke ring, it seems.
I hear coughing on the sidewalk;
the roses are still so lovely.
It seems a shame to stay inside,
but breathing’s a chore right now.
Everywhere people are coughing
but the rose out here are so lovely.
In spite of the coughing
kids are riding their bikes
up and down, up and down;
they are all coughing but acting
with no care in the world;
the roses are nonetheless lovely.
It’s getting toward sunset.
Seems a bit cooler. Even my throat
feels better than normal.
The roses remain so lovely.
The kids are still riding
and shouting and laughing
whenever they aren’t coughing.
Pretend these kids
have no reason to fear.
The roses remain so damned lovely.
Poem from 1999 or so, heavily revised.
In the year I was thirty-eight
the fragile man I was then
looked at the peonies
in the backyard
and the progress of the year
seemed so fast
I thought about how quickly
those pink and white heads
would droop
and drop their petals
into the grass to fade and decay
I feared
that if the year of thirty-eight
continued this pace into
my year of forty-forty-one-forty-two-beyond
I feared that every thing I had learned
by putting myself together
would come undone
This is the year
I have turned thirty nine
The peonies did not die
as they always have before
The path has stitched every piece of me
at last into one person
and it is harder for most to tell
that I have ever been split
I have always known what I was
and have walked around in fear
of stitches beginning to pull
and seams giving way
In the year
I turned thirty nine
I have learned
something more
Remembering today the scent of peony
Savoring the memory of those incandescent blooms
opening and surprising me with the heat of their pink
and the ice regalia of their white
that would fade so quickly
I have realized
that in all these memories
there is still enough of youth to make
my mortality
irrelevant
I have learned that thirty eight
was an opening and not an end
I have realized the sweetness of the peony
was the product of youth spent lavishly
secure in the knowledge
that not only would the dark strength
of the leaves and roots last
and not only would the cool shade below the leaves
last and refresh
Not only would the roots that hold so lightly to the earth
leave their legacy anyway after the year’s efforts
were spent and dried and gone
In this year I am thirty-nine
and the peonies have died but not as they have before
I have learned to rejoice
in how once the blooms and the leaves were gone
and the grey strong winter had buried their bones
the actual plants in the fullness of their beings
have risen again
from the poor soil along the garage
This is the year that has opened
my eyes my nose and my throat to the world
The year I passed through fear
to let my seams bulge and stretch
The year my senses
have saved me from falling apart
Whipped cream cheese
and peanut butter
on white bread —
damn, can you believe it?
An old man
stuffing this into
his ruined face
as if it hasn’t already
killed him over time —
breaking down his
diabetic self into
sugar and failure —
This food of course
is mostly failure
and self-damage —
and so not adult
if that means
anything for someone
like this — eating
himself toward death
with bread wet with tears
But it tastes good
Might as well die
emmeshed in pretense
as he’s lived
Having it and eating it
too as if his happiness
makes it alright
to die with his face
smeared and his belly full
of whipped cream cheese
peanut butter white bread
and old sugar tears
You can see
this road has signs
but they just read
“AHEAD”
or “STAY STRAIGHT”
or “NEXT LEFT”
and they don’t
tell you anything
They were all painted
by people on this side
who’ve never been there
and are likely uninformed
since no one has been confirmed
to have returned
with a solid report.
Why you didn’t
notice this earlier
is unclear but you really
had no choice but to drive,
so you drove.
When you get to
that left, if there is a left,
take it. You’ll find
it loops back and rejoins
the main road
and there before you,
the next sign.
Ahead?
Stay straight?
Drive, beloved.
It’s not like
you can stop out here
where there’s nothing.
It’s not like
you are willing
to learn
what will happen
if you do.
Dark Matter 