I’m feeling lazy, and honestly more than a little tired. Come back tomorrow.
I do apologize.
-~~~~~~~~~~~~
Onward,
T
Monthly Archives: July 2024
Tuesday Morning
On Tuesday morning
the sun flashed purple for
a second or less but
I saw it transform the world
around it, and it was good.
A simple moment, almost
easy in its derivation
from the complexity I’d grown
to believe was inherent
in the nature of things,
but it was good. Almost
a lie, almost a fib even
told straightforwardly enough
you could honestly swear by it
though you had not seen it yourself;
you would find a way to agree
with it. It was good.
After all, the sun does not change
every day and on the days it does
I know I have to believe in it;
even for a fraction of a second,
the sun turned the world purple
and you and I were bound to it
even though you did not see it
directly.
Marvelous sun —
for a piece of holy time this was
a violet world, no matter
how you saw it, no matter
your experience of it and it
was good.
““““““““““““““““““““`
onward,
T
Puissant
Puissant means
powerful.
Someone’s made an offer
of a word to choose
in place of a more common
word. Someone’s
got it in for the speaker
in a high-test way
and now he or she’s
gonna get it.
Now
I have to choose.
It’s such a minute thing, choosing
these choice words. Puissant.
Powerful. I am neither.
Living among the islands
I don’t get to talk much.
I get to think, and honestly
there’s not much talking involved
in that.
So I don’t say much.
Smile, nod, move on. Keep
thinking, though. Tap my cane
to the cadence. Wait
my turn.
It may not come again but
it may, and I will be ready —
puissant, powerful.
Ready.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
Sunday exclusive — 7/28/2024
My left hand wears a glove
from fingertips to elbow.
My left foot wears a sock
that does the same.
They aren’t, in truth,
doing this. From the outside
I look exactly as I always have
except I rarely smile. Take that,
disbelievers, take that.
My left neck holds my head
that won’t tell me my name
stubbornly, much of the time.
Less time than it used to take,
but still. It’s like islands decreasing slowly,
ever so slowly.
I’m tired
of the pace.
It is never going away…
still. Yet again
the cat sleeps near me
and does the same as she always does
and did. Still
I’m the same person, am I not,
except I never smile
and it takes me forever
to pick up anything that’s fallen
and I sit for hours and hours
doing nothing, desperately healing;
in a race to do something, anything
normal, appropriate,
casually correct.
Take that, beloved, take that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
Music And Truth
I try to add a thought here
whenever I have one,
which is seldom;
most of the time I confess
I prefer to think of ordinary life
and its discontents;
most of the time
I can’t spell right and I end up
replacing words and such —
sometimes for
clarity, other times to
startle readers into
whatever I feel at the moment
regarding truth and lies and
their musical notes
as if I were at the helm
of a grand symphony,
or an intimate and profound
chamber ensemble; it is not
fitting to startle readers into
music in place of truth,
say the elders of the music world
or the elders of the poetry and
truth worlds, any worlds beyond
this one, really. At any rate
I know so little and when I die
or at least go, go beyond this
mundane world of trash at the curb
and sitting still, trying to decide
how it’s going to work, I will have
ghosts of music and poetry
to hold me in their supple arms
and no matter how disrupted
they appear, no matter how
damaged or re-formed they
have changed themselves to be,
I will have my moment — and that
will be all, will be enough to go on.
You will turn to your affairs soon enough.
It will not hurt, I promise.
It will only prompt you to say,
as I did, “how it all — the music,
the poetry — how
it all shines.” Then,
as I did, you will turn away.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward.
T
Tango
I wish for
so many things
real and unreal —
I wish
the spin of the planet would stop
for a split second and that I could
be alive for the split second
before the shift of schedule slew me —
I wish a beaver would enter the room
and discern a palette in the wood
and discourse mightily and learnedly
about the nuances of grain on the tongue —
I wish all floors would drop off their posts
and there would be minutes of wonderment
at the warring senses of floor beneath my feet
and the tempered joy of nothing there —
I wish for no more plodding or trudging
between meanings in the course of one day
as I tried to muddle through weariness and
dread and plain ordinary feeling —
I wish light had a sense of purpose
I wish light had a rumor of coordination
with the dark and the in-between
I wish light had a mission worth understanding
I wish I was OK
I wish the senses and the sensibility aligned
I wish I recalled how to cry out
I wish joy and its counterparts knew how to tango
as if in a dance or in a dance
where the keys started and stopped their playing
to the leg lifted tight along the other leg
and neither fell
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
A Bird No One Knows
It doesn’t matter what you choose
or how you frame it. In the end
they will still look at you funny
and after a sigh or two dismiss you.
Shake their heads, one or two of them,
and let you go.
It doesn’t matter how you dress
or how you say the things you say.
You will still be the cause
for their shaking heads, their
worried hands trembling
when they reach out for you,
and then (reluctantly at first
but with relief at the close)
let you go.
Be well, and let me go
without a qualm or care
in the world. You should recognize me:
I’m a chipmunk
you never chased deeply enough into the earth
to understand. You should recognize me:
I’m a bird of indeterminate plumage
you thought you knew in your bones
but were never certain that you did,
not after I’d flown.
You should recognize me:
I’m you before the fire, after the flood,
sunset on your beloved lake before night falls
all the way down like a perfect blanket.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
Call Her By Name
Call her by name.
She doesn’t answer
for more than a minute.
You pretend to care a little
because it matters a little.
Outside, the world shatters
more than a little — you
are a little shaken; more
than shaken — meanwhile
she carries you on the wave
left behind by the occurrence
of your name on anyone’s
mouth.
When she finally
uses your name again,
you have forgotten it and
shake your head like a bag
left over from a long shopping
trip. Who you are
doesn’t matter. You are
hips and toes and only
a little of you is in your head
waiting to respond to her.
Call her by name again
and you won’t forget it
though you don’t know her
at all. She is a wave in your head
and that’s what counts. She
is perfect for the cause
and that is final. Until
you forget again, she
is all you can imagine.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
It’s hard for me
to add a new post here.
I do the ones that go along with the poems, of course. That’s a given. And as such, it’s a pretty much reflexive process; it requires a little effort, but it becomes easier with time.
But things like this, that just tag along with a slow lope connected to a prose piece, are hard as hell.
For instance — I wanted to write a piece about WERS in Boston. I wanted to talk about a piece related to Lyle Lovett’s “If I Had A Boat” and tie it into how I felt near-tears in writing about it, about how writing an appreciation piece for the cleverness and difficulty of the song had become so difficult in the wake of the strokes…
and then it was gone. This doesn’t come close to it.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I don’t know how you would formally express thanks on this format. Seventy-four or five of you are formally signed up to do so, but I lose the thread quickly in explaining it. I’m sorry.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
That’s it for now.
onward,
T
Remembering
I woke up
and played Joni Mitchell
on the radio, she sang “Summertime”
with a cheering raft of friends.
Then came the Dead and “Scarlet
Begonias” –50 years today
since it was released — and then someone
did a version of a Nirvana song
and I knew I was old,
old enough
for the tears that came up
for the live and the dead.
Last night I went to sleep
thinking it would soon be
too much to mourn for me
and only those who knew me
would mourn for my departure
from the solid world,
the world of
contracts and hibiscus.
Their hands
would be clean of the holy dirt
as soon as they wiped it off
and walked away.
Like a song
they might recall it — a snatch
of it, perhaps — later,
and it would bring up a tear or two
for scarlet flowers,
for crimson blues,
for lithium marks on a bottle,
for days when living was easy.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
A True Fan
A true fan of rock and roll
never quits. They sleep
fire and wake up smoldering.
They know more about crunchy
than soothing. They throw horns
on their hands like they were
born to it. They are forever
explaining it, them, others.
A true fan of rock and roll
sits inside an explosive shell
they built from the shards
of a yearning felt in childhood
and never adequately expressed
until they discovered sex and maybe
drugs, which gave them permission
to yearn forth and yarn long stories
about meeting this hero or that one
on a bus behind a club in Denmark
or Columbus, Ohio.
A true fan of rock and roll
dies young, or dies old. They end upside
a cone of fire that spun out,
or they end quietly like a sputter
from a ill-packed firework. They end
never talking to their kids about it —
wistful, picking up the sticks one time
in a guitar store, maybe they’ve got
a story, maybe not, but it stays tight
within them, tight as a death
they imagined — a shooting star
gone quiet, pills in the hand,
a gun in the hand at age twenty-six;
all the rage at last.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
Sunday exclusive — new post 7/21/2024
Laugh And Cry
I’m laughing now.
You didn’t know.
I told you many times,
you didn’t hear me —
or more likely you didn’t
listen. So I’m laughing now
as I never did before —
not heartily, not loudly
as if there was great comedy
inherent — you didn’t know
at all how the comedy
fell short, how these jokes and gags
didn’t measure up to the task
of what was asked. Instead
I’m crestfallen — a soft chortle
only, shaking of my head —
almost sad, broken a bit
south of the gag — a sob almost.
Almost confused between
a laugh and a cry. To feel this way
is almost sacred — as if you
don’t know what to feel anymore,
and the trap between the responses
is deep, and wide; as if you fall in
and only get out when you relent
and give up trying to decode
and decide.
~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
End
I don’t have anything much: a pack
of smokes, a cupcake, half a Coke,
a sheaf of half-finished poems. A limp leg
with a delayed step and a stutter now and
then — more now than then.
This is how I live. Stammer out the poem
to the paper. Stumble to the stage
very rarely. Repeat, sipping on the Coke
until there’s just a half swallow left
in my mouth. I wonder why I don’t swallow.
Toss the smokes, toss the cup: done. I’d toss
the poems if there was an inferno close by.
Maybe you’ve been here, stuck between
the past diligence of yesterday and
the casual loss, or half loss, of today;
maybe you know there’s enough in the swallow
to sate your thirst and be done and that is why
you don’t finish. You can’t stand the thought
of being done, of having said the last words.
One day you will have no conscious choice.
You will spit a poem, savor it on your lips,
and be done. You will go home with it
hanging out there and be done with it.
You will swallow the last of the Coke and
be done with it. You will die like peace itself
in the arms of war, or you will slip away
before, or after, the war begins.
Any way you can you will call an end
to war and peace, hostility and gentle rain.
You’ll do it without an announcement.
You will slip away into a great gray sleep
and leave this mess, this magnificent chaos,
to sort itself out. How it fends, at last,
will not be your concern.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
Dark Matter 