In the interest of better bonding
we’ve taken to making love
on panes of black glass.
Roiling the sheets,
on and on,
tumbling through a longing
for something to crack,
for stinging
cuts,
for lubricant
blood.
So help us,
pain is that feeling
accessible when no others are;
what’s been severed
speaks loudest
just before
it dies.
The poem I posted just previous to this, “The Meaningless Goal,” marks the 1000th poem posted on this blog since January 1st, 2010.
I intend to take a short break from posting poems here, but would appreciate it if those of you who subscribe and read the blog would take some time and go back and read some of the previous postings while I’m on hiatus. There will be more poems eventually, but I kind of feel like I need to take some time and do some other stuff for a while.
Thanks for your kind attention, and I’ll be back soon. Promise.
All are, in fact, meaningless
in one sense,
as long as there is
death
to snicker at them; still, there are times
when a branch grows just long enough
to scrape the wall when it comes down
and that scratch lasts a while,
at least till the next rain,
and everyone points at the mark and says,
“Remember that? Remember
when that fell and there was that crash
and we thought the whole house
was about to fall? Man, we dodged a bullet
that day.”
And then those people move, or die,
or lose their minds, and no one
mentions that branch again —
but somewhere the wood decays
or is burned and the vapors rise from it
and are inhaled by someone who says,
“Hmmm…I think I’ll go for it. What have I
got to lose, at least for myself —
and it might mean something to someone,
after all.”
The branches over your head all began at a trunk
and grew out. The trunk started from a hole in the ground
and grew up. The meaningless goal
grew up and out and reached and failed,
or left a transient mark, or lasted eons.
It’s all the same, all as pointless as any other endeavor;
in the end, it’s the growing that counts,
and not the place where it all ended.
My hands fell into my lap.
My palms
opened
face up.
I called out,
Who has a hand drum?
hoping to pound this
away from me.
I sang “Shenandoah,”
hoping to lure Death
far away, across the wide river —
but he stayed
for his flamenco moment.
Darkstruck guitar, dark heels and hands,
dark dance, dark jewel.
Cante jondo, they say. Deep, dark song.
Duende, putting a song into the air
to fill a hole
in the air. It’s not about death,
they say. It’s about life. And it is, and
they also say it is enough
though it is not enough.
But say it enough, maybe
it will become enough.
At the hospital, no music.
What sound they had for me was thin and cruel.
It’s nothing to repeat here.
I came home after I listened and heard enough,
and sat with
my hands
in my lap,
palms up.
Cante jondo, duende,
what can you bring to this,
to the hole in the air, to the not enough?
I am waiting to receive word
from far away, you rolling river,
from across the wide Missouri,
of dark eyes wide open,
a flash song in the deep, even just a chord. That
will be enough,
even if at once
it is not enough again…oh,
where is my bright dancer?
when you inhabit your name
hearing it as version of dragon lion or storm
when you make a home within it
fortress for the stand you must make
when you are at last the embodiment of your name
you will know that it is not a name
that is the source of
your power
His fuel for today is
a short memory
of her hairbrush in motion
years ago.
Her hair silked in, stroke
upon stroke.
Her with back turned.
Her.
She’s how he goes around
and comes around today.
Not quite
inside, not quite out,
but moving.
A big dog woofing.
Chainsaws running all day.
Me? I’m not smoking tonight,
too much to do in the morning.
God, sometimes a day
runs you over. Sometimes
you’re killed almost by it.
That’s big dog’s fault;
gets loud and mean and then
chases the day right out of its yard
and into the street and over us.
Those chainsaws must rile him up —
right here in the city, all that northwoods noise.
Didn’t think there were that many trees here.
The big dog pissed on all of them
and now he can’t tell where his territory is
so he’s woofing and we’re all a little on edge.
Days like this you wanna curl up with a bowl
and fake dead for the daylight hours. Can’t,
though; too much to do, and the dog’ll be hunting
bright and early,
and that dog will hunt and bite,
and the day will crush us before he gets to us
if we don’t get a move on.
It had stopped being cool when I was a kid
and became cool again as soon as I was not.
The only thing I know for sure
is that as practiced now it is a kind of low flight.
I know that you can move by grinding
or by sliding. That’s the same as when you’re an adult.
I think some trick is called “gleaming the cube.”
Or perhaps there isn’t. Some things are meant to be
obscure or meaningless. and that’s the same
as when you’re an adult.
But to fly like that, to ride handrails and swoop
through bowls and off ramps and dry pools?
To be in love with the thick clack of deck
and truck on hard surfaces?
To fall, again and again, and still smile and see it all
as joy and fun and purpose despite the blood and fracture?
Somehow, the appeal of that last bit escapes me
as I sit here looking out the window
at them rocking out. “Damn kids,” I say.
Damn them and their flying where all I can do is plod.
floral not
dense
concrete not
open
tear down
leviathan
object lesson
Georgia
pulled
start the zone
it’s already been pulled
start the zone it’s so
comfortable
what?
you’re the —
in plain sight?
ah go — ah!
what? in plain sight allegory?
mutual and interrogatory?
who’s to be believed?
the only real
is not
concrete
in strong gully
what a weakness
a pity to be so late for the fall
and to run for them
run for them
shall I run for them
run for them
~~~~~~
music’s just about music
poems have to be about something
what a weakness
Ripple the age, dammit:
ripple it.
Throw yourself in, not because you’ll be
at the center of all those circles
for that instant, be a target, be a
bullseye; but because
as others join you, the circles
will disappear, interlace,
turn to full disturbance,
and then what you’ll be
is all wet, immersed,
what you’ll be
is in it for the long swim,
part of the stream, the flow,
the flood.
After all the partying,
the exuberance, the Stutz
and the backroom booze,
the easy money, the luck;
after all that, what I’m left with
is the best blessing of the modern age:
that we built these buildings high enough
to make the flight I’m about to take
certainly fatal. When I fall,
it may be that I will become
warning to those who come
after: don’t ever do this again. Make certain
that those who make the money
keep the money. Make certain that
we are safe from those we stole from
with promises and shell games,
and pad us well enough
so that if we fall we do not feel it.
Well enough that we will bounce.
Too late for me, of course — but
get to work,
and make a world where them’s that got
shall fly if they fall, fly over
those that have not, that never had.
Sparse-framed, reticent, particular,
the old hippies come in to the market
on odd weeks
for what they cannot grow
or raise.
A friend sneers at them,
calls them un-American.
I hear they’ve got a sod roof on the house.
Life underground:
a few acres
and a 1978 Ford pickup.
Here on the grid we’ve got
fear, troubles,
and the grind. We all
talk too much.
Hey, hippie,
go hug a tree. Go
bathe in the snow.
Get a job.
Sparse,
quiet,
don’t associate with us
unless they have to —
un-American
bastards, get in the trough with us
and bring some eggs or something else
to eat.
Metallica’s “Blackened”
is playing: loud, loud…Then
the tree breaks out back,
louder even than that.
Half of a two hundred year old oak
comes down
across the whole yard
with snow-weighted limbs,
tears out cables,
and only gently grazes the house.
Barefoot in the wet
checking for damage,
and
other than the tree itself,
there’s none. The power
has even stayed on.
Back into “Blackened”
once back inside.
“Callous frigid chill?”
Only outside. Life doesn’t always
imitate art. In here it’s warm,
blistering almost. I lower the heat
and return to the music
of promised disaster.
Storm has taken out my home internet for what may be a few days…so expect a slower posting schedule. Thanks.
“Blackened”
playing. Then
the tree breaks out back,
louder than that.
Half a two hundred year old oak
comes down,
fills the whole yard with snow-weighted limb,
tears out cables,
only gently grazes the house.
Barefoot in the wet
checking for damage,
and…
other than the tree itself,
there’s none.
Back to “Blackened”
because there’s nothing else to do.
“Callous frigid chill?” Perhaps,
but only outside. In here it’s warm,
blistering almost. I lower the heat
and return to the music of promised disaster.
Isn’t it something when art, for once,
doesn’t imitate life?
Dark Matter 