Tonight,
at the pool hall,
I lined up three shots
in my head
and made them
in near-military order.
I’ve played pool badly for years,
gotten lucky more than once,
but I don’t recall this happening before:
what I wanted to happen
happened
as I had imagined it would
in a game I enjoy
but cannot play well.
The flow didn’t last,
but the sudden knowledge of it
made me shiver
and nearly cry out loud:
I can learn something
still. I can improve.
When you’re ready,
you come by and see me
then. You spend a little time
on the work you need to do,
including learning to relax about it;
nothing says you have to be so damn serious
all the time. You do that work,
come by my house when we can talk
about nothing, casually, just discuss
the rain or some dumb TV show
that’s just fun, kinda thing that lets me
turn my own running monologue off,
and you’ll be welcome.
I spent too many years being serious
to like it much anymore.
It just kept stretching me
on a rack full of questions. I finally
answered most and learned that the rest
don’t ever get answered — we don’t learn
exactly how to love each other, we just keep trying;
we don’t ever light every dark cranny
of the mind, figure out the roots
of every thing we do or understand why
we blurt exactly the wrong thing at the wrong time
though we know it’s wrong when we do it;
we do not ever get our parents completely,
and war and peace and justice don’t happen
eventually, they’re mostly process issues
and there’s not much new content —
there’s always been evil in the world and it doesn’t go away
just because we think it will. We will always fight
the fight, ask the questions, answer in the moment
knowing there will be a new answer, or the same answer
will bear repeating, the next time it rears its head.
I know all that now. So if you want to talk,
if you really want to talk to me,
come prepared with beer, a bucket, and a lightning rod.
It’ll be stormy outside. If we’re struck
we’ll put out the fire. If there’s another flood
we’ll bail till the ark is ready. And we’ll do it all
a little drunk, a little happy, and a little certain
of it passing by at some point. It’ll be back,
for sure. We’ll be more ready next time
and in the meantime, we’ll laugh a little.
Hey —
are you
vessel
or conduit?
Do you contain
or channel?
Are you
content or process?
Are you intention
or execution?
Don’t even try to push me —
don’t care if you’re black or white —
are you, instead,
colonizer or colonized?
Oppression or resistance?
If you answer,
I could be any
and am all,
we can speak further;
but if you choose,
you choose
alone.
I am sick of wearing glasses.
I’d rather not see things so clearly.
When I take my glasses off
people are softer and I take more time
with them, listen to them more closely
because I can’t judge their faces
or their clothes.
I’m sick of wearing glasses.
Why don’t I just get in the car
and drive over them? or crush them
in the disposal? or shove them
into that box the Lions Club leaves
at the store so they can recycle them
to people who in fact want to see better?
It’s because I don’t want them to see better either.
I’m sick of everyone being able to see clearly!
If we weren’t all wearing glasses
we’d be less able to use the computers.
We’d stumblefinger over the remote — in fact,
who would care what’s on TV?
Turn the radio on! Or,
we could talk to each other more.
No more driving! No more reading!
No more work!
Let’s try giving our glasses
to all the people who don’t need them!
That would be the Great Equalizer.
They’d get us then.
It would be like living underwater,
all of us lost in the blur,
except we could breathe.
(And don’t start with “have you considered contacts?
What about laser surgery?” Don’t distract me,
I am planning for the future of the world!)
Of course, there might be people who would still see clearly,
who wouldn’t get a pair because the numbers
probably don’t match up. Some folks would still
have perfect eyesight and there wouldn’t be enough glasses
for them. (They’d probably all be
snipers and pilots. We’d have to watch that.)
Maybe we could pass a law?
Maybe we could isolate them somewhere?
Of course, we would have trouble finding them.
I’d suggest we make them new glasses
but we’d have outlawed the grinding equipment
and besides, who could see to run it?
I guess we could just hope for the best
in our new, vaseline-coated world
and pray for their mercy…
or, we could blind them.
feather
head, floating
a little this way,
a little that;
one current lifts,
another drives down;
no matter how I prop it up
with breath it will drop
at some point to the floor
where it will stir a little
now and then
but mostly will lie still
having found its lowest level.
at last, I don’t care.
the drift was movement
and what I needed to do.
that feather, my head
on the floor full of dust,
that’s my truth and my real face.
hollow, almost weightless,
a discard. you can’t look at it
and tell where it’s been. you know
it was made for flight and it’s not
flying now. that’s all you and I know.
don’t say
you cannot believe
you’re in love again.
say instead you are pleased
that the cup on the shelf
is battered metal
but still holds water,
or wine, or paper clips,
that it remains fillable.
don’t say you’re afraid,
say instead that the cat
is unaccustomed to sleeping
on the back of the couch
and is striving to seem at ease
but looks like he knows he may fall.
don’t say
you are sure of failure.
say instead that when the nut falls
from its branch,
two scars always remain: one on the tree,
one on the nut. say instead
that breakage precedes growth.
the world offers you
agreement upon agreement.
take what help is offered,
no matter whence it comes.
Weeks before Palm Sunday
I thought of the ride into Jerusalem
and the donkey who carried Jesus
on the road, how he stepped stolidly
into history, probably died a few years later
without knowing a thing
about momentous journeys
or the bearing of divine weight.
Now it’s Holy Week. Now begins
the rush of replication of past events
pushed from fact to memory
to ritual observance. And this year,
I’m the burden on the donkey, or so it feels from here:
that sense of calm and celebration
is already turning to remembered dread
of pain and time in the dark to think
of all the sins I carry — except for three things:
these sins are my own, I can’t even save myself,
and resurrection’s
no certainty for me. So unlike that first donkey,
whose thoughts are unrecorded,
you get this braying, this hoarse and boring
(to everyone, I imagine) declaration
of fear and recognition that I’ve always been
the beast who bears hope for others without knowing it;
not salvation itself, nothing divine at all;
just another ass on the road with people cheering
because the story has a good ending for everyone
except the incidental being
that in every story dies unremarked
at some unimportant moment
outside the scope of the fable.
Two O’Clock,
we called him.
He walked to the corner
across from the bodega
and stood motionless
every day at that time
for exactly
seventeen minutes,
then walked away.
It’s a good thing we had a clock,
one with a second hand.
Otherwise,
we’d never have known his name.
Three years I worked there,
in that stupid optical shop,
unpacked lenses
and packaged frames
for delivery all over
the damn state,
and Two O’Clock
was out there every day,
rain or shine,
waiting for something.
A place to go
is a good thing.
I used to get paid for going to mine.
I don’t know what he got out of his
because I never saw him meet anyone
or get on a bus to go somewhere else.
Two o’clock rolls around these days
and I sit here. I don’t do anything
at all. Haven’t for a while,
and the money’s running out.
I might go down to the corner
one of these days,
see if Two O’Clock’s still doing his thing.
Maybe he’s been waiting for me.
He must know something
about killing time I might learn.
And he wore glasses.
I remember that. Old ones,
with big plastic frames.
Maybe I could adjust them for him.
I used to do that too.
While daydreaming
another installment
in the series
titled, “What I Do Not Care About,”
I went completely blank.
I woke myself up
and left the house
to sit in soft mud
among early leaves.
My ass got filthy
and I shivered a lot
for the fifteen minutes
I could stand it. Then
I stood up and realized
the kids across the street
were laughing at me.
I waved back, went inside,
showered, made coffee,
toast, sat down to resume
the daydream with no shortage
of material to work with.
Ah, Americans,
my little ones,
the television
too often spits
the shrapnel
of distant bombings
at our spirit.
We’ve grown
to expect this
and it leads to questions:
if you hear your neighbor
in the street at three AM,
do you reach for your gun?
Are there moments
when you just roll over,
go back to sleep, figure
it’ll be worth asking about
over the side fence
in the morning?
Or perhaps
you’ll say nothing at all
because you don’t know
his name, because no news
is good news?
What exactly
are you spending
on defense these days?
confirmed
that someone
had indeed been listening to me,
at least once
by chance more than anything;
lovely, indeed,
to imagine that for a moment,
to think of the earth
outside the front door
cradling a seed
I dropped without thinking
on my hurried way
to another place
where no one would listen
for more than a moment.
Yes, I’m grateful to you and
yes, I’m glad it is spring
at last, and that there may be
a chance, a small chance,
of seeing green soon.
…yeah, I don’t know…
this isn’t working for me anymore…
the breathing, it ain’t
what it used to be; the eyes
dry out, except on the frequent occasions
when they leak,
and they do leak often…
often enough that I call myself
“sentimental” now, a word
I never considered before…
and the knees buckling, the wrists aching,
the ears full of inconvenient
electricity crackling over
the background of each conversation…
I can’t remember the last time
any particular event happened
although the first time
it happened is crystal clear
and I talk about it
all the time…
I expect this will be the way
it will be, though I live for it all being
temporary…I don’t know…
already a ghost…everything is best described
with an ellipsis, because nothing
stays solid…
We take our coffee without cream.
We take our meals when the whistle lets us,
one half hour at a time.
Ham on rye’s as fancy as we get,
some yellow mustard on the bread,
maybe cheese, maybe lettuce if we’ve got time,
chips and pickle on the side.
We take it on faith
that we might lose these jobs.
So we take our money home
and keep it close enough to hear it squeak.
We take our clothing simple and plain
and cheap as we can find. Once in a while
we’ll take on something
with a touch more style
as long as it toes a certain line.
We take our evenings as they come.
We take our friends as warty and hard
as we are. We talk the way we learned to talk
at the knees of those like us,
and if we do change the conversation
it’s only a little at a time
unless we’re shoved along a path
we didn’t plan to take,
and then we do what we can
to hold on to what we used to say,
adding new words only where they fit.
We take the evening news with a heap of salt.
Even when it makes some kind of sense
we don’t pay much attention
unless we recognize a name or a face.
We work too hard to care too much
which suits are running the game
we know we’re going to lose.
We take our champions as they are
and our warriors as we find them.
We take them to heart if they sound like us
because that’s how we know they’re real.
We take on the battles they want to fight
because that’s how we learn to hope.
We take out the garbage first thing in the morning
to keep it safe from the raccoons and skunks
and the neighbor’s dog that rips the bags for snacks.
We swear we’ll mess that dog up one of these days
for messing us up and making it hard
to keep order on the streets where we live.
We take a moment to look one way,
then the other, before crossing the street
and climbing into our cars
in our same old solid clothes,
clutching steaming travel cups
and the brown bags
that hold the same kind of sandwiches
they held yesterday
and the day before.
No shirt, no shoes,
a little chilled in my own living room.
I could get up and put on a shirt
but then I’d have to move.
Could make coffee —
see above.
Paying bills by computer,
sending invoices by computer,
making poems by computer,
communicating with you all by computer.
None of this
seems lazy to me.
It’s the way the morning goes
most days. Eventually, I’ll move
and re-enter physical space —
a lie, I’m there now, of course,
sensing my empty stomach,
scratching the occasional itch.
How perfect are the ways of the brain
and mind that it requires so little sweat
to leap mountains and deserts
in order to survive, and that all it takes
is to move a few fingers at a time
for my friends to know I exist,
what I’m thinking, how Godlike
I am though I am fat and dirty
and hungry this morning,
and a little cold, as well.
I’ve got no pressing reason
to open my head,
so there’s no reason for you
to stand there staring at my hair,
wondering when I’ll pick it up
and let you see
the swirl of waste oil
on the surface of the pool within,
let you peer at the discarded items
visible on the bottom,
let you think about the sudden stink
in the air.
Truth is,
I’ve done enough of that
for a while. It hurts
like a mother, and I suspect
that what seems necessary to me
might only be entertainment to you.
Instead,
I think next I’ll lift a few foreign scalps
and see what’s in there — so don’t stand
too close. No telling what I might do
with such tempting locks before me
waiting to be examined. I don’t know
what trash I might find beneath them, and while
I’m disgusted with the possibility,
I know I will learn something
that might be useful, might learn why you stare at me
so deeply, so coldly. I may learn
how to be wary of you at last.
Dark Matter 