Engaged, enraged, and exhausted:
the first gets me out of bed;
the second keeps me upright and moving;
the third lays me down
and also reminds me that
there will be an end to this someday.
Category Archives: poetry
A Simple Plan
The Garden
Here they are:
the fruits of
our long and dirty labor
falling from their trees,
hitting the ground as rotten
as the heartwood that fed them.
When they break,
they will split, expose
their mush, stink.
It’s up to us
to rake them all up,
burn them, salt the ground
where they grew,
cut down sprouts,
end this. Of course
there can be no promise
that no missed seeds
will fall to the ground
to grow again
into a poisonous
stranglehold
on what we hold dear,
but we must put hope aside
as a luxury until
we’ve fulfilled the hope
that those who came before
put into us. This
is our job. These
are our fruits, reeking
of us and our inattention
and lax oversight. Until
we atone and set our garden
right, what right do we have to hope?
Our Burning City On The Hill
A thick blanket of chaos
falls upon the holy fires
consuming our city on the hill,
seeking a way to extinguish them;
we wake to mouthfuls of
robin feathers choking us
as we struggle in a bath of scalding air,
tortured by unbearable skin; we strip ourselves
of all objects metallic right down
to ancient fillings in our teeth;
we shift our church altars to the worship
of ice; we love each other from afar
in an effort to stay unmelted; watch
our unknown neighbors swell
with superheated air and rise,
sky lanterns celebrating immolation,
falling to earth in unknown places,
setting new fires in distant towns;
we can’t bother with those screaming beyond us;
we can’t bother to pick the stems
of those feathers from our mouths so
we swallow them as we do so much
else, knowing they will pierce us
like our bigotry from inside our deepest guts,
setting us to bleed boiling
into our farthest crevices; a thick blanket
of chaos like a wool combed with spikes and
the nails of dying children; in all this
the only hope left is that we drown soon
or suffocate in the steam of a rising ocean
that will bring the birds back in with it;
swooping over the last scraps of the old
conflagration, their feathers
coated in both mourning
and morning, exalting
as they grieve that our flesh
is no tender feast,
that we’re roasted to leather
as they swoop, seeking places
to nest in the wreckage
of our city on the hill.
If I Could Explain
If I could explain
why I listen to gospel services
on Sunday morning radio
though I am no Christian or even
much in sympathy with Christianity,
paying nearly the same attention
to its content
as I do to a stray episode
of “Law And Order” on a barroom television,
though I am not at all a cop, neither
am I at all a lawyer, and am
slightly less criminal than many;
and slightly less attention
to either of those than I do
to distant salsa tunes from two floors up,
though I am no dancer or singer
in Spanish or anything else,
then perhaps I could explain to you,
and to myself as well,
how I became a poet.
Maybe I could explain why Jesus
and Lenny Briscoe and
Marc Anthony rotate through
my firmament on some
indecipherable yet certain timing;
or I might be able to explain
why I feel like life barely grazes me
most of the time,
though I feel all of it
at least lightly;
I could even maybe explain
how when I am nicked by living
I bleed out everything
I’ve ever felt
and call that art
once I’ve run my fingers
through the flood
and tried to make patterns
in what lands and dries
in front of me, although
it never does the job
quite well enough;
so I go back to cursory church and
peripheral crime and loving music
I can’t understand
just for the sake of listening
while waiting for the next barrage
to brush me, the next wound to open me,
the next opportunity
to play in my red.
A Revolution Will Only Come
A revolution will only come
when our children can kneel
among trees and remain still
as they are pelted from above
with falling acorns, nuts, fruits,
and cones, chanting the beat
of the earth upon them.
It will come when
they can kneel on shore,
shivering, soaking
in the rush of surf, shouting
the ecstasy of the sea upon them.
It will come when they can kneel
before each other,
look into broken eyes
both like and unlike their own,
saying nothing, rising
to embrace their opposites
and weep in their arms.
It will come
when they can
disown us utterly.
It will come
when we are unable to stop them
from stepping away from us
toward the greater good.
It will come
when they fail us more joyfully
than we have failed them.
Copy And Paste
You must demonstrate
your devotion to The Struggle
through copying and pasting
You will bring down the State that way
Perhaps someone will be moved
by the words
Begin their own path forward
through your furious impassioned mashing
of keys
I won’t deny that there is a place
for some of us in those clicks and strokes
I won’t deny that sometimes
I feel less timid
after sharing
after seeing who liked it
after seeing who shared it
I have a spreadsheet of justice
shorter perhaps
than Santa Claus’s
Mine says
naughty nice and dangerous
at the top
It has columns
and pivot tables
I keep track of shares and likes
and originators and sometimes
I make a little mark about those
who never do anything
My spreadsheet of justice
tells me who I should love
Copy and paste this if
you want to end injustice
or stop cancer
Someone is always
watching and listening
Demonstrate
or be suspect
Johnny Loves Tech
Johnny loves tech,
say all of his work friends. Knows a
shitload about it. They ask him
to fix stuff all the time. Just a week ago
no one could print, Johnny
figured it out before the help desk
ever got here. They don’t even call the help desk
any more. They just ask Johnny.
Johnny says ah, it’s nothing. He learned
a while ago that all there is to tech
is sitting with it and thinking, asking
a question or two, following up, being patient.
He learned that from his mother. She knew nothing
about such things but would
solve everything else that needed solving
by asking a few questions
and then sitting with the answers, and it always
worked for her, so…
Johnny still lives in the house he grew up in.
His mother’s long gone. It’s still neat
and clean there, the way she kept it, would
have liked it. He sits at night and never
touches a keyboard at home. Sits and
asks questions, sits with no answers,
sits and sits and falls asleep sitting up
in her old chair.
Johnny loves tech, they say at work.
Johnny thinks that’s nothing, loving tech.
He sits at night and loves his mother
who didn’t love tech at the end, the beeping,
the steady pump of the machines, the knobs
on the consoles, the way it all looked so clean
and foreign to her body as she melted away.
That’s what Johnny says to himself
while he’s sitting and sitting and sitting:
it all worked perfectly and still,
she melted away. Some tech
isn’t worth loving. Some tech never
answers a single question. Johnny
sits there in front of an error message
on a screen and screams inside
about how easy some people
must think this is for him.
These Are Days
These are days
when before going out
you ascertain that
you have
all you may need
in your pockets.
Keys and
phone, ends
of threads you’ve tied
to others;
knife,
pepper gel,
tools you carry
to help you stay unentangled
with others.
You do not leave the house
without carrying
contradictions.
Those things are not
themselves
magical. They must
be in learned hands
to work
and you are learning
more each day
of what your hands
may have to do:
untying certain ends,
tightening others,
cutting others off,
spraying others down.
It’s a healthier
approach
no matter how
it sometimes feels
these days:
learning to trust in
and strengthen connection
while being suspicious
as needed and
ready for what may come.
Possessed By Golden Hearts
I have been
possessed by golden
hearts and owned but
let free to roam and
I have been a mistake and
a good try. Left alone
I may have been empty
and dirty, a bottle
in the gutter. But thanks
to those, worthy of
all my praise and thanks,
who lifted me. Even when
I was of no obvious value
to anyone I was picked up
and held and now
I am the mistake that worked out
and am not wrong for existing.
Even when I seemed
most evil. Even when
I stank of wrong, I was
held as all should be held
as capable of redemption
and golden as any who held me.
Lift me, my saviors. When I land
I will do you proud.
I will shine, light the dark,
be your hope incarnate. I will
offer you a place
to mount your pride
and let it stand.
The City
From ten miles out of town to here
I pass a half-dozen donut shops,
two smoke shops, one
liquor store. You get what
you pay for and clearly
there are those ready to pay for
some form of altered state
just to enter this town,
never mind to stay here,
to live here.
As for me? My mind is clear.
I do not need a cloud
of sugar or fat,
of smoke or drink,
to be here.
I admit to stopping
at one or more of those
stores, but only now and then
is it anything more than
a small enhancement
that I chase,
for here’s a view from my porch
of nothing but more porches,
a view from my back door
of nothing but more back doors.
There are times when I long to see
tree or stream with no one near them,
or hear surf, the smash of sea
on shore or rock — of course,
I’m human, there are moments
like that when I want to climb
back through the past to
primacy.
But the view from here
is people and more people
and all the variety sings to me
and all the street sound is symphony
and I cannot want to blunt that
when so much worth knowing
is there within my reach.
Keep the donuts, the vapes
and pipes, the sips and nips
and bottles in need of draining.
Drunk and stoned
and stuffed on the city,
I am at peace.
The All-American Halloween Poem
It’s like we’ve been having
a forced Halloween forever
in this country,
what with all
the villain masquerades
and stolen
identities, what with all the handouts
we have grimly provided
to unnamed shadows.
Ordinary folks sit at home
with the lights on
afraid of the vague threat
of “tricks” as defined by men costumed
in camo, in blue, worst of all
in gray or navy pinstriped
suits. We give all we have to them,
and when we turn the lights out
for the night we still sit there waiting
for late, ominous knocking, for our doors
to be kicked in. The beloved dead
do not return to us,
ever; the ancestors
vanish in a haze of
genetics and whitewash.
It’s All-American Halloween,
disguised as always
as the Fourth of July.
Though the dawn
is red, it does signal
that it’s almost over.
Time to ask: Halloween America,
we know what your real face
looks like. What mask do you think
will save you? What face
will you be able to hide behind
once our after party begins?
Crumbs
Aren’t you tired
of living on crumbs?
Aren’t you tired
of fighting for crumbs?
Of waking up
after three hours’ sleep
and lying awake
until morning?
Of rising and aiming
your heart at a job
that takes all you’ve got
then returns a few scraps from
some folks at a table
you won’t ever see
that hangs above you
like a solid cloud —
aren’t you tired
of waiting for crumbs?
Aren’t you tired of
living on crumbs?
Of hearing three words of praise
for your being and doing
for every four hundred
you hear in rebuke?
Of seeing the horizon
as some kind of carrot
to keep you running
with the stick right behind?
Of becoming the person
you dreaded you’d be
when you thought the horizon
was a sweet dance away?
Aren’t you tired
of scratching for crumbs?
Aren’t you tired
of living on crumbs?
Here comes day
and then night
and then day
and then night
and every hour
falls into gray
till you can’t tell the difference
anymore
Here comes something
falling from the table
One atom of sleep or
one atom of comfort or
one atom of peace or
one atom of how to get by
And just as you catch it
It melts into memory
Then it grows in your memory
That’s how you survive
By turning those bits
into magnified moments
Turning those moments
into amplified stories
Fantasies of joy
you claim to believe
and try to believe
and want to believe —
A whole culture feeds that
even while it bleeds you
Makes it hard to get past it
and realize that
it’s the dark of the day
and the dark of the night
at the same exact moment
and it is every moment…
you know you are starving
though you can’t admit it —
and aren’t you tired
of living on crumbs?
Aren’t you tired?
Against The Angels
Your upbringing has you convinced
that when angels come at last to visit you,
they will be immense and will dominate
all your senses and being. It’s hype —
they’re tiny,
house pet scaled nuisances,
unnerving
at their worst.
This morning
I woke to one perched
on the bedside table
and at first, I thought it was one of the cats.
Once I knew better, recognized it by its gray wings and
solemn demeanor, I said: how come, angel,
your resemble a cheap gargoyle from a garden shop? How come
you aren’t robed in storm, an elemental force?
I’m only mildly put out to see you here.
You picked the wrong bed to sit by. Get out.
Go scare a sick kid or comfort an old man, take
your burst of petulance at my lack of fear
and put it where it matters. Take
your European constraint, your
European deity feather-bound by committee,
and go. Go tell those that want me
to send tornado hearted eyeless giants, send
thunderbird riders, send the deep green-red sky itself
to hover over me if they must; something
I can bow my head before and rise into
with honor and agreement. Angel,
archangel, seraph: go. You’re not
worthy. I smell that book on you.
I read it once. I don’t care to read it again
and I’m not leaving till the earth itself
deems me ready to go and holds
all the continents and oceans up,
like a robe, to wrap me in as I go.
Older And In Costume
Older and in costume
I parade up and down because I know
this will make a difference
in how I feel about
how I am seen from here on in.
It’s possible that no one
will see me anyway
no matter how I am
dressed or arrayed
but as a slowly vanishing
man, I must take
all the chance I can to be
visible. Even if no one
notices, I notice. Even
if I am ridiculous,
I shall vibrate inside
knowing I chose such
silliness. Even if I
were to in fact
disappear from here
leaving the costume
empty in the aisle
before all present,
I will go knowing
I took this chance to
feel alive, saturated
with nonsense, joyful
as a true clown,
unafraid, saying to all:
This. I am this
as much as I am anything
else you know of me and
it’s as much a part of me
as what you’ve always
known, even if you have not
seen it till now. I am this
and that too. While I do not
and have never contained
multitudes, I was more
than you knew and even
more than I knew. Older and in
costume, I can see that now.
Telecaster Grimoire
That open D turnaround
we’ve all heard forty thousand times,
the Chuck-riffs done to death,
the pentatonic lockbox…
did you forget all were designed
as magic spells? Don’t blame
the weak impact
they have upon you
on anything but weak magicians
weakly casting them.
Last night I heard a master
play everything right out of
the text book of how you are
supposed to do it,
and it wrung me out like a rag
sopping sweat from some ancestor’s
forehead between sets;
I long now to stay home
and sit over my Telecaster grimoire
through as many midnights as I have left
in the hope of getting beyond
just getting it right
once in my life.
Dark Matter 