Clearcutting
began years ago: the ground
in some sectors
is nothing but leveled
stumps. We
didn’t always know
they were
there until after they’d
left but
when we tracked sawdust
into our homes
and looked out into what
we’d once called
“forest,” we saw the white disks of
stump-tops
shining in the moonlight.
How were we
to build now that the stuff
of worship
and sustenance were gone?
We never took
more than we needed and now
there would not be
enough. There would not be
enough and we
shivered and stared into
the barren night
until someone — one of the children
or an elder, it’s
still not clear — someone drew
a handful of seeds
from their pocket and gestured
that there was
room now we could fill anew,
and we fell down
and wept for the loss while
planning
to sow for the gain.
Category Archives: poetry
Clearcutting
Maestro, Virtuoso, Aficionado
Revised from 2011.
In the hands of a virtuoso
even a decayed instrument,
ignored for years, attic-bound,
can make a music strong enough
to bend walls.
Maestro
my maestro
play on
I don’t claim the title for myself
but my age being its own reward
and punishment at once,
I live toward the words
maestro and virtuoso
as if they were mine to use.
Virtuoso
I am aficionado
Maestro
I am waiting
What do I call myself now when,
with my instrument all but played out,
I cannot help but seek a clarity
in the use of a single string?
Ossessionato
I am obsessed with the hunt
Maestro
I am forsaken
I’ve been told that nothing made on the single string
is performable,
but here I find myself facing an audience
who expect performance.
Maestro
I am the impression of you only
Aficionado
Ossessionato
In command of the single note
and — of course, now I see!
In command of the silence
around it,
Maestro
I am aficionado
I cannot stop this
Am no virtuoso
Can one perform silence?
On stage, perfected, I do nothing.
The audience expects something —
but how to replace this?
The Stick
When I was a boy
we had a washing machine
too small for the loads
we stuffed it with and by the side
of the washing machine
we kept a maple stick
cut from a tree we’d cut before that
to heat the house
and when we washed clothes
we’d come back into the basement
after it started and use that stick
to push the dry clothes down
into the water and the suds.
Over time it became smooth
and was bleached white and all
the bark was worn away as if it had
been whittled. It may sit there
in my parent’s home
next to the machine still as far as
I know,
but I am certain that I have become
like that stick that I have suddenly recalled
out of nowhere for no apparent
reason. Maybe I feel whittled
by the constant wash of living like this,
living a life too small
for the loads it’s been asked to handle,
stuffed with them over and over and yes,
I’ve been worn to a splinter trying to cope,
but I’m still here,
a bleach-sanded artifact
of what was once
a grown-up, cut down
and sectioned out
and plunged over and over into
agitation, but somehow
useful still, and perfected
for my purpose, and good
to the touch;
how can anyone say
neither the stick nor I
have not fulfilled
our destiny?
Satisfied And Entertained
A small thudding
in the room. One of
the cats is staring
at the window.
One of the daily woodpeckers
is on the feeder and it’s quiet enough
to hear the bird — can’t tell if it’s
the male or the female — slamming
its beak through the grid into the suet
over and over again.
I get close enough to see it’s the
male and his partner’s out on the
farther feeder doing the same.
I don’t know much of them for certain, of course.
I know their colors and what the books
tell me they mean. I know there’s one
of each human-gendered example out there
and they come every day like this to feed.
I don’t know if they are a mating pair
or even if it might be different pairs
switching off all season long.
I know both cats are fascinated by them
and I might be too. I don’t know
why it matters or why I become anxious
on the rare days they do not visit.
I know that even when I’m dead broke
I keep suet and seed cakes in full supply.
I don’t know where the money to pay the bills
is coming from
but I know two cats and two birds
who stay satisfied
and entertained
and when the fat gets low outside,
I know how fast I step into the snow and cold
to fill it up again.
One Week From Thursday
As matter-of-factly as could be,
they announced the Closure
everyone had been seeking
would be here very soon,
on a yet to be determined date.
No one had really ever thought
they’d get there in this lifetime,
but here it was, officially, with fanfare,
paper rain, and balloons. Closure
at last. The Emotional
End Game would be played
to a stop on a big field, nationally and
globally broadcast, and no
ties would be allowed. There would be
clear winners and obvious losers,
appropriate prizes and genuine remorse.
We got ready. Cleaned out
the closets and pulled strings of lights
from the basements, tried to cobble
up some festivity for this once in a lifetime
festival of Closure. We sat the kids down
and told them back stories to explain
why Closure was so important. We had
threads and comments running
for days, so much so that social media
shut down frequently, and we scrambled
off to cafes and bars to keep the dialogue
going. Some tried to squeeze in
complicated developments of ongoing
dramas to get them included in what was coming;
some dug up the past, some projected
into the future. Truth be told,
none of us knew what to expect
until yesterday when with great ceremony
they came forward and told us Closure would happen
a week from Thursday after the sun
goes down, after the lights come on;
then we’ll see a show.
For now we’re all just sitting
tight. No one’s fighting,
sighing or grieving much. We hold
tight to those we love in a semblance
of peace and harmony. Nod to each other
on the street. Make love as needed
and agreed upon, step into solitude
whenever we desire. Closure is
on the way. We don’t know how it will feel
but we are practicing, and uneasy lie the heads
that must shut all these open, creaking doors
one week from Thursday, once and for all.
CDC
A well-schooled
experience of poisonous
double talk would suggest that
if one controls
the language, one then
controls the thought.
Science-based, evidence-
based conclusion: if not true
then why do we believe in the
rarity of diamonds? why
advertising, sloganeering,
marketing, speechwriting?
We are as vulnerable as
our ancestors, curled
into word-coated wombs of
belief as tightly as any fetus,
stuffing our entitlement
into spaces too small
for us to feel comfortable
holding our tongues for long.
Let them try to chain down
this diversity of song. Let them
forbid “transgender” or any other:
we will spring out in a birth
of allowance, saying all the
words at once: revolt, ignore,
engage, detach, disrupt,
resist.
Any Decision Has Consequences
In a strong moment
I burn an old bridge
but find myself on the side
of that from which
I was trying to get free
and now the only choice
is to leap from a bluff
and fall into a cold river
at the bottom of a chasm
If all that doesn’t kill me
then I’ll have to get across
and climb what seems like
miles to the side
when I might be free
unless that which I’m escaping
surrounds me and already
has gotten there and
escape was always an illusion
so in fact I have two choices
or rather one choice and a
modification
I could die in the fall
and be free that way
or if Magick exists
I could without warning
fly up and over and land
wherever I please
and in fact never land again
until I starve and fall
dead to the hard earth
Whichever I choose
it will start with a leap
I toss my torch into the gorge
ahead of me
bend my knees
and look up
In Between
Not for me the beautiful as
defined by the finders
of heart-shapes in
their daily bread, or
the peaceful as defined
by the beach-bound, the
ocean-drunk,
the rainbow-struck.
For me the rim of night
at the end of
the lit driveway, out beyond
the circle of streetlight,
is the essence worth
my celebration, a boundary
between the acceptable
and the frightful; whatever
there is to be said about
the liminal, the soft lines
of division, I must be the
one to say it: the one to call it
beautiful. Something
has moved into that realm
between, and it seems
to be beckoning — it seems
to know me, or perhaps
it is me. I am reaching
for it, as I always have.
Neither for me the brightside,
nor do I embrace its
opposite. I stand between
and hold out my hand to
this being crouching there:
I offer it peace. It lies down
to await my touch ahead of
my desire to name and know
this being in between.
Bad Air
It doesn’t feel as good as it used to
to breathe in this country.
I used to fill myself with good air
in the mountains now and then
and head for the ocean on other days
to draw in as much as I could.
I’m so busy running now from morning
to morning, through mourning and grief
and rage, that my memory of the air
comes only when I stop, briefly, short
of breath. I chop out little gusts of the past
and take in sick gulps of the moment.
I’ve got friends who will say: the mountains
are still there, and they will cure this, and others
who say there’s an ocean and a sky above it
not far away and you can suckle all you want
of the atmosphere there and you will be healed;
but when I go to the mountains or the ocean
it’s one long drag, one long inflation
before I fall back wailing. This is
no clean world anymore.
I cannot escape into
amnesia, somehow. I feel every razor,
every bullet. Every burning tree, every
cloud of coal smoke or flame from
a funeral pyre. I choke on how close
and how far it’s all come to settle in me.
The world in my lungs like glass
shards in the agonized air;
joy, shredded, bubbling
as it strangles
on blood.
Deep White Cold
Looking into
deep white cold
as a man in shorts
walks, bent forward
at the waist, uphill
into wind’s mouth.
I’m staying in.
I’m not
that man, apparently
comfortable with
how the wind
is blowing. With
lack of heat,
with danger of
hypothermia.
Staring into
deep white cold,
knowing
I will have to
go out into it
sometime
just as everyone
does.
Knowing
I’m in it even when
I’m snuggled down,
even when I sit back
and worry,
even when I pull
the blankets tighter.
Even this act — this
scribble of fear —
laying these threads of dark
in the middle of
deep white. Trying
to convince myself I am
dark and hot, not
white and cold,
and deeper
than these lines
on the screen.
You Coming Home
I come home, sit
by the window
at nightfall after the close
of a hard day,
hard month,
hard year.
I wish there were
softer tidings
in the air.
I sit by the window,
imagine you
as the dawn
of softer days,
months, years;
sit straining to hear
whispers of
you coming home.
Patriarchy Apologizes
Dear Baby Baby,
I’m going to shut up now
after saying I’m sorry;
you must know I lament how
this world is all so very
violent. The sky is violent,
the sea is violent, I am
violent, ashamed of this,
don’t care who
knows it, but I am sorry
and that is peace, isn’t it?
I dare anyone to say it isn’t,
dear Honey Honey, dearest
Sugar Sugar. I am sorry
that when I close my empty hands
they become fists — what is man
except a tree of fists, swinging
like figs on his arms? I dare anyone
to say these fruit aren’t natural and
I’m sorry, sorry I grew this way, but
dear Sweetcheeks, Sweetcheeks,
dearly beloved Ladyfriend, most treasured
Helpmeet, I’m sorry, sorry
you’ve taken all I am the way you have.
Dear Bloom In My Garden, Loveflower
Of My Eye, I’m as natural
as you are, limited, constrained,
a square of edge and mass in a round world
that contrasts and conflicts and isn’t that
what the good God intended, what
Nature and Nurture intended for us both?
Dearest, you flee me and I’m sorry
but I’m angry and some words come hard
to the angry and when I call you “Dearest”
I’m sorry it comes out like a war cry but
I am forced to become the Violence I claim to see
in the world and when I call you “Beloved”
you are meant to come as you are and I’m sorry
if it’s not as you’d most desire but I am
sorry, Love, sorry you see me as such a
disaster but I am at least a natural disaster —
when you say I can learn, Sweetness,
when you say I can change, Dearest,
I’m sorry but I don’t see how
or why.
Resignation
I am relieved to
think about this, to say
out loud
that killing myself
trying to survive
while doing the work
might be the greatest service
I could offer the world, and while
I have thought it before
with a hint of self-pity
and bizarre hope of help
from others who somehow
understood me better than
I knew myself without my saying
a word, tonight I say it
feeling the shortness of time
in this dimming world, the urgency
of the need to push myself
by wish and will into danger
and depth — and if only the
work survives the plunge,
so be it. Let there be
an end to me in service
to seeking the good
and drawing it to the surface
from the cold wrong
we are drowning in today.
Let me sink away if what rises
from where I sink floats,
high and bright, above the tides.
Iron Eyes
1.
If you are above
a certain age, you no doubt recall
the commercial: him striding
in full regalia through garbage
to overlook a highway
smothered in smog and teeming
with cars, turning at the end
to the camera
and breaking his native
and noble stoicism
with a single tear
down his cheek.
2.
I got a call
from someone wanting me to speak
about ” the Native American view of the world
of slam poetry.” I told her she needed
to speak to someone closer
to the action these days
and shunted her off to
someone I barely knew with the excuse
that I was some years
out of that scene,
but when I think about that call now
I wonder if I should have taken it
with the caveat that what I was,
what I am, was nothing relevant
to the discussion she was looking for.
3.
It has taken me a long time
to forgive myself for my longing
to be obvious, to dress the part,
to be able to pull off some kind of
faux-Lakota drag, some expected
semblance of the Mescalero
I knew inside me.
After all, I said back then,
it is not like I look as good in that as
Iron Eyes Cody.
4.
Iron Eyes Cody was
Siciilan and Neapolitan, born in
Louisiana, y’all. As Italian as
they come. Played Indian in
over 200 movies and TV shows.
He denied who he really was
his entire life. Died old
and died happy enough,
I suspect.
5.
I’ll take that call now.
You might not understand what
I have to say if you can
be moved by a single tear
on a wannabe’s cheek; you might not
pick up what I’ll be putting down.
6.
At the end of that ancient commercial
a dark, rough voice intones, “People
start pollution. People
can stop it.”
7.
I’m more of what you think of
when you see Iron Eyes Cody
than you know. Hollywood
made me as much as
my parents made me — sometimes
because I believed and sometimes
because I did not and sometimes
because I rejected and was
rejected.
8.
His birth name was
Espera Oscar de Corti.
Mine is Anthony William Brown.
He was all Italian.
I am not.
He played an Indian on the screen.
I play the half-hand I was dealt.
In the world of slam poetry,
some folks take stage names.
I never did.
What more
do you want to know?
The Palace, Burning
1.
I came to the Palace.
One of the force
who run the Palace
stepped to me, asked me
to halt.
One of the lackeys
who haunt the Palace
stepped to me, asked me
to dance.
One of the underlings
who manage the Palace
stepped to me, asked me
to cuddle.
One of the bureaucrats
who finance the Palace
stepped to me, asked me
to pay.
One of the royals
who decorate the Palace
stepped to me, asked me
my name.
The monarch
for whom they built the Palace
stepped to me, asked me
for a light,
then tossed the match into
the debris on the floor of the Palace,
stepped away from the instant blaze, asked me
to cheer as it burned.
2.
I am in flames, as is the Palace, each of us
burning unremarked like a stick
being held in a campfire
by a child who doesn’t know
the potential disasters hidden
under the red cherry of its flaming tip.
I am here, I cry out, I am here
and burning and the Palace
roars in time with me as it burns;
no one’s coming, we look up
to the sky-God we’ve both believed in
to drown the heat and are left wanting.
3.
In the flames I think I see the Palace
struggle to rise to its full height
from its knees.
4.
Does this Palace truly labor to breathe,
as my hope and eyes labor to convince me,
or is that slothful thinking?
Is the Palace human at heart or
merely a structure of human heart
that keeps moving
merely to battle inertia
or in fact does it not move at all
and all the hope I have
for it rising from its ashes
is misplaced?
5.
Someone who helped to build the Palace
steps to me and asks me
to stand aside
as it burns.
Someone whose land was taken for the Palace
steps to me and asks me
to stand aside
as it burns.
Someone who was never allowed into the Palace
steps to me and asks me
to stand outside
and let it burn.
6.
In the distance,
the Palace is burning.
Those of us
who burned with it once
but escaped
sit in the dark
and watch it go.
It was just a thing we built once
upon a time.
Let it burn.
Let us burn as well if we must.
We can always build another thing,
or our children can
if we find we can never stop
smoldering.
Dark Matter 