A bald brown man
is out on the curb with a black
trash bag of a kind disallowed
by my city carefully picking through
our building’s recyclable bins
for cans and bottles, almost tenderly
placing those he cannot use
to one side on the pavement before
adding to his bag with what little
he gets from us and then
putting the ones on the pavement
back into the bins, although
I cannot be sure
he puts them back into the ones
they came from they all go back
into the bins where they belong
without ever touching the yellow bags
the city makes us use for trash
and then he straightens up and
moves on, up the hill, up the street
to the next three decker, then the next;
then he crosses over and descends
doing the same on the other side
where I see him one more time,
directly across from my window,
picking through the plentiful options
from the green building’s bins,
and I note as an afterthought that
he’s new, not one of the usual crew
who come through on Wednesdays
or Thursdays if Monday was a holiday;
he’s younger, fitter, more neatly dressed,
stands up straighter, looks like he can carry
more weight as the bad black bag the city
won’t let us use for trash is full now
and he is tying it off and pulling
another one
from his back pocket
where you’d expect
a man
to carry
his wallet.
Category Archives: poetry
His Wallet
You Half-Unbuckled
You,
half-unbuckled,
verging upon
dropping all your armor,
ready to take on what is coming
from out of those dark mists
before you, those charcoal clouds
boiling from eternal battles;
you,
half-unarmed,
edge dulled, bow unstrung,
arrows blunted, still
with your stance set to stolid,
holding fast before
what is coming toward you;
you,
trying to recall every word of advice
about how to meet this enemy
with no toxins in your grasp,
no arms to bear against it;
you,
trusting you cannot fall
or fail except by failing
to face it, even if it kills you,
even if it takes you almost
serenely, almost with grace,
lifting you into its maw
and swallowing you;
you,
refusing to let yourself
be absorbed, digested,
making it spit you out
or choke upon the weight
you carry with you into war;
you,
unbuckled, unshackled,
naked now as it approaches, still no
shake in you, no shiver,
nothing but the unsheathing
of what sits at your core,
the one thing it cannot surround
or destroy: the essence
of what has answered
throughout history
whenever your indomitable name
has been called.
Getting Closer
When they first came
they measured themselves
against the trees, found themselves
less than acceptable; shrugged, cut down
the trees, built homes, built forts,
slid the scraps into their mouths
like toothpicks chewed solely
for the soothing taste
of wood, of victory.
When they’d been here for a little while
they came out of homes and forts
to witness and approve
beatings, burnings, massacres,
displaced thousands marching from
their homes, footprints freezing into memories
in reddening snow, baking into
blushing sands; they slid all that
into their mouths, pills to be swallowed
for prevention, for nourishment,
for their great peace of mind.
When they had been here for a while longer
they began to imagine themselves
measuring up, full-rooted here, seeded here,
forest primeval; shrugged, cut down memories
of those who’d been here all along,
slid those names into their maps,
their family trees, called them their own.
One day I came out of my home
and saw that no matter how much
I mourned departures and raged over
shed blood, I was now mostly one of them
thanks to the long “whatever” and “so what”
of how casually they’d cut down and consumed
my place, my people, my places.
When I’d known that for a while
I chewed off a piece
of me, a huge piece of me as one might
chew off an arm or leg, a piece I saw only dimly
as it disappeared, as I left it on the path
and moved on, a wraith, with a mystery
taste of ashes, wood rot, metal flake
on my tongue; then I shrugged,
told myself I was getting closer to an end of this road
and said I was long overdue for that
and lightening my load in such a savage way
was a departure all its own
and nearly as efficient as any other.
100 Words About Where It Happened
I’ve seen stains
on the road where
it happened. I’ve seen
ambulance lights
heading away from
where it happened.
I’ve heard weeping
and screaming,
tortured explanations
of torture and death,
condescension turned to
terrorism, eventual drift
from truth to shrug, and
blue, blue winds blowing
any remaining truth like
so many dandelion seeds away
from where it happened;
if you want me
to testify about where
it happened, where
exactly it happened,
we’ll be here a while
as I point and say
there and
there and
there
and there and
there
is where it happened.
Everywhere
is where it happened.
Would-Be Suicide Seeks Spiritual Guidance
Originally posted 3-23-2012.
Into the heat of the night to chase Lazarus.
I have something to learn from him:
how he got over his anger at his friend
for pulling him back into the struggle.
I want to ask him how long he held the grudge
and if he led with it whenever he and Jesus talked,
if indeed they ever spoke again after that day,
which seems likely though it’s unrecorded.
How do you have that conversation
about him not just saving your life, but pulling it
all the way back from bankruptcy and liquidation
to deposit it right back where it had been
as if nothing had happened at all and anything
that soul had seen while it was gone could be forgotten?
I know it can’t. Know it for a fact.
And I need to know how to speak to a friend
who brought me back like that, though
in my case I really wanted to go. I want to know
how I’m supposed to be his friend again.
I want to know if it’s even right to try. If anyone
should know, it’s Lazarus. How did he and Jesus
get past it, if they did at all?
They never tell that story in the Gospels.
They never made a sermon out of that.
Taking Stock
My body,
deceiving me
in some new way
daily.
My main diseases?
Sugar sludge blood,
moods lurching
from death sludge
to joy stomp, sleep
a series of strangulations;
each of these a wee bomb
waiting to rend me.
My brain,
pummeling me
as it always has.
My approach to life,
a recalibration loop
barely held together
at a weak seam.
My upbringing,
gentle horror show
wrapped in
soft white bread.
My heritage?
Half worlds away from here
in two opposed directions,
the vacuum in my core strong enough
to suck at them, too weak to bring them
smashing together into a good
cold weld.
My understanding
of that history?
Half book learning,
half frantic triage, all
of it guesswork when
push comes to shove
on the edge of the void.
My homeland?
An experiment in something.
Steal a medium and grow
a culture on it. Pretend
we don’t know
what it feeds on.
My future here?
I’m not alone in the game,
in the approach to it,
thank all the small stones
in the earth and sky
for that; thanks for
a hand to hold while I wait;
thanks for the hope that
I make it easier for them
in my own way;
but I know I will have to
run it in alone, diving down
a slip and slide built with
rust-fouled water and
undercover stones;
I know
I’m coming in too fast,
too hard, and in no shape
for the finish,
but I’m coming in. It’s
something to do, the only thing
to do; confusion and conviction
in action;
here I come
smashing in.
In The Wind
To the people who stopped dancing
after the Twist, after the Frug, after
the Robot, after the Dougie: pick up
what’s left of yourself from the doorman
and leave the club. Why are you here
when there are so many people waiting
to dance? You’ve crowded the floor,
taken up a lot of space.
No one can move unless they do
a shuffle like yours. So many have
so much wildness to unleash
that this is killing them.
You might have known that feeling once
and you might want to know it again, but
what you’re doing right now doesn’t come close
to the free shake they long to do. Maybe
that’s why you want this. Maybe them dying
without a leg to dance on is part of some plan
you’ve hatched to get your own rhythm back
but it’s nothing that will stand. So: get off the floor
if that’s all you’ve got. Get out, get
out the door without looking back.
There’s a new crowd waiting. Stay
if you are ready to move again. If not,
there’s a wind outside. Go be in it.
Tattoo Dwellers
Whenever they buy a country
they have their names tattooed
all over every open patch.
We lived here before they got here
or got here after the inking up but
our names don’t look like theirs, so
we have to hide in the spaces
in the letters, the gap of the upper
“A”, the narrow rooms afforded
inside “D” and “O.” It helps your chances
if you are comfortable
living under a thin sheen of blood.
Poem To Be Read At A Press Conference
Hearing of your latest
spurt of hell, I wonder
who will ask the question
that will close your throat
at last.
I wonder if you
will be at a podium
in the middle of some
hateful, stupid sentence
full of self-referential, self-
serving pablum for you that
will deal terror to so many others
when someone blurts out
the right spell, the right curse
in the form of an inquiry
you can’t deflect, or
will it come from a half-trusted aide
on a golf course
somewhere, mid-swing,
while you’re trying to forget
everyone else and focus on
your own perfection that’s always
just beyond your grasp, or
will it come from one of your children,
checking in on you
long after midnight as you stare daggers
into the screen light between
your soft little hands, or
will it come, most improbably,
from yourself as perhaps
a chunk of clot hits your brain
in the right spot to release you
from this unrelenting lust for
the reverence and squat obedience
of all others. What question will it be
that takes you down, pours you
into a puddle of gray flesh on
a public floor, terrified as always
but with a fading awareness
that this is what you always wished
for so many others, what you dealt
with so many of your labored breaths,
and now you may meet them face to face?
No one’s certain,
but rest assured,
we’ll keep asking
until we see you fall.
The Public
They are realizing at last, if only dimly,
what they’ve bought and what’s been
sold out from under them.
Sitting there slack, slumped against hubris, mouths
opening and closing, sounds coming out:
no sense to be had there. You would think
they’d get up and move, either
trying to escape or beating a path
toward something better to come after
such an awful time; but not now, or not
yet at least, in spite of the scent of urgency
in the air. Instead they hold harder to
the prejudices and suspicions
they’ve always been chained to,
as if such things could save them
in a storm that’s only now begun
to rise to full scream. They sit there
and scream along, they do not move;
as they are engulfed, they seek
a scapegoat and avert their eyes
from what they’ve bought, from
what’s been sold
from under them
with their clueless, ecstatic consent.
My Left Hand Soaked In Oil
My left hand
soaked in oil:
those are the first words
I heard this morning,
if you can call
how they came to me
“hearing.”
It’s not
a true descriptor, but
as close as I can get
to how the words come
so I call that hearing
and hearing it is,
much as my left hand
feels dry with no apparent
oil upon it yet I trust
what I’ve heard about this,
I don’t argue when I hear
words this way: clearly,
my left hand’s soaked
in oil. Up to me
to figure out if perhaps
it is magic oil
I can’t see or feel
that shines in darkness,
or maybe a social oil that
gets on me from others
and later ignites
when I try to reach out,
or in some way a deep soul oil
that seeps out of me and
covers me wrist to fingertips
and it’s only on my left hand
to reveal to me once again
what I forget and forget:
how hard it is to hold fast
to what is closest to my heart.
My left hand soaked in oil,
shining at dawn. Perhaps
all it means is that oil
is a decoration, a highlight
reminding me to celebrate
my weakest parts, even as
I write this all down
with my right hand.
If you are a bear for truth
and have read this far, tell me
what you think it means
for it seems that all I know
has become slippery,
falling again and again
out of my grasp
no matter how many times
and how tenderly
I listen to the words
I hear upon waking,
no matter how faithful I am
to the words.
Three Ways Of Looking At It
1.
In these sullen days
a half smile has become
a badge of subversion.
In these enraged times
any peaceful face has become
enraging.
In the white fingered
company of the ones
who dance confidently,
well-gloved
and bespoke-booted,
at their self-congratulatory
banquets, to be barefoot
and casual
invites punishment
and raises alarm.
Being at odds kills you
here.
Taking a side
kills you too but
you’ll have company
when you die,
while those
left out of all sides might die but
might be left standing as
either proof of or contradiction
of dialectic,
but they will be
as alone afterward
as they were
beforehand.
2.
Today I am
in a process of dying
no matter how
you look at me:
dressed down,
worn down, well over
halfway along, staring at
this side of the long hill
I’ve crested,
looking down,
picking up speed.
3.
Ah well, I tell myself
as I start to roll,
I prefer not dancing.
I prefer not wearing
such damned clothing.
Soon I’ll feel such a wind on
my poverty skin, in my
blood-sugared hair, that
I might forget that I never
figured out
who I was or where
I belonged.
Warm Salt Water
Spent this life sipping
warm salt water
in drops, only
warm salt water
and only in drips and
drops,
yet am expected
to taste sweetness
easily and reject
the only taste
I’ve ever known
at once, with no thought
as to how all those
dribs and drabs of salt
may have burned
my ability to taste
anything else. You do
not understand how
oceanic it is in here,
how such trickling
pleasantry and joy
disappear into
that sea with no
trace; meanwhile
warm salt comes
relentlessly, in bits and
blips, filling, spilling.
Spend a life sipping
those and see
what happens when
another flavor offers itself
to your tongue. See how
it feels to understand that
what you are meant to love
cannot touch you now.
See how you cry then:
it won’t even
feel like a loss as you
sip the drops,
as you shrug off
the suggestion
that there could be
anything else for you
but the sip and the
slipping away.
Tony Stops
Tony stops, just like that.
He sits for two hours
and forty five minutes
without moving.
His knife twitching like
a muse in his pocket.
But he doesn’t reach,
he doesn’t
acknowledge.
He wishes he had a tail to show.
He’d show an angry snap of that thing
but
he’s stopped now,
his winding’s run out.
If he’d been born animal
things could have been so different
but humans being what they are
it’s remarkable that Tony
can be so still when he’s always been
such a loud little twitch of a man
and so dumb, dumb
to how he was supposed to come
correct, dumb to how
he was meant for success
and nothing like this
was ever supposed to happen
but don’t weep
whatever you do.
That shit’s contagious.
Tell folks he just stopped.
Tell them,
Tony stops like that from time to time.
Tony says so, it must be true.
Song From The Genocided (Ironweed Tea)
When you reach the point
where you trust nothing
except your gut
and your gun
and the finest music
you know is simple chaos
accompanied by
percussion
and every pow wow poster
makes you weep for
your parents and
your broken feet
and when the news comes on
the television you
hear chickens settling
into their roosts
to await the divine weasels
who will come for them
in the night and take them
for some yet-unseen purpose
When you write such things
that readers insist you must
roll your pen in flour to make it whiter
before the next workshop
that you invite them to
go bobbing for your ass
in a hot vat of grease rendered
from the killing fields of Everywhere
and the music shifts to
four on the floor and tosses
a cumbia over that until
your fear is overcome by rage
or transforms to something akin
to a detachment from the future
and the present is all still past
and you clutch your gut and your gun
and shoot out the news on screen
and shove your pen into your eye
and you look the curious readers up and down
and ask for nothing from them at last
When you get there
you give me a call and we
can sit together sipping tea
made from ironweed
a yellow tea that will taste
like rust-burnt bridges and tonic sweat
and maybe then
we can call ourselves
worthy of our bloodlines
worthy of our tribes
worthy of all the dead who came before us
and worthy of being ancestors ourselves someday
Dark Matter 