All day,
out of boredom
and patience,
I stare at the news.
Red flags
to the horizon:
carpet for
a nation-sized room.
Too much red
for me.
Too many
stabs:
death of a thousand
cuts, and I’m
not even
their true target.
How selfish
of me to think
I matter
in all this.
How like me
to make it about me.
How like me
to know that,
yet be unable
to stop myself
from centering
on my own pain.
Originally posted several times, in different versions, under the title of “Stationary.” Major revision.
When I move, you move…just like that.
Remember sticking a thumb in the air?
When I move, you move…just like that.
Remember turning a key in the ignition?
Remember the last minute ticket,
the just going,
the just getting out there?
Hell yeah, hey DJ, bring that back.
Tell yourself
we all used to travel without a lot of thought.
We all used to travel without a lot of anything.
We all used to trust one another.
Try to forget
it was instead
a flag-wrapped dreamtime,
a selective American walkabout,
a stack of ad copy woven into a myth of a collective self.
When I move, you move.
Just like that.
When I move, you move.
Just like that.
Tell yourself this is all new.
Tell yourself it’s a shame.
No one picks up hitchers anymore.
No one buys a ticket last minute
and gets on a plane without running a gauntlet.
No one rides a train.
We fear the buses will smother us
in other people’s germs.
We fear that the ship will sink.
We don’t drive at all
without a screen to tell us
where we’re going.
We don’t move at all
without a plan for what to do
when we get to where we’re going.
Tell yourself :
There are reasons;
things are different now.
Tell yourself:
It’s a necessary change;
things are different now.
Tell yourself:
Back in the day
cops gently patted every traveler down
exactly the same soft way;
things are different now.
Tell yourself:
Back in the day
they’d let all the folks
go easily on their way;
things are different now.
Tell yourself:
the bullets peeping from the cylinders
of those old police revolvers
were only there for show;
things are different now.
Tell yourself:
standing still
is all the safety you need
and you aren’t going to move
even as everyone else
blurs by you
because things are different now.
Insist upon ludicrous fantasy,
insist it has to go back
to some way it never was
for anyone but you —
when I move, you move. Just like that.
even as the world
turns its back upon you
and moves on.
the truth:
it’s exhausting being alive.
it’s not fun much of the time.
we only choose it
because the alternative is coming any way
and most of us aren’t early adopters.
the truth:
I’m glad there are people
who like to mentor the young
because it needs doing but
I’m neither good at
nor willing to do it.
if it happens inadvertently
as a result of my work, cool;
if not, ah, well…
the truth:
I’m pretty certain that
even given all our best efforts otherwise
what we have here
is a society based on
everyone but the elite
having a bad case of
failure to thrive
and you can’t run forever that way;
it’s failing
by design.
we better learn
to mine the rubble.
the truth:
I’m too old to matter
to 90% of the people
I wish I mattered to
and 90% more stupid
than I think I am anyway.
the truth:
I am beginning to forget
my power
and I suspect that’s a defense mechanism.
the truth:
I never mattered much to begin with
and
that is a comfort.
an apparent tragedy
is visible here
above these caved sockets
whether a lost battle
or a won war
created this cloven skull
is unimportant
as this is
the end product
what is present:
bone
what is gone:
all memory
of any color
once found here
any life
any love
both long gone
so no matter
how this fatal wound
came to be
whether in victory
or defeat
gone is gone
and
dead
is dead
Originally posted, 7/15/2010.
Joe Frazier’s left hooks
were the only thing
on my mind.
I had just turned eleven,
had just listened
to the Fight Of The Century
on a scratchy AM radio
a few nights before.
Although I was a righty
I threw what I felt was
a mighty left hook
at Jeff Maxwell’s jaw
in the middle school gym
and (though we were just playing)
I laid him out
flat and crying,
and I admit
it felt pretty OK to see him there, sliding
on his ass away from me as I tried
to explain it was all in fun to Mr. Tornello
as he shook me and dragged me to
his sweat-soaked office
to await
my parents.
Right jabs and Muhammad Ali
were on my mind
a few years later when Henry Gifford
got dropped, this time in anger,
on the shores of Thompson Pond
for cussing me out
when I cussed him out
for breaking my switchblade,
and this time
there was blood on his mouth
and I confess
it felt OK
to see it moonlit and shining
on his face and I am glad now
that I hadn’t had
the knife in hand
at the time.
Kung-fu movies and Bruce Lee
were on my mind a few years after that
when it felt OK to deliver
a straight-arm open palm blow to the side
of Joe Peron’s nose during a work dispute
in a warehouse,
and heard the gentle snap
of his bridge breaking.
He knelt there
holding his nose. His hands
soaked and dripped blood,
and that felt better than OK
for a minute,
and because we were men
we just shook it off
and told no one of the fight.
It’s all on my mind again,
childhood and adulthood,
fights and
fighter heroes
of ring and screen,
and I can’t shake off
being old and heavy,
and thoughtful
about how much harder
I could hit today
because I know so much more
about how much better it feels
to hit than
to be hit.
How good it felt then,
and how good
it would feel again
if the opponents I have now could be
dispatched that easily,
but now I face
unpunchable bills,
bloodless banks,
rapacious creditors,
my own rotten body, and
the creeping fear
that these are enemies
I will never beat.
I stand thrashing in the kitchen
past midnight: cross, jab,
hook, uppercut,
palm strike, temple strike,
slash, stab,
icepick grip, sword grip.
I wish I could be a pacifist
in soul and action,
but I am not;
this urge to admire again
the blood I know I can draw,
to know the joy of winning
simply and quickly,
is almost more than I can bear.
A room full of hookahs,
craft beers, slick cocktails,
and a blues-rock band:
are you surprised to learn
you could count the brown faces here
on less than two full hands?
Each of my hands is empty
as tonight I’m not drinking, not smoking,
just listening and speaking to friends.
I dig the tunes but feel
an uneasy itch inside me.
It’s one thing to know of
a slow acting poison,
another entirely
to be reminded of it
by a good moment
in a good place
with good people.
We leave early.
On the way back to the car, I fill
one hand with pepper spray.
Parked behind us:
a pickup truck
with a big bad flag
hanging on the back,
and I tighten my grip
on what little safety I have.
I’ve forgotten this morning
how right it felt last night
to grab a drink or three
as missiles fell over there.
It must have been something,
fire splashing up from ground to sky
the way whisky’s heat came surging
from gut to chest.
I’ve forgotten this morning
how right it felt last night
to smoke, a thick layer in my air
like a pall above a bomb crater.
It must have been something there,
wreckage obscured by haze, people
scrambling to take cover at first, slowly
taking stock afterward — counting, recounting.
I’ve forgotten this morning
about last night and what felt right,
or wrong, or scary, or justified
by logic or magic, flag or cash.
It must be something there,
everyone wondering how hell
could possibly be different,
could possibly be worse.
I wake up in selfish mourning
that I have such certain luxury here
to imagine all hell is overseas, to pretend
I am not myself a demon
for getting
messed up
during
the late news
then waking in the morning
to damn others for last night
when all I wanted to do
was not feel my own finger
on those buttons,
those triggers, the pulse points
on all the bodies over there
that have ever gone cold.
My next goal is to eat my way out of this darkness that has swallowed me.
After that I want to eat the soul of the President
once I’ve established a stable residence
as I know how long and how tough a job it will be
to convert that thing into fuel and waste and memory.
It won’t be a good memory
but someone has to do that for the good of the state.
I think I have been chosen for that, for I understand the words
that keep appearing on the flag behind his head:
MENE
MENE
TEKEL
UPHARSIN
abbreviated for the convenience of the moment
and as a way to control the gag reflex:
#MMTU
It’s a lot of weight to carry in my mouth: chewing, chewing for days on end.
No one said it would be easy or quick or appetizing, of course.
After I’ve done my gross digestion, my next goal
will to find gainful employment as a dark muse
for someone equally constrained by the history of their appetites.
We have to stick together.
It wasn’t our choice to eat the souls of monsters
and foolish greed-dogs, to save the rest of you
the chore of small-bite revolution.
After I’ve done that we will band together
into a guild of songsters with worn out teeth and bowels
singing cracked and painful arias about urgency
and the sound of those political bones
in our teeth. We’re only doing it to exhort you
to help us. There are so many of those tough souls
to be eaten. Maybe a rousing chorus will help you choose,
won’t you sing with us, sing along,
MENE
MENE
TEKEL
UPHARSIN
#MMTU
I have eaten the damn President’s soul
It was heavy but not heavy enough
to keep me from that task
But the flag keeps waving
and the words the words keep coming up
If the whole kingdom must be consumed
you will have to open wide
we will have to open wide side by side
MENE
MENE
TEKEL
UPHARSIN
#MMTU
They tell us
to be at peace,
silence matters most.
That’s what they tell us
with their mouths,
say it out loud, praise
silence with
their voices though
language brought us here,
carried along the whorls
of our ears, through the labyrinth
concealed within.
What we are now
is what the last sentences
we heard made us.
When they praise our silence,
urge us to be silent, sit
with nothing in our mouths,
say nothing,
they are saying
shut up,
we have no need
to be further built.
Write it down instead, they say.
Write it down,
we’ll read it in silence,
sound it out for ourselves…
they never stop talking about
how we should sit in stillness.
This is what they think
of us — two ears, one mouth,
they say. This is the balance,
they say:
more listening, less talk —
forgetting lungs, larynx, tongue,
lips, resonance from sinus, sonorities
built into our bones; we’re made
to have voices;
clearly there is something
to be said — so we
talk. They don’t like it. We
chant. They don’t like it. We
yell. They don’t
like it. They don’t like it —
shhhh, they say. Shhhh,
to people built from sound,
built for sound.
This last defiant breath
I will not release
without a struggle. To breathe it
would be to admit
I’m past resistance
and have surrendered
to easy despair
with the world and its
grasp upon me, that I’ve begun
to interpret the velvet of
its grip on my throat as
less heinous than that
of an iron hand crushing
me swiftly into choke though
the end result will be the same:
my white-lit death. My tunnel
opening. Even if I remain
alive after breathing, that moment will signify
my willingness to walk into
my own captivity to their New World —
so I fight, holding my breath
against that. If I die fighting, may it be
that my body will hold that breath
for the next fight, the next fighter,
then for the next fight and fighter
and all the ones after that;
not only for my world,
but for those to come.
My goodness
is real, he tells
himself. Is pure
snow, cloud,
hay beard.
My intentions
are pale,
calm, bowl of
Cream of Wheat.
If it’s not
white, it’s
imaginary,
he tells himself.
There are
other shades
of world, but
they are his
to define. His
imagination
is all. My intentions
are my best
self, he says.
My goodness
is perfect, light
of a perfect
universe, gift
of a blinding
faith. White
as milk,
white as
the light
of some
cloudy dawns.
Of course
I’m clean,
he insists.
Of course,
I am without stain —
you are thinking
of my unbleached
ancestors, but know that
I did not inherit
a thing from them —
in fact, let me
put this to rest:
they are
imaginary so
my imagination,
my rules. They were
devoid of color too. This is
how I keep it real,
he says,
eyes closed so tight that
all turns white in there.
This dissection of the body politic.
This level of disease being revealed.
This opening along natural seams.
This observation of
burst vessels
open sores
mottled skin
jaundice
desiccated gums
and lesions.
All routine. All
as expected.
What surprises us, then:
not so much what we find,
but that we find it
here
when we’ve been told that
inside
we are made of, not organs
and blood,
but
sweet light.
If you find yourself
on workday mornings
staring into a mirror
and wondering about
how a certain line
above your brows got there
after all the years it spent
on your mother’s face,
or about how the upward twist
of your wry mouth’s left corner
migrated there from
your dad’s Army photo,
or in general worrying
about this new slight slope
in your jowls,
so reminiscent now
of Uncle John, or how
the light you once saw
in your skin is now
nowhere to be found,
dimming the essential
“you-ness” you have always known
into a simple, generic mask
of a darkening, dimming old man
getting older and dimmer
in exactly the same way
all the old ones in your family
darkened and dimmed,
take heart in knowing
that no matter how unfamiliar
you may seem to yourself,
how much you stray from
what you once thought
you immutably were, to those
on this side of the mirror
you will remain the same
mess we have always known
and loved and laughed at
since the first time
you stared in rapture
at your own face, not knowing
that we were in here all along,
staring back,
waiting for you to notice.
Some days
get a pass from having
to fit on the spectrum
of “good day or bad day.”
They just sit there
on the calendar
waiting to be remembered,
and never are.
A week later,
as you toss the page
with the date into the trash,
you pause and ask yourself,
“What happened that day?
Did it even happen? Was it
the day that…no, that was
the next day…or maybe it was
the day that…no, no…”
You crumple the paper
in a low panic at having
no memory of such a recent
blank. You can’t call it good,
can’t call it bad, can’t recall it at all.
It’s a tear in your fabric. A moment
you’re not even certain happened
although being here today
indicates you were present then.
Today is shaping up to be
a bad day, what with this awareness
of how unaware you’ve become
now seeping into everything.
You stand there over the trash
wondering what else you’ve forgotten,
how far into oblivion you’ve gone
without noticing, how many holes
you don’t even know are there
are waiting to swallow you if you fall.
In a cave.
Remnants
of other visits
by other beings.
Stink of guano.
Beetles skittering.
Shining in the floor
where one beam
strikes, a small broken
white bone.
Pull it from dirt,
take it out into sunlight…
are those cut marks?
tooth scrapes? runes?
One end sharp as
suspicion. Smooth
as if sanded overall,
except for those gouges,
and bleach-pale.
Stink of guano,
beetles skittering.
Was it weapon, leftover
from a meal, souvenir of
an enemy, nothing even
related to human
being?
It is sharp. It is
bleach-pale. It is
telling that
first thought is
a human
act created it:
a violent act;
a taboo act
with some hidden meaning;
a common, easily
repeated act
conceived
ages ago
amid stink of guano
in which beetles thrived,
first dreamed up
in a cave.
Dark Matter 