A scar on my thumb tip
that won’t heal underneath —
current marker of my decrepit
mortality — wound whose cause
I’ve long forgotten, stone scar
pulsing intermittently
with small but constant pain
each time it comes into contact
with anything — guitar neck,
keyboard, another finger — this last
the most persistent as I worry
and rub that tiny round
into a nearly constant mini-scream —
why do I do this to myself, why don’t I
get it looked at, perhaps removed,
why do I make it hurt more and more
until the inevitable day
the scar breaks away
from the new flesh underneath —
so tender, raw, and pink — waiting
for its chance
to harden and mound up
and begin the cycle again —
as I do, as I do each time
I rise wounded from bed
these days, latter days
hard crusting over
raw sense — never
healing so much that
I can forget that it hurts —
even if I don’t know anymore
why it does.
Category Archives: poetry
Under The Scar
Explanation #47
the number of times
i’ve been accused by others
of being absurd or out of my place
is large
the number of times
said absurdity was intended
to be absurd
is not
the number of times
i was out of my place
on purpose
is also not
i was
simply
being me
and
my absurdity
was simply
a way of
adjusting
to what felt
to that out of place me
like an absurd situation
see
where i stand is usually
a little to the left of
the frame and cocking my head
is just trying to see things
the accepted way
anything coming from
my tilted mouth
that spills wrong
doesn’t have
much of a chance
of landing well
for Them
Trolls
They think of themselves
as mere campaigners
in a big, big war.
They inflame
wherever they sit. Ignition’s
a self-granted wish.
They have hands full of triggers,
are willing to pull them
to get their way.
They opened up this casket
and now they’re going
to have to lie in it.
They didn’t see that coming.
They never see it coming; it’s why
they never go away.
Look at how scorched the earth is
everywhere they’ve been. You’d think
they’d be longing to chill by now
after all this burning,
but not them, never them.
They dig the heat out of Hell,
swing it around,
then blame the fuel
for turning to ash, blame the burned
for being burned, blame the fire
for burning the burned and
the fuel. Then they
whistle their innocence,
and look for someone to hand them
another match.
Broken Edge
I like to talk about
my broken edge the way
every regretful mouth
still likes to form
rotten words
it once said with glee;
I like to talk about
the old days as if I was
some pioneer fighting off
cholera when in fact
I sniffled far more
than almost died;
I like to nod my head
to songs I don’t remember well
and pretend to anyone watching
that every note is a past epiphany
although I was not present
the first time they were sanctified;
I like to claim what I never was
but only for public consumption;
I like to play the nostalgia game
but only when it wins me what
I didn’t have back when; I like
my broken edge the most,
though you can’t break an edge
that was never there.
Walls Of Bones And Blood
Until you are by law under suspicion
for your face, do not speak too proudly
of the need to obey any other law.
Until you are by law under threat
of becoming slave or slain for walking
your path your way, do not claim
that if you are doing nothing wrong,
you have nothing to worry about. This
is not a tale of unlawful doing, but one of
unlawful being; unless you have lived
where you are always at war, or where war
always simmers just under boiling, do not speak
so confidently of the need for restraint,
do not sternly scold broken windows
in a landscape where everyone’s a casualty
by definition. If you live where that
is not the case, you likely live
in a fortress made of bones cemented with blood
and unless you can see your own bones and blood
in those walls, don’t scorn those who are sick
of seeing their entire past, present, and future there,
and who then attempt to tear it all down.
A Lie
A lie is a lie is a lie.
Long chains hold us
to our pasts. We claim
to have cracked their locks
and are now free of them, but
a lie is a lie is a lie;
we give our faith to
such talk, choose not to hear
those who still bear the weight
we claim to have thrown off;
it’s clear that we are not fooled
but are in thrall to our lies,
and a lie is a lie is a lie;
our lies form a base on which we build
those truths which may in fact be true
in the small scope of our own small lives
but which are bitter jokes in the lives
of those whose backs hold us up; a lie
is a lie is a lie. We lie with our lies
when we sleep safe and sound
in our safe beds; to lie
in those beds is to lie in and on
a bed of lies and what is safe,
what is sound, what is
a sound sleep
when each breath we take in sleep
is matched by those whose breaths
are long since — and even now —
cut off, choked off, stopped
by blood in the throat? How is it
that we do not dream of blood
come to drown us
when we lie down
when our lie is a truth for some
and not all?
If it is a lie for some
it is still a lie,
is all a lie,
and it’s no lie to say it kills.
Decolonized
You grew up as expected,
fit prescribed dimensions. Then
you met some people
you weren’t supposed to meet
and did some things
no one had planned you would do.
You began to grow in some areas,
shrink in others, shrink
from some others while growing
toward others, toward people
largely unplanned for by those
who planned you out.
Now you’re scared of the flag they revered,
scared of the uniforms they obeyed,
and they’re a little scared of you in return —
or so you’d like to believe. It’s possible
that they don’t see or hear you at all now.
Wrote you off, a failed experiment. Wrote you
into a narrative that preserves their own.
That’s how it started, after all:
with you fitting into their story.
Now you fit into it by no longer
fitting into it. It’s all win for them,
and for you too once you choose
to let their story go
in order to embrace your own.
Sad Player
Does not matter
how many instruments you buy
how rare they are
how odd they are
where they’re from —
if you are
that sad kind of player
who twists fingers
lips and lungs
into knots trying
to transcend
by sheer mechanics
the spirit of the maker
the spirit of their time and place
the blood in that soil and
the tears and joy that fed it —
if you’re that player
take a seat
and learn first to sing
Make yourself over into
instrument
Seethe and roil with
your own blood
Then go back
Untangle your parts
from your head
Play now
sad player
See if you have stayed
the same kind of sad
You Could Have Been An Eagle
Suspend for a moment
your faith in the orderly
progression of time.
Discover your first image upon
abandonment of that notion is of
an eagle chick not yet fledged
tumbling from its high nest,
then suddenly sprouting feathers
and flying to avoid the drowning
promised by the lake rushing up
from below to shatter the bird.
Don’t you feel better?
Things, at least in your head,
don’t have to make sense to work. Imagine it
as having left your mother’s purse
in the jailhouse where she died
and going back to find in her cell
baby pictures from the wallet
(pictures of you sprouting wings)
plastered everywhere. In the visitor’s room,
some have been made into posters:
“Have you seen this bird? Have you seen this child?”
It’s got some kick to it, this fantasy, doesn’t it?
It doesn’t have to make any more sense than that.
Go with it, rinse yourself
in the milk of it,
taste the reminder
that before anyone slapped you dumb
with education and indoctrination,
you believed you could be an eagle
when you grew up. How bitter it is
to have remembered this so late in life,
when your mother and father have long
passed and can’t possibly soothe you.
You could have flown, been
iconic, been in this all the way.
Man In The Jar
There’s a man in a jar
on the high shelf. Not preserved,
not pickled. Just sitting,
alive (it’s claimed), walled off,
visible. Maybe he’s angry,
maybe terrified. Maybe
he’s feeling an emotion unique
to the walled off, the exhibited,
the left on a shelf. It would be good
to have such an emotion — not to
have it for yourself, not to feel it,
but it needs to be described.
It’s new to us, new to humanity. It’s
a function of how so many of us are
connected without having any feelings
for each other. We fake it a lot, though.
Perhaps the man in the jar on the shelf
is tired of faking. He’s rocking the jar
now. He’s getting it closer and closer
to the edge. It’s going to fall and those
pieces are going everywhere
and chances are
he dies in the fall.
Let’s watch.
Salesman’s Blues
Originally posted 6/18/2008.
In town for a convention.
When not at a meeting or the booth
lives in the back corner of the hotel bar,
alone over soup, a salad, now and then
a rare steak, always
the drink, always the glass.
Right now, running
a finger around the rim
of the tumbler: two rocks,
single malt, half gone.
Half gone as well
the old tie — worn as a slack noose,
silk darkened at the tip
from fiddling with it
under conference tables,
in airplanes, in
traffic.
Looks down,
notices the staining
and says, “Man, if I still
had the money
for every tie
I’ve had to buy in a rush
from a hotel gift shop
before a meeting
where I had to look my best
or risk losing my confidence or
maybe the account,
I could have retired
by now.” Strips it off,
a superhero changing
for battle.
Downs the last
of the drink, slams
the glass, gets up to go
back to the room, getting
far away from people
laughing at the TV,
flirtations, deals
wisping on the air
like smoke foretelling fire.
Says it’s only temporary.
Only till things get figured out.
Only till all the obligations
to others are fulfilled.
Offers silent prayers
to whatever has made happiness
such an overpriced commodity
that one can survive
on selling it to others
while living entirely within
a fantasy of making enough
to buy some of your own
one of these days,
sooner rather than later.
Falls asleep
trying to decide
what tie to wear tomorrow.
That Poser’s Life
Disappointed that my body
has pushed through another night,
I flush with anger for harboring
such desperate selfish longing
for an end to this cycle
of sleep and wake
and sleep and wake
again. I live a poser’s life,
keep enthusiasm for living
a sword-arm’s length away.
It’s such a privileged life,
such a privilege to be alive
and yet want to die
without moving a finger
to further that desire,
a privilege to feel entitled
to an easy passage.
Once, years ago,
I took the steps — bought the pills,
bought the razor blades,
tried more than once to use them.
I learned from those attempts
that I am a coward when it comes
to getting what I want, or what
I claim to want —
for perhaps I don’t want to die at all?
There are those who tell me that,
who say that what I did not do
I did not do not from cowardice,
but through the body’s stone resistance to
the fact of finality. Something
within held me back. Maybe
that’s so, but I can’t shake off
another thought —
that the reason
I did not succeed
was not from fear of pain
or afterlife censure, but from
the suspicion that once I’d crossed
I’d find everything there
to be much the same as here,
and once I was on that side,
there would be no way out.
So instead I wake up daily
dimly disappointed that I have
done so yet again, ashamed at
my inaction and my lazy wish
to have it handed to me in my sleep,
embarrassed when I think of those
who fight each day not to pass,
jealous of those who die in their sleep;
now and then each day
I push myself to feel
a modicum of hope
that tomorrow
I might rise and know
something of what it’s like
to be glad you’re alive.
USA
Not so much
a hierarchy of classes
as one of castes here:
Greenback Caste,
Faint Hope To Prosper Caste,
Edgewalker Caste,
Underwater But Bobbing Up Now And Then Caste,
Bottomed Out Caste;
solid, none too porous,
none devoid of nuance,
each with special provisions
for how you or your parents looked,
how you live and love,
how you are what you are;
not splintering, not
softening, not becoming
more pleasant.
Easy enough now
to move
down the ladder.
Harder than ever
to climb it.
Nothing
this vertical can stand
intact forever —
it cannot stand
but it will take more
than talk
and lightly scuffed skin
to tear it down.
It cannot stand,
and when it comes down
it will come down hard,
stone from the sky
falling in fire, wailing
a storm behind,
splashing everything
with ruin
right down
to the last greenback
and marble arch.
The Pyramids remind us
that even with massive slave-built bases
that made them strong,
that even while stripped and roughed
they remain impressive to this day,
after all is said and done
they are today
just empty tombs
for men who long ago
turned to dust.
Forensics
Originally posted 12/27/2012.
We’ve exhausted all leads;
the clock’s running out. People
died. Who and what
to blame is all we care to know
but we’re broke and broken
and we’re out of time.
If we want to get past who did what
and learn how to stop it
we are going to have to start time again.
Build it all again differently —
more windows and doors,
fewer walls. Most of all,
we’re going to have to
build a better clock.
Something with longer hours,
days, years.
Something based on
the Mayan model,
perhaps. Something
with resets.
Not Enough
Not enough.
Does there really need to be
even one more line
explaining
how little I’ve done
with my talent and
soul? How little
I’ve sweated, how small
my reach has been?
No.
Enough.
There’s still time.
There’s work.
There’s breath.
Dark Matter 