Look at that newspaper —
ha, I meant that
newsfeed —
it does not matter. All that’s left
is to choose the soundtrack
to the future, and it’s
“Meet the new boss…
same as the old boss…”
When I tilt a windmill
at my battered guitar,
when I make a joyful
dissonance of the noise-news,
I change nothing
but I can tolerate the horror
of knowing what is coming
a little better when
my ears join my heart
in bleeding.
God, we need these drinks
just to forget or deaden
how lately this bar’s gotten
loud as war
and nearly as deadly.
Half the patrons
screaming, half sobbing,
no one secure, all drunk
on some substance or idea,
and both are made mostly
of bile licked
by the sour taste
of flop sweat.
This rowdy dive
is where we keep
our dreams,
our nightmare,
our curse.
It’s an abusive little church
with a pulpit
brimful of paranoid sermons.
No one likes it here
but it’s where
we keep finding ourselves;
maybe we’re in thrall to a God
we don’t even recognize.
1.
the gun
the picture of the gun
the movie of the gun
the theater of the gun
the toy gun
the gun as toy
the toying with the gun
the gun toying
the gun’s toy
the toy discarded
the toy weeping
the toy guarding and guarded
the toy erupting
the toy deceased
2.
hair along the arms rising tingling
who brushing who with air and scent
hides coming alive
this thing needs a name
so they call the new life love
love in the hair along the arms
love on their hides
but really
eventually
same old
same old
same old
lives
3.
that weed’s gonna kill ya
when it doesn’t — AH
what roads open
4.
God
or a sandwich
offered at the right moment
and
BANG
zealot
5.
I had to do this, didn’t I?
Didi stutters.
I knew her
when she didn’t.
I know
who made her stutter,
made her shy.
I know what he did.
I didn’t do
what I should have done
when I found out,
so I guess
I helped
to start her stuttering too.
I guess I wasn’t a man then,
or maybe I was.
Maybe I
still am not one, or maybe
I still am. Maybe
“being a man”
means
brooding about
being a man,
instead of just
being a man
differently.
Don’t judge me
by Didi, stuttering
and shy —
it’s hard to be a man.
That’s what i said, it’s hard
to be a man these days
when men are so not good at
being men —
I said it, yeah.
You heard me —
did I stutter?
A confident, satisfied,
perfectly still man with his lover’s head
on his chest while they sleep —
really, how many houses around here
look like that inside? How many
truly happy beds are nearby?
Don’t ask. You’ll tear yourself that way.
Think instead
about the moonlight
on this night
after the beaver moon.
Think about how
bright color inevitably
went a little gray
under the beaver moon,
but it’s still there.
Think about red, and yellow,
and how they are still there.
At me, looking. Say, did I
muscles have, ever?
Was there anything
uneaten? Did I mother
a thing, father a thing
worth any damn?
Hardly a damn at all.
Sat me down instead and wrote
poems of fat and second hand
and not me and here we go tomorrow,
not now.
It shows.
Now, pear-man,
pale freak I am. Rager,
sadder, so complete in some
potato sack way (empty, sag,
writing on the walls). Open
to the lies of stardom yet
nearby, all I gotta do is
reach. No, untold is how
reach doesn’t spell grip —
see how the cramp fingers
bend only enough to claw at,
not hold? And I’m poor, not broke. Broke
is today, poor is tomorrow, is all tomorrows.
Make broke often, turns to poor.
And still, can belief
happen for anyone
who sees this?
It’s a poem gets writ,
not a plan. It’s words, damn
them — hot little breaths all
done as all I can. All I can,
what with no muscles and straight fingers
and no plan and all poor and all that —
You say, do something, please,
we all sick of you. I am,
me too. Maybe a little
more than you? I keep
at it, do it like a job
I can’t retire away from,
grouch water cooler or no.
Used to add value, though —
at me, look, please.
Give me proof it meant a little more
than a pear in a mirror, fermenting,
spilling, going.
She is thinking again
about how not to die, ever.
(As it was yesterday, as it will be
tomorrow.)
Who isn’t?
she wants to know. Who’s not
figuring it out or at least fretting
about it? Maybe that
Goddamn Dalai Lama?
I hate that guy, y’know,
because he might get there
without trying.
Peace,
she says,
folds herself into
a lotus pose
with a snarl.
How not to die,
ever. Have to get that right,
and soon.
I can be patient
and hopeful and kind.
That’s a deviance,
I’m only a bit ashamed to say.
I can be disciplined
and focused and
when I am, I can feel
the mask gripping my face.
I can be happy.
I can be a role model.
I can impress others
with my calm demeanor; hell,
any half-assed actor can.
When you’re not looking,
though? That’s when I do
my best work — that’s when I am
genuine volcano,
honest torpedo,
purely the vicious slothful dog
I feel most free to be.
I am telling you this
so you’ll run away or strike me.
When you hate me, you can hate
the real me and not that character
I barely feel most of the time.
That logician, that schoolboy,
that monster lie. That costume
everyone refuses to admit
they are also wearing.
Gently miked guitars,
gently picked
banjos and mandolins,
gently resurrected ukeleles:
fuck all this
small music — let’s get back
to blunt force trauma
in the rank embrace
of a Marshall stack.
How good it feels
to be in a crowd
bathing in the Loud,
roiling in the stage surge,
drumming that stops and restarts our hearts
a thousand times a minute
while driving a song
with a subject
as big as the noise itself,
for these times demand
a fist in the air, a hundred fists,
every fist we can call upon
from anywhere within earshot.
The knob labeled “volume”
is the only tone control you need.
Twist it up.
Slam me an E.
Let’s conquer something.
Tired of working for justice.
Tired of the stubbornness of humans
who will not acknowledge the need for it.
Tired of the struggle,
so —
let everyone
die in chains.
Let blood
drown the oppressed.
Let the scent of their decay
crush the flowers.
Let their absence
stun the trees into despair.
Let their bones,
once bleached, begin
to shine, begin to
overpower sunlight,
moonlight, starlight
combined. Then
let the overlords run things
in the dark until
they cannibalize, starve,
and die.
Let the empty world
lie empty. Call the silence
all you ever wanted.
Call that justice.
Call that
victory.
You are composed
of how many stories?
If your answer is six or more,
I despair for you.
If your answer is three to six,
I worry for you.
If you say two,
I will remember you.
If you say one,
I will embrace you.
If you say you do not know,
if you say you are made of none,
I will tell you: you are One.
I will turn you to your First Blank Page
and say, write it here.
Somehow tell that One
as soon as you can,
as clearly as you can,
something depends on it,
something close and dark and dear.
Once in a while
I have blood in my mouth
upon awakening.
It’s good for you, I tell myself.
Full of iron.
And once in a while
I have a blocked right ear upon
awakening. It’s good for you,
I tell myself, it’s telling you
to focus more on what your heart
has to say.
Now and then
the left side of my left foot
has no feeling. Now and then
I have a long lasting pain
across my upper lungs. Now and then
I roll out of bed in the middle of the night
four or five times to piss; it’s not even an event
worht noting anymore.
It’s good for you, good for you, good for you,
I tell myself, it means your body is getting too old
to fuss over and fix. Pretty soon you’ll be Pure Mind
and ready to let go. Think of these disturbances
as the clarions
of a new path.
Now and then, I ask myself
who I’m talking to.
It’s good for you, I respond,
not to be completely sure
of the sources the little voices call upon.
Not to know what’s a truth and what’s a
delusion. Which pains are killing pains
and which are the clarions of a new path
or how many are both.
I tell myself
relax, it’s natural;
it’s all good for you,
it’s all good.
Inside, something shouts
Awake!
You rise,
run to the bathroom
without stepping on the cat.
Then, feed the cat. Then back to bed.
Good job brain and all
associated organs! But let’s be
honest: how lovely
was that sudden moment of first waking
where you didn’t know your own name
or recall your own limits? Where
instead of peeing and serving
you might have flown, or vanished —
but then you knew who you were
and what was expected of you
and you did just fine. You got
shit done. Good job, brain.
Unexpected gift
of rain and wind tonight,
weather some choose
to call “bad;”
yet how musical is
this violent earth of ours
with the air whistling, trees drumming,
percussive sheets of waves pouring.
Being Indian
and White
on Thanksgiving
means being tired
of plowing the six weeks of stupid before this day.
Tired of explaining. Tired of walking on Pilgrim shells.
Tired of having to justify marking the day
as painful or joyful or neither
or both. Being Both on Thanksgiving
means I get to give myself the ulcer
I richly deserve. Means being hungry
in every sense of the word. Means
I want to give thanks for something
I stole from myself, or perhaps I did not;
being Both on Thanksgiving
means nothing is simple. I am thankful
for the tightrope, thankful for the mash-up
problems, thankful for looking like
I ought to be oblivious, thankful for
a good talking to. Being Neither, fully,
on Thanksgiving means I ought to give me
a good talking to. I am angry enough
to ignore much and fantasize more
over the boiled onions only my Dad eats
and the meat stuffing with chestnuts only my Mom eats,
angry enough to lose my appetite in public,
angry enough to be redder than the damned canned
cranberry sauce. Being Me on Thanksgiving
means I sit down to the table and eat like a fat man,
eat a continent’s worth of overkill, filling my dark gut
till I have to shed something to be comfortable
by the fire in the too-warm house of my parents
who are long past caring about anything but making sure
that the peace holds till night falls and we all go home
carrying the leftovers with us to feed on
for another whole year. Another harvest festival
passed, no guarantee of one next year, maybe
we’ll starve over the winter while being Indian, being White,
being Neither, being Both, being the kind
who thinks it matters when you are choking on
so many bones.
