I haven’t written a poem in days
Haven’t read a poem in days
Haven’t thought about a poem in days
I do think about things that are not poems
This is one of them
Trust me if you can
But right words in right order
Right scheme to put one over
Left turn from one world to glimpse another
These are lost to me now
Damn near fifty years of making this my self
It has been my self for over half a century
Words used to tumble up against the locks
Banging themselves with whole body against them until I opened
The knocking of both ghouls and angels have ended
All my mirrors are covered
with black leather glued to the glass
All I can see is my damned shadow
crossing back and forth as I pace before them
I haven’t sat with that shadow in a dead dog’s lifespan
For so long this room was rich with light
I haven’t turned around to see where the light comes in
It might be a crack or it might be a candle
lit on the altar inside the front door of this tomb
Keep at it the people outside are shouting through the door
Keep at it they are shouting it will be rich with light again
Flooded even
So much light again you will be glowing with it
It will come from under your skin
We need you we need you we need you we need you
more than you need to be yourself
As for myself
there’s not much to say or see
beyond my disquiet at this quiet
I haven’t written a poem in days
This isn’t one
To point out contradictions
to a man without vision enough to see them
is a cruelty you ought to keep to yourself
Let me be blinded and deafened before you
Let’s see if I can make something without my self
and learn whether I am visible or audible
to anyone
without being again
who I have been
Category Archives: poetry
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Partial Spontaneous Human Combustion
I am having one of those
disconnected morning thoughts
that come when I wake up
half an hour before I need to rise
and I stumble around the kitchen
mixing up a glass of cold brew
trying to decide whether I could do
another job in which I might have to
be up this early — say
for the sake of argument
as a reporter
at a crime scene
or a weird scene
where I’d be interviewing a victim
of partial spontaneous combustion
whose arm kept smoldering
She’d casually pat the skin down
to extinguish the flame
now and then as we talked
saying that this sort of thing
used to happen
to her cousin Davey
but he eventually outgrew it
In my vision she’s damned cute
if you dig Paris Hilton
and surrealism
so maybe I’d break
all the sacred vows of journalism
and ask her out
even though I’m pretty certain
any relationship would be doomed
from the start
because even though there might in fact be
some kind of spark between us
I’m not sure I’d ever feel comfortable
making love to her
Maybe that fear would just add to
the experience but
when it came around at last
to fuck around and find out
I’d be not pleased to find out
It’s too late to go back to sleep now
Finish the damn coffee dumbass
I tell myself every time
I’m thankful for real work
Nothing exciting ever happens there
It’s just enough work to keep me awake
It’s just enough work to keep me warm
Hope
When you
have been held
as tightly by illusion
as you have been
for so long,
tearing free
must leave behind
so much blood
you might
find yourself overcome
with longing
to turn back and dive in
to that red pool, one so deep
you can’t find a bottom
to touch and rebound up
to free air again;
but I beg you, do so:
bounce back up
if you go back down,
break surface through
your own lost blood and
once the red has drained
from your eyes
and you open them
in full spectrum light
you will see all of what’s here
as it should be seen, tinged
with what is natural,
inherent, normal —
sooner or later
your lost blood will refill
and you will keep it inside
where it belongs
and the old illusions
to which you were chained
will fade into a darkness
kept forever at bay
by the light into which
you’ve emerged.
Holidays In The Sun
The time has come around again.
The blood in their vats is bubbling again.
The vats were hidden for a time
and are no longer.
People don’t care. They
call that plopping death
burble music. Toss in a child
and let it boil, toss in an elder
and watch it overflow.
This is how they make
treaty ink: render
future and past and sign with
the broth from the stew.
The time has come around again.
The stereotypes make it feel like fall again.
Hang the prettiest artifacts
back on the wall.
The dried scalps, the tobacco sacks
made of scrotums. Do that
honorific horror, that
tomahawk chop. Sling your
DNA tests. Hang your
jerseys on the movie reel corpses.
The time has come around again.
The wolf T-shirts have been put away again.
There is only one wolf
inside some of them.
It bites. There are two wolves
inside others. One bites,
the other howls. Some of them
claim half a wolf, others say
there’s one half buried
two grandmothers deep
in their back closet. The one
that sticks the farthest
out of their ribs
is the one they feed.
If they house a couple
one is always starved.
The time has come around again.
The bloodiest holidays are here again.
One for love of the instigator
of all that has happened. One for
the feast of loving the smell.
In between is the one
for honoring the dead.
Look at all we have to honor.
Look at all that has come and gone.
Listen to what’s brewing
in the treaty vats. See how far
we’ve not yet come.
Dog In The Fight
Listen bud
I am but one dog
of the small and mighty
in this fight
and we
are going to
bite your ankles
until you fall
and then
I will set upon you
with those
same friends
O fallen one
you have grown
so fat and sure
Before you fell
your ears had closed over
with fat
you couldn’t hear
the word “entitled”
over the sound
of your chewing
what you thought
you were “entitled”
to devour
without a care for
the wages
of your gluttony
Ooh that smell
How much time is left
Did we get to you
in time
to stop you
to end you
to eat you
to pick you clean
We are
the small and mighty
You think
we’re just yapping now
That’s the sound
of hunger, bud
Hunger and memory
and of what will happen next
Tomorrow
This is the time
when I am
most full.
No expectations
other than those I find
in the first word
of the day, or
in the decision to leave
this space intentionally blank
and tell myself it is fine;
to say out loud
to the empty room
that I’ve already
done enough,
considering how long
I’ve been at this.
This is not a poem
about poetry but
instead one about
the incomplete nature
of any completion.
It is about leaving things
awash in anticipation;
about tomorrow,
always tomorrow.
These Latter Days
These days
I can listen to a song
and not like it for itself
(whatever that means —
for the totality, the wash
of what it is and how it sounds)
but still enjoy it for how
its rhythm guitar snakes around
and under keyboards or how
the drummer’s a touch
behind the beat or what that vocalist’s
surprising choices do
to amplify the meaning
or meanings if it’s
“one of those songs
with more than one;” I can dig
its parts while not digging
the whole wrapped package.
This is how it’s been
for years now — digging
treasures out of dirt
or soil if you prefer; it’s rarely
for joy in the song or singer
that I sit back now and close my eyes.
That is in fact how I take all my joy
in these latter days;
in clumps, in pieces, not as a whole.
It does not lessen
my joy that this is true;
rather, it concentrates my savoring
of what I have dug free
from the world, what
I have unearthed.
If you see me with my eyes closed
before the beauty of some ocean
at sunset, please let me be.
I am here in the now, here to be swept up
in the sound of daylight leaving
with no promise of another day.
Missed The Train
Missed the train,
went home, lay down
miserable at having to wait
until tomorrow for the next one;
your hair kept growing,
nails too; it wasn’t
the end of the world.
You just became a bigger person;
then again, you would have
gotten bigger anyway
if you’d been able to go.
Missed the train, missed
the colors of leaves
and and shapes
of stations along the way,
the scent of the man
seated across the aisle;
trickles of conversation
now and then leaking by;
your nose would
have opened up, maybe
your eyes might have startled
into new visions, maybe
an overheard word would have
cut you or stitched you;
then again, nothing
can stop you from being
all that while you are parked here
in your bed or on your couch
while waiting out the day
and evening and night
waiting for the next train.
You’ll be OK; maybe
bigger, maybe your glucose levels
will change for the worse;
maybe you’ll be the next obituary
someone learns about through
social media. Maybe not.
It’s the next day
of the rest of your life as
the asshole prognosticators
like to call it. Or it’s Tuesday,
the day after you missed the train
you were counting on
to change everything, and nothing’s
changed.
No matter
to any of that. You are OK
right now. Stand close
to yourself as you are.
Let it wash you clean.
What Are The Rules
While overthinking
how it’s going,
you lose
the moment.
Is this sunrise,
or sunset?
Without understanding
directions, all at once
you find yourself
uncertain. It’s just
a pretty sky. Your memory
refuses to help; you can’t tell
if it’s cooling
or warming up;
whether those distant cars
are coming or going.
Which way
you are supposed to face
to decide what’s coming
or going is uncertain.
You close your eyes,
still unclear as to what
is going on but
it’s dark enough now
to pretend it’s going
the way you want —
toward dark, toward light.
All you have now
is the moment.
It is empty.
You are there.
Otherwise, nothing.
What else is there to do
but overthink everything
from here — past,
present, future if there is one.
Make it all up. Keep
your eyes closed. It is
neither warming nor cooling.
It is, instead, everything at once.
That Ripple
That ripple
up your left arm. That
awful sense of
something crawling.
Nothing there, though.
No bug, no mouse,
no unseen being to be tossed
aside in spite of its
invisibility; you can’t
get a hand around it
so it must not be there…
correct?
Of course, unless this part of you
has slipped into a secret world.
Unless you are lying on the bank
of a long vanished pond,
your arm immersed in ghost water,
spectral critters there
foraging upon
your forearm.
You wake up shuddering,
thinking…
but is this thinking?
Isn’t this
an entirely different way
of knowing?
You can’t be sure of that —
all you are sure of
is that you won’t be soon
falling back to sleep.
Proverb
It begins in quiet
at just predawn
while seated with
back straight, pressed
against the couch,
my hands folded in my lap.
It seems I should be
doing something
since I am awake.
Early to bed, etc.; so
the saying goes. But
I’m surely not healthy,
laughably unwealthy;
wisdom slipped away
when it sank back
into a dark dream river
as I opened my eyes.
A breeze rising in my backbone
blows through from there
to sternum and is swirling
around my cooling heart.
I hear a ticking from somewhere
from a clock I don’t own.
My father died not long ago; died old.
My mother will die older; likely soon.
Everyone I know
is on that same clock.
It seems I should be doing something
since I am awake — early to bed,
etc. Of course. It’s a proverb.
It’s wisdom. Apparently
it’s mine now. But what is it
I am supposed to do next
in this remaining life
when all this wind is in my chest
and a hidden clock is growing louder
in my ear?
Rockstar Dreaming (Telecaster Ghazal)
It’s morning, the morning after playing out.
I wake up couch-locked, cradling an unplugged Telecaster.
Not what I would have wanted, not what I’d hoped for.
But it is still a voice I love here in my arms — a Telecaster.
How far from here back to the broken heart from which I sing?
How far is it to any healing I can wring from this Telecaster?
Left hand defeated, left side numb, neck stiffened and sore —
right hand? Ready to get back to it, back to the Telecaster.
You’ll hear me one day and say, “shit, that sounds like Tony.”
The song is out there somewhere. I plug in the Telecaster.
In These Times
Standing in the weeds
behind the bus stop,
waiting. Hope
I do not catch a tick
and Lyme disease or Babeosis
or have some larger
unknown something
sneak up behind me.
I of course could step out
into the shelter of
the glass box provided, or
get all the way onto
the sidewalk to wait,
certainly — but that’s how
you become a target.
Let’s be clear that the bus
holds its own threats,
the destination as well is
dangerous, and the ride home
when all is done? A doubling down,
a repetition; a breeding Ground Zero
for the fear in just being alive
in these days.
I could just ride the bus
with my eyes closed
and headphones on,
I suppose, as so many do
because there seems to be
so few options;
can’t help thinking
that somewhere out in these weeds
may be an Answer disguised
as a threat
and I’m just too conditioned
to believing in the danger
of this world to turn around
and face it down and
draw it close and
see what it truly wants
from me,
from the frightened world
we’ve made.
Isn’t It Romantic
Oh, how we rejoice
in telling people
they come to us
unbidden sometimes;
this one came
in a dream; that one
tumbled through
and popped out
while falling
off a horse; it was
a gift, a Muse
on a day trip
may have been involved;
sometimes it just
happens.
Truth is? We
learn that subterfuge
early. We need to keep
some mystique around us
else they might discover
they could do it too,
and where would we be then?
Never let them see
the smoke rising from
the head at all hours,
the late night flinging
the pen across the room,
the paper flying off the desk,
the cracked screen left
after punching the old laptop.
The partner
cursing as they tell us
the typewriter is keeping them up
far too late and don’t we both
have to get up for work
far too early?
They rarely come easily —
we are working
on them even when we
are oblivious to the Work
going on within;
if they come
in a vision, folks,
it’s in a vision of
a factory and it rarely smells
or sounds as it did
when it was still raw and smoking
on the belt coming to us
for final assembly
and inspection.
Provider
Dirt under your fingernails
when you get ready for bed;
that’s enough
for today. You did the work
and the evidence is upon you
and clear.
Outside
weeds lie drying
on the pavement where
you left them. Tomorrow
you will pick them up
and take then to the pile
along the fence out back.
Once they’re dried and brittle
some will be used
to spark the firepit
as kindling for an August
night’s party flame.
It will be a lovely night —
you’ll have vegetables
grilled fresh from the vines
you’ve carefully saved
from the weeds you burn
ceremoniously as you feast.
Look down at those nails
before you scrub them clean —
take a moment to savor
the deaths you caused today
to bring forth the most abundant life
for you and yours,
you beautiful man; you,
provider.
Dark Matter 