Desperately seeking
sexiness, she
had done cumulative damage
to her animal heart
by lunging after acceptance
from unworthy men.
Donned imaginary
lures and fished. There was
something baitlike
about her, a hook hidden
within that was not
well-disguised, was easily avoided,
and those who bit
took at least
a little piece of her, some
a big piece of her, with them,
and what was left wriggled
with volition that
did not seem
to be her own.
Many have said they’ve seen
a delta shaped object
lined with lights
over their suburban heads
I think
it was
a grand and terrible ghost
embodied as the Mississippi Delta
come to haunt them
Witch pyres as steady as planets
rimmed the shores
and the unknown flowed down from within
They say
“I don’t know what it was”
They lie
to themselves
for deep within they know that neither the future
nor the extraterrestrial world
brought these triangles of dread
to the space above their heads
Instead
memories
of dead history
forgotten languages
rapes and suppression
negation and killing
came back to remind everyone
that all the slaving
and pillage
of many generations
do not simply disappear
but rise into the common ether
and hover
most often unseen
but always there
legacies
in the night
making selected random
viewers
think of genocide
and send their children inside
to hide
while they shiver in the air
outside their handsome
stolen homes
and living standards
wondering at the beings
who have stolen their surety
a true reparation
for history’s extravagant misuse
of darker beings:
the replication
of fear in the bellies
of those who have not paid it
enough heed
a man
became a critter
creeping
over land
he sat on rocks
turned em over for moral guidance
he’s a cemetery
of thinking —
left over
animal
reptile brained
chunk of reaction
fight and bite
sleep where it’s warm at night
stay out of the cold
of opinion
screw a little
when needed
no need for a lot of breath
to tell this story
it’s so common
you might be forgiven
for pretending it’s not true
just another legend
until you cross paths with him
while trying to fall in love
I have heard you
whining about your fate lately,
and let me just say this:
the only thing
worth knowing
about that butterfly
who ruined your life
from 10,000 miles away
is that butterfly wings
are frequently lovely
and your life
has not been so far,
despite my considerable help…
so,
if I had swatted the butterfly,
how exactly
would we be better off?
What would you have done
differently
with your improved atmosphere?
When you can answer that
with something more than
a stammered metaphor,
then we can talk.
Carrying the week’s groceries
over the footbridge,
I imagine the wind’s whine
is the creak of bolts
coming loose. Up here
there are no city lights
to obscure the stars.
If I fall through the ice below,
at least it’ll be a pretty ride.
When I came here, twenty years gone
now, it was for moments like this
when all of life seems
one tight coil of trivia and import.
I could pass from this life
and become a local footnote with no regrets.
A starlet died over the weekend
and all I know of her death is allegations
and rumors. Such a lot of fuss
for a stark fact: someone dies
and we’re forever uninformed as to why
such things happen. If I fall through
to the ice below, no one will talk of me
that way, and I’m grateful for that.
There’s no answer to why, and no such thing as
“too soon” — not for the deceased. We go
when we go, at times we believe we choose
or at inconvenient times, and I suspect
that whatever happens to us afterward,
it’s not anything we conceived beforehand.
So why we seek to explain such things,
I do not know or seek to know. What I do know
is this: here in the cold north, on a narrow bridge
between the road’s end and my small home,
I walk under a stellar shield that protects me
from the awful truth that life will end for all of us,
and when we go we will be remarked on
and mourned even as we are beyond such things.
We will wonder at that because we have no choice
but to do so, but to wonder without noticing
the world we live in and our own impermanence
is to lose the thread of who we are now.
I will listen to that wind and trust my footing
against the possibility of it being my last walk
because the stars are perfect here, and I am here,
and that actress is somewhere else, and what will be is certain.
Swear
that you can lose yourself
easily
in something
if you want to be
close to me,
for the best friends I have
thrive
on a passion
outside themselves,
live as if they are constantly
writing letters to others
that begin with “To Whom
It May Concern,”
and go on for pages
of detail, obsession
writ tight and careful,
no detail left behind,
certain that whoever receives
the letter will be
concerned as they are concerned,
ending them always with,
“Love” or “I eagerly await
your response,” forgetting
(or perhaps omitting with intent)
their names, the least important
detail, not worthy of note
in the presence of the greater topic.
These are the people I love most:
the ones who can forget themselves in something
as I have forgotten myself.
We find each other
without worrying about who we are
because from the start,
from first contact,
we understood that we had it right:
we are incidental chips bobbing
in the wake of our love
for the torrents of this world.
In your very own monastery
a small venal monk
is rewriting the Bible
just for you,
sweating through his coarse robe
in a narrow cell.
“For it shall be
that the bow in the clouds
will be loaded, and heavy
with dread, so that when you see it,
you shall think of rain, and drowning;
and the springs of the abyss shall be loosed,
and you shall cry, ‘I am forsaken.’ ”
At the moment
of highest prayer,
you are raptured
and rise surprised
back to your stunted life,
your scribe, Brother Fear, still beside you.
That voice you never heard in person
in your ear, the letters of the First Words
illuminated in gold
so there is no mistake:
“You wept, and shall weep
throughout your days
with no comfort,
for you are the Way In
and the light of your history
is darkened, a plague of black birds
is upon you.”
Awake in the night,
praying, soaked in yourself.
No sound now
but the wings above you.
red lights skewing
across the road
in the white darkness
and the visible wind.
we sleep through
someone’s near disaster,
ignorant for now of fear
of losing control
even as we are blown
in our dreams to vulture islands
as the cold beak of winter
tears at our rest.
we will face the morning
with crossed fingers
hoping the road under the snow
will hold us when it’s our turn.
In my hand is a hyoid bone,
staple reference of crime shows
for the way it breaks during strangulation —
It supports the tongue
and gives us
the offer of speech —
The person who once owned this one
is silent now,
choked for some reason —
You can tell by the cracks
along the horns how it was
seized from without —
crushed by some weight
as the person stared into
another’s eyes, perhaps familiar ones —
I can’t speak myself
of any one suspect, don’t know
how to explain —
I’m stuttering now, my breath
stalled inside, preventing me
from lying to you —
My brain’s gone down into a blue hole
swirling into quiet, the lights
failing as I rasp my distress —
How this bone was ripped and crushed
is a story for someone else to carry,
not a burden, really —
a small tale of suffocation
so mundane as to be
unremarkable —
It happens every day, the
free floating bone of language itself
a casualty of others’ desires.
welcome to admitting
you belong under the flag
of scarlet
bone and
vein
unwitting
stamp of pain
for many (leading to comfort
for others on a bed of skins
and feathers)
when you went overseas
that one time
and claimed to be
Canadian to avoid being associated
with the loud couple on the first floor
no one was fooled
and they sneered at you
ah, Americans
best defined
as
impatient
and dedicated to the proposition
that everything
can be found in
either/or
so if you aren’t like them
(demanding the room they desired
and embarrassed by the bidet
they didn’t pay to have that in their room
no sir)
you must not be them
but you are, you are
from your sneakers to your nerves
at the maze of small streets
what if you got lost
and couldn’t speak the language?
(and you couldn’t)
what if you were shown to be
idiots
out of place in the old world?
(and you were, you were)
who wouldn’t be able to tell?
who in the street wouldn’t know at once
that you at last
understood
what it means
not to fit in?
who wouldn’t see
the flag
in your frightened
faces?
Before I got here,
I wanted the poems
full of feral Siberian iris and
the sword leaves of cattails,
their cotton-bomb tops
coated in tan smoke;
now I have the poems
sticky with asphalt
and cigars, Saabs
broken down on Vermont
snow trails, starfruit
on a glass plate
in a downtown bistro.
If I seem to know the world
these days, it is because
I can still sense it distantly
through its cloak of tar
and screen of clever conversation over
well-constructed food —
but there was a time
when I could stalk the woods
alone, never speaking,
filled with One Word that was enough
until I became hungry
and then I could pull white tubers from the ground
and crawfish from the streams,
build a fire and eat well,
and still never say a thing.
This is why I will not write now
of the peregrine
on the museum eaves,
knowing how little I might have to say
is true to what I have become,
for it seems that everything
that grows or soars without speaking,
is born to be itself without being told,
is now just a symbol of something I’ve lost,
and a weekend trip to the forest spells nothing
worth repeating, and I am
starving, and noisy
with the need to speak of human things
to other humans.
I am discontented
and desire only
to be alone
with the memory of how
I could have been as animal,
as mineral, as green and dumb
with simple existence as these
better beings.
Some nights,
up here on the sixth floor
in the highest loft I can afford,
I can almost believe
it was real. My blood in my ears.
My pulse slow as constellations
turning. My eyes fooled
into thinking I am still
seeing things as they are.
On those nights, I sleep
soundly, and the city
fades behind the curtain
of unspeakable
divinity.
It does not last.
And I do not tell a soul
of how it is.
standing up swiftly
after the shouting
was over
he fell to the floor
said
I feel like the crutch
discarded
after the miracle cure
then
turned
fractal
into himself
the equations within
inadequate
for explaining the process
but suited
for description
of its appearance
circling methodically in
upon his cry of
of what use am i now?
such violent
classrooms to be opened
such ferocious
hardware to be mastered
he broke often
trying the locks
he swelled
and atrophied
healed crooked
healed
broke again
more and more arthritic
always reflexive
he stumbled in predictable ways
what use am I?
clumsy
typical
of a generation
unused to a
troubled path
kept himself
alive without
thriving
a Friday full of longing
found him
thinking of the days
when he was
support
for the limping of others
wondering
if it was still worth learning
to live with a limp himself
to spin on
not knowing
his use
the crutch eventually
rotted into the ground
and left no trace
under the spiral arms
of galaxies
unsympathetic
to such trivia
nothing shall be untitled!
do not refuse to name it!
it will be cagey and take a name
you don’t like
if you’re not quick!
eat it before it grows
self-aware
and does the job without you!
ABSORB it into yourself
then squeeze it out and admire it!
It’s you, leftover!
let it take your own
goddamned name
if that’s all you can think of!
make part of it into your elbow knob
or perhaps a bladder cell!
you’re a discarded stick in the mud
waiting to take root
and drop fruit all around you!
here’s the chance
you’ve been waiting for!
put a name on it!
it’s not roadkill!
it’s a kid! a pet!
an ancestor! a tractor
for your field work!
dig a trench of letters!
raise up a voice to the sky
and call it something!
anything! call it!
you’ll never get it to stay with you
otherwise!
Before last call
you convince yourself
that they are paying attention to you
by telling yourself
they could tell with one glance
that you are a live grenade.
This must be a heroic act.
They must sense how dangerous
you are to yourself and others,
can see your obvious potential
for causing widespread distress
so they’re all over you.
If this is happening,
that is. It may not be.
And soon you admit that It isn’t.
So you go home alone
because it’s getting brighter outside.
Ho hum, nothing new,
you awaken still a little drunk
after only two hours of sleep.
On the couch again
with the laptop
and another final poem you can’t get right,
flying by the seat of your briefs,
no coffee in you yet.
You haven’t raised the shades in weeks.
It tells the world no one’s here.
So what?
You’re sprung,
been flung,
the pin’s already been pulled.
When you eventually explode in a forest,
a bar or an apartment,
if no one’s there to hear it,
it won’t make a sound. So
why not have a little fun
before that happens and convince yourself
there’s a chance
you’ll be regretted?
What if
you allowed yourself
to be a fist
in the presence of
your enemies? Not to
raise a fist, but to be one:
carry your whole being
in a ball and
resist the blows while you hold tight
to yourself? And when
the conflict is over,
with no memory of violence
against another: the fist
you were is gone,
you’re an open hand again.
Dark Matter 