It doesn’t question
its own existence,
so far as we know.
Beyond that
it seems to be
devoid of concern
for its own meaning.
It is simple
in the best way
possible. Could I learn
a thing or two here?
I don’t know if I could.
I’d have to sort
out and toss so much
head fluff,
then learn
base skills like
how to eat more
intensely, to climb
without fear of falling;
to spring away
from danger
when needed
in self-preservation.
I don’t know if I could,
or should. A question
for a Saturday morning
during a respite, a lull
in a storm.
Category Archives: poetry
Squirrel
The Egg
inside your head is your egg
where you hold the full life
you will live after you crack
at the moment you are folded
upon your incipient self in there
it can only be seen in dark close up
you won’t know what’s in there
until the shell breaks
and you flop out in your head
less dark and cramped than before
all will feel possible then
light and shadow tumbling
inside your egg is a head
you wish you had cracked open
when you were younger
though the cracking
would have defined
agony
it would have
defined joy
as well
Disciple
Red-eyed, black-shod,
stinking like
an unclean kitchen hood.
Comes slinking up
the side road, shouting
stuff about Jesus.
He knows Jesus personally
and Jesus would dig deep for him
into his pockets except
that robe don’t got pockets.
He’s got disciples to carry
his stuff.
Ask a disciple
how it works. Any disciple
knows what to do.
He’s got that West Side Swagger.
He’s got that Sunshine Energy.
He’s got that late night last night stagger.
He’s got that strapped for cash
but feeling all right air of a man
who knows dead doesn’t last long
even if it takes him mid-sentence.
He’s out here every day.
You ever see him dead?
He’s got that downtown rhythm.
He’s got that boondocks
knows-enough-to-get-by stare.
He says he looks
just like his dad.
He’d show you a picture
but he doesn’t have it
on him right now.
He doesn’t trust himself
to carry it.
It’s back
at the spot.
Asks you for a quarter.
Says you are blessed
when you hand it over.
He isn’t going anywhere.
Even if he dies tomorrow
he’ll be back soon enough.
Shakespeare Nailed It
Once villains die
someone reframes their portraits,
puts them in something plain,
then rehangs them in a gallery
named “The Innocent.”
The old gallery is painted
then refilled.
It is renamed
“No One Alive.”
Every few minutes
someone comes along
and wipes up
the blood on the floor below
all the portraits
in all the galleries.
Everything is
spotless.
Meanwhile some kid
is dying in a village or a slum
and the mother is wondering
who to blame, or even if there is
blame to be assigned.
Generic
not an original bone
in here
not an original thought
in here
my face is generic
should
get out of myself
look around
and see how much out there
is not me
the door
is sealed
from outside
even this
is generic
all I can muster
is a hello
that is more generic
than everything else
Iris Aftermath
What did the iris learn
as its bloom browned
and became thin as paper
before falling?
The iris is not dead.
The swordplay of the leaves
goes on. If anything
they’ve grown longer.
Almost summer now
and no shade
other than green
in the border of the yard
where the irises grow.
Nothing other than green
to draw in the casual eye.
One might say
the irises have become background.
From the annual brief riot of purple
they learned to thrive, to be here
no matter who sees them,
to trust in a future
where they will bloom again
even after their superficial charms
have failed to endure.
Restrung
My all-consuming problems
converge in this ancient guitar
that sounds barely fine today
Not as fine as it did a year ago
It needs some work just to be solid again
but even now it’s too expensive to repair
The cost will double over time
so it remains here in the spare closet
as a memory of what it used to offer
A reminder that pain can sound like
the strangled tone and sharp chirp
of treble strings
when they try too hard to respond
to an urgent upstroke
A request to make it sound like it used to
only makes it more obvious that it can’t
This fragile guitar is past its prime
waiting to explode from the pressure
of being tuned to an accepted idea
of what is right and good and worthy
I restrung it yesterday and played old songs
and thought of new ones I might try
With a softer touch I drew something forth
It briefly felt like music could still live here
I See Stars
Irritating. Whiny.
Unpleasant fuckup.
A mistake, a problem
come to stay.
One disease
after another, one system
creaking along
but just barely.
Waking up
every morning, dammit.
Not what was prayed for.
Not what I’d hoped for.
This is not the way I thought
it would go.
What some call
coming into grace
I call sliding into
a grave with no purchase
to be had from the sides
of the hole.
Can’t even hold on
as I go; I can’t
close my hands and
can’t feel much anyway
as I’m numb from the prints
to the bone. To the bone:
it’s the bone I desire
to find in the mirror —
but there’s too much flesh left
to cover it. I despair out loud: after all
I’m a whiny fuckup, I despair
of ever getting to see the bone,
ever getting to see myself
as more than incipient dead. It is as if
the universe itself is out to mock me
that in looking up from the grave, I see stars.
It’s Time
I took a weed-whacker
out to the garden and cut it
all down. It was time:
well before harvest, well before
even blooming, in fact not long
into growing. It was time.
I stood there after and inhaled
the wet green scent of what I had done
and felt like a horseman
from one of the old tales, surveying
the battlefield aftermath. I felt
that I was seeing farther now
and I turned back to the house itself
and took a pipe to the windows.
It was time: I broke stubborn shards
from the frames with my bare hands
though they were too torn to grip right.
It was time: I licked blood
from myself until I felt noble
again. It was time:
having spent years blunted
by history and weak knees,
by my own diluted story, it was time
to regain the place I deserved;
though it was a ruin
to all who saw it
it was home at last — and then I woke
to the alarm sounding softly
from the bedside. It was time.
Sat up in bed in the aftermath of the dream
clenching and relaxing my hands,
looking around at too-familiar ruin.
It’s time, I told myself. It’s time.
Standing Stone
There’s a stone
not far from here
balanced on another stone
in a field that’s been used
for cow pasture
on a dairy farm for
seven generations.
The stone has been there
since the last glacier
retreated and left it perched there
dozens of generations before that.
When I was a boy
I’d sneak up into that pasture
when I thought no one was looking
and try to push that rock over
though it hasn’t budged, ever.
It’s still there. I’m still here.
The cows are still there grazing
around the rocks. There are
other stones in that pasture too
but there’s only one
I could draw for you
from memory if I could draw.
That memory is dozens of generations old.
Here is the proof, right here
on this paper. I didn’t bother
with the temporary cows,
the minor stones, the grass.
You could go there now
and find it right away by sight
just using this sketch, I swear —
and once there you would talk (as you do now)
of developing the pasture
and the land around that pasture
for luxury homes and lovely roads
as if moving the standing stone
was no more that a bulldozer’s illusion of right use
and all the whispers of the kids who’ve put
a shoulder to it without moving it
hadn’t left it unmoved
for dozens of generations —
as if your desire and greed could touch it
when they couldn’t;
as if the land doesn’t know already
that you are nothing,
really,
not when you have to look
across all those years to see you.
Ask any of the Natives standing behind you.
The stone will be there even if you move it.
Blood Pool
He tells me I have a voice
smooth as vegan honey
but I think
he’s wrong
I hear meat
in there as well
Something I killed
and consumed long ago
Bones I crushed
between my teeth
Hard fragments coursing
into my core
Before he turns away
I consider my options
and choose silence
over questioning
his perception directly
My voice holds
secrets in the shape
of a blood pool
and it might
be best
to keep it
that way
Game Show Haunting
In the center of the house
behind a locked door
are stairs you haven’t climbed
in many years, maybe decades.
Now and then, you swear
there is sound up there:
someone running,
faraway music playing.
Begins and ends
suddenly, startling you,
breaking up the monotony
of a flat June mid-afternoon.
You know you can’t
open the door and
climb those stairs. Couldn’t
lift a foot if you tried,
and furthermore
can’t remember
where the key is.
It all leads you to wonder:
who’s up there? The family
lives elsewhere, kids long gone,
you don’t believe in ghosts
and anyway no one ever
died up there.
If it’s all in your head
no worries except the most
obvious: what’s wrong with me?
If it’s not,
maybe you should assume
you might be causing
somebody up there
the same anxiety:
who’s down there?
They might
wonder about
hearing snatches of
TV game shows
at top volume,
a wheelchair rolling
on old oaken floors.
You must admit, it’s ghostly
no matter who
lives here, who doesn’t,
or who used to. It’s only surprising
that you can’t hear it
all the time. The unseen
is making such a racket
in this place it is hard
to concentrate on one thing
or another. You don’t need
to climb the stairs to see that
but you will think about it often
as you sit before the TV
and try to guess
the answers before
the celebrities do,
imagining your win
and everyone
throughout the house
applauding.
Sharp Knives
The job is to ensure
that the kitchen knives
stay sharp
Sweeping the blades
at thirty degrees
across the diamond stone
to be certain
they will cut
when called upon
and to make a place
for them to hang
within easy reach when needed
There was a time
when a kitchen knife
cut meat and roots and throats
with equanimity
and no one thinking
it should be otherwise
as the red gushing neck
of the hen too old
to lay any more
promised nothing
but a good dinner
and a hearty soup
Just part of the cycle
of the household
That whole life and death thing
which we no longer have
to think about
as we go about our day
Case Studies In Management
from 1989
1.
At the pre-shift meeting,
our ops manager
talks down
to the crew boss.
He repeats himself often,
speaks loudly,
pronounces Namthavone’s name wrong twice
and in two different ways.
He explains to me later
that he understands these people,
thanks to two tours he did in country.
“I had a lot of fun there,” he tells me.
I say nothing to this.
I am remembering
that Namthavone
once told a story in ESOL class
about his tattoos –
the script that runs
around his body,
up and down the arms,
up through his hairline
at the back of his neck.
He said they date back to
when he fought in the Highlands
for the CIA against the Communists.
He said they were charms
against bullets, knives;
incantations
to avoid being seen
by those who would do him
harm.
2.
At dinner,
Larry explains
how Spanish women
are passive by nature.
Again I say nothing,
recalling Lourdes and Santa
after second shift last Thursday,
standing toe to toe with boxcutters
on the median strip
just off the factory property,
mad eyes hidden
in third-shift darkness.
Lourdes had just told Santa
that she was sleeping
with her man Ruben.
Santa replied
that must be where
he’d caught the drip.
I see them raise their arms
as the first cruisers arrive
and scatter the watchers.
It took three cops to tear
Santa from Lourdes,
four to hold Lourdes back
once that was done.
From where I sit tonight,
I can see the women seated
on either side of Ruben,
still bandaged, not speaking,
forcing alternate bites
of their cooking on him,
re-drawing the rules of engagement.
3.
Daniel Opong walks into work
and announces that he entered this country
under a false name
but now has established legal residency
and after ten years working here as
Daniel Opong
wishes to be called
by his real name,
Anthony Otoo.
“Who do they think they are?”
says Pauline, our personnel manager.
“That’s the third one this month. How dare they?”
I am told to fire him
for falsifying his application.
I refuse.
I suggest that she would do the same thing
if she were facing whatever
Daniel faced back home.
I lose. I am reprimanded.
He is fired anyway, nods when I tell him
about the personnel office’s decision,
then shakes my hand.
I apologize.
“You do not have to be sorry,
because I’m not sorry”,
he tells me
as he leaves.
“I would do it again.”
I am hoping I would.
4.
Araminta tells me
that she used to hate
having me for a boss,
but now she thinks I’m ok.
I don’t know
what I’m doing differently these days,
and I tell her that.
She doesn’t know either,
but she’s sure she’s right.
I tell her
I’m not sure I agree with her,
I think I keep quiet a lot more often
than I should.
She looks at me
for a long minute,
saying nothing.
5.
The management team
always leaves
after everyone else is gone.
On a Friday night, we usually head
to McGuire’s for a beer,
McGuire’s because we’re sure not to see
any of our employees there.
When I drive home from the bar
later that night,
the apartments
that line the road to the factory
are still lit and raucous.
There’s a party going on somewhere.
I recognize a few of the cars outside from the factory lot.
I don’t know who lives here.
Sometimes I think
none of us
knows
anyone who lives here.
Bug Action
Bug action in the mulch
must have brought the critters
to the yard last night
as it’s all messed up with holes
and mounds where noses got pushed
into the damp black bark covering
everything.
Below the feeders where the seeds
and bird crap fall and are either
retrieved by birds or left to sprout
seems to be the target spot
for those who come to forage on
the beetles and the worms under there.
I write too much about the feeders
and the birds as if I never get out
past the windows into the rest
of the neighborhood. I know.
I’d tell you I’m safer here or at least
feel the way but in truth
why go out when
scuttling scavengers and
skunks and the like
make this yard of damp black mulch
cleaner and more complete
than the human world?
I read the news. I know how it works
out there. I could spit out the window here
and not hit anything that isn’t
doing its job and contributing.
I’m sure there are
places like this elsewhere
but I’m afraid, terribly so,
of being crushed
at how hard it will be
to find one.
Dark Matter 