Isn’t snow always
remarkable? Although
it’s not snow
charming us, maybe,
as much as its
volume, how
it falls so silently
when there’s no
wind to push it.
Then again it’s
so difficult to manage
at times, sticking around,
adhering to ground and
pavement, to our vision
and never mind our freedom
to move; how about
the child from my hometown
who fell into a drift
outside his front door and
wasn’t found until spring?
Snow did that, drew him
into its maw and
killed him. How missed
he was, right there on his own
land, his parents’ death-ache
palpable all over town
that winter when all you could see
everywhere was —
ah, clarity — White.
It’s silly to fear the snow
just for its color,
they tell me, but when considering
my own history, I have to speak up:
try to understand, I don’t fear the snow
for its color as much as I’ve learned
to fear the color itself and how it
warps the picture outside my front door
without a word — so silent,
so heavily insistent, so
relentless.
Category Archives: poetry
The Color Of Snow
Learning How To Listen
Listen: somewhere inside me
it’s already happened
that the first seed of my death
is sprouting. Somewhere
inside a cell has hardened into
a dagger and I can hear
the sharpening.
Or perhaps the cracking I hear
is a dam inside me is ready to burst,
and a cluster of once-quiet cells
is turning into a shouting mob.
Listen: I can already hear
the ruckus of war being waged within
from the isles of Langerhans,
which will likely be enough
to overwhelm the rest. Listen:
there’s the metronomic tap, tap
of the brain as it chips away at memory.
Listen: the heart is pushing blood
at a rising volume. Listen:
neurotransmitters are hollering
in penultimate chorus, there’s little
serotonin in the mix, and I know too well
what their song is urging me to do.
I’m listening, asking how long,
how long is this going to take? I’m asking
not for me but for a friend. For
a lover, for a family. For what
I’ve got left to do before I can’t.
Listen. You would think
I would stop but
the least I can do
is to listen to these bitter songs.
That’s why any song spring shall bring
is more welcome now,
and summer’s song after that,
and then perhaps autumn and winter
will sing as well, and after that I shall see
what song is loudest,
and then I shall hope
to listen to more.
In Media Res
soon enough
a pair of Malinois
will come into view
holding a banner between them
that will bear
an illegible word
you will squat before them
and from that vulnerable position
attempt to decipher it
as the dogs approach they shall veer
slightly to the left of where you are
and the banner will become
impossible to read
so whatever the message the dogs have
is either not meant for you or
you will miss it
and you shall rise
from the squatting position
look back at the place
from which the dogs came
and see only a sunset
you will tell yourself
as you veer away from the view
turning slightly to the right
this how it has been
for all your time
messages seemingly meant for you
narrowly undelivered
from ferocious mouths
leaving you in their wake
to marvel and wonder
where to look
for an explanation
Froideur
The word of the day:
“froideur.” On loan
from French, it describes
“a coolness or distance
between people.” As in
how we develop rote answers to
“how’s the family, friend?”
No one actually cares,
do they?
As in, “what’s up
for the weekend?
Got any plans?” comes to sound
like reconnaissance for assault.
You don’t respond with the truth,
which is, “I’m going to spend it either
coiled and nasty, or curled and
weepy, either way don’t come by
if you don’t want a share of the pain.”
You think I’m sick for saying this.
I think you are right.
I don’t care what you think.
I think I’m not alone.
Others don’t care what I think,
or that I’m even here.
Calling it froideur
offers hope that it is not
who we truly are.
We don’t have a word for it.
We had to go take one
from elsewhere to speak of it.
Using one word to explain it
leaves so much more time
for silence.
Imagined Body
Imagined body:
pensive, fat-assed,
sweaty with compassion
for all. Real body?
Cold layers like
Damascus steel,
cold eye when turned
toward others’ pain,
cold and round and dry-eyed.
He tells himself
he is nearly one
to his aspiration.
He tells himself
he loves, he is
kind and as free
as his imagined body
imagines itself to be.
He stands in his imagined
place in the world
and tries to occupy it:
stiff, sharp, cold to the touch.
Red/Green
The news is all red
in spite of the daffodils
butting in with green.
All of the new buds
by the lake, showing red first
before they go green.
Old mulch by the walk
is not as red, and it’s cracked —
coming soon, the green.
The news is in red.
The window differs: make room!
Consider the green.
Do you look for red
when you wake up, or do you
only see the green?
Spread red over green,
or hide the red with the green.
The news is on. Choose.
Sitting Around
Originally posted 2012. Revised.
Mostly, people are sitting around waiting for it.
It’s not going to be like a tsunami, or a war.
No one wants to admit that we peaked at Lascaux.
No one wants to admit that we were pretty much at our apex
right before the first grain was planted, the first lamb was tamed…
that it started to fail with the first surveyor who confidently said
“this plot’s yours, this plot’s not…”
No one wants to admit
that we were OK about the God thing
right up to the moment we shook God loose
from a particular geography,
the one outside the hut door.
Get up every morning, yawn, stretch…hello, God.
Turn another direction, there’s another God.
Say hi to that one, too.
It kept them small. No one wants to admit
we knew something back then we don’t know now,
and we don’t even know what it is that we knew.
I have some friends — oh, I cannot call them that
as it’s untrue now and will be even more so after this —
there are people I know who are activists.
They think they’re doing something.
They think…I like them because they move now
that everyone’s mostly sitting. But do they do what’s needed?
No one can do what’s needed now.
Not on anything but a small scale,
no matter how grandly they practice.
Because when it comes, it won’t be much different than it is now —
a slew of abandoned houses, a lot of rootless people.
They’ll leave because their wallets betrayed them;
they’ll leave looking for work;
they’ll leave looking for food.
The lawns will recall their heritage
and swallow houses while making jungly noises.
We don’t know what we’ve lost.
We peaked at Lascaux;
all those hunter-gatherers knew it.
We sit waiting for what’s coming.
We ought to be moving though it won’t come
as tsunami or war, not at first.
No.
It will be as it is now.
Tiger’s Way
With apologies to John, Michelle, Cass, Denny…and all of you
All the world is curds
and the air is whey
I hopped on a bus
and ran on Guy Fawkes’ Day
I’d be under fire
if I’d chosen to stay
Surrealists are in charge
This is the tiger way
Stopped to drink a beer
along the way
Shoved my face into the glass
and sucked those suds away
Ordered up another
No point in sobriety
When everything’s infected
in the body of society
The milk of kindness curdles
The blood of caring clots
If I go for a walk
I won’t attempt to pray
because I think it’s pointless
expecting to be saved
We wait to be devoured
as we walk the tiger’s way
Peregrine Falcons Of Stone Mountain
Wherever the edge was
a decade ago, a year ago?
It’s just ahead, almost
underfoot now.
I was born for the edge
of the edge, to hang my toes
over the great fall
to the bottom, and look down.
My friends say it’s dangerous
to be here. They are afraid
I’m still who I was a decade ago,
a year ago. No fear that I’ll jump;
they just know how much I love
the edge of the edge. Love the stage
it provides. To tumble in the last act
would be just my way, they think,
but I’m not the being
they think I am, not even the one I was
a year ago, a decade ago. I know
if I fall into that, I’ll just float
and no one, not even my friends,
is ready to see me hovering like
the peregrine falcons on Stone Mountain
updrafts, not plunging to earth.
I know who I am now. I don’t
stumble over the edges where I find myself.
I sit there in mid air high above disasters
and catastrophe. Maybe someday. Not today,
not a decade, not a year hence.
I’m not done with the earth yet.
I’m not ready yet to fall, to fail.
I’m too light to know how close death is.
Wall Of Darkness
For the love of the wall of darkness
in the mouth of the bedroom
that is the door to the bedroom
that has been created by the light in the kitchen
that will soon be turned off leaving only
one small nightlight left on to make it easier
not to trip over the black cat if there is
(as there always is)
a need to walk from bedroom to bathroom
in the few small hours between
my late bedtime and early rising
that have become my old-age norm
I offer praise for what lies
beyond that wall of darkness
in the mouth of the bedroom
as I stagger with my old knees
and dead-nerve feet from bathroom
back into the bedroom
so warm and easeful
after fitting my CPAP mask
and settling in for the few hours between
falling asleep now and then rising
into the insatiable orders
of dawn and food and work
This is for love of the darkness
that promises a little forgetfulness
if only I will come in and stay
and now I realize that here is the black cat
sleeping on the bed itself
so I needn’t have worried
I could have done all this
in darkness had I wished
without nightlight at all
It’s not far from here to there
An easy walk easily completed
if I only had had faith in my own steps
I tell myself next time to listen
for the purring in here
before I step out into dim and useless light
Hen And Chicks
It’s a neighbor with a bad car
parked on the street
without plates, the cops
hovering around then having it towed.
It’s the couple screaming at
each other on the sidewalk and
one of them tears a rock out of your wall,
raising it overhead, and now
it’s your concern. Did they screw up
the succulents that grow there,
the hen and chicks? You yell down from
the bedroom window to put it back.
That breaks the anger spell.
They leave after tossing the rock
onto the top of the wall.
You will replace it later
now that all is well and after
the tow truck leaves with the bad car?
It’s almost as suburban out here as it is back home
where high school friends live who say
“the city is a cesspool” and trot around
boastfully shaking their heads at me
from their beautiful yards
where the hen and chicks grow from holes
artfully cut into the sides of barrels
transformed into planters they bought
at the hardware store down the street
from the place where that guy
stabbed another guy in the back of the head
at a lazy evening barbecue a couple of years ago,
an isolated incident among isolated people,
insulated people who choose to turn away.
To those high school friends I say:
welcome to the cesspool
where I see my shit and name it
while you hide yours.
In the longest of long runs
it all smells the same.
It all spills out eventually
just like those tough little plants do when they
bloom, long translucent stems and flowers
drooping out of barrel holes and stonewall cracks,
trying to make the best
of wherever they find themselves.
Folderol
Wish I could take back
everything I’ve ever said —
each word, ill timed grunt,
sigh in passion, moan of distress.
It’s language that has cut
all my crops down, set the fires
in each of my villages.
If I’d just been silent,
things would have been different.
But I just had to do this. Had
to open my big fat mouth. Had to
make a whole series of noises
and call them art, say I was
seeking beauty, truth, that
folderol; forgot that a stone has beauty
on its own without making a sound,
reveals truth when hurled through
a window; the noise you hear then
doesn’t come from the stone
that lands mutely on the castle floor.
Wish I’d stayed silent. It’s done me
little good not to be. It’s made me
want to sit with a glued-up mouth
on my scorched earth till I’m gone.
People say I owed it to them, to the earth,
to be this, to make noise, to rumble
like a damn volcano, tweet like a bird.
What I owed myself, they tell me,
is unimportant. It’s the artist’s just fate
to disappear into their hollering,
happily or not. I say no, then say
no more. Be here that way till I’m not.
Dad’s Close Order Drill
Revised, from 2009.
The five purposes of close order drill are to:
1. Provide simple formation from which various combat formations could readily be assumed.
Look for their fear.
Slip your hand into it, make it
your puppet,
pull it close,
make it rigid,
make it dance.
The dinner table provides
the ideal setting for this, so
2. Move units from one place to another in a standard and orderly manner, while maintaining the best possible appearance.
speak to them
with great attention
to their faults. Do not fail
to hit the same notes again and again:
inadequacy, failure, shame at heritage
denied and betrayed…and ensure
that nothing of the conversation
will be heard outside that room.
3. Provide the troops an opportunity to handle individual weapons.
If you are focused
soon enough the words
will come from them,
tailored, well-pressed,
4. Instill discipline through precision and automatic response to orders.
and when they cringe
you won’t even have to watch
to know it’s happening.
5. Increase a leader’s confidence through the exercise of command by giving
proper commands and drilling troops.
Won’t you accept the salute,
the hands above their eyes,
shading themselves from the heat?
You have earned it.
* close order drill objectives, in boldface, taken from USMC Website
It’s Not That Simple
I don’t have an answer
Don’t know the right questions
to get from one end of this
to the other
It’s not that simple
Not an equation
Stuck in my head with
A jumble of words
that feel like maybe
Might lead somewhere
It’s not that simple
Incorrect directions
I turn from one to another
I turn from the certain to doubt
I turn away from the road
with the well-marked signs
To the dense darkness under the trees
I don’t have a sense of direction
Can’t make any sense of the landscape
Don’t know the right way
to any destination
It’s not that simple
Not an equation
It’s not that simple
Incorrect directions
It’s not the arrival
It’s the journey they tell you
No, it is the arrival
They lie as they’ve lied for all of my life
They Are Yelling At Me
I don’t know who they are
but they keep yelling at me:
Enough, enough! What’s with
the moaning, all the doom-poems?
You are sitting in a warm-enough room.
You are still warm to the touch.
Look out the window at that one cardinal.
There’s the woman across the street
starting her Jeep. There’s so much going on
that isn’t the direct result of some tragedy.
Write a damn love poem,
they say. An ice-cream poem,
cool and sweet. A feather pillow poem,
soft and easy to clutch. A poem with
a roar-shaped kiss. A metric ton
of roar-shaped kisses, in fact. Why
the constant scream of pain and
anger at how the worms of money and hate
twist through all our guts
all day and night? Write us
out of that with a love poem,
a bird poem, a stars in your eyes poem
or two or three hundred, Mr. Prolific,
Mr. I Got Words For Everyone, Buddy?
All my poems are love poems, I answer back.
I wouldn’t stand for them if they were not.
I would not be here with them clustered around me
if I did not think they held love within.
The poems with the guns will do what’s right
for love. The poems full of moans are the echo
of wishing for better. Every word
may taste like rocky road
to a parched and bitter mouth.
And why is there roaring at all in these words
if not to speak of love for the world as loudly as I can
in the face of so many teeth and such greedy claws?
They don’t answer. They never do.
I wish I could do anything else but this.
This morning I shall settle at the keyboard
to put flowers upon all the unmarked graves.
It’s not a living. It’s a life.
Shh, I tell them. Enough, enough.
Dark Matter 