Reminder that I’ll be doing a reading at Root and Press, Shrewsbury St., Worcester at 6 pm Tuesday September 2. Open mike spots are available. Love to see you there.
~~~~~~~~~~
T
Category Archives: poetry
In An Old T- Shirt, Remembering
I recall how it used to be
when I saw a thing: react,
jump back, touch it, think
about it, pass on, remember
or forget it.
It took an instant but now,
I don’t have that; between
the sight of a thing and my reaction
comes a second of blank time;
I do not choose
a reaction but deliberately
react and jump back or touch it
and pass on into memory
or forgetfulness.
I sit with the spaces between.
They do not soothe, and they
do not aggravate; they simply
exist and I sit there in them
in my almost transparent from age
Grateful Dead T-shirt
and new black sweats and wonder
what I should do in this presence
of one moment of purity.
It’s enough to be silent, I think.
Maybe this after all is what
we are supposed to do with
moments like these even if we have
just one of them in our whole
damn lives. This is how we live,
this is how we die; but mostly
this is how we live forever
in the gap between what happens
and what we choose to do next;
nothing, I guess, to do
but smile.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
T
Rant
Flat black,
flat pale blue, flat
fire red, what are the colors
they are painting cars
these days? Everything
is flat, they have TV screens
on their dashboards, every
third car is a Tesla in flat black,
no sparkle to their schemes,
they wing past me in my old
Subaru, maybe they notice me,
maybe they don’t? I know
I’m small and unimportant,
got a MMIW sticker here somewhere
I ought to apply, got a FDT sticker
I ought to add on, got
evidence of a cardiac event
I ought not to advertise,
I am scared of all of them, trucks
as large as my sense of former adventure,
roads as pitted as neglect can make them,
everyone serenely going along
as fast as speed limits wink at, but
my life is good within speed limits,
my life is fabulous if it’s much shortened
by someone in a flat gold car
who looked away to their screen
for a split moment, looked away
from a forgettable song
that cut off when our cars touched
and I’m gone and forgotten
as a sparkled firework on a long ago
Fourth of July that meant something
back then, something
not to be shrugged at,
someone to be ignored
except after death
when they will say
he was a good man though
not meant, really,
for these times.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
How Not To Do Anything
Think about when to pull back
the window shades. Step to it:
using the cords, level the blades of the shades
just so. It’s grey outside, no sun yet.
The lavender flowers, the white flowers,
some with pistils just as bright
and others, stamens brown to black,
sitting side by side, waiting for the bees
to come. Step to it: go outside,
it’s just about dawn and there’s nothing indoors
that you need to do. In fact, why you’d ever thought
there was something you’d need to do indoors
is a mystery. Today, there’s no
mystic crystal revelation here;
the old songs, chestnuts of your youth,
vanish in perfect silence. You turn off
the radio and shut your imperfect eyes.
The flowers await your presence, or they don’t.
But you love them, or something like that.
You blink once, hoping it will mean
something to them, but it’s unknown
for now if it does. You blink a second time.
This is the second time.
Has anything happened?
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
What The Old One Dreams
The cat is awake,
looking for food, purring
almost silently.
Blood pressure
a tad high, blood sugar less so, and
I’ve lost another three pounds.
I am lost without
a damn thing to do
in the whole damn world,
but I’m getting better,
or so the doctors say.
I think I must say the same
or risk it — all of it.
So I keep busy. I try
not to think about it,
my life and death,
my damaged heart,
my blown-out brain.
I can’t think about it,
after all, without screeching
to a halt.
The halt comes whenever
I close my ruined, repaired eyes.
So I keep them open until
I fall asleep. Then, I wake up
and do all this again.
It gets old so fast.
This morning I remember
my dream; I was a student
in a failing high school in New Jersey,
making gentle, raucous friends;
riding around in a Jeep;
smoking weed and laughing,
always laughing. Then
I woke up. Went through
my morning routine
of testing and shaking my head
at the results.
It gets old so fast
I don’t have time
to think about the dream
while I sit around
and think, or not,
of what I have to do
or not do. But
I think about it.
Yes, I do. I think about it
and about taking
one catastrophic step
toward determining
if that dream has legs
or not, if it can carry me
anywhere I’m not,
anywhere but here.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T
Bloodsong
My blood,
that flood within,
that unceasing flow
of dark red and almost blue —
though it remains hidden,
I will not see blue as it
blushes upon instant exposure
to oxygen — it all comes out
red, red with sugar and
panic at first
and then settles into
ordinariness;
my blood, that stream,
that river beaten by my heart
into moving — until that day
when it slows and then
adjusts to a new
ordinariness, a stillness
I will not fathom then
or ever;
I wonder about it,
blankness of time everlasting
afterward until somehow
I am awakened into a new
ordinariness, a refreshed
sense of wonder, risen anew
into love and hate and lust
and every day a sense that
this has never happened
ever before, my blood
singing with it
as if it were a virgin awakening.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T
Georgia
Georgia, girl
or state or country,
I’m sorry;
I shouldn’t apologize to you,
you with your flat back
leaning against the rest
of the land like
you’re tired of being;
Georgia, you are
a meaningless name
right now, just something
plucked from a screen
recalled at a random time,
pictured now as a young girl
waiting for me, or
a cold nation somewhere else, or
a warm state
swimming in peaches,
or other stereotyped figures
I made up in childhood;
I know now that I know you
only this way and my choosing you now
doesn’t negate the fact that
I don’t know what the hell
you mean to me, if anything.
You are a word and I trade in words
as if each single word was a coin
or a bill and I can spend or save it
as I please. Georgia,
forgive me; I’m sure
you solidly mean something
specific to someone
at the moment but
to me you are just another
pair or sounds slipping
from me, from my tongue
this time, no lips needed,
naming a country, a state,
a girl I never knew in real life,
an imaginary thing
attached to a word I know
anew, right now as if
I was hearing it for the first time,
sound sticking to me
as if I’d invented the word, Georgia,
as if a name was fresh and new
waiting to be attached to something
then released to this wide, wide world.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T
Getting Old
I am sagging
where I sit, loose boned
and blemished, into
a remarkable sameness
with others like me
who cry in their coffee
and wait to fade away.
Everyone is forgetting me,
everything I stood for.
I am standing here waiting
for them to sweep by
and leave me in their wake,
standing here waiting for
anything to notice me.
I worry about my clothes,
my health, my choices for music
and reading and television.
I am this close to not understanding
the language. I am so far
from what I thought home
would be.
I would panic
if I thought it would help me
catch up. Instead
I sit here, waiting for
a signal to catch my eye,
but it won’t. At least
I’m certain of that.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T
Fear Is In The Details
Did I forget to mention in detail
the armaments of
the other side, how
they have guns to counter
us, even if we have guns
ourselves? How their guns
outweigh ours, how they laugh
when we struggle and die?
Did I forget the minutiae
of their blades and cuffs,
the stunted shortened imaginations
of their followers and supporters,
living in a land they call free
when all it does is trap those
who are truly wild, and totally free,
public with their wildness
and freedom?
I forgot to say it, how matter of factly
they sneer at those of us
who never wanted trouble
and offered themselves
as objects to be seen as
ordinary, normal, boring even;
how easily they mock us
and torture us and kill us
as if we were barely ideas
or shadows of ideas.
We fear them in our hurry
to be all we are;
they fear us in their panic
to shore up the edges between us;
they fear us
as we fear them —
this whole land is awash in fear;
there is a storm coming
in the details,
and no one here can say
when they will be swept up
in them, sanitized
for the comfort of others
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T
Blue Jay Way
A Telecaster on the stand
next to me:
two single-coil
pickups, one three –
way switch, a volume
and a tone knob:
that’s it. A slab
of wood mass-configured
to amplify sound
and make sonic magic
and I can’t think
of anything
to do with it.
Saturday morning: old songs
on the radio — Beatles,
to be specific. The DJ
plays a rare German pressing
of “Magical Mystery Tour.”
Strangely don’t feel
the pumping urgency
to seize the guitar and struggle
on, and on, until
I tire of the work involved
and put it back —
instead,
I sit. As if
the black and white
of the Telecaster
itself makes the fatigue.
As if I don’t dare
pick it up and try.
This house is so
quiet except for
the Beatles and my heart
so loud I can barely hear
anything else,
anything worthy
of repeating,
anything worthy
of writing down.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~`
T
On Writing
The screen says,
“Add a post.” But
I can’t write a damn thing,
except for this and perhaps
the next phrase, and
then the next.
None of it is
a poem, no matter
how much I wish it was —
none of it matters,
as does a poem when captured
in midnight and rushed
to a page. When one
reads such a poem
afterwards, I sit back
and sigh, “there it is;
there’s what I
meant to say,”
and then I seize my guitar
and play clumsy notes,
my hand stumbling.
I wrote something, though.
It is not a song. It is
a poor sort of poetry
laden with a lack of music.
I sit back and sigh. There
will be another chance
to get it right. There will be
(likely) another poem, a second
from now, an eon from now.
The poem yet to come
is the only poem
that keeps me alive.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
onward,
T
At The Piano Bar
With you there
at the piano making
music. Your pudgy
fingers somehow
impossibly stretching
to reach the chords,
the sure way you find
the correct keys.
I sit there
between jubilation and despair
inside — a brief pilgrimage
from one mode to the other;
a move from great joy
to an envy almost as great,
my senses slipping and bleeding
between the two.
Meanwhile you continue
to play. You seem oblivious
to my swinging to your music,
a beat behind the tones,
looking like a failure to
the outside but knowing
I am in there, right there
with the swing.
I continue to hear it
I find the beat for a few seconds,
no more — and as I connect
and make right with it
you do not see but continue
to play. We are in sync
for a few seconds and God
feels it and touches me at least,
if not you, though your playing
seems to agree and for that moment
when we are in sync,
it feels like the world stops turning.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T
The Day Before The Day Before
First,
you go to the window
closest to the street
and open it
wide. Then you turn the radio
up, way up. Soundtrack
suddenly expands to
an acoustic guitar; simple,
resonant as last night.
There are
birds out in the trees
of indistinct species
who fall to silence for a
moment. You assume
they are listening. When
they resume — single
sharp notes, clipped
off at the end —
you know they aren’t.
They don’t care at all
as long as you stay inside,
and you do for now. You flop
into a faded armchair
to wonder at how you used to be
when you faced the world
entirely whole. Do you
prefer this quiet
before death, before breakfast
even, or are you just
tired of sameness now
as you sit, like you did
the day before and the day before,
back to the day you lost yourself
to a pounding in your head
and the word “stroke?”
You don’t remember that day
at all, you try to recall it
and you don’t even know
if there were birds.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T
Completion
Did you wonder much
about this when you were younger —
did you think hard about
where you would live and how
air would come to feel on your face
in your final moment?
If you are like me, you did not.
You worried about small things,
but never about
what might remain constant
and consistent in those misty days
when this past would fade.
Still, there must have been one day
when you sat under a maple
in you side yard, maybe
at sunset or under
a long shadow of your house;
four of you together or you alone
and immediate needs
slipped off your skin
until you were alone with
a future you, alone
or together
with different people,
and there were thoughts
and feelings and a hunger
and a thirst, a vague longing
you could not articulate —
did you long for it? Did you
wonder about whether anything
like this would happen to you?
It happens now, everything
in a rush, your tongue pressing
your teeth, your skin alive
with a sense of living, of dying,
one second of breath between
that moment and its recognition
as completion of your time
here and whether you are alone
or with friends or even
in a crowd of strangers
you will think back and say
oh…oh…
to yourself.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
T
The Words
Here are the words to the poem.
They don’t sound like words, though.
They are sounds that sound like words,
but they do not share their meanings easily.
So how can one call them words?
A bird makes sounds like this.
A sword carries meaning on its edge
like those birds carry their sound.
Neither sounds like a word,
but they are understood.
These are the words, the sounds.
Have understanding
without the words.
The sword has a meaning,
as do the birds.
They don’t need the words.
~~~~~~~~~~~
T
Dark Matter 