Some people love
the look of an eagle
so much they forget
the terrible things
an eagle
could do to them
with that
noble head
and those tenacious feet.
The eagle
will be mostly unconcerned
with those people
until they
pose
a threat,
and then, then
we will see
what happens:
the gripping and biting,
the tearing.
The panic. The blind support
for more of the same
as long as it’s not done
to them.
Your head
wants to know what to do next,
and you can’t tell it
anything.
You can’t even tell it
who is listening to its questions,
if it is not the head itself. Maybe
it’s one of those old distinctions
at work — heart, head, hands.
Perhaps your hands are talking to your head,
or perhaps the heart has its own voice
and that is what is bugging the head for action.
The bigger question: where are you, exactly,
in the mix? Do we need to pull
the soul into the inquiry? Or perhaps this is
a case of ego, id, superego at play;
anima or animus goading the persona
to action while the shadow sits aside chuckling.
All this speculation gets you is panic,
is a spur of the moment step out the door
in a T-shirt and pajama pants
in mid-January. You have no idea
who’s doing what inside your shell;
maybe, just maybe, you’re just plain nuts;
but look: a coyote
trotting down the sidewalk
on the other side of the street,
much to your mild surprise.
It does not look back at you as it passes.
As if it should. As if in any space
where Coyote runs
you, you hero,
you man of the hour,
could mean a thing —
you go back inside
shivering and
brimful of silence.
A brutal word
has come to me.
It seems to hold some truth;
I don’t know for certain.
I didn’t invite it,
yet it seems to be
inside me,
digging itself
a home.
I am trying
not to think of it
or say it out loud.
To do either
would be to allow it
to claim a place in my life;
even more dire,
if it required
a definition from me
I’d be forced to
give it more meaning
than is proper
for a man like me —
who would I be
if I understood
such a word,
its use, its context-
making energy?
When the word
begins to chafe
against my resistance
and demand that I voice it,
I have to hold my tongue
in ice tongs I keep
for this purpose — cold
teeth biting into
stubborn muscle.
I sit in a standoff
with this rude particle
of language, hand clenched
around a torture tool, refusing
to yield to the word’s claim
upon me — its demand
for time and space
in my mouth and beyond.
If I cannot win
and the word triumphs,
burning itself
into the hard poem it seems
to be made for,
I may be a better,
humbler person.
I may in fact
have told the truth —
but that is
not at all
what I came here for,
and not at all
what I came to say.
I just work here
with my feet on the ground
head on the ground
eyes just clear enough of the ground
to weep at seeing the sky
when I wake up for work
I just work here
cleaning up after the sparkle dogs
of the glitter folks
I just work here
on behalf of someone’s imagination
about the nobility of following my bliss
right into a pit brimming with broken backs
I just work here
not that far from the sky
and a sparkle dog of my own
(at least that’s what’s printed on my pay stubs)
I just work here
work I said
but they say voting is my job too
I need to vote sometimes so I vote
(about work)
and they say I need to kill sometimes
in the work (for the work)
so I kill occasionally
I just work here
and I cheer the killers if I’m not kiling
I just work here
high on shrugs and winks and nods
I just work here
with my feet on the neck of another
and the blood of the past in my drinks
that taste like hell
(it’s work to choke it down
and I work here)
I just work here
in the forges of the gods
in the factories of the demigods
in the cube farms of the priests
in the bank vaults of the faithful
in the gardens of the dog catchers
in the still-faintly-blue seas of the mariner warriors
in the starved ranks of the indigent
in the desiccated homes of the criers and screamers
I just work here and vote here and kill here
and vote for the killers to do it in my name
and work is work and the sparkle dogs
lick my hand now and then
for love or for taste-test
I don’t know
I don’t ask
I just work here
where they barely
tell me anything
I don’t already expect to be a lie
Every everything
An onion full of stench
Sometimes appetizing
No telling when or how
Every everything
A packet no one’s read
A black hole paperwork
An answer in there somewhere
Dream or how it just is
Fantasy or operating system
Direction or illusory urge
Did the land itself just heave
Every everything
A doctor with a Doberman face
A mistake on its knees for your pleasure
Doors that open on walls that move aside
Welcome to the newest of new
Every everything’s changed
Will you carry a daisy or a dagger
We will need both
Listening to
my old guitar
in better hands
than mine
causes no jealousy,
only wonder;
it seems that every song
ever played upon it
has been hiding in there
and all of them
are now ringing
around this room
as if every yesterday
has found its voice again
in those hands and
those strings.
If I let envy
stop my ears tonight, I fear
I may not be worthy
of seeking those songs
for myself tomorrow.
Mystery
upon mystery,
how we force
some creatures
into becoming
our dearest symbols;
then when the symbols
become extinct,
our mythology
grow stronger, as if
the death of eagles
is irrelevant to the death
of all that we have made
the eagles stand for,
as if we never cared
for eagles in the first place
beyond what we
could make of them.
Just uploaded “A Head Of Flames,” an eBook of my selected poems from 2019, for download by my Patreon subscribers.
As you know the name of the blog is “Dark Matter,” but the URL is “radioactiveart.blog.”
Here’s where the name came from. The poem goes back over 20 years, and can be found in the “Poems From The Slam Years” page on the blog if you want to read it.
I’ve had the music for it for a while, but only sat down to record it tonight.
Hope you enjoy.
I’m going to take a short break from adding poems here, and from writing in general.
I’m not exactly in a creative lull; more that I’ve got a few things going on that need more attention from me and health issues are draining my energy for all endeavors. While normally writing is the last thing that I reduce time for, it’s time I tried something different to see if it helps.
For those of you who read daily, many thanks. You keep me going, and I’ll be back soon. I promise.
In the meantime, there are over 3300 poems on this blog going back to 2010, and more available before that in the archives that were transferred from my old LiveJournal pages. I’d love to have you check those out.
In addition, there is an ongoing community on my Patreon site (https://www.patreon.com/TonyBrown) where I discuss various aspects of the work. I’ve collected some of my poems into eBooks there, and will be releasing my selected poems of 2019 shortly. It’s only $1 a month to join at the most basic level, and that gets you access to video blogs, new music releases, and the like. Higher donations get higher rewards, of course.
I look forward to seeing you all again soon.
Onward,
Tony
If you dance with The Ghost in
a miasma of brown and red
If you stumble whirl
into their pit of mad violence
If you have no love
for those fallen underfoot
If you cannot bring yourself
to lift those broken to safety
If your fear of The Ghost
stifles your love of Living
If you cannot kiss without panic
and The Ghost insists
on tonguing your twitching mouth
If you cannot smile without screaming
and The Ghost demands
both smile and scream
If you fall writhing upon hearing all this
because you know The Ghost
knowing neither name nor face
If you are not yourself The Ghost
how can you keep dancing
knowing you are dancing in blood
merely because it is easy
merely because you know this music so well
you need not even listen
I keep seeking music
in language, meaning
in both; all days
I struggle, most days
I fail, sometimes I catch
a tune, now and then
I fully sing, more rarely
something I sing
moves someone else,
maybe something
has changed somewhere
as a result, though I’m unsure
of that and do not trust
my hope for it. This is
what I am, what I have been,
what I have given myself to —
and now? Nothing within
feels like music. Nothing within
but noise I’m not skilled enough
to transform, and to sit in silence
hums only of death
which is more meaning
than song,
and no language at all.
Get out of bed
and step outside
in short sleeves today
when only a few degrees
keep the rain
from becoming snow.
Your skin asks hard questions
of you: why now, why today,
why is this necessary?
It’s not that you are
deathly cold, but it is
raw enough out here
to drive you to full waking;
why, considering everything,
in the midst of all things
being on fire,
did you crave
the routine misery of cold and wet?
Was it to remind you
of other
possibilities?
In this slim hole
named home
angels of discord
jostle for primacy,
raise up fresh dreams,
conjure new hybrids, misshapen
offspring of dreaded ancestors
and fearsome strangers
who somehow look familiar;
bring to mind names
we are afraid to utter
for fear of them turning,
smiling, nodding,
calling us kin.
Do you find yourself
wanting to run away? Do you
long for new and open country,
unfenced, empty and clear?
Do you find yourself yearning
to move somewhere new
and become someone new?
To escape these bitter demons?
More to the point: are you certain
you aren’t one of them yourself? Are you
running from yourself? Is it possible
that you are at heart, when faced with
what you consider unspeakable,
a colonizer?
how are you
he said,
worming forward
from the foot of your bed
to where he could
see you better, him being
almost blind from years
underneath
the corner dresser
in the dust where
you’d forgotten him
that time when he fell
off the bed and rolled
under there and now
somehow he’s back
as familiar and needy as ever
but you aren’t having any
and when he gets close enough
you toss the covers
and off he flies again
into the corner
where he has lived
although you thought
he’d gone away years ago
and now you see he’s not
so what does that mean about you
that he’s back haunting you
getting this close to the new you
you’ve worked so hard to create
how are you, he said blindly
as if he couldn’t see how different
you are now
proof of that being
how quickly you fall back to sleep
and how little he shows up
in subsequent dreams
but in the morning
you move the dresser
sweep underneath it
and everything else in the room
leaving the curtains and blinds
flung wide and the windows open
for hours in an exorcism
that’s worked before and you hope
will work again because
this is what you deserve
a night free of his voice
and a home as fresh as a good wind
Dark Matter 