Dark Matter

Thinking of
all the talent show
also-rans
you never hear from again

(unless by chance one of them
makes it big and then
how the news loves to bring it up
as in, wow, looks like the show
got it wrong, look how this one
was the real talent and 
ooh wee ooh, we told you so
back then, although in fact
they didn’t), but then
there are the others

who go back to more or less
the same old same old,
the used-to-be that rises up
to cradle them or swallow them.

For most it’s no doubt fine and they settle in
with memory and love for the moment,
the not-even-quite-Warhol moment
that gets mentioned now and then
by locals when they sing the anthem
at a high school game or tear up the floor
at a family wedding or jump on stage
to sing at the village bar with a cover band:
c’est la vie say the old folks, etc., etc….

of course, there are no doubt a few
who crumble like cookies into dust
and use words like robbed and contender
and should have been and rigged,
who groan for decades afterward about injustice.

I do not know
whether I would have been
contented or embittered
in the aftermath
had I ever had the courage 
to step to the stage,
even as I mutter
“too late, too late”
while refusing to consider
that I might have been
none-of-the-above,

that I might have won.

Before money itself was a thing of beauty
Before money was a godly masterpiece
Before money came in waves across horizons
Before money opened its mouth upon all our past
Before money swallowed identity and shat out sales
Before money landed on us like a weighted blanket
Before money slept so long upon us we went numb

we had Animal and Stone and Element and Vision

We had Tree and Dogstar and Sigil and Knowing
We had Smoke and Herb and Sea-smoke and Sea-grass
We had Bark and Order and Beat and Bird-call
We had Cry and Enter and Pass-phrase and Secret
We had Ghost-church and Bell-chant and Tooth and Fur
We had Long-love and Mountain-crown and Reverberations

of whispers and prayers and the simple act of life as prayer

Prayer we did not segregate
into select moments
instead of embracing them
as they subsumed our timeline 

Prayer we did not expect to work
if it was not supposed to work
within great scope of life
as seen from beyond us

Prayer from before 
one could pray for money
from before one could think 
of money as beauty

Prayer centered in Animal 
and Stone and Element and Vision
from before the need for Money
or anything called Prayer

A door in front,
a door in back;
go in or out a window
if you choose (don’t let
the cat out is all I ask);
a wall could be taken out, 
the roof could be raised
and you could fly away,
the floor could fall in
and you’d be in the cellar,
you could easily climb out
of that; all those
are more or less available
right now and I am leaving out
the fanciful such as magic potions;
one could become invisible 
and vanish
without leaving at all;
point to be taken
from this is that escape
is not only not futile
but so easy. So easy
if you are a little creative
and have some care
for what you might do
to others as you go.

Toward the end he put his past
into a jar and closed it tight.
Put his drama and affection
away in glass reasoning that
if it fell and broke
from his aged clumsiness
it would get everywhere and 
he might cut himself on it,
so best to tuck it far away 
in the back of a corner cabinet
in his basement, a brokedown box
of shelves left by the former owner,
now deceased. 

Now that he was free of that
he could sit all day and not do
a damn thing. Not even
barely breathe. Not hang out
with friends. Maybe once in a while
touch a cat, pick his skin. He did not
imagine anything. Mice ran around his feet
and edged closer to climbing all over him.
It became clear that he didn’t care.

His flesh hardened 
to gray wood. His eyes
marbled into dull stone.
Got in and out of bed
like a log rolled off a truck
until the day he saw no reason
to get out of bed and stopped.

The jar in his basement
might still be there. If you can find it
among all the jars of old nails
and slips of folded paper
holding dried tomato seeds
kept for a spring that didn’t came,
if you can find it among the spiders,
please discard it as you are all the rest

as that was how
he would have wanted it
if he could have remembered
what wanting was.

what you recall about
the last time
someone said

“just be yourself
and you’ll be fine”
is that your first reaction was

“if I am myself
I am by definition
not at all fine;”

this was followed by 
a recognition
of how hard it was

to be someone
you didn’t know
all that well.

that said,
how do you know
that being yourself wouldn’t work

to heal you?
to bring you to life?
to tell yourself the truth?

I’m going to assume
that somewhere a couple
is making love tonight 
in spite of all the ways
the world is ending;
going to assume

that they have been and will be
tangled and drenched
and strenuous and motionless
as befits their moods and desires,
and although they know how few days
are left for any chance
at such a night again,
they are fully present now;

assume that past and future
are just hard words
for harder times
behind and before them;

assume in my weary 
know-it-all core
that I’ve missed something
they have found,

and it’s there as well
for me to find
if I choose to seek it.

I heave the suitcase from the hatch
to the sidewalk
outside the rehab center.

My rider thanks me 
and shakes my hand.
I wish him luck on wherever

his journey takes him next.
He wheels the heavy bag toward
the glass doors. 

This place is located
deep among broad fields
on an unmarked road.

Dark institutions in the near distance
might be hospitals, might be prisons,
might be something else again.

I drive out in the dark. No streetlights.
Find I can’t trust my eyes;
what is road, what is not? 

I must not be alone
in my confusion as to
the location of the road:

here is a sign:
“Vehicles must stay on pavement.
Violators subject to arrest.”

They don’t make it easy.
You’d think there would be
lights everywhere out here

but maybe no one voluntarily
comes to this place
at night, and the dark

is allowed
to swallow those
who lose their way.

Behind me,
the lighted lobby
of the one secluded building.

Ahead, my good headlights
and my memory: how
I got here, how to get home.

I don’t remember it
Ninety percent of it
Has fallen from me

How I was born
How I was nursed
How I started to walk and talk

I’m told my first word was “apple”
not “mama”
but I don’t recall it myself

That memory
might be on the ground or
might have found its way
into a waterway and floated
into the sea and now is part
of something bigger

Important clues are lost
So I make them up

I think of rose lions
darting through purple grasslands after me
Imagine darling swords
swallowed by lean women dressed
as medieval fish from the margins 
of old maps
who then hummed strangled songs
to me as they bounced me on 
their rough knees

and taught me how to grow up

I force myself to believe
these myths of who I am because
ninety percent of all I am
is as unremarkable as it is forgotten

Somewhere someone’s found what I lost
and holds it up to the light on a beach
far from here
closes their fist around it then
relaxes the grip
and tosses it back to the sand
to walk on without a second thought
about that crummy little trash-nugget

Meanwhile I choose to say 
I was a dragon
before I could walk

Smell the burning applewood
Taste it always on my tongue

will not do this for a week
or a month

or a remainder
of life or so. turning away

to practice instead
my eating skills.

find a way to feed
on less (as there will be less.)

writing’s a bad food,
anyway. texture too papery,

mouthfeel, pure ashes.
adds fat in subtle places.

it doesn’t show
but oh, the weight.

when I stop
some will scoff and some

will wave hands and flutter
and some, some will insist:

hey, you owe me. you owe me
all your gifts. 

you call this agony
of process on display

a gift. I never understood
that. I’m hungry. I’m starved.

look at what I’m giving you.
this is what I owe? you want this?

such a poor menu
I have been offering.

none of this
is good for any of us.

It doesn’t matter
how many times
you’ve told yourself
not to share yourself
so easily 
and so often;

you cannot help opening
your barn door mouth,
letting the horses out
to trample the fields.

It’s too late to call them back.

The sunset, at least,
is perfect: red layers,
pink layers, fire glow low
to the west.

It’s too late to call your words
back from their wild run,
but at least it’s warm
where you are
for at least
a few moments more,

before night’s cold sets in
and you have to sit there
silent and alone with regret,
listening to them
galloping far away
without you.

A man burning paper in a dish,
waiting for magic solutions. 

The smoke sets off an alarm.
An entity snickers behind the kitchen door.

Damn, the man says, flapping his hands,
grabbing the broom to reset the detector

with the end of the handle. 
Damn it all to hell, he says, everyone’s

going to wake up and know
I was pursuing such foolishness.

The entity in the corner
whispers to him that he should open a window.

He thinks it’s a good idea.  He thinks
he came up with it. He opens the window.

Out with the bad, in with the good, he mutters.
It’s as much an incantation as “damn it all to hell”

and he doesn’t realize that the whole cascade
of what is about to follow is his fault

for listening uncritically to whatever sounds
like a good idea at the time. 

The good comes in
and the bad goes out into the world.

The entity easily absorbs the good.
The man eventually closes the window.

Now he’s got so much complexity
to deal with, and nowhere to go. 

Magic, he mutters;
pointless, perhaps non-existent.

It’s too late for that, though,
and he doesn’t even know it.

Old saying: cheaters
never prosper.
In fact they do.
They always do.

I don’t know how to trust.
I don’t know why I should.

To ask for help 
is to open my chest
and show all the knives
I’ve stored there —

not in boxes
or sheaths but bare-bladed.
Over time, nicks
have become open wounds
and I won’t show them
to just anyone.

I dream of canyons
the way some folks
dream of oceans:
I want to sit beside them,
stare out over them 
for a long time,
then plunge in. 

I don’t know why I think.
I don’t know why I’ve bothered.

Old saying: what goes around
comes around. If that’s so,
it takes too long. 

What I know of desertion
would empty a book. I know this,
I have seen the library
where they are kept.

It isn’t cheating 
till it comes around
and fills a book
with knives then
tosses the book
into a canyon
and calls it a day.

How does one prosper,
you ask.
One doesn’t,
I respond, all the way
down.