Dark Matter

In Austin
someone I know once threw me
a small bag of weed
as I stood in a hotel elevator
surrounded by 
cops on vacation.

I’ve been to some
cracked moments
while on the Journey.

In Venice
I stared down 
rapacious gondoliers
and watched
from an unsafe distance
as students
in Piazza San Marco
rioted for lower tuition.

I’ve been close
to the fur-gloved hands
of Fate often enough.

Sat at a university president’s desk
during an occupation of 
the administration building
in Amherst. Was in the rush of bodies
that broke the glass doors when we 
stormed it. Was one of the last ones
to leave next day at sunrise,
weary and jubilant all the way
back to the dorm; cannot for the life of me
recall why we were there.

I have forgotten more of my life
than I have lived, I think. Forgotten,
I think, how close to the front lines
I’ve come without ever engaging,
how clueless I have sometimes been
about the breath of history and disaster
on my neck.

I watched the Towers fall from less
than two hundred miles away and watched
friends die on television as they fell
and sat in an empty office for hours after
breaking the news by phone to other friends,
some of whom could see the smoke
from their rooftops, some of whom
were thanking their stars
for the blessing of escape
until they heard from me. 

I have been the Angel Of Death,
posting open letters to the dimming light
in beloved eyes,
all in the name of holding on
to whatever I could
when so much else 
has slipped.

When I was a boy
we had a washing machine
too small for the loads
we stuffed it with and by the side
of the washing machine

we kept a maple stick
cut from a tree we’d cut before that
to heat the house

and when we washed clothes
we’d come back into the basement
after it started and use that stick
to push the dry clothes down
into the water and the suds.

Over time it became smooth
and was bleached white and all
the bark was worn away as if it had
been whittled. It may sit there
in my parent’s home
next to the machine still as far as
I know,

but I am certain that I have become
like that stick that I have suddenly recalled
out of nowhere for no apparent
reason. Maybe I feel whittled
by the constant wash of living like this,
living a life too small
for the loads it’s been asked to handle,
stuffed with them over and over and yes,
I’ve been worn to a splinter trying to cope,

but I’m still here, 
a bleach-sanded artifact
of what was once 
a grown-up, cut down
and sectioned out
and plunged over and over into 
agitation, but somehow
useful still, and perfected
for my purpose, and good
to the touch;

how can anyone say
neither the stick nor I
have not fulfilled
our destiny?

A small thudding
in the room. One of
the cats is staring
at the window.

One of the daily woodpeckers
is on the feeder and it’s quiet enough
to hear the bird — can’t tell if it’s
the male or the female — slamming 
its beak through the grid into the suet
over and over again.
I get close enough to see it’s the 
male and his partner’s out on the
farther feeder doing the same.

I don’t know much of them for certain, of course.
I know their colors and what the books
tell me they mean. I know there’s one
of each human-gendered example out there
and they come every day like this to feed.
I don’t know if they are a mating pair
or even if it might be different pairs
switching off all season long.  
I know both cats are fascinated by them
and I might be too.  I don’t know
why it matters or why I become anxious
on the rare days they do not visit. 

I know that even when I’m dead broke
I keep suet and seed cakes in full supply.

I don’t know where the money to pay the bills
is coming from 
but I know two cats and two birds
who stay satisfied 
and entertained
and when the fat gets low outside,
I know how fast I step into the snow and cold
to fill it up again.

As matter-of-factly as could be,
they announced the Closure

everyone had been seeking
would be here very soon,

on a yet to be determined date.
No one had really ever thought

they’d get there in this lifetime,
but here it was, officially, with fanfare,

paper rain, and balloons. Closure
at last. The Emotional 

End Game would be played
to a stop on a big field, nationally and 

globally broadcast, and no 
ties would be allowed. There would be

clear winners and obvious losers,
appropriate prizes and genuine remorse.

We got ready. Cleaned out
the closets and pulled strings of lights

from the basements, tried to cobble
up some festivity for this once in a lifetime

festival of Closure. We sat the kids down
and told them back stories to explain

why Closure was so important. We had
threads and comments running 

for days, so much so that social media
shut down frequently, and we scrambled 

off to cafes and bars to keep the dialogue
going. Some tried to squeeze in

complicated developments of ongoing
dramas to get them included in what was coming;

some dug up the past, some projected
into the future. Truth be told,

none of us knew what to expect
until yesterday when with great ceremony

they came forward and told us Closure would happen
a week from Thursday after the sun

goes down, after the lights come on;
then we’ll see a show.  

For now we’re all just sitting 
tight. No one’s fighting,

sighing or grieving much. We hold
tight to those we love in a semblance

of peace and harmony. Nod to each other
on the street. Make love as needed

and agreed upon, step into solitude
whenever we desire.  Closure is

on the way. We don’t know how it will feel
but we are practicing, and uneasy lie the heads

that must shut all these open, creaking doors
one week from Thursday, once and for all.

In a strong moment
I burn an old bridge

but find myself on the side
of that from which

I was trying to get free
and now the only choice

is to leap from a bluff
and fall into a cold river

at the bottom of a chasm
If all that doesn’t kill me

then I’ll have to get across
and climb what seems like

miles to the side
when I might be free

unless that which I’m escaping
surrounds me and already

has gotten there and 
escape was always an illusion

so in fact I have two choices
or rather one choice and a

modification
I could die in the fall 

and be free that way
or if Magick exists

I could without warning
fly up and over and land

wherever I please
and in fact never land again

until I starve and fall 
dead to the hard earth

Whichever I choose
it will start with a leap

I toss my torch into the gorge
ahead of me

bend my knees
and look up

Not for me the beautiful as
defined by the finders
of heart-shapes in
their daily bread, or

the peaceful as defined
by the beach-bound, the 
ocean-drunk,
the rainbow-struck.

For me the rim of night
at the end of
the lit driveway, out beyond
the circle of streetlight,

is the essence worth
my celebration, a boundary
between the acceptable
and the frightful; whatever

there is to be said about
the liminal, the soft lines
of division, I must be the 
one to say it: the one to call it

beautiful. Something 
has moved into that realm
between, and it seems
to be beckoning — it seems

to know me, or perhaps
it is me. I am reaching
for it, as I always have.
Neither for me the brightside,

nor do I embrace its 
opposite. I stand between
and hold out my hand to
this being crouching there:

I offer it peace. It lies down
to await my touch ahead of
my desire to name and know
this being in between.

I am relieved to
think about this, to say
out loud

that killing myself
trying to survive
while doing the work

might be the greatest service
I could offer the world, and while
I have thought it before

with a hint of self-pity
and bizarre hope of help
from others who somehow

understood me better than 
I knew myself without my saying
a word, tonight I say it

feeling the shortness of time
in this dimming world, the urgency
of the need to push myself 

by wish and will into danger
and depth — and if only the 
work survives the plunge,

so be it. Let there be
an end to me in service
to seeking the good 

and drawing it to the surface
from the cold wrong
we are drowning in today.

Let me sink away if what rises
from where I sink floats,
high and bright, above the tides.