My tongue’s thick as
a vintage guitar neck.
Speech scented with whisky,
the Devil’s sweat. Give me any topic
and my opinion comes out
with bent notes. My whole world view
is a flatted fourth string,
a little bit of matchbook in its nut-slot
to keep it from buzzing against the frets;
pawn shop tickets in the cheap case
tell a story of loss and gain. Put plain:
I’m a man of blue words and I don’t think
a thing has gone wrong in my life
that twelve bars and a crossed road
couldn’t fix or at least make pretty.
100 Blue Words
Talking To My Children
Originally published in 2002 in my chapbook, “In Here Is Out There.”
Original title, “Talking To My Son About The Night.”
I have been thinking:
what do I tell my children
about Evil? Something wicked
in these days stirs,
and I cannot lie to them
and say shh, be still,
all is well and safe.
What shall I say to them of Evil?
I shall say:
it is a young man
holding a knife to a lamp.
He adores how it separates
skin from flesh,
sinew from bone.
He knows that when it is sharp enough
he can see the body’s coherence
fleeing before its edge.
I shall say:
it is a woman
leaning out of her window
on her elbows.
She sees something she does not favor.
She slips out the back door
to carry her gossip to the slaughterhouse.
Someone there will take the news to the mechanics
who will set the wheels of the juggernaut
for maximum kill.
On her way home
she will wipe her face with a stolen liver.
Behind her she will leave a trail
of rumors and cartilage.
I shall say
it is a gaggle of children
trapped in a dream
where they are made to suckle straws
filled with their own blood.
They purse their pale lips,
draw the red up, columns red rising,
red cresting in their mouths,
falling red into their stomachs,
such sharp nourishment,
such a simple lesson:
living through this
requires such a meal,
a simple meal for a simple terror.
They have learned
to devour themselves.
I shall say:
it is in and on all of us.
We stink of rich meats, phobias, fires,
restless pride, secrecy.
We inhabit our stereotypes,
are slowed to the speed of custom,
our houses crawl with indignation,
our ferocity is unbridled by logic,
we create atomic proverbs to live by.
A man decides to force himself
on the next random passer-by;
a boy slits an ancestor’s throat;
we shake our heads, we cry out
for safety, we wait for it
and it never comes; instead comes
the Evil: violent, clean cut, simple, fast;
and then, somehow,
we tell ourselves
that we can live forever
this way.
And after that?
After that, what can I possibly say
to them?
I will say to them:
children, it is slander
to speak of this life
and only note the Evil.
I will say to them:
children, my children,
look at the stars.
I will say to them:
children, my children,
whenever you despair
of this world, take comfort in the night:
go out, lie back, and look at the stars.
I will say yes, there is always horror afoot
by day and by night,
but always, always, we have the stars,
and if ever you despair,
look up at those hints
of the hoped-for forever
and tell yourself:
I am a star,
and I do not
shine alone.
Unveiling
You laugh at me, say it’s not
the apocalypse, say it’s not good
that I should be this worried.
I know it’s not the apocalypse.
That’s your word. I have my own word
for this. I call it the Unveiling —
which is, by the way, what your word
originally meant. You’ve turned the thought
of secrets revealed into the end of the world
and I think that’s right for you, but not for me,
and not for so many of us who see this world
the way we always have, though now
your secrets are out in the open and
that might indeed be the end of your world
and the beginning of ours. It’s going
to hurt like childbirth. It’s going to be
soaked in blood. It might take a long time
but we know that your future is in apocalypse
as ours is in unveiling. Revealed:
in coming years you will be in eclipse
and we will be in ascent. Revealed:
that you are bold today means little
to those who have always known
what you hid from yourself. Revealed:
what’s coming at us today
is a hard kick from a frantic leg
on a dying beast. Revealed:
we know you better
than you have allowed yourself
to know. Revealed, unveiled, exposed:
your backlash is just the same old violence
it ever was, only grown more savage because
it knows how short its time truly is.
A Stopped Clock
Like a stopped clock,
I’m correct only at intervals.
If I were pressed to say when, I’d say
I stopped at 41 and a few months.
Old enough to claim full rights
to grown-up, young enough
to pass for less than that
at select moments,
at least in my head.
Now, years later, I’m old enough
to claim old, young enough
to be dismayed that most everyone
agrees with me, not quite old enough
to be past all care for others’ perceptions.
I look forward to one more moment
of complete synchronization
when this stopped clock will one more time
tell it like it is, and then
most likely will be discarded,
or with any luck be shunted into a dusty box
of broken things with sentimental value,
things no one can quite bring themselves to toss.
The Ghost Caressing My Face
Startled by
a ghost caressing
my face when
I do not believe in
ghosts, so I’m not sure
how to explain this
to my senses beyond this:
I saw a wavering film in the room,
and it had a hand upon my cheek
before it disappeared,
so I will call it a ghost until
I think of a better phrase
for the phenomenon,
just as I do not believe
in fate or luck but still
cross my fingers
and close my eyes
when I’m watching
a baseball game or
the television news.
After all, it may be
that I’ve got it all wrong
and the stars do influence
human events, maybe
the stone I carry
in my medicine bag
means more than just tradition,
maybe prophecies come true
all over the place and I
have gone too far away
from the place where wonder
and awe work true spells,
and sacred magic
is more than a trick or two
to keep a terrified mind
from screaming —
so come on, ghost,
caress my face,
calm me, I don’t care tonight
if you are demon or angel
or something utterly else
we haven’t yet correctly named
for it felt good
to be cared for
by something in this universe
that lately seems so intent
on crushing the last spark
out of our spirits.
Catskills
Chasing a memory tonight
of driving in the Catskills
among thousands of trees
and thousands of whitetail deer
under the infinite cloud of stars
called the Milky Way
Top speed on the narrow roads
was reduced to
as slow as possible
Over half the houses were empty
Many abandoned and neglected
Others shuttered but well kept
and the Milky Way
as bright as it should always be
out there
so far from the city
broadly strung horizon to horizon
thick and visible enough to reinforce
how empty the woods were
of everything but trees and deer
who did not move
when headlights hit them
their numbers giving them
the certainty and the confidence
to stand their ground
Counted 40 while I was stopped
by just one road-clogging herd
Creeping through close enough
to open a window
and (perhaps) touch one then
finding 15 around the next bend
and the next until
before I could reach my destination
I simply stopped counting
in the low hundreds
I learned the next day from a local resident
that this was all dairy country once
Hundreds of farms in its heyday
now down to 35 in all of the county
Most of the rest were simply abandoned
and those pastures gone wild
were perfect habitat
for the whitetails
who had become so numerous
that there were fears
of a die-off coming soon
on the way to regaining
balance
I am thinking of this tonight
while sitting here
dreading the morning news
because I have to try as well
to recall a time when I saw
what it might be like if America
abandoned the land it liked to think of
as its tamed birthright
and let that land re-invent itself
healing into a new balance
under a free and inviolate sky
Watching The River Flow
Patriotism,
that great river fed
by whatever can be dammed
and made to flow its way,
is a drowning flood.
No one can count
all the bodies it holds
in its depths, how many dead
it grinds along its bed
with its implacable current.
Choosing to be oblivious to that
you dip yourself into it, then
climb out and dry yourself
with an ever-convenient flag,
end up sitting on the bank
reveling in its apparent beauty,
choosing to forget
how it has been fed,
how it was turned to
its current course,
how many less fortunate than you
could not climb out
once it had taken them.
Instead, you hum
a Bob Dylan song
about sitting on a bank of sand
with people disagreeing all around.
It’s pleasant to remember
old songs,
sentimental favorites,
at such moments
as the bank of sand
begins, unnoticed,
to crumble out from
under you.
Pushcart nominations…
Every year, journals in the US nominate work they’ve published for potential inclusion in annual collections of the best of the small press called the Pushcart Prize anthologies.
I’ve been nominated twice this year: for “2001 CR-V,” published in Drunk In A Midnight Choir; AND for “Song Fragments From The Brokenhearted Chorus,” a composite poem to which I was thrilled to contribute, published in Radius. (Go there to look at the impressive list of names who were involved in that stunning poem.)
These mark my fifth and sixth nominations, although I’ve never won. Fingers crossed for this year…
Thanks to the editorial staff of those fine journals.
What You Are Asking
You are asking me
not to wince when I am cut.
You are asking me
not to curse in blinding pain.
You demand of me
the bow and scrape of etiquette
as I am blasted.
You suggest that this genocide
should be politely borne — no.
No, because
sometimes hope
is a broken storefront,
a glass storm, a fire
in a public street.
No, because
sometimes survival
is strongest
when it is taken,
not requested.
No, because
asking me to fold my hands
and wait to die,
shunting me
to one side
instead of facing me directly
as I have always faced your knives,
patting my head
and sweetly speaking
that poison suggestion
that I compromise
in the face of an apocalypse
that has been tailored for me alone,
are not things to be borne politely.
No, because
you cannot make me die
unnoticed. No, because
if you kill me off,
at the very least
my loud extinction
will echo in your ears forever
and you will never
know peace
again.
A Diamond Till The End
If this brain softens
any more than it already has
I might have to open my head,
pull it out and lay it out
to dry and re-harden in full sun.
But how to put it back in after
once it’s cooked right?
That’s the kicker.
It would surely take
a shotgun or a hard fall
to get this big bean open
and putting it all back together
and locking it back up after
looks like it would be
its own special hell.
So maybe
as my brain softens
and it becomes harder for me
to concentrate and recall
and speak, I should just accept
this process as inevitable? I don’t
want to. I’m not ready yet.
Some remaining bit of firmware
locked up in the mush is protesting
on my behalf even as I begin
to sink into that plush forgetting.
Mostly, I don’t want to lose
how I feel when I see
your face.
Please — let that
be the last thing to go.
Let that
remain a diamond till the end.
One More Day
I came to a decision
in my teen years
that I would change my name
to Red Resolve Revolver. I told no one
but called myself that
in my private moments.
“Red Resolve Revolver,” I’d say
as I left the bathroom, “hell of a shower
you took there. You took the hell
out of that shower. Nice job on
the scalp massage, too.”
I dried myself like a gunslinger
and the buttoning of the shirt
was done with all the swagger
befitting one with the name of
Red Resolve Revolver.
After a while, I changed my name
to Wing Face Magoo. In the car
I’d whisper encouragement: “Hey,
Wing Face; hey, Magoo.
You weren’t meant to sit in traffic,
bud. You were meant to set your smile
flying out over the stopped cars
and transcend. Put your blinders on
and soar!” And I’d crank up
the radio, later the CD player,
even later the iPod, and pretend
my bird visage was somewhere else
as I rocked out with my headspace band,
Wing Face Magoo and The Real.
Over time, I nearly stopped talking
to myself. If I had a name,
I didn’t use it. Now and then,
I’d remember Red or Wing
and play those old memories
like a 45, a cassette — mostly
like an eight track with its big-ass CHUNK
in the middle of a long song
the perfect fanfare for a breakdown.
Today I do well to sit up, have
coffee, think about breakfast.
I do what little work I can do
with the points of my fingers
sticking hard upon the letters
on the keyboard. I pull a small living
from the air. I sold off the swagger
and the soaring for rent money
long ago. Now, with the last
of my red resolve
glimmering faintly under my skin
and the wind of imminently beating wings
on my crepe paper face,
all I can say to myself is
“c’mon, Old Man. One more
day. Just one.”
This Year
How are your doors holding up?
Has anything blown them off yet?
Some folks saw theirs take flight
a long time ago — centuries ago, in fact,
which doesn’t change
how much of a typhoon this is:
in a high wind such as this,
doors and roofs fly so easily.
So many of us are now exposed and afraid
that the structures won’t hold.
So many of us long exposed are excited
that walls are beginning to buckle.
Of course, you could just decide
to go out and live in it. You could accept
that your hair will be messy
and your eyes will sting
for as long as you live. You could…
or you could shelter in place
and plan to rebuild. How
are your doors, your roofs, your walls?
Do you have the tools you need,
do you have the patience to stand in this wind?
There’s some joy in having
such choices to make. It’s not like
they aren’t the same choices
that have always been laid before us,
but some of us have had stronger walls
than others. Some of us have never had to think
about our doors at all. Some of us
never even knew they were there
until the wind picked up and we saw them
unhinge and begin to rise.
All We Have
There’s no hope,
you know,
except for the hope we make
in spite of hopelessness.
It’s an action verb no matter
what grammar claims for it. So:
as much of a cliche
as it is — there’s no depth
to the observation
as it is, we can only
add depth through
pure and bright work —
we are responsible
for our hope as much as
for breathing clean air
and drinking clean water
and protecting them both
as we can. The idea of hope
unpolluted by despair
is all we have as we are all we have.
We hope. We must, we have,
we will, we will have hoped
regardless of outcome. And if
and when hope requires us
to act, we will act, we act, we will
be able to say we acted. We hope
to have acted. We hope
it will work.
If We Cannot Dance
because there is no time
for frivolous things
in this killing moment
we must dance
for who will dance
if we do not
because there is no time
for our leisure
when all around us is industry
and labor
we must sit our asses down
and refuse to work
for who will recall the joy of rest
if we do not
because there is no time
for art and creation
as repulsion and nausea
dominate our senses
we must take up pen and brush
and fight
for what will the future think of us
if we let those fall
from our hands
if we let
this grinding moment of horror
take from us
what is most holy and human
if we cannot dance
if we cannot create
if we cannot rest
satisfied that we have done
the necessary work of our souls
what will be left
for the future
to fight for
Thanksgiving Eve Poem
Brain!
Hard to believe
you really want
this poem from me
on Thanksgiving eve,
right when I’m cooking
many small things
and worrying about
many large things, as if
there was time for this
now. This may be
the last one for who knows
how long — who knows
what there will be
to be thankful for
this time next year.
I suppose having leisure to
sit back and do this
while many small things
cook is a good thing.
I suppose having food
is a good thing.
I suppose this word
“Thanksgiving”
with all its baggage
is a good thing.
I suppose family and survival,
things taken too often
for granted,
are good things.
I suppose
there should be gratitude
for being pulled to do
and being allowed to do
what I was built to do
in spite of everything
that needs to be done — and
everything
needs to be done —
even, I suppose,
this —
so Brain,
though I can scarcely believe it,
there is time, and food,
and this small moment of time
in which to breathe freely —
let us bend to it,
giving thanks as we do.
