Dark Matter

“…Satan, your kingdom
must come down…”

Thinly voiced, static-creaky,
Blind Joe Taggart’s guitar 
drives the old tune down
a narrowly rising and
falling blue road — and
am I hearing a distant trumpet
in the background?  Not in the song
itself, not in the recording,
but out in the neighborhood
somewhere.  Never heard brass
like that around here before.
The ancient crank who lives 
across the street will now and then
play marching music, military bands
blaring from the second floor
in summer, but this is farther away
and not like that at all; it’s at once
more plaintive and more ominous,
fluidly expert, a dangerous snake
of a melody falling in behind
this old-time apocalyptic warning
of Heaven’s eventual triumph:

“…I heard the voice of Jesus say,
Satan, your kingdom
must come down…”

I’m no Christian, not at all;
I just like to hear a good guitar
driving a good road. 
I like the crackle
of old gospel blues recordings.
I like to stand apart
from dead voices and hear
what drove them to sing 
without feeling like I need to fall in
with their fervor for the subject. I like
that chance to pick and choose
my personal soundtrack
for what may or may not be
the End Of Days without feeling like
I have to despair and wail along,

but man oh man,
I did not count on that trumpet.

When moving across 
yard or continent
toward peace, 
across a border
or a walkway
toward something
you hope will be better
than where you are,

you place your trust 
in an ancient wisdom 
that suggests your feet
know more than your head
and your heart know, or

that when and if those
are in conflict, the decision
should be turned over
to those who have always been
closest to the path.  

My own feet must seem dumb
to those who don’t walk
as often as I do, since
I have stumbled more than once
into swamps and piles
of refuse upon departing
what seemed intolerable
at the time, found myself
staring back toward
what I’d left behind and muttering
about my idiot feet; but then

I turned back to the direction
they’d chosen, and slogged on
to the next destination
that would soon become
the next point of departure;

I might have regrets now and then,
might have let my feet choose poorly,
but look how far away
the first intolerable place I left
is now; look at the meanderings
you can read in my footprints,
the magnificence of that often 
broken tottering toward this Now.

A sudden noise
in the night
makes no sense,
so you turn on the light
and banish the darkness —

how foolish to do this,
to be this afraid of mystery.
To rush the process
of understanding upon
that which is revealing itself
at the moment it has chosen
in the setting it has chosen.

“It is better to light a single candle –“
bah! Why curse or banish
the darkness?  It’s lovely in there

if you do not fear it.  A sound
speaks there as it cannot in light.
Don’t you close your eyes
when in the presence of 
Great Music?

The downtown wizards
of modern magic
are up early — rinsing yesterday’s
sulfur from their mouths,
dressing their lithe frames
in alright costumes to follow
their bliss, striding
with great purpose into 
the tiny autonomy granted them
in their compartmentalized jobs — 

No!  These are not jobs,
they shout at me.
These are careers.

Wizardry, they insist,
is a career,
claiming superpowers
owned in fact
by their bosses.

Bosses beat wizards.
The downtown wizards know it. 
Hence defensiveness, hence
their longing for alright clothes
and purpose. How else to follow
bliss and climb
to a boss’s chair?

Some make it —
the ones
who stop rinsing away the sulfur.
Who may not glory in the taste
but who let it season
more or less 
everything

until even the wizards,
as strong as they are,
pale when they catch a whiff
and fall to their knees
before it,
sinking down,

following
the idea of  bliss
to its natural
destination.

Mirrors go to war armed with glass 
and glossy bullets. Perfect aim, 
lust for fame, long pained memories.  
Effortless strategy, clear risk assessments.

Armies stare at each other
before battle begins. They recognize
themselves in the enemy lines.  They
charge certain of who’s over there.

Mirrors at war break as any glass breaks.
All those silvered knives littering the ground
of battle. All those tiny, sharp reflections; civilians
will be shredding their feet and shedding blood

for eons after. Both sides ever
unable to walk straight. It won’t be forever
till someone angers up and takes up the charge,
and then it will be mirror, mirror once again.

writing another poem
is as pointless as
taking another breath

Considering the empty plate before me

Considering fullness of all our plates
Considering lack of nourishment there

Considering the Buddha-nature of a plate-maker
Considering the plate-maker creating emptiness

Considering broken plates that can hold nothing
Considering meals un-plated both good and bad

Considering a bowl of seeds
Considering it inedible yet so many meals to come there

Considering space that appears to be full of stars
Considering distances between them that hold next to nothing

Considering the pan my brain sits in
Considering the mind cannot be found there no matter how long you look

Considering an open door with a broken lock
Considering this a joyful damage as the room has emptied of its prisoners

Considering the words filling this page
Considering the silence in which they’ve been written

Considering my voice and its origin from deep caverns within me
Considering how I might never speak again and have no choice in that

Considering Death the great emptier that yet fills the world
Considering an empty place setting at a holiday table filling with presence

Considering hunger for its ample gnawing filling me
Considering a meal that empties the body of its hunger

Considering the empty plate before me