Dark Matter

Early breakfast for one:

oatmeal, frozen blueberries, 
a drop of agave nectar, 
a ton of cinnamon,
lowfat milk; ready
in two and one-half minutes.

You shake the last blueberry
from the bag into the dry oats,
the stubborn berry that won’t fall,
the one carrying the mutated bacterium
that survived all the countermeasures,
that will survive the microwave,
that will enter your body,
that will come to life, 
that will divide into a swift million,
that will damage cells within you
before dying off unnoticed 
except for a mild rumble within you
at two fifteen the next afternoon;
those damaged cells left behind will,
one day three years from now,
slide from wounded mad into feral spread,
become cancerous,
mystify the doctors,
and painfully kill you.

It’s not meant to be funny
that this is the morning
that will eventually kill you.
This bright eyed morning 
full of your own justified pride
at taking a positive step
is the morning you begin to die.
It’s not meant to be funny, 
but of course,

it is.

You should go
for a brisk walk
after breakfast.

Be sure
to look both ways
before crossing the street.

Petty is as petty does,
and petty rules the land and sea.

Petty is as petty does,
does it all in little mincing bites.

Petty can’t be bothered to go full vampire —
prefers to play mosquito, yearns to be a gnat.

Petty can’t be bothered to search its soul —
prefers to read its own Cliff Notes.

Petty opens its heart
to the side eye, the shade, the snicker.

Petty feels OK
in single broken heartbeat intervals, 

then leaves a trail of mild destruction
behind it, like kid footsteps in the cement

of a national monument, discovered 
only upon the occasion of ribbon cutting,

too late to smooth it out and make it 
feel OK again.  

Petty is as petty does.
Petty does quite well;

one mansion in the hills, one on the beach,
a penthouse in the city, 

a foothold in your mouth,
a homestead in your attitude.

Scorch
earth or skin,
burn
bridge or eyes.

What you
do with your fire
is yours
to choose —

put it out, even,
or confine it
to a hearth
and home. Pick

a commonplace
for it or
go on and bust 
the box, let flame roll

across
metaphorical
prairie,
metaphysical

skyline. Or
put it out, quench it,
drown it,
smother it — 

not my flame circus,
not my
hot monkey
to tame. Only this:

if it dies
unheeded, the cold
you feel will be
forever.

I spent a few hours today
uncaught up in worry.

That’ll have to be
all for one day, or a 
year; all the time
I’m likely to get
free of the shackle 
of fear.

I could say
more about that

but instead,
let’s discuss how it happened;
let’s discuss
three strawberry plants 
I moved on impulse 
into the greenhouse
when their bed,
rotted and old,
had collapsed;
let’s talk of them

now blooming in their
temporary pots and 
how the ground might
be warm enough
soon enough
to take them back.

Let’s talk about me
doing something right
purely on instinct
and how
that small success 

keeps me.

How my right index fingernail curls under,
causing it to hook guitar strings,
requiring attention and constant care.

How my semi-polytheistic agnosticism
screws up conversations about
the nature of reality.

How my fatness and my diabetes
are connected and correlated by others;
endless, wearying blood and food vigilance

for the latter has led to a decrease
in the former, which is less of an issue for me
yet is always a source of first comment for others

praising me for decreasing in size;
I tell them it’s because of illness, 
they say “but still…” and I let it ride.

How inconsistent I am
in love for any and all, 
essentially a damn island

when it comes to honoring
connection; how selfish I am
at heart; how mechanically I surmount that

for the sake of appearance; how easy
I find it to dissemble in such a way;
how frightened I am of slipping.

How flat my feet, how dumb my legs
for running; how silly my eyes look
when I am trying to forget what I’ve seen.

How death smells like roses
wherever I find it waiting round the corners
on my path. How I love the smell of roses.

How easily I could make this list
last and last, growing longer and 
wider, faster and faster with the piling on.

How thin these scratches on my surface
that nonetheless 
go all the way through.

Imagine the second
when the first proto-human
to have their consciousness flicker
from “just before human” 
into “fully human”  

looked around at the other
apes-on-the-brink
and felt for the first time
humanly, utterly alone.

It was likely enough
to drive them back
over the threshold into
the comfort of animal thought,
but it left a residue of that fear,

an ember within
which flared and faded, flared and faded,
until the fire could spread at last to others.
They had burned for want of that first language,
were burned by the terror
that there were none like them.

Imagine the joy
when the First Word was spoken,
understood, repeated — 
rain on blistered skin,

upraised faces inventing song.

It’s too early for there to be
so much light in the room.

I’ve gotten so used to rising in the dark
that I can’t stand morning,

begrudging how it has taken to
beginning without me;

when I realize
my self-centeredness,

I laugh — to think
that I have held myself

in such regard. But I’m still
not rising, not yet;

not until I shake off
my regret at not having kept up

with spring, my remorse
at not having kept up at all.

I’ve slept till ten or beyond
more than once since the light

began to grow so early.
I do it because I can,

because nothing compels me
to rise lately — no call to work,

no call to be at all alive
until nearly noon;

no words within
begging for the Light.

It’s too early for them 
to be clamoring so hard,

or perhaps too late; either way
it’s been so quiet in there, who knows

what is steeping
inside me — something

that prefers
the Dark.

I only want of you
what I can see you do,
what I can hear you say.

You intentions matter
to me, but they are not
what I need most — do

or do not, speak or 
remain silent; that’s 
where I will find you

at your most clean
and uncluttered. That’s where
we should meet — 

in the groove cut by our
behavior; that is where
you should seek me as well,

among my own voiced
and acted moments; let’s leave
the philosophy up on the high ground

we’ve cut through to get here.
Hold each other.  Hear each other.
Stay here, in the ground we’ve made.

I wonder,
if ever I am able to do this,
how I should greet
the reader of such a letter:

Dear You?
Dear Me?
Dear Tony, this is also Tony?
That last might work best —

I’ll assume that if we ever develop
a way to do this, we’ll know at once
because letters will have flown
back and forth
throughout history and such transit
will be commonplace;

that we don’t know now
that this happens
suggests that it never happens,
but let’s put that issue
aside for now — 

if I get the opportunity
to write the first line to follow
that debacle of a salutation,
if ever I write one and
a delivery method is developed
for such a thing, my first line
shall be an exhortation:

burn this now, 
read no further, 
take no advice
from it; it took
knowing nothing at all
at that age
for you to learn
what little you know
at this age.

If it ever happens,
the evidence suggests
this approach will work.

It’s proof that I never
learned to take
advice, except

it also
proves that at least once,
I did;

but it also proves
that at least once
I did not break the rules
given to me 
and indeed,
I read no farther;
of course 

there’s the possibility that
I simply ignored
my own advice,
which proves
how little we change
after a certain age;

or it may be that I’ve sent my letter
to a self who never received it,
and someone in the past
is reading my letter
and becoming a better man than I am
by taking the advice.

Most likely of all of these
is the possibility

that it sits
in a dead letter box somewhere,
forever unread in the void; proving
without a doubt that

spewing heartfelt words
in a futile effort to change an indifferent past
is in fact all I was ever meant to do.