Not enough.
Does there really need to be
even one more line
explaining
how little I’ve done
with my talent and
soul? How little
I’ve sweated, how small
my reach has been?
No.
Enough.
There’s still time.
There’s work.
There’s breath.
Not Enough
I Get Misty
Such a great surprise to become unbodied,
to find myself hovering above my own grave
once my loved ones had wiped their tears
and the diggers had wiped their hands
and all had gone away; such a great surprise
to learn then how much I’d been run
by the belief that I was my body, how many
wounds and acts of ill repute I might have avoided
if I had become aware earlier of my body only
as game piece and vehicle for what I truly was
and not fallen into its urgency and insistence
upon its own mechanical demands. Now
that I am no longer inside the creaky tyranny
of it, now that it is beneath me in the dirt,
only now can I see how free I could have been;
words like “walk” and “run” replaced
by “float” and “seep” and “hover,”
words like “hunger” and “thirst” set aside,
words like “lust” and “flush” and “blush”
slipping from the vocabulary
of my still-conscious ghost until
all that is left is the mist of me
dampening the headstone at dawn,
darkening the rough granite,
my sodden name a remainder
and reminder
of what I once thought I was,
what I did not understand at all.
Feeding
I’m trying to break
my bad habit
of depriving myself
of thick words.
I’m going instead to savor
yucca, saltimbanque,
muscadine, and
riprap. Lie back with mouthfuls:
jingoistic, marbling,
dysplasia, nave,
sacristy, homunculus,
mellifluous, melisma.
As much as I love
the stark bite of small
and simple, there are times
when I want the rich silk
of long syllables and
sibilance, diphthongs
flitting across my tongue;
a lateborn taste for complexity
turning my scorn
for haute linguistic plating
of easy thought on its head.
I shall fatten myself
on these words
until I loll back
sated, full with them,
into a new round slumber.
And when I wake?
I cannot yet know the spells
to come from this, the soothing
afterglow of such gorging,
the possible combinations,
sounds, denotations,
connotations;
an entirely different man
may rise from the bed
where I laid myself:
hungry for synecdoche,
new as an egg, humbled
by potential, awake to language
as if it was again
that first time being turned away
from mother’s breast
and introduced to
soft, utterly
unknown nourishment,
and finding it good.
Sloth
It might be the dawn
of the last day I’ll be alive,
or it might not. Grand apocalypse
or tiny personal demise;
I can’t say when either or both
may arrive.
I’ve read of
many who have said,
“today’s the day,” then turned
their sick heads away
from loved ones
with a last resigned smile
and passed. Such
foreknowledge seems to come
only when that last day
is already very near,
and there are of course
the tales of soldiers diving into
showers of demise who
also predict such things, tales
of sailors on sinking ships
and pilots and passengers on
falling planes, or in colliding
cars and trains, who do the same;
I cannot forget
to mention those
who choose, alone
in darkness, a path
hacked through dense pain
into that final peace
by their own hand.
All of these know
by choice or chance
what is coming,
but only just before
it arrives. I cannot see myself
slipping into despair
were I to somehow learn
the hour of my death
well before it came.
Instead, I like to think I’d fall
into the worldview
and mindset of a sloth —
hanging for days and months,
perhaps for years,
from favorite places
in my personal canopy,
moving as little as possible,
being slow and sweet with a
perpetual smile on my
changed and perfect final face,
dropping to the floor below
in one last fast moment
when it’s finally time
to go.
I’m No Christian
“…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.
For Weeks
We’re out
in the meadows
hiking although
there’s a predicted
likely chance of
torrents and thunder.
Ahead of us hours
of waiting, walking,
hanging on the movements
of every breeze-turned
leaf.
I suggest we
might not want
to get our clothes
wet, and it might be
a fine idea
to take them off
while we’re waiting
and stow them in our
packs (which also make
fine pillows when filled).
You smile like
the light behind a long,
low cloud full of rain
when the ground
has been parched
for weeks.
Door Dreaming
Originally posted 6/6/2012.
In half of my dreams
I see a door
sacred to no two faced God Janus,
but instead dedicated
to a three faced
unnamed god:
one face for out,
one face for in,
one face looking back to the world
that would have been
had I never seen this door,
a face that’s always looking away.
~~~~
I always wake up angrier
than I was
when I went to sleep.
In the last dream of the night,
I am being beaten
by a masked man.
He asks me
how it feels
to be beaten.
I lie that
it is neither bad nor good,
that it has no flavor.
Let me spice it then for you
with more blows, different blows,
he says,
slamming my hand
in the door
as I try to push through.
~~~~
Always aching when I wake,
always wishing I could
just go through the door
into the day
happy, light
and smiling.
I live in
this wrong world
of in or out, this or that.
I hate walking
through that door.
Some days, I try not to.
On those days my hands
look like meat from taking the beating
as I try to stand in between the rooms —
fingers clawed into the jambs,
terrified of the unnamed man
doing the banging.
Choose, friend, he says.
Crawl through or hang back,
but the door is here;
you have to choose
now that you know
it’s here.
What of
the promise of the third face,
I ask.
No one ever
gets to look that god
in the eye,
he says.
They all die
trying.
Feet
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.
Zucchero
In my late grandmother’s pantry
a leftover box of Italian sugar,
sole ingredient: “Zucchero.”
That is also the name of
an Italian blues musician.
I’ve never heard his music.
I’m ok with that, not because
I don’t want to hear it but because
I’m happy enough just knowing it exists.
I don’t have to experience everything
any more. Not, for instance, planning
to dip my finger into the box —
I know what sugar tastes like.
I know what the blues are like, too.
I can’t know perfectly all things
in every detail, although once I slew
several of my better selves
and some worse ones
in the pursuit of such knowledge.
Driven to know everyone and
everything; such knowledge was all
I had. I didn’t feel pretty or strong
or confident or human but the more I knew
the more I could fake those things. I bet
someone thinks an Italian blues musician
is faking it but I don’t. I don’t
know everything but I know
blues, blues and sugar,
sour and sweet; blues e zucchero,
aspro e dolce. I got the blues
for my lost youth and my vain
pursuits. I got the blues
for my grandmother’s cooking.
She’d cook and then sigh on a chair
in her kitchen, wishing my grandfather
was still alive. He died the same year
Robert Johnson did. So did she.
It was long before I was born.
I missed so much.
I can never catch up,
I can’t be satisfied,
and I’m done trying.
The Proper Perspective
Originally posted 9/25/2013.
Love’s not worth
the worry. You either
have it or don’t, are loved or
are not. Simple enough;
devastating enough.
You can’t worry about it
to the point of no return.
Worry instead till just
before that point. Say there’s a pair
of eyes that wreck you often. Why worry
about wrecking — you will
or will not crash, they’ll turn your way
or stay fixed elsewhere,
and there’s nothing you can do about it.
What else is there to do —
obsess about them
until
you don’t see
the bridge abutment
looming?
Love’s neither voluntary
nor subject to reason, so
sitting with your head in your hands,
utterly controlled by love, is foolish —
rest your head
directly on your desk instead
and save your arms from fatigue.
Rest it there repeatedly, in fact,
several times a minute.
It will hurt less than worrying
about love. You’ll see — eventually
you’ll pass out and love
will fall into
its proper perspective
of blackout and pain
at which point
you may still be worried about love
but no one will be the wiser —
and maybe, just maybe,
you’ll awake with amnesia.
Harambe
Harambe:
a Swahili word meaning
pull together
let us pull together
let us pull together as a people
Harambe
I learned it when I was a kid
I read it in a National Geographic
way back before Rupert Murdoch bought it
I read it in an article about Kenya
replete with requisite stereotyped photographs
Harambe
a rallying cry during the struggle for Kenyan independence
Harambe
pull together
let us pull together
let us pull together as a people
Harambe
I’ve never forgotten that
When they first talked about that gorilla named Harambe
I remembered
When they talked about the cage that gorilla was in
I remembered
When they talked about shooting him to save the child
I remembered
When they started to be mournful about the gorilla’s death
more than they were thankful for the still-living child
I remembered
When they talked so sternly with great condescension
about that child’s parents
I remembered
When they roared and roared for someone’s blood
to be spilled for the dead gorilla
I remembered
Harambe
pull together
let us pull together
let us pull together as a people
Harambe
A roar for blood
on behalf of a caged gorilla
who shared his name
with an independence movement
Harambe
I remember
Do you remember
Tatiana
a Siberian tiger
who killed one man in the San Francisco Zoo
injured two other men in the San Francisco Zoo
after escaping from her cage
after being taunted by some or all of the men
after having pinecones shot at her from slingshots
They shot Tatiana
There was talk afterward that the taunting was only publicized
to shield the zoo from repercussions
even though the men admitted it
No charges were filed
and no one remembers if anyone
roared for blood on behalf of
Tatiana
No one knows the names
of the African painted dogs
who tore a boy to death in the Pittsburgh Zoo
when he fell into their enclosure
from an observation deck
where his mother had raised him
to the railing to see better
No charges were filed then
It was deemed a tragic accident
Lawsuits were filed and settled
Only one dog was shot that day
The other dogs were removed
were sent to other zoos
The zoo replaced the nameless dogs
with cheetahs
who do not appear
to have been named
It’s dawn and I’ve been at this for too long
I don’t know how to pull it all together
which is fitting I guess
for a poem about a society
that can’t seem to pull it together
Harambe
The villains
The heroes
The gunned down
The living
The sympathetic ones
The blameworthy ones
The ones who write the narrative
Who get to tell the story
Who own the means of transmission
Who pulled the trigger on this
Who fell
Who declared the black and white of this
Who roared
Who loved the taste of blood in this
Who thirsted
Who danced around their desire
for all involved to die
from one bullet
from one choice
Harambe
pull together
let us pull together
let us pull together as a people
Harambe
Harambe
Is gone now
Is over now
Is over
and out
A Sudden Noise
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?
Following Bliss
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.
Yankee Doodle
Originally posted 5/30/2011.
Watching the parade
I at once (somewhat
unfairly) distrust
the clergyman
walking amongst
the children,
the admiral
speaking of sacrifice
from the podium,
the policeman
approaching
the kids
holding
the Puerto Rican flag
on the sidelines,
the politician waving
and shaking hands
along the route.
I’m wrong to suspect automatically
that nothing is what it seems,
but after all
this is
an all-American holiday, and I’m
a Yankee Doodle Dandy,
Yankee Doodle do or die. I grew up
with an erratic Uncle Sam and
I wasn’t born yesterday. Certainly
I’m wrong
to automatically suspect
anyone of anything but
isn’t the larger wrong
how my mistrust has so often been
so well founded,
cheapening and weakening
any chance at an honest
Yankee Doodle joy?
Mirrors At War
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.
