Dark Matter

My daddy used to
ride a motorcycle
long ago. Put it away
before I could get 
enamored of it but
I knew and loved that
pipe music
almost before I could
speak. 

Pulled it
out again
only after he retired,
thinking, I guess,

I was safe enough
by then from
two-wheeled lust
for him to throw a leg over,
get back on. Later his hips

messed up even that
short run for freedom, 
and the bike was sold

before I could speak up for it —

now, I’ve never owned a road bike
and only ridden small ones a few times
in the woods and then only
when my daddy wasn’t around

but somehow

I dance to pipe music more these days

and somewhere in the dark 
beyond my father’s eventual

departure, I can see myself
throwing a leg over
something big and loud and
noisy and all mine

before my own bones tell me no,
before I become
deadened to that rough skirling
clatter,

before I forget him completely.

Blood or blues — time
to choose my drink 
for tonight — to sip
rage or rue —

It’s afternoon —
dark’s not terribly far
off — some light
remains — do I choose

blood or blues —
do I sit in cold
with sadness in
my mouth or

raise heat and roll
with the rising —
go out hot
to smash or soar

Blood or blues — I could
go either way but it’s time
to choose — move or slump
or dance or dim

until I’m barely here — or
ball myself into fire and 
go out burning —
time to choose

blood or blues 
Living past dying or cooling
and sliding into darkness —
do I choose blood or blues

tree-shadows
outside the window

what’s under-bed
whose hand you’re imagining
under there

how to fix this

suddenly
trying to recall
what you forgot
what might burst into flame
what you left behind

how to fix this

how should you have phrased that
did he mean what he said
did you misinterpret it
how could you have been
so stupid

how to fix this

word salad clumsy
rose petal mistakes and
what might it mean when
they are often

how to fix this

does pride go before
a trip and where could
you go where you might
feel pride again

can anyone seeing you
see all this
hear all this and are they going to wait
for you to fix it
do they fear you fixing it
do they care anymore if
you fix this

knowing exactly how to fix this
exactly how to fix this
how to make it stop
make it stop 

never being touched again
OH

how to fix this
exactly right
perfectly well

how much will it hurt
is there a way to fix it
that won’t hurt
that will be like sleeping

finding nothing there once it has stopped
finding no way to restart once it has stopped
finding this fix doesn’t fix it

trees

hands

to be touched again

Cross with the 
olive skin
of others, angry at
accommodations
being made for
others, saddened by
changed hearts of others,
furious at condoned loves
of others, terrified of
the desperation of others,
worried about the money
of others, enraged by
all the ways of others,
explanations of others,
reasons of others,
reasons for others,
art by others, music by
others, the taste and flavor
of Otherness itself…yes,

it’s in the eyes.

Each birthday you reach
is your last until 
you reach the next one;

what are you doing
for your last birthday?

It seems only right
that there should be
some symbolic flame to it,

some burning down
of the previous years

as in a warrior’s funeral
or the high leaping fire
of any pyre anywhere

for at heart a birthday party
is the performed hope

concealed in the hot core
of the myth
of the phoenix.

you’ve fallen into
gloom, feel
you’re drowning
in murky water, 
think you have no
choice but to be forever
dimmed.

dearness, 

darkness isn’t
all-inclusive simply because
it’s hard to see through.
its mystery
isn’t everything, doesn’t hold all 
there is worth knowing.

look.

it’s full morning, long past
dawn.
a lacewing fly
has landed upon your forearm,
shining among your own
fine, shining hair.

you bring your face close
to see its glassveined
wings glowing, flicking
as it rests there upon you,
connected
to you through 
sunlight. dearness, 

if it were midnight,
you’d slap this miracle aside for 
making your skin crawl. instead,
by having allowed it to stay

you will feel it
shining within you
for long years to come.

As you serenade me
with your inconsistencies,
railing against
your own fluid
nature, your failures
and poor choices,
ask yourself
as you wail: aren’t you 
at least half in love
with this song
you’re making
from your
contradictions?
It seems so obvious
that you’ve
written your life
as rock opera,
grand bombast
with one eye
upon the charts,
that I can’t fully believe you
when you wish out loud
for a simpler tune
to dance to. All 
you’ve ever done
is make this music
and call attention to 
this music and tour
endlessly behind this 
music and now you claim
it’s all been against
your own desires. It’s not
pity I feel exactly, although
I can imagine your pain
if it’s true; it’s not anger
or insult I’m feeling, as I love
you too much in my way
to fail entirely to see how
you do indeed believe this
on some level; it’s more 
a fatigue with the soundtrack
of the tale, a sense that
it’s been overplayed, a dawning
irritation or even boredom
with the sing-song chorus, the
repetitive verses,
and that confounded bridge 
like an earworm that keeps me
only half-aware of how badly
you need someone, anyone,
to listen.

The rock star for all time
stepped onto her stage 
just as it broke and disappeared
from underfoot. Falling
toward death she began
composing a final song
to tell at last her full tale
of how having talent and will
and luck got her here —  
it opened with grand chords,
shifted into slim-fingered picking
in the bridge, had of course
a singalong chorus, a fist in the air, 
cadence building to catharsis —
it had everything
and she wrote it in her head
in the two seconds before she died,
probably for the best as it sounded
like all her others — all that drama
and urgency as she fell translated
into her being there anyway,
sprawled in the ultimate cliche,
her last song utterly ordinary
and thankfully unheard — making it
a song just like the one
we all sing upon telling ourselves
for the last time:
this time, finally, I’ll get it right.

Seed to stem, stem to school, school
to work, work to bone, bone to hand, 

hand to mouth, paycheck 
to paycheck, worry to more worry,

desperate to despair, despair to prepare,
prepare to ruin, ruin to rash, rash to reckless, 

reckless to reckoning, reckoning to armament,
armament to carry, carry to itch, itch to shake, 

shaking guns drawn to sudden discharge,
steady guns drawn to clearly aimed executions,

bodies to fall, fall to faint, faint to disbelieve, 
disbelief to convictions, convictions to whisper campaigns, 

whispers to scream, scream to chant, chant to 
march, march to war, war to end all war, 

end to end and head to head laid in lines
border wall to wailing wall, silent sea to shining sea,

stem to stern, stern to solemn cry, cry to cradle,
cradle to cold and lasting grave.

Recently spoke
in mysterious tones to
a dog on the sidewalk,

not expecting a response,
and I got none; the point
of doing so was to exercise

a sense I had not used 
in years — the ability to sense
God in a dark brown inhuman

eye, to recall that divinity may be
a muted answer to a clumsy
question asked in an absurd way

to an impossible
respondent.  When there was
no answer at all, I did not despair

of God’s existence,
instead choosing
to believe I was rusty

and out of practice
and with more time
would get it right. 

I swear now to practice,
to ask every creature
and plant I see

similar cryptic questions,
and to then think
on whether any further lack 

of obvious answers
from them speaks more
about my inability to understand,

about an actual nonexistence
of God, or about how language
is so often just inadequate

for important things. I will figure it out
and in the meantime try
to simply enjoy

the silence,
fooling myself that
is all the answer I seek.

Israel dances a half-stumble 
to Jimmy’s Corner Store for cigarettes,
banging through the narrow doorway, 
all of his body-music colliding with 
door jambs and point of sale displays
until Jimmy 

(whose real name is unknown
but is certainly not Jimmy,
Jimmy having been
the original owner of the store,
Jimmy having been gone
for fifteen years at least)

shouts at him for raising a ruckus
and insists he buy something or get out,
and after he buys
his pack of Mustangs

Israel drum-bangs his way
back to the street,
Israel strum-dings his way
back to the street,
Israel smoke-songs his way
back to the street where Israel
is lord of the dance and his name
is exalted, though it isn’t his
real name either, not the name
he was born with in his homeland.
That name is long gone

into this city’s alleys 
and distances
that instead named him Israel 
for no reason other than he looked 
like another guy named Israel
who walked these streets before him,
who bought his cigarettes from original Jimmy,
who had his own halting music to dance to,
who is himself long forgotten
having been easily replaced
through the city’s greed
for colorful characters
to people its own delusion 
that it is in fact
a promised land.

So Israel dances out,
lights up,
butt-chunks
his path, spring-strings
himself along.
So Jimmy shakes his head,
watches him go,
turns back to the counter
and the sweeping up.
So I begin to forget that I
play my part too: the bemused
observer who makes it all possible
is necessary to the play; without me
to make it into a myth,
what would it be except
just another hard town
pretending
to be a home.