Dark Matter

When my left hand
goes completely numb
I fall into my bed
and lie there between sleep
and pain,

aware of 
a third in the bed with us

whose name is Fear.
Is this a stroke,
is this the end
of something, or the beginning

of the end? Fear
chatters on and on. 
I lie there among
states of being,
tingling and fretting,
and it’s not hope

that gets me back up later
but the discomfort
of how crowded
that bed’s become,

how noisy it is in here.

I use this word
“moment” so often
that I may have
cheapened it, may have
obscured my reverence
for how many universes
may be found inside it

so let me correct this
by saying that “moment”
contains the entirety
of northern lights
and orgasm and stark
anger when faced with
a piercing incident of
hate and the gentleness
of a hand smoothing
a child’s hair and how breath
sucks away after a body blow.

Give me a moment
for “moment” being 
a snapped pole and
transformer explosion 
pocketed within a 
captured gaze and 
dawn through the window
of cheap motel after
a sleepless night of your
choice — despair, lovemaking,
anxiety, anticipation of 
family arrival after long absence,
the moment of loading the pistol,
settling out the pills, the moment
of sweeping them back in the bottle,
of putting the gun away.

A tender moment, a moment of
clarity, a momentary fear.

Give me
a moment, and then another,
and another. A gift of
presence in the present. Every moment
the last, and the first.

No better word
exists; the others all came to be
merely to hold onto that one.

Take the pain of being yourself
and box it up.  Take the pain
of being in love with another
and box it up, put them on 
the same shelf in the same
dark room.  Take the anger
at all the maddening others
and box it up then box that box
again and again put it in the same
dark room. Did you notice something
about how a poor person prayed
for the rich? Did it sicken you? Box
box box it up and put put put it
in the back of the stifling room. Box
the fear and the residual hatred,
box the last words of any martyr, box 
the clean air up in a dirty old box
and box it all into the suffocating heat
of the room where the boxes, 
all the boxes, are starting to glow
from within as if the contents, finally,
have stopped smoldering
and are starting to blaze. Pretty soon
they’ll set everything on fire
and there’s not a drop of water
within reach, which somehow
you find comforting and somehow
seems like a release and somehow
seems like what you expected
from the first time you shoved a box
in there, turned your back, and tried
to pretend it wasn’t there as you closed the door
with a smile for the onlookers, saying
well, that’s that.

After a deluge
the ground dries out
but there are differences:
leaves point in odd directions,
branches have come off the oaks,
rivulets have cut thin beds in the yard.
It will revert eventually, mostly,
but aspects will remain altered
and if you have been paying attention,
you will also be changed in small ways
as what is once seen is never unseen; 
even if memory keeps you
from conscious recall
you will shift how you approach
living in a subtle way —

lifting your feet
higher than normal over puddles for fear
of unseen current, for instance, or 
thrilling to a gust of wind pushing
a sheet of rain against your window,
wondering with a mix of concern
and excitement if this will be the one
that breaks open the dull box of your life
and soaks it in needed change
that ruins everything even as it renews all; 

or perhaps from now on
as any storm gathers
you’ll find yourself wishing
for a Flood and not caring
if you make it to the Ark
as long as enough others survive
to start clean.