Dark Matter

New poem.

Because the glow of
orange-pink streetlights
on falling snow
just before it touches ground
before dawn
reminds me
to adore the sacred nature
of mundane existence. Because

the toaster does what’s asked of it
without fail.  Because
of the oven failing, appropriately, when it reaches
its appointed moment of obsolescence. Because
of how my age and diseases
are killing me correctly, every cell
following its correct path, even
the broken ones behaving perfectly well,
exactly as if they are broken. Because

nothing ever answers
my prayers specifically
and I am instead told so often
in so many ways
that I will have to
make myself, because
I’ve been told so often

in so many ways
to depend upon watered-down,
man-cheapened deities
for neither identity nor protection,
yet whenever the pre-dawn snow glows

I am always caught by its appearance
as if seeing it for the first time
and end up fluttering within,
enthralled by something like hope

that this will not be the last time I see it.

Mostly, though, I stay because
something tells me
that the greatest pleasure
of dying
will be the laughter breaking out
all over the new life
immediately after my arrival,
and I don’t yet know enough to get
the Punchline
so I can laugh
long and full 

with the Others.

New poem from an unpublished fragment, written sometime in 2011.

Unbroken flesh
becomes stone
if left under pressure
for long enough. Then,
often, breakage:

stone once shattered
enters dust.
Fragmented, it
reshapes itself.

Merely cracked,
it stays that way for
an eon until more stone 
fills gaps. 

Unsure of my specifics
as matrix around me
opens and I step out.
Never been here before.

Legs feel odd, what I see
is odd, what I smell
is odd  — or it’s not odd at all and
I am sensing oddly. Stone

is all I can smell no matter
flower or meal or neck
before me.

Is this forever? In panic, see 
that erosion may be 
a lone hope for salvation:

lie down in a stream
or under a waterfall
or grind along a riverbed
with other stones.

Either that or
get comfortable
being this hard
for a long time
yet to come.

Sit for a bit with it
in rain or sun or snow.
Try to decide. Try to 

not fret, try to not choose
(once again)
what’s most obviously
wrong, not to choose what’s
wrong, try to choose
what’s not wrong, try
to feel something
right enough
long enough
to choose it.

New Poem.

I spun in, twisting, rotating
out of control. My whirring 
stifled her pleas. I could not focus
on her face, or on my heart.

Not enough, shine
on her cheek; not enough,
her sweet words.
Not enough, not enough.  

If there were things
she could have done
to make my spinning stop,
I know she would have;

but only a fool would have tried,
and she was no fool.  She saw me
drilling down, descending,
whenever I tried to stand still,

and so she let me go. I spun down into 
bedrock, aimed without aiming
at the core far below, knowing I would burn
if I went that far, knowing that here,

left behind, would be her face,
her words, her sweetness,
her anchoring care and cautious love;
still, I could not stop myself, and I spun in.

New Poem.

Pretend there’s a fable
about a one-legged flamingo
(born with one and only one)
who somehow survives
the vagaries of indifferent
and unrelenting nature
to grow to adulthood.

Pretend there are passages explaining
how a one-legged flamingo
grows easily tired of standing still
and so must fly more often 
than its counterparts.

Pretend it’s not all farfetched and pretend
that such a bird could truly survive. 

Pretend there’s a moral:
to those from whom much is taken
much is also given,
or 
unending fatigue in living may draw out
an urge and capacity to soar,
or 
perspective and vision may come to one
as compensation for grievous wounds;
pretend that it matters 
which words are used. 

Pretend like mad
that the moral
is strong enough to hold the bird back
from drowning
as it is exhausted tonight,
descending though there are no
shallows in which to land.

New Poem.

Highway signs that
flash and warn

“LAST EXIT ON HIGHWAY”
and
“HIGHWAY ENDS 1500 FEET”

thrill me

Beyond that last turnoff always
a wall
a barrier of yellow and black boards
some mound of untended concrete 
gone to brush
saying

here is where it all ends

It intended to go further
but exhausted it stopped

You should too or
take that last turn if
you insist upon continuing

People say the road goes on and on
always on and on
You can go forever if you want
Keep turning off and you’ll never stop

When they say that
it just makes me even more
want to crash into those highway graves
just to prove
a point about the desirability 
of limits
and satisfaction
to offer a definition of 
far enough

There I’d rest

without regret for that last missed exit
and filled in my last moment with joy at avoiding
the collapse within me (had I turned)
upon seeing more road ahead
and more of the unrelenting boredom of
endless gray below me
above me
and within