Dark Matter

1.
When people hear I’m a poet

some expect
that French hummingbirds
will fall from my mouth:
flashing
subtleties, gems
suspended
on a red string.

Listen,
I want to say to them,
It’s not going to shimmer like that,
not always.  Sometimes
there are no hummingbirds —
isn’t a Chicago robin
doing its drab and wormy job
wonder enough?

2.
I won’t lie — seems sometimes
that I’ve got
not just birds but
a whole game preserve
inside me.  Being the host
of a whole wilderness,
even the ugly parts —
that’s apparently important enough
that it’s become my vocation.

3.
If you want to know
what poetry I have in me,
three things to recall:

one, among the instantly arresting lovelies
there will always be some
hideous and
some so plain you will not see them
at first;

two, among the plain and ugly
there will be some venomous and
some that heal —
and there will be the same among the beautiful ones,
of course;

third,
whether peacock or slug,
three-legged dog
or most unexpected
unicorn
(yes, unicorn: not at all
precious but terrible,
you’ll see),

recall,
I beg,
that I
have to live with them.

I’m their shell, I am the walls
they loathe.  These aren’t
pets.  They don’t love me.
They growl, claw,
bite.

When people hear
I’m a poet,
they need to be prepared
for all the blood.

Describe the last time
you ate something
you killed yourself.

Use words of three syllables or less.
No more than twenty lines.
No use of the definite article.

If you haven’t yet killed
and then eaten something, 
you’re not off the hook. 

If all your food is killed by someone else,
if you could never and have never,
you are not off the hook;

even If you object on moral grounds,
if you do not believe in killing,
if you are the vegan of all vegans, 

you are not off the hook.
If this poem offends you, if these instructions
offend you, you are still not off the hook. 

Describe, instead,
the last death that helped you
to sit there, hearing this, reading this. 

Who died to bring the rare earths
to your phone?  the oil to your car?
the compassion to your face?

Whose departure left you so wanting
and desperate that you swore a fool’s oath
against the necessity of death?

Use words of three syllables or less.
No more than twenty lines.
No use of the definite article.

Think hard, pure soul,
gentle soul:  who died
to get you here? What hand

did you have in that,
even if it was unconsciously given
by the fact of your birthplace and time? 

No more than twenty lines
on how you have never, ever,
been more than an hour or two away from food. 

There are times
when I want to mash a nose
with my fist.   I don’t ever do it,
but I want to, and I refuse
to say I do not on occasion
want to.

There are times
when the face I am longing to punch
matters, times when it
does not.  Times when I see it clearly,
the whole punch, the spray, the tumble;
other times when I can only see
my wind up, my cocking arm.

There are times when I am righteous
about the target and the choice of blow
before I swing
and times when I just want
to smash a cheekbone, anyone’s really,
and explain it away afterward to a crowd 
who will sympathize and agree and no one
will do a damn thing to me
and untouched I’ll head on back
to the enviable noir lair I call home.

I feel the blows coming up
from my balls to my hands
and I want to mash a face.
I never do it.  I just want to.
I don’t know why this happens.
I keep it to myself, mostly.

But not talking about it at all?
Keeping it under wraps, away from
polite company, my social 
networks, my political discourses?

It feels like a swallowed horse
bucking in panic.  Feels like
the highway rising up and down,
a popular ropes workout.  Feels like
Godzilla’s come a-rolling.  
Feels like I’m going to 
mash a face and not 
stop
there.

You quote a proverb,
“The wet heart does not burn.”

I say,
“I’ve never heard that one.

Let’s put it to the test.”
We draw straws,

I cut my own heart from me
and toss it

into the already roaring
woodstove.

Several hours later
we open the door and peek in.

No sign of the heart,
but the walls of the stove 

are caked with a tar
neither of us has seen before.

“Does that satisfy you?  
How does it feel to be right?” you say

as you turn away
and start to pack.

“But baby,” I shout after you,
“baby,

I was just curious!  I was just
curious!”

Afraid of what I’m seeing
out the front window:

a cloudburst
each drop
nearly the size of an egg
and smelling of sulfur.

Eggs falling from the sky,
exploding upon impact.

Of course, half the smell out there
is likely coming
from the bodies of the dead.

I would say this is all a dream,
but I am fully awake and clothed
to go shopping.
I’d be out there already
were it not for the fear of the rain
that in spite of its volume
has not wet the street at all.

And now, I have to say,
the dead have vanished too. 

This is perplexing,
terrifying… 

perhaps
this is prophecy?  What day is this?
What’s the date?
Maybe it’s all from some drug
I don’t know I’ve taken?
Yet I feel one hundred percent
normal…

maybe this
is what normal is going to feel like
and I’ve surrendered?

Maybe
the lack of devastation
is in fact
the illusion?

dear joe,

please,
i want to come home.  

it’s very bright here.  
the food is good,  
the water’s clean,
the beatings are
practically
nonexistent. 

still, 
I want to come home.

dear joe, 

there are no locks on the doors.
we come and go as we please.
we wear what we want.

dear joe, 
i want to come home.

they keep telling me I am home.
they keep saying they love me.
they keep calling me a name
and claiming it’s mine, 
but it’s not mine.

dear joe,

I apologize for the informality
but I find when I use
your preferred name

nothing happens. 

it’s sinister and puzzling how
you aren’t answering.

I want to come home
and you’re not answering.
nothing happens.

maybe home
is wherever you end up
when you reach your limit
on answers?  when stuff
stops happening?

dear joe,
no matter.
if this is home,
supposed to be home,

make it feel better,
I beg of you,
please. 

“Wrong, wrong, wrong,
and so incorrect.  Cannot say enough
about the wrong of it,
the wringing of hands that follow it —

oh, it’s an opinion about something,
one voice, one view — still, such wrong
cannot be approved.  It doesn’t
fit, does it? How can such a thing

be said and let stand?  It’s about
the nature of art, isn’t it? Critical
theory?”  Labels and genres and
modalities, o my —

here’s the thing:
I’m going to go outside,
see the planets lined up with the moon,
say something of the huge cosmos

within which I’m so small.  Maybe it will
change things, maybe
it will preserve a moment.
Maybe it will matter after I die, after we all die. 

Now then, classify it
and paint it your color —
dead black, live blue.
I have better things to do. 

Hyacinth and daffodil
tenting the faded mulch
by the walk, yellow points
turning green
as they break through:

how demanding
they are.  How insistent
as they push up and back into
what we call “our world.”

If they win —
if they bloom and glow
and spring is eventually signified
by their emergence and
triumphant opening —
if they win,
what becomes of the brokenhearted?
Where will we cry then?

That’s one tall reptile
standing between us
and the outside.
If we want out,
we’re going to have to walk
under the reptile’s belly
to reach the road out of town.
It’s going to smell under there.
It’s going to be dark.
We’re going to have to make the crossing
in fear of him dropping lazily down
to crush us,
or of him deciding to wheel about
and lap us into his mouth.
We’re going to have to walk,
not run, for fear of him feeling us
galloping through.  
He’s so big, swollen,
maybe venomous though
he doesn’t need poison to take us;
our biggest threat may be
that he won’t even know we’re there
and our demise will be accidental,
a side effect of him shifting his bulk.
Pointless, unremarked deaths.
With the case laid out like that
the possibility
of us getting through
shrinks to not a prayer in this hell —

but then,
this is hell,
already.  And 
it’s not stopped us from prayer —

who’s with me?

“Be the change
you want to see in the world.”

I tried to live by that.
I began to disappear.

Can it be, I said,
that I am not to be

in the changed world?
I could not bear the thought

so I backed out of being
the change, and of the wanting

as well.  It all felt just swell:
the birds, the television, the bed

I loved as much as homeland
and heritage all took me back,

said they’d been waiting for me.
Solid enough — but soon enough

I found myself flickering.
What’s this, I cried, I don’t want

to change and I’m not being
the change!  Someone else

must be stronger.  Maybe
I’ll meet them in the new world

if I end up there someday
but for now I cower, see the mirror

filling with flowers.  I put a finger on the glass
and a violet came and met it with half an inch between

my flesh and its petals.  I don’t want this —
but I must say it is a perfect shade of blue. 

We did not have the strength to believe
how not slight and not brittle
she had turned out to be 

though her homeland was so broken
it was like breaking language itself
to speak of it and her

We stayed mostly away from her
(to let her heal herself
is what we said)

It worked for us mostly
though we’d trip over her dropped jaw
or stark rib now and then

When she found out
we were the world
and she was the children

she was angry
and lo and behold
was strong enough

to show us how brittle
we’d become
our smooth tongues notwithstanding 

We could not explain
to anyone’s satisfaction
how we’d left her alone for so long

once we’d known
and we splintered a little more
every day as we saw

what scabbed and hardened creatures we were
horrible comrades
who lied and turned away

not even close to being
the condescending parents
she’d never wanted anyway

who
would you sashay toward, do-si-do beside,
promenade or allemande left with
if you were caught in time,  
found yourself in the corny old elegance
of the square dance?

I picture you in gingham
and me in overalls.
I’m hoping you’d have bowed to this partner.
I’ve got a stereotype of you
gently rocking my head.
something lovely and odd and unreal.

now, who you gonna step to?
who do you want to grind with you
in the more familiar
dances of our day?

I’ve got a picture of that too
and I’m in it
and there’s you too, boo.
like what I see.
but it’s not happening.

let’s runaway from these pictures
and get real in that town from the movies
where no one ever dances
by law.  

it’s some kind of fiction
but let’s go there anyway
since this is some fantasy
and we can defy the dream law
and dance however we want
or maybe

find other stuff to do.
nothing nasty, just moonlight
and making stuff up
we like out of all the pieces from 
the past.  do-si-do, back that
up, do what feels good.  you know:

dance.