Brand new to the charts
Number 15 with a bullet
Nice beat, you can dance to it
I give it an 85
It’s the perfect length for the radio
The perfect summer single
Perfect prom song
Perfect driving anthem
Perfect club banger
Perfect navel gazer
Perfect for throwing the horns
Soundtrack for dorm room philosophizing
Soundtrack to fall in love by
Soundtrack for your next party
Soundtrack for a breakup
A song to get crazy with
Song to rage with
Song to slit your wrists by
Song to beg for one more chance by
Song to conjure memories with
Song to conceive a baby by
Music for boning
Music for running
Music for revolution
Music for a wedding
Something to day dream on
Something to set your toes tapping
A little something to brighten your day
Something you might remember
Here’s a blast from the past
Here’s one from the “where are they now” file
Here’s one from the vaults
Here’s one to get you thinking
What were you doing when this was all over the airwaves
What were you doing the first time you heard this
This was their biggest hit
Rising to Number 3 on the charts
Here’s a remake of their biggest hit
Here’s a remix of their biggest hit
Here’s a sample of their biggest hit
They just don’t make them like that anymore
Song Of Songs
Skid, Crash
Cars have been skidding this hill all night
but I’m home so no worries plus
our cars are in the driveway
and she’s sleeping
so we’re both safe from idiot drivers
I’ve been skidding
in and out of sleep
feeling that tightness in the seat
that you get
before a crash
History says skid is always followed by crash
Those idiot drivers
are setting me up for a history lesson
but to hell with them
I’m going to bed soon
where she’s sleeping
reminding myself
that I’m home and safe
the cars are safely off the street
soon we may both be
safely asleep
Whatever heaviness
may come sliding out of control
toward us
I must remember that
crash
doesn’t always follow
skid
Bones Of A Popular Song
Bones
of a possibly popular song
are bleaching in my hand.
I can’t do anything
with this now.
It was alive once,
a tale of a perfect moment:
surely it might have been
as perfect a moment
for someone else
as it was for me
but I did nothing with it
and after a while it died
though I kept it close.
I sing what it was a little
now and then,
though it’s not right.
I never thought it was right
and so I never let it go,
and now it cracks
in my impotent fist
like old crackers
no one could dream
of choking down.
Persona Poem
I’ve never changed my name,
but there was a day
when a new me blew past the old
as fast as “Dylan” flew by “Zimmerman.”
I sat back from a page
and said to myself, “It took a year
but at last it’s right,” and then that poem
reached up out of the paper and slapped
a difference on me I could not deny.
Mark of Cain, secret superhero status,
witness protection mask,
luchador camouflage — no.
Nothing like that.
I looked the same to all but me,
but that poem raised a battle flag
behind my eyes,
that only I could see,
that prodded me then
and prods me still to be
something more than slapdash,
someone who digs,
someone I was not born to be.
Someone once drafted
under his own name, and then
told he was another man entirely,
so as if in spite of whatever man I truly am,
I live and love and work and fight
as if I was indeed that man.
Consumerism Explained
Balance,
not always as peaceful
and serene as predicted,
sometimes barks “Buy me! Buy me!”
from a store shelf, the cries
of a gadget or doo-dad
that you know will fill a hole
and now and then it does
for a bit or even longer.
Sometimes it works forever.
Why not? Even a shaman
has fetishes for the focusing
of power, an altar holds
fragments of spirit made solid,
and when smothered in
the clutter of living,
you can hardly be blamed
for reaching toward
what calls to you,
can you?
Parenting Guide (Little Mummies)
Their bodies
bled dry,
carved out, then
smothered in salt.
Not a scrap of soft
left in there.
You too
can create such things
without so much
as a paring knife.
You have to start
while they’re
very young.
Your tongue’s
quite enough
to start the job
and your
averted eyes
can finish it.
They are not likely
to love you
for your efforts
but at least
they’ll forever be
your little mummies.
When Your People Love Other People
When your people love other people
who have treated you badly
you sit back and eat
a bowl of knives. Sugar it
with dead bees. Wash it down
with dishwater.
When your people love other people
who have treated you badly
you run the other way
right into the walls of the Lascaux caves
and sit dazed asking the paintings
for a chance to start all the way over.
When your people love other people
who have treated you badly
you go to bed under a chain comforter.
Your ribs snap. You can’t move.
You steer the pain toward a good dream.
When your people love other people
who have treated you badly
you should just tell yourself
it’s your fault. You must have been
one bad pony to have no herd anymore
but maybe no one in the herd has to know
that you don’t belong.
Shhh…
this is how you get along.
Magellan Song (old poem, revised)
Still not posting new poems, though I’ve been writing them; I have also been revising some very old ones — this one dates back about 15 years or so.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
when I speak to you of the way it is
your eyes widen in surprise
(or is that astonishment –
the right word makes so much difference
when one tries to describe the way it is)
how will I make you understand the way it is
when no right words exist
to form my complete meaning
how will I shape my breath
to swaddle you in a foil of dawn
and seal you
against denial and forgetting
do you think I would still speak of love
do you think I would speak of hearts or forever
and set atoms to move in anything
remotely resembling those dry and familiar forms
if I had language that could make how I feel
clearer
what I have for you is known and common
a few small words I may have offered too often
but I promise you
that if I had been alive in mythic times
I would have invented a language
that would have the syllables in it I need
every word I built
would have been a nail
in the ark that saved all the couples of the world
the covenant bow that was revealed
after the rain had dried
would have colors only you
would be able to see
and I would have been clear enough
to have torn Babel down all on my own
if I had the right tongue
I would reform history
with improbable, impossible words —
if I had the tongue I need
to speak my mind today
I swear I would remake the world
in the corners of my mouth
and offer its fresh contours to you in a song of Magellan –
the circumnavigator
now just barely remembered
his name the leading edge of a legend
an arc of hope as we move
from known to unknown
if I could speak the words I need
I would conjure him
I would spell him into life this morning
as we sink our toes into the cold Atlantic sand —
look at all that horizon out there –
its dark line the promise of unseen shores –
to reach it we will need a new vocabulary
but this is all I can bring myself to say:
come closer
closer
sunrise can’t be too far away
New poems to return shortly. Stay tuned.
I’ve got a bunch of new work on deck, so keep your eyes peeled. (Boy, that’s a horrifying metaphor.)
Thanks for sticking around.
T
Video? Why, yes…
Amethyst Arsenic was generous enough to publish my poem “Awake” in their current issue. Here’s a link to the issue, and specifically to a video of yours truly reading the poem at the release reading at the Cantab, Cambridge MA, on Dec. 21, 2011.
Make sure you go on to read the rest of the issue, which has much fine work in it and other videos from that night.
While you’re waiting for new poems…
you might want to take a look at a whole host of new videos of The Duende Project, my poetry and music collaboration with bassist/guitarist Steven Lanning-Cafaro. We’ve been out there a lot lately, and I think the videos show off our various pieces quite well.
Check out all of our videos at:
Short break in posting
Working on another project for a bit, so won’t be posting new poems for a short time. Please come back and read through the back pages…there are about 2000 poems to choose from.
Thanks.
No Split
Voices, all inside;
division, all inside;
conflict, war, struggle, impatience —
all inside. Nothing to see
here.
Admit it, man;
you’re not fighting
anything except
the lies you tell
to keep yourself
from seeing how you really are.
Your whole belief
of the sounds of your enemies
has never been anything
but the sound
of your own garden growing —
roots breaking stones,
leaves pushing into the light.
Stay still and you can hear it all
Now it won’t sound like you’re not whole
if you’re quiet enough —
yet, who, in fact,
are you talking to now?
Can’t you ever shut up long enough
to tend what you’ve grown?
Loud, Louder, Loudest
Some days,
it’s just one
turbocharged
evocation
after another
and then
there are ones
where you sit around
wondering why
it’s not one
of the other days.
Frankly,
I could do with
a few less of
the former
and a lot more of
the latter;
not every moment
or action
has to have a point
and I’m tired
of getting stuck
and bleeding
because of the ones that do.
Right now, give me
the road and the
loud, louder, loudest
three-chord songs,
and no reason to be
driving except
that’s where those songs
sound best.
Pudding?
Woke up
neck deep
in something
that might be chocolate pudding,
might be…
the other thing
that looks like
chocolate pudding.
My senses of smell and taste?
Somehow, gone.
Sittting in front of me
on the surface of the sea of brown,
a spoon.
A sign affixed to it:
“Eat, then Dig…or Die.”
You’re thinking,
ooh, a metaphor —
dear reader, you could not be
more wrong.
Took me hours.
No matter what it was,
I was sick by the time
I was free.
I’m still covered in it
but I had to tell you about this —
it’s what I do:
follow the signs
no matter how confused
I become or
how disabled the process makes me,
then put it all on paper
and say, “See
how clever I am and how hard
I have it and isn’t it all such
a mystery? A lesser man
would have drowned.”
What I wouldn’t give
for a house without spoons,
for one good night’s sleep.
What I wouldn’t give
for the wisdom
to figure out
the difference
between shit and pudding
without plunging in
face first. What I wouldn’t give
for you to love me
and not my foul
awakenings.
Dark Matter 