I’ll be gone for the next couple of days doing the family thingie, so Happy Holidays to all! Enjoy and be at peace.
The Bitter And The Sweet
No matter the bitter,
I’ll not deny the sweet
that polishes the bitter
to a high, taut sheen
so that when I take it in
(as I am inclined to do)
I still may see reflected in it
the sweet which touched it once
and left its subtle tinge
upon the sting of bitter.
No matter the bitter
and its effect upon my face
and core, I will never deny
that sweet and bitter fall equally well
upon my tongue; though sweet
may not be common, though bitter
somehow fills me more, sweet is present
somewhere and even as I twist
my cheeks and pout my lips,
even as I cough my praise
of bitter and its bracing charm,
sweet holds its firm and distant sway
if only because it sets me free
from too much bitter to think
and dream of sweet as
a possibly different way to be.
What You Most Despise Explains You Best
Blue bottled,
bushy-tailed,
windburnt
and ready.
Sleeked by
darkness into
menace on track.
Removed,
relegated,
remonstrated
and shunned but
the party’s not the same
without me lurking,
is it? So keep
some portion of an eye out,
whisper of my absences
and sudden arrivals —
God, it feels good
to be a god. To be
Mars or maybe
Loki or maybe one
unknown yet, blue-
tailed, bushyfaced,
glimmering clean
and sharp enough to cut
silk. Here comes someone
jumping toward you from shadow
to murk to ink —
is it still me
or am I nearby
laughing in the light
at what you have created
from my being forbidden
and cast into the night?
Hole
Alive in this encrusted moment
of tasting, feeling,
seeing, listening to
the air.
Loud pressure, always,
to speed up, get loud,
rock out.
No.
Rip a hole in that noise
and crawl through
to where
depths
are transcended through
details.
What to bring back
through the hole —
nothing.
Don’t speak of it.
Leave it for
revisiting, as ancient pottery
should be left in place
when found in
the forest.
One day, someone will ask
if there is still a forest
beyond the noise,
and then you will be able to
show them the hole and
they’ll hear you say
yes.
Brave In Winter
In a moment we’ll get back
to our regularly scheduled nonsense
but for now, let’s break for a wintry trance
as the wind cuts and swoops
across the bare skin of our faces.
Let’s face nature threatening
with a knife in her hand
and us standing there
shivering but not budging.
In a moment we can go back inside
but we ought to be able to walk and not run
when we do. We ought to be able to say
that we’re barely connected enough
back to the days of hide and fur
to be able to stand up to something
that comes every year and never relents.
In a moment we can forget this
before the fire or the radiator
but right now let’s act like original humans
and be glad we remember how,
even for a moment.
Mountain For Breakfast
Ate a mountain this morning.
All of it, base to peak.
I sat around fat as a dam
waiting to burst.
Lightning and fog
gathered around my head.
I was huge; if you’d been there
and tried to scale me, you’d have perished.
“I’m geographical!” I exclaimed.
“I’m on the map!”
Then someone tried to rename me.
I resisted that successfully
but damned if then I didn’t start wondering
who I was.
When and if I push this rock out of me
will I be the same person?
Can anyone take in that much of the world
and be unchanged?
All that I can say is that a mountain
presented itself, I took it in,
and now I’m staring down from a cliff
whenever I look in the mirror.
The Master’s House
In the master’s house
they know how to have a good time
and still make it seem to those outside
that they’re as broken-down as the rest of us
In the master’s house
they’ve got the know-how
that lets them kick up their heels
with the curtains closed
In the master’s house
all the pillows in the guest house
are filled with ultra-soft down
and lined with shattered Baccarat crystal
The master’s house is divided
There are wings for each of the children
The children keep their rooms slum-messy
All linked by corridors of marble
In the master’s house
There are a lot of doors that open out
But only a few that open in
The signs on those doors read “This Way Out”
In the master’s house they have televisions
Computers and phones and music on demand
Our music, our computers, our blessed wide screens
Everything we make they embrace and sell back
When the prodigal comes home to the master’s house
Nothing is slaughtered for the welcome feast
Nothing’s laid before him for his humble approval
Except a bill and a piece of cake
In the master’s house the halls echo and the walls stand pat
Outside the house crowds gather
to see the inside and measure themselves for the fit
in case one day they master themselves and move in
La Vie En Rose
Woke beautifully alert
from midday nap
to Grace Jones’ take
on “La Vie En Rose”
Thought of you at once
and said it out loud
“I’ll bet he’s dead”
Still don’t know for sure
but I’ll bet you still like Grace Jones
whether you are dead or not
The two of you were as scary
as Paris is beautiful, dear
Your beauty
was long-limbed and capable
of anything short of murder
when it was hungry enough
capable of chilling the blood
at first touch or sight
I cannot imagine that’s changed
I cannot imagine a different you
Are you in Dublin
are you in Dubai
Are you somewhere in the States
Under or aboveground
I’m so well rested
This afternoon is perfect
without you being anywhere close by
except in speculation
There are two ways
to chill the blood
a good way and a bad way
I have to say you were good at both
even with my rose-colored glasses on
and I hope you stay lost in time
with Edith Piaf
and Grace Jones
Slumming
After your fall,
you’re free to examine
the customs of slumming
in the name of a new life.
You’re free to move about
the dark places of the country,
the shady shelters, the half-secure
shared apartments, the dank
holes of forgotten neighborhoods.
Enjoy it and make a brag of it,
buddy; someone will agree with you
out of necessity and praise it as
a lifestyle choice, a simplification.
You’re free to self-medicate,
embalm yourself early, break open
the husks of imaginary taboos
in a world where everything’s permitted
and less is not more. Laugh and barf
on the corner, bucko; no one need hold
your hair when you’ve shaved your head
that shiny.
Maybe, though, you’re happy.
Maybe you’re glad things
aren’t better, more comfortable,
closer to what you once had —
but friend, you claim too much
for the way you live and too loudly
and for all the proclamations,
those keno slips in your pocket
flag a willingness to leave it behind.
Really, you’re free as this worm
in this puddle and as
pale. He’s wriggling
because that’s what worms
do. It’s what you’re
gonna do too. Snicker
and wriggle, pal; all yours
your low pride in low places,
even your wet pride of a pending
wet death in public, with not even
the utility of the fishhook
offered to you
to help you salvage a scrap.
The Hanging Gardens
Once, they were called
a wonder of the world —
gardens suspended
above the desert,
the green heart of Babylon.
Never mind that they
did not belong, that they took
unimaginable labor
to build and maintain,
immeasurable resources
to feed and water; never mind
that what they were
did not belong there.
They amazed all until
they fell to ruin,
dried out and blew away.
I think of them here in the skyscraper
where a man is speaking of deals
and leverage, thirty stories
above a garden of blue tarps
and varicolored tents full
of those who worked once
to make the country bloom.
It’s the only color in the autumnal city
today, a firefest
of inchoate rage
at the care and feeding
of unnatural wonders.
However many centuries have intervened
between the arrogant heartbeat of old Babylon
and this equal arrogance of ours,
it has not been enough time
to change the likely result.
Quick Note: The Duende Project
Just wanted to drop a note to the regular subscribers here (and anyone else coming by, for that matter):
First off, thanks for being here. It’s gratifying to know there’s a regular readership for this.
Second, thanks for all the comments lately. I’m normally really good about trying to respond to each one and it’s been tough lately. Will get back to that soon, promise.
Last point: I don’t usually refer to it here, but if you’re interested in The Duende Project, my poetry and music recording and performance project, you might want to join us on Facebook at:
http://www.facebook.com/TheDuendeProject
You’ll get updated info about shows, streamed tracks, occasional downloads for fans only…oh, I’m sure you know the drill.
Thanks, all.
T
Fable
east of where we settled
was a bleached tree, spear-ended,
open-seamed. on the nights
the full moon hung upon its top,
we built fires along the beach
and danced from one to the other,
all the while staring up.
later, when we’d grown too large
for the original camp, we spread out
and someone took down the tree
in the dark of the month, possibly
to burn, possibly to build with.
we did not seek the thief,
preferring instead to imagine
a better solution: that some god
had lifted it from us to free the moon.
nevertheless, we still build fires
and dance, having the good sense
to decide that while the moon is no longer ours,
we still belong to the moon. we have that amazing
capacity: to imagine a change and interpret it
when in fact there has been no change.
all that’s changed is the rationale we use
to hold onto our past. that, and this:
we do not sweat as much joy as we once did.
Cabin Fever
Go.
Just go.
Go do laundry, shopping,
banking errands. Pay the bills
and visit the folks.
See if there’s anyone
at the coffee shop, the bar,
the library. Make
some conversation.
At the least, pretend
that movement is valuable
in this case.
Go.
Just go.
Take a job, a volunteer
position, a role
in a community play.
Play a unicorn, a pirate,
a fur-clad king or queen.
Take on the control and mystery
the house doesn’t afford you.
Go.
Just go.
Get out the door
and unravel your hermitage,
following its threads
to the world
outside your house.
Let the slam of the door behind you
be your fanfare.
Let the anthem of reverse wail
as you get out of the driveway.
You’re an American,
royalty among nomads,
shining as you roll across the world.
Go.
Just go.
Go big, large, gargantuan, grandiose,
universal in your journey.
Make a virtue of pretending to tear
your roots from the ground,
even if just for a little while —
for the afternoon, the morning, the day —
your car radio on roar, your home behind you
laid open and wasted as Jericho from the sound.
Take comfort, though —
magically, it will be reborn when you come home
and rest. You can tear it down again
the next time you need to go.
Geodes
An old poem. Someone was looking for it. Here it is.
1.
This Monday night bar in Union Square
is loud enough to allow for intimacy.
You have been here for hours when a co-worker,
who is also the woman you’ve been seeing,
who has also been sitting across from you all this time,
rises from the table and turns toward the door.
You catch a glimpse
of a tattoo on her back,
visible between the shirt and the belt.
It stretches from hipcrest to hipcrest
as if she had sprouted
low-slung wings.
Her skin, her body, her message — now your sudden burden;
she has just recently inked this code for
escape upon herself, but
you never noticed it until
she stopped listening
to you.
She leaves the bar,
moving away from the sound of your voice
out into the night ‘ and you know she’s thinking that
though your words, like stones, were clearly born in fire,
though you have tumbled them a long time between your water heart and your earth tongue
to make them cool and gleaming and edgeless,
as if all that labor had meant nothing
you took and tossed the once-burning words at her
through the air, and it felt like hail in July.
She is longing for flight, but how will she ever rise
when you keep burying her
under such a tumble of dead things?
Inside her
a stone is growing where her heart once was. You know
she believes now that you will not be the one to move it.
She is gone, but you drink for another hour.
On your own cab ride home, you begin to plot a path
toward the cracking of her heart. Your dreams burn and spin all night.
2.
Next day, awake at 6 AM.
Thin clouds beam in the dawn,
slip by the window.
In them, her face: and then you see her face become
the face behind the voice of heaven.
There have been many things
in your life that were
seen once or many times
and unremembered
until they were needed.
A ripple on a lakebed,
a patch of wrinkled layers in old stone,
some tree bent and gnarled into a twist ‘ waiting
until they could give meaning
to something else.
Her face last night,
seen so many times before,
was like that.
You saw it and now
you hear secret voices,
voices heard solely in the body,
saying that
revelation exists
in a simple trace of
transcendence – even inside
the skin and eyes
of someone you think you know.
Before now, you certainly would not have called out to God when thinking of her.
Now your brain slides into that way of being —
now you say, alone in your bedroom,
what you have learned:
it exists,
it certainly exists,
a way of living,
a holy space that only another body can make real —
and because you will not call it
‘being in God’,
you will call it
‘being in love’.
You have never felt like this
before work before –
ready to pray all the way up to the
forty-fifth floor.
3.
By Tuesday noon
you have run back down
forty- five floors,
you’ve learned thousands
of new names for God,
crying them all
as you run from the thunder,
fleeing stone
and powder
and shock.
The running itself is a kind of prayer
that she is running too,
or watching this happen from elsewhere,
one hand on her mouth, tears
leaving trails in the white,
awful dust on her cheeks.
Your running is a prayer that she still can fly.
4.
You kick in the television at 9:30 PM.
You have not spoken for hours, staring at the phone, waiting for it to ring, waiting.
You close all the blinds while waiting, waiting for the phone to ring, waiting.
You wish you could drink but everything tastes like suicide.
A pill forms in your hand while you wait, wait for the phone, waiting.
A pill washes down past the scratch and raw breath of your coughing.
A pill makes you lucid in the face of delusion long enough to realize
that someone really is at the door, it’s your landlord, just arrived,
all the roads closed, been waiting for hours in the lines,
waiting, checking up on all of his tenants, tells you
the towers are gone, the towers for the cell phones are gone,
no calls coming in or out, no calls,
all those hours waiting,
air filled with voices in tears,
in arrest, in thrombosis, in embolism,
waiting, waiting, with crush injuries,
burns, inhalations, rages, fevers,
blames and names and hatreds,
silences and understandings, moments gone with
all the bodies newly torn, flung,
sundered, crushed, and cindered;
all the memories and the bearers of the memories
waiting to get through,
hoping to reinflate,
to reanimate,
to be reborn:
while you’re still
waiting.
5.
Wednesday, driving north from the city before dawn toward New England
to stay with friends. It’s mid September, nearly time for the leaves
to come off the trees in one last burst of flame.
The day looks like it is going to be
perfect.
You are trying to remember yesterday morning’s dream of her,
how it felt to rest in the moment of knowing
she could leave you. You linger on one small moment of it:
the moment of not caring where she was,
as long as she was out there somewhere,
as long as she was happy.
You called it love then,
but now you know it was God,
that moment of being without attachment to the result
was something you could call God.
a name you could hang
on the moment,
a name you’ll cling to
though it has become hard to say because
it does not include enough syllables
to describe the fact
that you didn’t bother to bring your cell phone with you this morning,
that you did not leave a message on hers before you left.
At a rest stop outside Waterbury
you pull over.
Maybe you fall asleep.
It isn’t important ?
what matters is that
suddenly all around you
the earth is pushing up geodes
by the thousands.
You pick one up and it cracks in your hands,
spilling oceans of ancient, limed water,
soaking your hands with salt and
the flakes of
long concealed
crystals.
She is suddenly there,
watching you weep,
and as she rises from the ground
she tells you:
keep moving
there are more names
for God
than any of us ever
could have
imagined
Breaking Your Story
Breaking your story
right down the middle
into perfect half-shells;
I see fruit left standing on end —
to rot?
to sprout?
to be consumed?
Did that truly come out of what you’ve been claiming
was yours? I can’t see
impressions on it at all;
it’s lovely, soft, so ripe —
how is this possible?
How can you be?
How might this, so unguarded now, grow?
Dark Matter 