My 2023 anthology, “Handwriting Practice,” is now available to my paid members on Patreon. It will be available to the public in a month or two.
The Floor Is Always Lava
The floor is always lava. My feet are always burning. No one ever knows what’s happening. No one else feels the heated floor, the measured melting steps I have to take.
I’m going to tell of what that’s like, but not today. Today I have no choice but to keep it to myself because to explain it I’d have to open up and let the flames out of my lungs to which they’ve risen — up my legs the fire goes and there is a burning within.
It’s clear to me that some people like to read about the burning. It’s clear to me that I’m their choice to feed them the fire. It’s clear to me that they think my fire can counter theirs. It’s clear to me they are wrong.
The floor beneath me is always lava, and with that awareness as public knowledge now, I will keep my mouth as closed as I can until I can no more.
This Is How We Do It
I finished my term today and when I stepped out the door afterward I looked up at the sky and thought about that being a form of graduation. Reflected on what I’d learned. Tried to choose a life’s work. Tried to think about who I wanted to be.
I finished my term today and the final grades are in. I seem to have passed all the critical tests, the crucial exams,
the certifications for the New Life. I looked up at the sky and reflected on what I was supposed to do — what shone upon me now, what I attracted unto my self under the grand roof of Heaven.
I finished my term today and realized I had no idea what to do next. Reflected on direction, considered standing still for all the rest of time. Instead I looked up and began to rise. Ceremonial to the end. The writer of ritual endings. The knife wielder, my hands moving above my head. The only tassel to toss is the one on the scabbard of the athame.
This is how a long semester ends — uncertainty and a fall back into superstition.
This is how I discuss my lost youth. This is how the aged degenerate.
This is how it’s done. This is how we do it.
Beyond Rain
I like these high waters,
their roar a herald of once-lost causes;
love the way clear eyes
can look through the lashing rain
to see the dry light of tomorrow beyond.
Even drowning would be better
than turning to each other
and saying, “We’d better go inside.
Better wait out the storms
and let them wash themselves out.”
So…Here is the rain; beyond it,
the new day. For now I’ll stand
cold and wait for a moment,
let the rain let up a bit. Beyond
that is all I have to live for.
Listing
The first step is to take the list out of its resting place in an old fashioned desktop tray of dark wood which sits to one side of where one would normally place what they were writing. Writing comes second. Comes after the list. Lists of any sort must come first.
As one goes over the list, checking off (with small relief) boxes of those items which are complete and fretting over incompletions and forgotten or delayed or avoided ones, one begins to think of what should be next on the desktop; what should be centered after the work of checking items on the list and becoming desperate over that which is left unchecked is complete.
One begins to make another list of writing needed for one’s ultimate completion. One then goes back and adds the monitoring of this list to the first list. One must be sure to add the second list to the inbox. And now there are two — the list of things to do before writing, and the list of things to write once you begin to write.
One’s pen has become now empty of ink. One should add getting ink, or choosing new pens, or thinking about pencils over pens (one now needs a new list of pros and cons) and what of using a typewriter versus a computer? Making a new list now: writing instruments, technology…the lists must have formal titles. One needs the skill of titling to become a writer. Are there tools, are there workshops, are there blog posts and opinions — fountain pen or ball point, Mac or PC? What of using a gerund in the title? What of the capitalization and punctuation wars?
The second step is to die with lists upon lists to be shoveled into one’s grave. One will lie upon them for eternity. One will be so comfortable at that point. One will sleep very well on the pile of intention — so soft, like feather snow, like words one never pronounced but only dreamed of inventing for others to marvel over and snuggle with.
Toy Chest
Whatever I lose today
will likely end up in my toy chest
from childhood. I don’t know
where that is, either.
It was built like
a bench with a back
so perhaps someone’s sitting on it
and that’s why I can’t find it.
It was built to be subsequent furniture
so you could stuff it
with items other than toys
when childhood ended.
But I never took the toys out of it
and I suspect that it has been overfilled
with later playthings over time.
Not even a majority
of what’s in my missing toy chest
was put there by me. It was
a vacuum sucking up what I thought I loved,
or should at least cling to for life.
Whatever I lose or have lost
from words to sensations
to longings will be there. If I find it
I’ll spend some time rummaging through
to see what I want
to keep or can recall
how to play with them, remember
why I wanted to hold onto them.
To see if I recognize them,
can call them by name,
still care for them
if I ever truly did.
Missing the Funeral
There are cuffs sticking too far out of suit jackets, muted floral print dresses that have not been worn in a short while, and murmuring about causes and effects. Now and then, an out of place laugh.
Someone steps up and speaks to the now-seated mourners. All the well-styled messages, all the bowed heads; then the getting up to go home or to the reception hall to set up the ham sandwiches and coffee, while others go on to the cemetery to check off that detail of obligation.
Somewhere else is someone else who, still ignorant of the event, is working, sleeping, fucking, fighting, or flying home to where they’ll get the news of the Passing once they’ve landed.
They will tell everyone they wish they could have been there.
In private, once they are alone or flying back, they will be glad they were not. They no longer have the right clothes for that kind of event. The right taste in catering, or in God-talk.
Tunnel Vision
What I see ahead is condensed to a pinpoint. Tunnel vision, but so much more narrow. Bright all around except at the end of the tunnel and there at the end, a massive darkness. Not that I would call what’s all around me now as I head into it is fully lit. More like a haze from a fire. All around the dark point at the end is dim light that is only bright by comparison.
“Everyone is fighting a battle you cannot see,” says a poster quoting fifteen different people. Everyone’s battle is out there in the haze you cannot penetrate. Light’s useless. Sound matters and everyone’s battle sounds like bad pop music from this end of the tunnel.
What I see ahead is a gun barrel in the guerrilla night. I’m traveling down through it. Looking forward to roar upon exit, and then silence. Looking forward to full light. The tunnel expanding in a rush to a landscape. Everyone at war but for a few.
I go into the unblinding as if I’m now a stone tumbling in rapids along a hard bed. Who can say how smooth this will make me? All the polishing, the wearing down until I myself become a point.
A light at a tunnel’s end. Now-brilliant haze all around.
Sounds of battle becoming dance.
Immigrants
It took them a long hard time
to get from elsewhere to here.
It could have been from anywhere
but you should ask them
where it was and
what it was like there.
You should know;
you should not negate it, diminish it,
or assume they want to forget.
There are differences
between Montevideo, Tegucigalpa,
Talinn, Lviv.
Do not assume
they are interchangeable.
Do not assume they forget
once they arrive. Forgetting
is up to them, their children,
their grandchildren.
Look at the state of
the country. You
haven’t forgotten;
your people
didn’t forget. Haven’t yet.
Built a new world based on
their old world. Now
it’s their turn to do the same,
and all the whining
and gunfire
you can muster
won’t make it stop.
Happy New Year
Once more
around the sun;
please keep
your windows open
to hear
all the shouting.
I promise,
there will be
as much
as last year.
In fact
there will be
more. If only
you’d stopped
to hear it
even once
this last year,
it might
have been different:
too late now.
This year
might already be
too late.
We shall see.
So: go
with open windows
into it,
and listen for
the wailing,
the crying out.
Maybe even
commit to getting
out of
the car and
helping once
in a while?
It couldn’t hurt
to step into it
now and again
and try to help.
To at least
act like we care,
to at least
do something different, anything
other than driving by
with the windows up
like it doesn’t matter.
to us —
as we did last year.
As we do.
There’s No Jesus Here, I Swear
Think there’s any Jesus
in the poem? Trust me:
there’s not.
Jesus is staying away from this
the way that once upon a time the fish
on either side of the Red Sea learned to avoid
their former space in the divided waters,
no matter how they longed to be
with their loved ones on the other side.
The dry land between them,
the lane of separation and escape,
offered them nothing while it offered others
everything. But don’t assume
there’s any Moses
in this or any of my poems.
Deliverance is for the future
and this poem
is in the moment.
No Jesus, no Moses.
Just you and the fish
wondering what’s happening.
Me too, friend. Me too.
All this Biblical stuff,
the walls of water on either side.
Whose poem do you want it to be?
It won’t be the one I wrote.
Whoever you find there sneaked in
when I wasn’t looking, I swear.
You know how water distorts.
Those fish could be anyone.
Don’t be fooled.
That’s how I wrote it.
Anyone could be in here.
Clumsy Blues
When the cat
at last stepped out from under
the bed covers,
she came first
to the dry food dishes
in the border land between
pantry and kitchen,
then into the living room
with half-lidded eyes;
sat down smack in the middle
of the grey rug
looking for all the world
like a reluctant barroom audience
as I picked with
recovering skills
at the Telecaster
not long ago set aside
for my illness,
my wrecked ability;
only recently taken up again
to bat around
as a cat might play with
doomed prey.
Unimpressed,
she turned back
to the bedcovers to dream
of blues I’ll never play again —
not in this, the eighth
of my alleged nine lives
that is also the sixth
of hers, that is the last one
of someone else’s allotted haul.
All of this is to say
that when I sit back now,
I sit at my leisure
knowing I’ve not much longer to play.
This cat who will outlast
my last poor song
can stay under the blanket.
I’ll be there as well before too long,
thinking:
Let me sleep for now.
I’ll be satisfied one day soon.
I’ll have had enough of these clumsy blues.
I’ll set the guitar down for good.
Let’s Pretend
Pretend to that caution
you’ve rarely practiced
when deep in your longing
for love or for comfort in the cold.
As you stare at the sunrise
of one of the last days
of a calendar year,
you imagine the release
waiting ahead of you
some hours from now
after sunset; instead
of rushing head first toward it
as you once would have done
when seeking what you
had always considered
your birthright, this time
you fall to your knees,
stopping
well before
the sun is gone;
for once grabbing
for the last light instead of
falling for the darkness
you always found more amenable.
Pretend to caution
you have never felt
before letting yourself fall
into forever. You have never known
such a pull on your back.
You have never known what it is
to hold yourself from a free fall.
You do not know this person you’ve become:
have never
felt the desire
to remain alive, to see
what happens next.
Where Is The Door?
I am 63 years old
and neither can I mash potatoes
nor can I drive, if all I am told
is true. It doesn’t
look true — I cannot do
both at once but give me time
to separate the tasks from one another
and I am sure I can do
most of what what
I am asked to do. I am 63 years old
and cannot dress myself nor can I
hold myself close and love me
as I should be loved, or as I’ve
been told I should; who knows now
what that even means? I’m 63 years old
and the list — check-boxes on soul-paper,
boxes printed in fire, the audit trail
with which I judge myself — is incomplete.
It seems, even, to be erasing itself.
What I thought I knew of living is vanishing.
I’m 63 years old and I’ve not done nearly enough
about famine and genocides, nothing about
correcting history, not enough about the poor,
neither the belly nor the beast are more in check
because I was alive. I’m 63 years old
and it is 63 years old — weakened
in mind and matter. I cannot drive,
can’t mash potatoes, can’t hear,
have all but stopped feeling
anything other than fear and regret
and if I ever knew peace of mind,
I have forgotten what it was like.
I have to go, and 63 years after I got here
I find I’ve forgotten how to get to the exit.
63 plodding years of the urge for going,
and where exactly is that damned door?
Baked
Sometimes
the dough is perfect.
Other times
it is baked broken
without anyone
being able to tell.
And at times it is obvious
before the oven reaches full heat
that nothing can save
this one.
In the first instance,
the bread is perfection.
In the third
the bread is aborted before baking.
As for the second?
Think about all of
the people you’ve met
and you will understand
why sometimes
after a conversation
you find a taste
of their mold in your mouth.
What do you
bring to the table?
Dark Matter 