My bloody friends and I
need our damage.
We float
in a colloidal suspension
of belief.
We are as young now
as when this began,
or so we like to think.
If anarchy rules,
why are we so perfectly
equidistant?
Reaching across
and up, we particulate.
Watch us wave
as we settle out
into a fine sludge
at the bottom.
Watch us claim
to have planned this.
That word
means “disregard.”
It means “no need to listen.”
It means “less than.”
It means “ha ha, ahem, thanks,
let’s move on, shall we?”
That cyanide word,
bitter scent in your air.
That devouring word,
you are minced and eaten by a nibbling horde.
That word is a pat on the head
so hard it shortens you.
That word, like any label,
is used to assign you a place on the shelf:
something
unnecessary at the moment.
Something that will sit there
until it becomes poisonous
and can be discarded
with a clear conscience.
When word reaches you
that he is “boning your girlfriend,”
consider that the word “boning”
as an angler uses it
implies a change
from a catch and release policy
to one of greater commitment.
From where you stand
they’re apparently
passing a joint on her back porch.
“Bone” is of course
another word for “joint”
and for one second you allow yourself
to think that maybe
this is the type of boning
the gossip means: the sharing
of substances. And then you think,
of course it is that exactly, no matter
what “bone” refers to.
Ah, rationality:
the fisher tosses his line,
decides that this one, he’ll keep
and consume. You catch a hint
of his catch and try to shake it off,
but the hook’s in and set now.
Smoke’s a bait, lure, scent in the water,
and you take it knowing it’s fatal.
He’s boning your girlfriend.
He’s boning your girlfriend.
There are limits.
First, you’re
the broken drawer
that chirps when I pull
hard and and fast.
The back falls off
and spills the junk inside
down into the limbo
behind. The thing I want most,
what drew me to reach for the pull
in the first place, is stuck
back there beyond my reach —
how dare you laugh
at me, lie there in mocking pieces
that scold me for an inability
to get at it?
Then, you’re the file,
corrupted and infirm
on my drive. Not working,
not even a little, sitting there
as a reminder of functionality:
how dare you
sit and spin endlessly
pretending that something
is going to happen?
Then, you’re
the viral video
being seen by all the curious idlers
on the planet. You’re caught
by accident doing something ridiculous
like loving me, protesting
to anyone who’ll listen
that it was all a mistake
and you’re not really like that.
How dare you
squawk like this, as if
you didn’t hand me the camera
and tell me how to push the buttons?
Finally, you’re every day
full of errors that leave me
trying to figure out
what went wrong,
when what went wrong
is that the day began and progressed
and aged and ended as it always does.
W’ere in the modern world
with its overabundance
and instant access. How dare you
accuse me of anachronism,
suggesting that there is agency
and cause and effect
in my stumbling
through it?
It’s all new.
Neither of us has it locked down yet.
Oh Stella,
we need to talk —
we really need to talk.
The conversation will likely go
to expected places — three common chords,
some modified to add space; switched rhythms
to amuse us both; misplaced fingers that sometimes
surprise and sometimes lead to pain;
nothing inspiring or novel on most days.
Once in a while, though, I stretch
and we find something together
that I thought was forever beyond me,
and I’m young again. I learn something
about leaving well enough alone
and breaking what’s not broken
and I’m young again with your neck
under one stumbling hand
and your body springing to life
under the other. We shout low
or whisper loud where we once
repeated what we’d always said.
Sometimes I resist the urge
to close and say everything on my mind.
I hold back that last home tone
and leave the root unresolved.
Those days, Stella, I can feel us
bending back to the past
where every conversation
was always left unfinished
to be taken up again tomorrow —
those days, Stella, old girl,
when we talked and talked
and always found new things to say.
This fretting hand of mine is cramped
and you need new strings;
we’re both showing our age
in every uncleated crack and stain;
yet sometimes, Stella,
and today is one of those days,
we really need to dig in, lift ourselves
out of the rut,
and talk and talk and talk.
If this is the Devil
he doesn’t smell too bad.
He looks a bit like a god.
Used to be one, you recall.
If this is the Devil
he sweats the details.
Dismisses God
with a gentle wave of his hand
for being too remote.
Says he knows you,
proves it in a low voice
by reciting all your wants.
Knows how to count pennies
and conquests, defeats
and bad checks.
As you think it over
he adjusts the flower
in his lapel. The Devil
is a dandy, pastel shirt
and good dark suit. He lifts
a finger to his hair and it falls
perfectly over his eyebrow.
All those stories, all the fear
bled from the nuns, all the wagging tongues
of the men of God, and here you sit
across from such a reasonable refutation
of them all. The common touch, too,
sucking on a Budweiser while he waits
for your answer, or pretends to wait
since you and he both know
that you’ve already decided.
The Devil, bearing a resemblance
to nothing at all like a traditional
rendering, sits back, orders another beer.
“You get this one, I’ll get the next,”
he says. And why not? Your wallet’s
already filling in your pocket.
Your night’s just getting started.
You’re just getting started yourself,
and there are so many ways to go from here.
I’m lying on the floor
looking up at the TV.
Thirty-nine years later
I’m eleven again. I like
the upside-downness of it,
familiar people talking
out of their foreheads.
That childhood of mine
is back in effect: another Asian war,
another broken country, the flag
suspect again, and people arguing
off the top of their heads,
but this time, it seems,
not a prayer
that I’ll grow up
and out of the fear.
The fucking darkness is splintering.
They call it a meteor shower,
I call it a mistake. I like my fucking darkness
whole and cursable. All the damn lovable
mistakes and demons live in the darkness
and I don’t like the implication
that something could break it. I like
my Goddamn darkness dark, not full
of potential redemption. Curse the candle
instead for lying and trying to pretend
that it won’t go out at some point
and the darkness will be back in effect
at once. I’ve got to live here, damnit,
fuck it all, all shit-raged and piss-full
of dim — may I remind you
that those things falling aren’t beautiful,
not wishes but trash coming down
in flames and not reaching the ground,
leftovers from the ass end of a dirty snowball.
The fucking darkness ought to be dark.
How the hell am I supposed to be
the professional shitbag I am
when all these fires keep the sky lit?
I need my fucking darkness pure.
I don’t want to have to be forced
to acknowledge hope.
My mind was set to chirp
whenever it was
crossed by thought.
It never shut up.
Then I applied
brown liquor
and all the chatter
smoothed itself out
into a warble
I could stand to hear.
Brown liquor,
tamer of birds.
My chest was set to holler
whenever the current certain someone
crossed my mind.
I got no sleep.
Then I applied
brown liquor
to my core
and boy, did the shouting
settle down. Boy,
did I sleep.
Brown liquor,
tamer of lions.
Brown liquor,
should have had you
all along and put you
where my problems are
from the first.
You do the trick
like nobody’s business,
and that’s nobody’s business.
Hear how quiet it is now?
That’s the way I always wanted it.
What I used to think and feel — damn
all that chirping and ruckus
and give me the brown liquor
to lie on the noise
like a dead blanket
that won’t keep me warm,
but what it does do,
I prefer.
Fill your fist
with tears
before you beat the creature
who wounded this baby
into that tortured sleep;
make a club of the rage and grief,
make a membership
of the circle of care, a posse
of everyone you know
to make fists to sling
against that thing
who beat this child
into labored inhale
and sharp exhale
drawn through a machine.
Time enough for the other cheek
when you turn your head back
to loving the tiny one back into this life —
today, make a fist of the love
and sling a fist at the monster
who cowers and wonders
at what’s been unleashed here:
the low growl of the mother
waiting in her blood
for the chance to smash
and rend, the ferocity
of a family yearning
for the baby to awaken
and learn what storms
were harnessed for him
as he slept.
I’ve got girl groups on my mind and radio.
Three minutes in heaven
followed by three minutes in heaven —
oh Ronnie, oh Mary, oh Diana and Flo —
whatever happened to us?
Once, anybody could have been my baby
or so you made it seem.
The smallest sound contained every other sound,
or so you made it seem.
For every night spent rolling back roads
in ancient cars rigged with the biggest speakers we could afford,
or parked in turnoffs deep in woods
full of New England ghosts and fumbled loving,
you had a song to match
and we tailored our cut to the words.
I”m in girl group land now,
full of three minute peeks into heavens I never found.
Turning up the stereo makes the missing hurt.
I turn it up even louder to make it go away.
Somebody sell me a bear.
Something bulky and toothy
with attitude to burn.
I want to go raiding
and I need to borrow its heart
for a time.
Fill me up with Bruin,
that shaggy source of ruin;
give me a path to follow
into the scared core of the enemy —
I’ve got cash and credit
and the willingness to use it.
I’ve got the right mentality
which lets me think I can buy
berserker
whatever it costs.
So someone sell me a bear.
Something I can control
and sic on the others I face.
Something a bear isn’t.
Something I’m not.
Everything is for sale,
even that.
An explosion
of consciousness
in the middle of the night
as I stir and find myself
suddenly:
all the previous day’s events
rattling, then tumbling
into a mess of unintended angles
and dust.
The blitz
in me
drives me from bed to couch
where I sit
and stare into the reverberation
until I’ve spent an hour
dead awake, waiting for more bombshells;
then I head back to bed
where I lie back
and think of old London
alive though devastated,
waiting for its chance
to build again.
Drop down upon me
the finest wine: rain
spilling off my shoulders
into the empty soil.
Sing the wind, its melody
twined with the voice
of the last tough grass cheering the moisture on,
its many-channeled throat wide open with joy.
Snow’s coming soon, perhaps
days from now, no more
than weeks away. Maples and oaks alike
shudder, waiting for the burden to settle.
I soak it all in, the portents
and the fulfilled prophecies,
the whispering and the roaring.
I shall gladly forget my name soon,
surrender it to this symphony —
one instrument drowning, but for now, still there.
Polonius would have understood
the seductive nature of Twitter:
the opportunity to listen in
upon intimacy and
usually unexpressed thought
though he had a purpose in mind
unlike so many of us
Polonius would still have had something inane to say
and from behind the curtain
he would have said it
out loud
No one
smells a rat anymore
because we invite
our lurkers
secure in the knowledge
that no one will lug our guts
to the neighbor room
for having heard too much
There is no longer
too much
Ophelia would have announced her imminent drowning
Laertes would have Googled
to learn the proper venom for his sword
and the melancholy Dane
would have heard it all ahead of time
right down to the last sweaty detail
thus decanting
an even more potent poison
into the porches of his own ears
