A glass of Scotch whisky
always makes me happy
and a little sick
at the same time,
like most things
that make me happy do;
no unalloyed moments for me,
drunk on what makes me strong.
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Alloy
Operation Hermit Crab
You can’t trust
that you truly know anything
when you only know what others tell you
and your senses just bring you particles
to be rearranged and interpreted
based on what others have told you.
So you strip it all away
and go sit on a beach
in a different stolen shell,
but with no pretense this time.
Everyone knows the story
of how you’ll just discard this one
once you’ve outgrown it
and you’ll find another one
and you’ll keep repeating the cycle
until you’re consumed
or stepped on
or broken. There’s no such thing
as a death by anything other
than natural causes in this life.
If you’re lucky
you’ll get picked up
and tossed in a case
and provided with painted shells
while people chuckle at the googly eyes
and the stripes you’ve been provided.
It may look sad from out there
beyond the glass,
but you, you sneaky little machine
of outward deceit and self-awareness,
you’re delighted to be amusing them
without having to pretend
that’s what you really are at heart.
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Your Stuff
you’ve embedded
tiny angels
within the keepsakes
you carry everywhere
to inhabit wallet
key chain
and jewelry
peace
through possession
called out to cheer you
with a touch of your fingers
but you weary of it
at night
lie naked in bed
lay your stuff aside
and sleep in poverty
without your usual fear
but if you rise
after midnight
disturbed by
something
it may be those angels
cutting loose
noisy and free
the manacles
that have bound them to your safety
have been unlocked
by your lack of attention
since you’re already up
you might as well try
to stay awake
without having your stuff around
to protect you
see if you can recapture
the peace you had
when you had nothing
in your sleep
and your dreams
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Noise In The Kitchen
only happens when I’m not looking
sounds oddly comforting,
as if some beloved pet was simply
chewing on a favorite toy
but all the pets are accounted for
when it happens again
something going about its business
with no concern for me
construction in the street can’t explain it
I’ve checked for mice and there’s no sign of them
and I know how the house settles — this
is different
and again, nothing to be seen in there
when I try to sneak up on it
so
what could be so calm
and thoughtful as to live beside me
without my being aware of it
having approved it
or having brought it here
it’s going to drive me crazy
until I know
so I’ll wait
do nothing
remain still
all day if necessary
until I have learned the truth
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I Know What I Know
A country fair in rural Connecticut
two weeks ago
Saturday night
There’s a kid
as crew cut and blonde as a farmer stereotype
wearing a side tipped black on black Yankees cap
and this T-shirt that says in white on black
TODAY I DIDN’T EVEN HAVE TO USE MY AK
I GOT TO SAY IT WAS A GOOD DAY
I know where that came from
I pride myself on trying to know
things my friends don’t know
It’s a hipster thing and knowing that line
qualifies me as a hipster
among my graying pals
and like a good hipster I snicker to myself
What could this hick
still wet behind his exposed ears
know about something like that
out here in the fresh air
next to the cider donut stand
under the fireworks in the woods?
I don’t know where that’s coming from
Then tonight
on a late night drive home
from Providence
I hit the preset on the car radio
and pick up a new station
“BSR in the 401 — 88.1
Hitz From Da Left”
Now I know what I know
but I don’t know anything I’m hearing
Here’s a shoutout to “my boys
on lockdown tonight in the ACI”
and “Jacqui sending this out to Rab-dog
wherever he is tonight”
I think I know this piano sample
Think it’s from Curtis Mayfield
but it’s not long enough for me to be certain
And the beats that travel with it
make it hard to hear the past for the present
so I don’t know if I know
Then the announcer cuts in with
“Who’s making rhymes like this these days?
a few seconds go by before he says
“…that’s right — no one’s
making rhymes like this, son
This is twenty years old”
and the words are similar
to something I know
but far enough away to be strange
to ears that think they’ve heard everything
there is to know
(By the way, if you’re sitting there waiting for me
to bust out in some lame replica
of the rhymes I heard
waiting with incipient glee for my failure
may I suggest
you kiss my middle aged
fat round ass
because I know what I know
and I know when I’m licked
and I’m licked so hard here
I’m still wet behind the ears)
I’ve never heard this stuff before
and the tracks roll on
like breathing that won’t stop
and I’m trying to breathe like this
but I can’t
I’ve got the window down
with this unknown old school turned up loud
listening
to the wind rush by
until the signal breaks down to static
two miles out of Providence
still thirty miles from Connecticut
I hit another button
and find a few more rhymes
a little farther on
I recognize this stuff
and can almost follow the words
but this time when Ice Cube drops
I shut the hell up
because I know what I don’t know
and what I know now is that I know shit
except it seems that hip hop’s not something
to be found in the blood
but in the air
and maybe that kid back home
with the buzz cut and the shirt down to his knees
knows something I don’t
or maybe he doesn’t
but I know I don’t know
I know now
what I know
isn’t enough
and because of that
I got to say
today was a good day
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Glassfist
Glassfist,
the weirdest superhero
of all time,
broke his hands
on another villain’s face,
leaving the enemy shredded and wailing
and himself
crippled
yet again.
Back at Headquarters,
his snickering friends
in their capes and masks
watched
as he thrust his hands into the Superkiln
and refashioned them,
blowing shape back into each finger,
gloving them after they’d cooled.
“What, exactly, is the advantage
of this particular attribute?”
they asked him. “You’re only good
for two shattering blows in any battle
and then we’ve got to save
your sorry ass.”
He smiled, didn’t answer,
but later in his lair
he pulled off the gloves
and his mask and stared into his palms —
so clean,
no trace of blood anywhere,
and his own honest face
staring back without needing
to blink back tears.
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Remembering What Four Stones Said
You came to the bank of the stream
and saw them spread out
through the torrent before you.
The first,
white as a fish belly
and small, so small,
said that the Way
has no sense to it, but
leads forward in any case.
The second,
black as wood long submerged,
slick as a suspect, said that
if you could risk believing
that it offers solid footing,
you would find yourself halfway there…
and the third, rusty
streaked, seated high and dry,
solitary and distant,
mumbled a secret worth hearing,
perhaps only minimally intelligible,
but still invariable and true.
The fourth stone
lay below the surface.
It was no more than a shadow
and a threat of tumbling, of immersion.
It urged and coaxed: venture,
leap, steady as you go.
That far bank was high and green
and paths were visible under the pines,
leading up toward
the sun on the high meadow,
the moon on the high meadow:
you fell in love with it at once,
a perfect place for dancing
with wet feet
and knees
still trembling from the journey.
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Workshop in NYC this weekend…
For you NYC folks…I’ll be in NYC this weekend running a workshop. If you’re interested, here’s the link:
Notice to site watchers…
Taking a short break from posting poems here. Couple of weeks tops…
Good chance to go back over the six years’ worth of work in the back pages, though.
T
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Gun Song
World in peril
under the lead
night sky: we stare at
the nose of a bullet
aimed up
and viewed from within —
each of us one grain of powder
ready to ignite
and push it toward its target —
each of us wondering
what blow will create
the moment of ignition —
and how can we know
which of us will be the first
to set it all off?
We were created
to vanish
in that moment of propulsion.
Everything we do
before that
is just waiting:
potential in a chamber,
knowing what will crumple and fall
when The Day comes.
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The Remarkable
In the middle of
the infield
during a stock-car race,
he lifts his camera
from the roaring before him
and snaps several shots
of barbed wire
atop a chain-link fence
with the blue sky behind it.
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Pronouncing Worcester
Yeah,
it’s spelled weird
You pronounce it
“Wistah”
Easier to say
with a cigarette in your mouth
and a chip on your shoulder
Give it the strongest grit you can offer
in the face of the unrelenting
derision
Remember
the “Wist”
is for
wistfulness
a wish for it to be
something else
the “Ah” is for
“Ah,
whatever…
it is what it is”
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The Original Question
Is there any way
to begin a sentence
that doesn’t immediately
predestine its ending?
I keep talking
in hope of breaking through
to one. It’s not working,
and it’s not easy.
If you speak often,
you’ll repeat yourself
often. If you act often,
you’ll act and react.
Whatever chance I have
to say or do something original
before I stop speaking or doing
is rapidly vanishing into the haze
of things I’ve said or done before
that hangs around my head
and keeps me from seeing more
than what I know I have done.
Silence, of course, is the answer
to the original question…
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Meditation #21
Everyone on this show is
LOUD
from the insistently
neutral host
to the mother
screaming indignantly
at being accused of sleeping
with her eighteen year old stepson
calling the accuser
A DOG
to the stepson who is proclaiming that
it’s not true
that the four year old is not his
he would have been fourteen
and that’s
NASTY
to the aggrieved father
of said eighteen year old
who is making the accusation
and is himself accused
of not
MANNING UP
to the crowd cheering on their favorites
and the only moment of hush comes
with the ripping of the envelope
and the announcement that
NO ONE HERE
is the father
at which point there’s more yelling than ever
and everyone running around
to thunderous applause
All we ever see of the four year old
is a still picture
his eyes wary
his head thrust forward just a little
leading with his chin
Newport Beach, California
In the embrace
of the best Scotch
I’ve ever had
in the Four Seasons Hotel
in Newport Beach, California;
a perfect measure drawn neat
into a brandy snifter.
One hundred seventy five dollars a glass,
purchased on a rich man’s dime.
I catch the crawl
on the muted lounge TV
telling me that Kurt Cobain
has died.
“What the hell did he have
to be depressed about?”
says one of my companions,
and I take a swig, not a sip,
and mumble,
“You wouldn’t understand…”
I notice the rich man
turning his eyes down,
looking into the gold
rapidly disappearing
from his own glass.
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