Dark Matter

It isn’t what you’re thinking —
or, maybe it is. I don’t know
what you know about it. All I know is
when I hear the words a finish line
appears, well-defined and solid,
at the distant end of a track.

At sunrise runners queue up behind the start line
and when the gun cracks they take off
as madly as they can, never noticing
that they never get any farther along —
not that it matters. The object here isn’t to win,
it’s to run; to be in the game.

If you’re watching
from the sidelines and you want in
someone just has to offer you a number,
a lane of your own that may or may not be crowded,
a stopwatch that may or may not be set to zero.
(The word is out that you should be grateful
no matter what you get.) All you need to win this one
is to be allowed on the track,

and then they call the race on account of darkness
and hand almost everyone a medal
except you — but tell you that you get to try again,
just wait for the next dawn to come up
bright and shiny as sweat on a pale brow.

“Be patient. The race is not always to the swift,”

you are told,
I am told,
we are told
again.

Fear, for me, always has far more to do with abandonment than physical danger. I’ll risk all sorts of bodily harm before taking the risk of losing a friendship, even to the point of absurdity. Even to the point of far greater emotional harm to myself.

Stupid. Self preservation is not one of my strong points. I can’t continue to let things hurt me in the name of false peace. There are times for things to end and I must get used to that sometime. Especially as my friends and I age.

I have noticed I’m getting better about it.

And…if you can read this, it’s not about you. In fact, it’s not even really about me. More about self-examination based on observations of others.

I’ve seen you pull the coins
off your own eyes
to feed the parking meter.

I’ve seen you and the hemlock vendor
chatting idly by the door
to the stadium.

I’ve smelled a hint of cyanide on your breath
just before you popped a mint
and smiled weakly back at this life.

Maybe in your mind you always skipped the denouement
to get to the wake where people
congratulated you on how great you looked

in your someday best and painted skin.
So now, when we pull you blue and white from the water
and see you bloated here and shriveled there,

now when it’s clear that this time
it’ll be a closed box we’ll sit around
to speak of you, now I have to ask:

did all that dress rehearsal make it easier
to go down to the lake this last time,
or were you as scared for yourself

as we always were for you? Did you wonder
what we’d be saying now, or did it all pale
to white light as you sank away?

This is not the way I thought you’d go.
I expected us to laugh bitterly together
at all those attempted escapes one day.

And I may yet laugh
at you, at us, at this —
but not now, and not soon;

not as long as I can still imagine
your body, a sack of empty gestures,
pulled out to dry under a waning moon.

Is growing on me.

I may have to dig out my King Crimson “Red” album to go along with it.

I’ve never been a prog-rock fan, but there are certain albums that defy an easy genre label and my accompanying bias, and I think this one (like the KC album) is going to become one of them.

Of course, I’ve been chasing this all with a generous helping of GYBE and Sonic Youth’s “Daydream Nation” so it may just be the total sonic wash aspect that’s getting me.

In other music news, my cube mate has absconded with my new Hem album. Damn her! (I did hear it before it vanished…oh, “Redwing”! What a great song.)

Switching to poetry — SPEAK was fun if a little disheveled last night. badgary read cool new poems from his forthcoming chapbook, Walt premiered a new poem about a 30-.30 rifle called “The Winchester Verses” (cough), and in general things were moony and fun. New themes were picked and will be headed to the Asylum website shortly…

Meanwhile, the shifting tempos and Zep-esque vocals of The Mars Volta continue to shred the office air…

is an eternity in poet time, so: a reminder for those in the NYC environs.

I (Tony Brown, AKA Harry Christner) will be reading from my revolting — um, revolutionary — oeuvre at the Bronx Museum of Art on March 30, 2005.

In the evening. In the Bronx. In the Museum. From my own stuff.

Come by or stay home and see who wins on American Idol, thus earning our snobbish scorn.

Mom always said,
“It would be a sin to waste food when kids are starving in Korea.”

By that logic, it would be a sin to not stroke each other for hours
when dance studios are crowded with lonely people
hoping a bossa nova brings them something closer than music.

It would be a sin to not kiss
when mouth to mouth dummies lie in their cases,
imagining near drownings, their saviors chosen from long lists.

It would be a sin to not get into each others’ pants
when there are used car salesmen out there
eyeing hip pockets as if they were the heirloom rosaries
they lost before First Communion.

It would be a sin for us to miss out on this chance
when there are mulletheads standing drunk and alone
as the DJ blasts Loverboy to herald last call.

It would be a sin to not discover the depth of the way we taste
when there are diners sniffing unpleasantly at their wine,
too afraid of ridicule to tell the server they don’t like it.

It would be a sin to not eat what’s in front of us
when there are club kids on X
starving in Chicago.

It would be a sin to not fall asleep together
when we can. It’s a sin that I even have to say this:
it’s a sin to look at each other this way
without immediately
closing our eyes.

One day I’m going to own these walls
and floor. Tear out the carpet
in favor of fur. Strip all the paint
in favor of bark. I want it sexy enough in here
to make no one want to work harder than I do.
Give me this boneyard and I’ll hand you back a farm.

One day I’m going to be a wheel
someday rolling across the plains
spinning past the desert’s hollow cheeks
all the way from this town to the far coast
and on into the waves.

One day I’m going to never have a bad day at work again
and it will not be my idea when I go, it’ll just be
the only idea anyone has for how to handle my impossible
beauty and lean tongue. Till then I don’t want to hear anything
that isn’t a come-on. I don’t want to do anything
that isn’t a faceplant. I don’t want to, bastard,
I don’t want to.

New/old purchases:

New:
Mars Volta, “Francis the Mute”

I may be giving this one away. It was only 7 bucks, though, so I may try to grow into it.

Hem, “Eveningland”

I loved “Rabbit Songs” so much I can’t wait to dig into this.

Repurchase:

Godspeed You Black Emperor! “lift yr. skinny fists like antennas to heaven”

Last year, I lent my entire GYBE! and A Silver Mt Zion collection to a work acquaintance who promptly moved to Portland, OR. I have mourned this ever since and never got around to rebuilding the collection. I have officially started.

In the guitarish meantime, I’ve been trying to work up arrangements of “Ballroom Blitz” on my ancient (1920s) black slide guitar and of “Dance Away” by Bryan Ferry on my usual instrument. The Ferry song’s pretty much done; the Sweet will take a bit more work but when it’s done it orta be…well, sweet. In a totally bizarre sort of way.

Some reasons added up. Careful; some nastiness therein.

bipolar

No offense intended, but love poems ought to occasionally take a slight detour from well worn ways, don’t you think?

This love will be
forever devoid
of hearts, falling stars,
the sea, the moon,
honey, and moist skin;

for this love is good with ketchup,
vinegar tang on tongue,
shaded far past deep blush,
coating us, rare and red,
perfectly.

Some love
smiles like chintz
and curves gently like paisley,
but this love is burlap
against our asses where we’ve
fallen down half naked on the
warehouse floor and gotten so dirty
it stinks just to be near us —
but we make it again just to be sure.
And then, this love’s
a washing machine
that churns and brings forth spic and span
returning us, cycle after cycle,
to almost good as new.

This love swallows us.
It is no fist sized organ
but a throat that goes
as deep as a whole body goes.
This love’s a pipeline
that ends in
the Mojave Desert. This love
spills out, dries out, blows around,
stings the eyes, gets into everything.

It’s a dustbowl love,
clouds against daylight,
and no moon in sight to break the darkness
around us, thank sweet Christ;

no one can recognize it,
no one can see us well enough
to even try to take it away.

My dear friend Seren was wonderful as a feature. Great erotic stuff, especially the series of short poems she included accompanied by guitarist Danielle.

The open mike was dull as dishwater, frankly. I’m getting too old to sit through stuff like this.

The open suffered most because of twenty four readers, only six were women. Women are writing the most interesting stuff in the scene right now, and they aren’t showing up amid the testosterone barrage that is the Asylum of late.

I hate this. I haven’t been in for a month and it felt like a horror show. I need to read somewhere regularly in order to edit my work, and SPEAK doesn’t happen often enough for me to make it do that duty. The Asylum is home, always will be; but I may need to relocate for a while.

More on this all later.

My dear friend Seren was wonderful as a feature. Great erotic stuff, especially the series of short poems she included accompanied by guitarist Danielle.

The open mike was dull as dishwater, frankly. I’m getting too old to sit through stuff like this.

The open suffered most because of twenty four readers, only six were women. Women are writing the most interesting stuff in the scene right now, and they aren’t showing up amid the testosterone barrage that is the Asylum of late.

I hate this. I haven’t been in for a month and it felt like a horror show. I need to read somewhere regularly in order to edit my work, and SPEAK doesn’t happen often enough for me to make it do that duty. The Asylum is home, always will be; but I may need to relocate for a while.

More on this all later.

I’ve seen you pull coins
from the eyes of the dead
to pay the parking meter.

I’ve seen you and the hemlock vendor
chatting idly by the door
to the stadium.

I’ve smelled a hint of cyanide on your breath
just before you popped a mint
and smiled weakly back at this life.

Until now, you had always skipped that denouement
to get to the wake, where people
congratulated you on how great you looked

in your someday best and painted skin.
So now when we pull you from the water
and see you bloated here and shriveled there,

now when it’s clear that this time
it’ll be a closed box we’ll sit around
to speak of you; now I have to ask:

did all that dress rehearsal make it easier
to go down to the lake this last time,
or were you as scared for yourself

as we always were for you? Did you wonder
what we’d be saying now, or did it all pale
to white light as you sank away?

I have to say, this is not the way I thought you’d go.
I expected us to laugh bitterly together
at all those attempted escapes one day.

I may yet laugh
at you, at us, at this —
but not soon, and surely alone.

I’ve been buried at work today and yesterday so I’ve been relatively scarce here.

Your comments and best wishes on my birthday are truly appreciated. I know I kicked up a fuss about my not celebrating it…and I don’t really; but the generous impulses of my friends were a welcome discovery this afternoon, and I would never want to deny that spirit with crabby behaviors.

I love you all and thank you sincerely.