Dark Matter

Replacing a Fuse

The first step
is always a long one, no matter how
familiar the cellar. Entering the semi-dark,
one eye on the dead swinging bulb and
recalling the wisdom of all the horror tales
ever told, you question
every shadow. Each once-safe corner
is black and new. The doors
yawn open, the windows beam weakly, and
you can almost hear Freud and Jung whispering and
taking notes.

You forgot (of course)
a flashlight. You can’t read (of course)
the paper inside the box that tells you which fuse
does what. You’re going to have to
pull them all, one by one, and try to puzzle out
which one is blown.

It’s just another day, then:
fiddling in the dark,
looking for
illumination, trying to set
the currents right
and restore your power
while myths snicker
and wait for you to fail.

I believe I ate something ugly in the last few days.

Please, for all our sakes, don’t ask me how I know.

If I owe you an email, a congratulatory phone call (myainsel), or any other consideration, I am sorry.

Just a quick note to let you know that Zero Point Zero is up now, and there are only two more columns to go.

This week’s installment is an exercise in poetic self-flagellation, and includes a slightly reworked version of “Meta,” the poem from the last post.

Carry on. See you later. Hasta la vista, baby. C-YA, for now.

is smaller than I expected, but it’s DAMN pretty.

I also got a picture of myself shaking hands with Alan “Aaron” Embree, with the trophy, in front of a replica of the Fenway scoreboard set to show the final stats of the seventh game against the Yankees. Heh heh heh.

I thanked him for helping to win the trophy. He said it felt awesome winning it.

*yawn*

Actually, he seemed pretty cool overall, considering how much of this he must be doing lately.

I did this only because I get to lord it over my brother in law the Red Sox fanatic, and to rub it into some of my Yankee-fan buddies’ faces.

HAND ANTLERS, UP! TONGUE, OUT! FORWARD, MOCK!

I Am Tired Of You

I am tired of your life of things
your oft-repaired faces
your bluebirds and chemlawns
your gazing balls and croquet
I am tired of your luxury trucks and inbred dogs
and the scent of your ionic breeze

I am tired of you gathering
in your varnished rooms of white pine
in your open floor plans and closed redemptions
for your simple compassion and complex rejections
your dropkick Sundays and backstage Saturdays
your sandbox brotherhood and clubhouse suspicions

I am tired of you smiling
in white and ivory on your wedding days
in white and ivory at your christenings
I am tired of children who will be dipped in the sacred water
yet will not be blessed with attention or ease
who will be born without learning to live

I am tired enough to rest quietly beside you
in your cities and your cafes, your steel diners
your small bars of Schlitz and Jim Beam
these are my small bars, cafes, cities too
these are the small towns I sleep in as well
these are the farms and the highways
the massage parlors, the nightclubs, the alleys full of suck
the homes where some of us look into eyes like our own
the rooms where the girl strokes her belly and worries
the doorways that lead to our churches, our manna, our god
these are the worlds I inhabit and admit to
the places you cannot believe in
the places where fatigue and joy exist in each others’ pockets
the country by and of and for
the land of tired and poor and just got here and always been here

I am tired
I am resting now
as still as
a bullet
in a chamber

I went to the eye doctor at lunch.

I need bifocals.

The next stop was the Piercing Pagoda.

I compensated.

I’m re-upping my Prozac level, and getting back on Seroquel.

I surrender.

I just trimmed my friends’ list. Mostly folks I don’t hear from that often; a couple whose LJs don’t seem to mesh with my interests. (Sorry, folks. Nothing personal.)

Check it out; if you’re off and want back on, please, just let me know.

Heard the one about the LJer who is accused of killing her mother?

Relevant links:

http://www.livejournal.com/users/smchyrocky/
http://ap.alaskajournal.com/stories/state/ak/20041123/2605949.shtml

Let’s move beyond the tragedy itself for a second.

Somehow, seeing all those comments on her LJ from people spewing vitriol…hmm.

What do they gain by that?

I swear, there are days when I dream of world annihilation by fire, by ice, by God’s hand. I know these people see pain incarnate here, and I want to let them go.

I don’t want to be here anymore, in that space of anger. I don’t want to change the world. Let’s let it rot and die.

I’ll know better about all this tomorrow, but this is where I am tonight.

Under No Moon

Tonight I like hearing you
better even than seeing you.
Having heard you speak,
I won’t even bother
to open my eyes.

When you spoke, I dropped my knife to the ground.
It stuck blade end down, hilt deep.
A stream bubbled up from around it.
I can’t see that either but it sounds like you,
a cool bend in the wind.

Sinking this nude and this deep into midnight
while the poplars shake in spite of
greedy silence, I think I could take root and grow,
watered and well fed, lying in some bed, any bed,
listening to you say something, anything, under no moon.

…thanks, by the way, to dead_kitty for thoughts and critique…

Hi, y’all. How was your Thanksgiving?

We got home from our yearly friendly debauch in CT today. Our holiday consists of two dinners seventy miles apart, followed by consumption of large quantities of alcohol (one of the few times I do drink more than sparingly — and it involved Cabernet, single-malt Scotch, and my latest indulgence, good older tawny ports — by the way, any recommendations would be excellent) and crashing in a 300 year old restored farmhouse. Fun. I didn’t think about the computer at all, read some Rumi, played with a handsome Labrador Retriever pup, and generally enjoyed myself.

I overindulged a wee bit on the carbohydrate side of things (surprise), so my stomach has been a bit upset and it’s also clearly affecting the way my various meds work — so I’m being strict about the diet for a bit to get back on track.

Just posted the column at Gotpoetry — perhaps influenced by my mood, a melancholy meditation on the place of blank books in my life, and on what they represent to me. Love to hear your thoughts.

Only three columns left…wow. One on God and me and the poems, and then two to wrap it up.

I don’t know what I’ll do with myself.

thought this was interesting…

I know I mention Cryptome, a website on intelligence and privacy matters, an awful lot here.

I’ve used it for years because with very few bells and whistles, it provides source documents on a wide range of issues related to secrecy and government oversight of our lives.

It also tries to fight that secrecy by publishing little-seen documents from a lot of sources– things that many folks would prefer be left unseen.

Right now, they’re running a series of photographs they’re calling “the Fallujah/Iraqi Kill zone.” Some are battlefield photos, but the more recent ones — and the ones you really ought to see — are the photos of the funerals of the soldiers, and of wounded service people at hospitals, getting Purple Hearts, etc.

For all our rhetoric, we forget, sometimes, what the human face of war looks like. It looks like these photos of young men and women in their dress uniforms, coupled with photos of their bereft families and friends touching their coffins. It looks like the corpses of Iraqis in the streets of Fallujah, and the look of fear — and yeah, some elation too, now and again — on soldiers’ faces in the battle zone.

I don’t want to be a bummer on Thanksgiving Eve…but you might want to take a look at these pictures when you can, and think long and hard about what you’ve got to be thankful for. It brings the shortness of life home; it puts into perspective some of what’s being done, ostensibly in our name, by kids who may not ever make it home. Some of them are there because they believe it’s the right thing to do; others got there because the military seemed to be the only choice for them…

I don’t know. I’m not even sure what I’m trying to say here.

It just seems to me that wherever you stand on our country’s overseas actions, there’s something human to be recalled here that is best served by making these dilemmas real. Look at some of those faces, and think about what you would say to them, if you could.

This guy named David Beauchamp
used to host one or two ghosts at
every meal.

I watched him, sometimes, serving food
to an empty table.
I couldn’t tell exactly what
happened to the meal,
but it always
disappeared.

He drank
beer on Friday nights
with a poltergeist
at a local dive called Rosie’s.

He said once
of the spectres all around him that
they were lonely, he was lonely,
it worked out — and
what did it matter anyway
where you put your trust — in the dead
or living? Suppose, he said,
they’ve lied about being dead, the way
so many people do — suppose I’m already
dead? Would I even know?

Better, he said, to just give up
this fantasy of life
and move along. We don’t have a clue,
anyway, he said,
about what it means to be here, or there. Better to make peace:
come down on a Friday night and have
a beer or two or three,
and some small talk
in Rosie’s back room.

He put his head down on the table then.
He never saw me. I put my hand on his neck,
and held him, gently, until
we faded away.

I am staggered, nay, astonished — no, FUCKING astonished — that no one here has commented on my referring to a SubGenius text a few posts back.

Granted, it was a gift and all, and I’ve never actually read it; but I thought that was the point of slack, anyway?

I did read the first book, years ago, and chortled mightily throughout.

C’mon. Is this a forum full of PINKS?

The SubGenius must have SLACK!!!

(We now return to actual, original, non pop subculture related blog content.)

PS: does it disturb anyone else that the LJ spellchecker doesn’t recognize “blog?”

Went great. (Even I think so.)

Set list:

Cante Jondo for the Left Side
In America
Getting Ahead
The Last Word (aka “Let’s Fuck”)
Punk
Seafoam Green
The Kathy Bag
Chrysler
Mission Statement
DIY

As promised, a real old school set, with the exception of “The Last Word” and, comparatively, “Cante Jondo.” A good 70% off page, which is rare for me nowadays.

I feel like this stage of my poetic life is really over. The poems aren’t being retired, but I’m letting them go.

One more volume to this go-round, maybe in February, and then it’s no more chapbooks…and onto more magazine submissions and eventually the manuscript.

Sold about half the print run of the new book. (Time to make some more before DC, I think.)

I’ll start mailing them to you blurbers when you let me know your addresses…hint, hint…

Thanks to all in attendance; you made me very happy. I hope I did the same for you.

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

The big secret I mentioned earlier is that I’m going back to school. I’m entering the Bachelor’s in American Studies program at Lesley University in January — a low-residency intensive program that gives me my long-delayed BA in twenty-two months.

After years of foot dragging, abortive attempts at re-entering broken by breakdowns and job responsibilities, I think I’m well enough and generally pissed enough at my inertia to do this.

Let the games begin.