I used to be
such a goober
when it came to
how I acted around
someone I was drawn to
(although it was I gather at least
somewhat endearing to most except when
it became clear that I did not understand
how far off I was in my estimate
of the level of interest the other person had
in my attentions) — regardless of the reason
for my interest — hero worship, attraction,
a desire to learn, general admiration seizing hold —
I used to be such a goober, stumbling through
conversations, asking all the wrong questions
in even more wrong ways — touching subjects
that should have been left untouched, oddly breaching
spaces personal, professional, social, cultural, even now and then
spiritual — I used to be such a goober, addicted to the excitement
of finding someone who sparked me until after years of corrections
and shaming I became silent before the mystery of such attractions
and now, now I’m not; I have become calmer, stiller, socially acceptable,
and far more numb within.
Goober
Ghost Of Sweetness
Waking in darkness
to do…what?
Walk around the house
thinking daytime’s near?
Pretend this
was intentional
and go sit on the couch
in the living room
where all the light comes
from electronics
and think about yesterday,
all you did and didn’t do.
Daylight is a long way off,
it seems.
Mark this as night, still,
not early morning.
Rectification
for what was badly done
and what was undone
will have to wait until sunrise;
any wisdom that comes
from the struggle
needs time to be born,
and this is not that time.
To sleep now, with a spoonful
of honey on your tongue.
Morning will offer
a ghost of that sweetness.
As always, you should begin again then:
lay the ghost to rest, grant it
passage from dark to light
in tandem with your own.
A Purr And A Hiss
The big cat in the window
with a little bowl of catnip
poured from the bottle that sits
next to the bottle of Jameson’s.
In the next room the big man
sits next to an emptied glass.
He’s used to big Scotch whisky.
Irish whiskey barely touches him.
The big cat comes in, sits down,
stares at the big man. “You looking
for more?” he asks her. She walks away.
He knows she’s not. She knows when to stop
but it gives him the excuse he needs
to go back to the kitchen and pour
something into his, something into hers.
“Don’t mind if I do.” The big cat is gone,
probably to the bed.
He should do the same.
But now, a second glass
as the first barely touched him
and he wants to be touched.
“Here’s hoping,” he says.
It comes out somewhere
between a purr and a hiss.
Inconsequentials
Like a bite of lettuce
drenched in oil
on a salad plate
that’s about to be taken away,
or an irregular corner torn
from some unknown paper
blowing through the yard
fast enough
you can’t catch it so
you don’t bother
to try. Not to mention
those people
on your supermarket corner
for whom you feel
twinges of regret
that it’s so difficult
to rescue or clean up
after them. Must have had
a purpose once. Must have
been good. Or at the least
shouldn’t have been left behind
to litter the place.
Boilerplate
because of
the intense
social pressure
because
of the wild
speculation
because of
the depth
of suspicion
because of
the climate
of fear
we are withholding
the benefit
of the doubt
are reviewing
the situation
from all angles
will determine
if a measured
response may be needed
and will implement
such measures
with all due speed
A Grand Stone
A grand white stone on the bed
of a familiar pond
seemed to be
in shallow water
but then you remembered
as you reached for it
this pond is clear
but deeper here
To retrieve it
you had to plunge
your arm in almost
to the shoulder
So cold
you were disabled
for a while
in terms of being able
to feel and hold
the desired stone
to heft and bounce it
in that hand as you tried
to understand better
the reasons why it drew you
which had seemed obvious
until the shock
of seizing it
snatched your breath
It seemed so close
and easy to grasp
It looked
so perfect down there
Now all you’ve got is
this cold rock and
a longing
left unexplained
swiftly drying
into mere memory
Being Neither, Being Both
from 2013, revised.
Being Native
and White
on Thanksgiving
means being tired
of plowing the six weeks of stupid before this day.
Tired of explaining. Tired of walking on Pilgrim shells.
Tired of having to justify marking the day
as painful or joyful or neither
or both. Being Both on Thanksgiving
means I get to give myself the ulcer
I richly deserve. Means being hungry
in every sense of the word. Means
I want to give thanks for something
I stole from myself, or perhaps I did not;
being Both on Thanksgiving
means nothing is simple. I am thankful
for the tightrope, thankful for the mash-up
problems, thankful for looking like
I ought to be oblivious, thankful for
a good talking to. Being Neither, fully,
on Thanksgiving means I ought to give me
a good talking to. I am angry enough
to ignore much and fantasize more
over the boiled onions only my Dad eats
and the meat stuffing with chestnuts only my Mom eats,
angry enough to lose my appetite in public,
angry enough to be redder than the damned canned
cranberry sauce. Being Me on Thanksgiving
means I sit down to the table and eat like a fat man,
a continent’s worth of overkill, filling my dark gut
till I have to shed something to be comfortable
by the fire in the too-warm house of my parents
who are long past caring about anything but making sure
that the peace holds till night falls and we all go home
carrying the leftovers with us to feed on
for another whole year. Another harvest festival
passed, no guarantee of one next year, maybe
we’ll starve over the winter while being Native, being White,
being Neither, being Both, being the kind
who thinks it matters when you are choking on
so many bones.
Yellow Apple Skins
Long night recalled
only in fragments.
Yellow apple skins glimpsed
in a refrigerator drawer.
A voice as clear
as cirrus clouds in sunset.
A remnant lust
fading into regret.
What needs to be
retold for a different world.
Instructions on
how to be old.
Sickness and health
interchangeable.
Hard words: love,
damage, porcelain.
The same old “used to be”
shifting: is memory
credible, imagination
no more than a broken cup?
The pattern on the tablecloth.
The tablecloth on the floor
and whose eyes are those
watching from the pantry?
Fatigue in the form
of question marks.
I had better get home
before answering any of this.
Want to lie down
silently and let doubt
slide away like a kid giggling
in a downward mountain stream,
all the way into an icy pool
then coming up for air.
A yellow apple for breakfast.
Afterward, cleaning up
the broken cup. Afterward,
memory kissing me back
to just after childhood
and the eyes of an early lover.
The Work Undone
Five in the morning
has always been my time
though I haven’t seen it
in a while. Sick as
a sputtering candle,
sleepy as the old dog
I am, I’ve been keeping
less funereal hours of late
as once it gets dark
this body says go, sleep;
get used to it, soon enough
this is all you will have.
So to bed
after dinner I go, hating
myself for succumbing.
But somehow the graceful lamp
of Work Undone
relit itself tonight and now
before dawn I am here: back at it;
uncertain of the time left;
I am here aroused
into sword time
with the old weapon of choice
at hand. I ask:
what am I supposed
to do now, dimming body —
pretend to joy
while I stare at despair?
It shouldn’t be a pretense,
retorts the body half-lit before
the Work Undone. So much to do
before you drown. You are
out of the dark and joy is
out here, somewhere, waiting;
pretense is for false warriors. Go.
You are not
allowed to fade without
at least making a stab
at finding it.
COVID
My girlfriend and I are currently dealing with COVID. She’s sick but seems to be improving; I am just getting started with it.
Not much energy to write right now. I’m sorry about that. Hope to be back soon.
T
Trigonometry
You thought your life
was going to be deep,
imagined you’d have thoughts
as large as whales
moving sine-cosine through you
all night long, all day long,
from wake to sleep and after death.
You thought that at this age
bills would pay themselves,
imagined you’d be soaring now
far above dirty and mundane,
that such small things would be beyond you
as you plunged and rose and plunged again
upon thermals, updrafts; flying upon the fullness
of cycles, the vast majesty of understanding All.
You never doubted that by this age
throngs would look to you for wisdom,
imagined yourself in whale-speak
sharing the meaning of tender, sharing the falcons’
long vision, imagined yourself
nodding at the seekers, shrugging when
needed to maintain mystery.
You thought this morning
about all that nonsense,
imagined yourself instead no longer hungry
and cold as you sat in your sad apartment.
The whales no longer passing through you
sine-cosine; you have no sky to fly,
nowhere to go. Deep thoughts
you once hoped for have left you adrift.
Instead you think about your empty shelves,
pretend you recall hearing songs in the ocean;
it seems so far from here
to the top of that last wave
but it’s really no farther now
than it has ever been: how simple it seems now:
shallow or deep, high or low, rich or poor,
hungry or sated:
sine, cosine;
cosine, sine…ah.
Graveside
It was sweet of you
to agree with me
when I said I mattered
Was sweet of you
to let me lick
your plate
Sweet as
hot candy
on a car floor
Sweet and soft
as shoveled earth
If I could I’d get up
from this shady grave
and hug you and pray
that you wait
until my back is turned
and I start to walk away
before you scrape off
the dirt that adhered to you
when we embraced
the dirt
you put me in
before you shudder
An American Poem
Revised from November 2021.
To write an American poem
insert
nature image here;
purple up those mountains,
you god.
Then chew
the scenery
until there’s nothing left
to suck from it. The
American poem,
a rigged dance
of myth and cynicism.
Right outside the poem
is where we step on
toes
until the pain becomes so strong
they cannot help but kick at us. Inside
the poem is where we apologize.
An American poem
should be brimful
of exuberantly shaded ghosts
and their decorative babies,
crying, screaming — playing dead.
If you write it someone will say
no no, not the babies, please.
Leave the babies out of it.
So precious, so beautiful.
Bah, humbug, you say,
though it’s not Christmas, it’s
the Fourth of July and the Fourth
of July is built on dead children.
Uses fireworks to justify
a war everlasting.
What’s that about the ghosts? You
don’t recognize yourself in there?
Still cheering, still writing,
strangely inverted? A good mirror
shows you your other side.
A better one shows you more than one.
An American poem
usually holds an America over half
of its readers cannot recognize.
See the babies
before their mirrors,
either clapping and laughing
or screaming, wondering
where we went wrong
that this is how we look now
from wherever
you find yourself
when you come near
an American poem.
The fireworks are done.
Sulfur and sizzle hang in the air.
Stella
You live
between animals
in a studio apartment
pretending your daughter
is not so far away.
One side
of the room belongs to
a dumb cat named Cat
who sleeps
for more hours in one day
than you usually muster
over two nights.
The other side of the room
belongs to an alarmingly smart dog
named Toby or Tsunami or
something else beginning
with a T you don’t care
to use or recall
as he never comes for it
which proves he’s smart
as there’s no need to answer
in a room this small.
Your daughter
lives in New York
and neither calls nor
answers your calls.
You live
between animals
and look from time to time
at the yellow wall phone
you can’t quite give up
for a mobile device.
Feed the animals,
sit near the phone.
Don’t bother with the television.
If there’s ever a tsunami for real
they’ll never find you after.
The animals will survive
and go to shelters.
Your daughter won’t bother
trying to adopt either one.
You used to have a name,
but why bother with that now?
You were at last just
The Lady Between The Animals.
It’s not an easy one to forget,
but it will happen.
Rude Awakening
Soon enough
I hope
we will retch
when on some lucky morning
we finally taste workers’ blood
in our orange juice
and after that move on
to sweeping the television
into a trash can
and after that recognize
that some so-called
“opposing political viewpoint”
is in fact
the smirk of a well-fed predator
seeking its next meal
and while it won’t be soon enough for all
I hope we will find the key
to the dusty old gun safe
and after only the briefest of stops
for unlocking and retrieving
step out into the day
with a hot spring
in our step
rude awakening behind us
and something resembling
a red but needed future
before us
and some
will moan about violence
but how you can think
they’ll stop smirking
without us being willing
to wipe that away
as a consequence
for them
feeding us blood with a smile
is beyond me
Dark Matter 