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
Be Sweet
be sweet with yourself
while donning your arms and armor
for the day.
drink fruits newly juiced
from a cup fashioned from
the skullcap of yesterday’s enemies.
be fierce as a broken daisy
not yet browning
as it droops toward decay.
ask yourself: if you are not
a warrior,
how are you still here?
in your shelter
as night, whether ripped tent
or bungalow, dim tenement
or high glitz studio:
are they all not
battlements? lay your hands
upon your sleeping beloved
and swear the only oath
a warrior should take:
here is what I am, here
is what I love. may I not let
this coarse need for war today
grind away my words
and my deeds. may I
recall the sweet even as I
traffic in the bitter.
may I come home. may I
sleep there. may I not be alone.
A Song Too Far
Low enough today
to be unable
to reach my guitar
even though it’s
right there hung just
above eye level
on the wall.
Forget about the amp,
I’m carrying enough
already. It’s not like
I have any place to go
and play tonight
so I’ll sit and think about
how I’ve got
nothing going on
and even if I did
I’d have no reason
to stretch out my hand.
Anything But Fine
I’m dying I say
and you say I’m going to be fine
and I’m dying I say and you say
fine. You’re going to be fine. We’re all
going to be fine. You’re dying
and I’m dying and that’s fine.
Nothing that inevitable
can ever be anything but fine.
I’m scared I say and you say
I’m going to be fine and
you are going to be safe. I’m scared
I say and you say there’s no reason
to be scared. I’m dying I say
and you say fine. I’m fine, you’re fine.
It used to mean fuckable, now it means
dark is the night and cold is the ground
no matter how fine you are so you can’t be
anything but fine.
I’m cold I say
and you say I’m going to be fine
and I’m dying though and scared and now
I’m cold and you say fine. You’re fine
and are going to be fine. I told you
the ground would be cold and
look how fine you are even on the ground
coming up to hold you. Your planet
longs to take you in. You can’t be
anything but fine.
The Buffet
1.
Imagine your sins were laid out upon
a buffet table. Where would you begin?
Would you save the best for last
or plunge your face and slobber it up
first thing? You know if you do the rest
will pale in comparison and you
will lose your appetite. Then what?
You’d likely sit there wondering
if you missed out on subtleties
by falling into such gluttony.
2.
Imagine your sins have been laid out
upon a table short but wide. The dishes
holding them are few but they are vast.
You’ve sampled throughout your life
but the rib-sticking ones, the ones
upon which you based your diet
and sustenance, are in deep bowls
covered with drip. Where to begin
is the big question. How to finish
is without question. You will finish
eyes open and unable to swallow
one more bite.
3.
Imagine your sins had never fed you.
You still wouldn’t have lived forever.
You’d have sat there wasting away
without one smile on your skinny little face.
You’d have been one clean bag of bones
but you still would have no clue about
how to eat right. How to digest
the hard stuff. How to add spices,
how to know all the differences between
evils and indulgences,
how to thrive
in the gap.
Neuropathy, 4 AM
Obsessed with what I hope exists
but am too lazy to research:
a method for knowing when this water
was last opened and poured.
A method for determining
when the bottle was last taken out
of the refrigerator,
how much was in it,
how much was consumed
before it was
put away. How many hours have passed
since the light last went on and then off
as the door was opened,
then closed. If it does not already exist
there must be someone in a lab
working on formulas, testing
hypothesis after hypothesis
for considering the movement of
molecules, the conservation of energy,
how to know from the state of now
what the state of then was
and how long ago then was.
It must be measurable. People
measure things. I measure things,
or wish I could: the progress
of how my nerves are dying, for example.
How pain grew from a tingle
in my big left toe to that full blaze
in both feet as if I’m shoeless on asphalt
in a beach parking lot
that comes pouring into me
at four AM when I’m just lying there
trying to sleep till the alarm.
There must be a measure of how much
that takes out of me as I lie there
already worrying about money and
the limits of hope and how clumsy
I’ve become when I wash
a dish or a spoon; how difficult it is now
to pull a shimmer
out of my guitar
with my numbing fingers as I used to.
In the dark I can’t even recall
the state of then. All I have
is the state of now. There must be
some way to measure the distance,
the decay, the way back to the core
of the memory of being whole.
What if I am the measure? What if
it’s all been an experiment to see
how then becomes now? I want to talk to
the whoever in whatever dark lab
wherever it is to understand
why this is so. Wasn’t it enough
to see how I was already
damn near empty
before deciding
to change the parameters?
If not, I want to hear
what’s been learned from this;
people measure things
and someone has to know.
Reflection/Epitaph
It’s been enough
to have been here.
Built my home
on this lot you offered.
Moved here from
a busted shack.
This made me work.
This made me wider.
Gave me more rooms
and all outdoors.
The home is not
a spacious place.
Neither great in width
nor wild in depth.
Either one’s
too grand for me.
It’s been enough
to live this place
and call it home
as I am called
so many things,
though none that simple.
As far as I can know
I’ve been completed.
It’s been enough
to have gotten this far.
Land Acknowledgment
Wondering what the name for this rock
would be in Nipmuc, or rather
what the name for this rock is
in Nipmuc. I seek a Nipmuc word
for how our daily chatter
aligns with the land’s desire
to be known, to include us in its
conversations with itself and all else.
What was the Nipmuc word for how it was
between us and the land
before Whiteness came,
stopped the world
and divided it into two categories:
resources and obstacles?
It’s a gap in me, a failing,
that I do not know.
It’s my shame
that I want that healing spoon fed to me.
As if the Nipmuc word alone
would save me trouble and give me more time
in time to avoid
the trouble.
I am seeking their magic now,
doing the colonizer thing:
asking for Nipmuc to save me
after all I have done
on behalf of genocide
simply by living as I do.
There are people
who could tell me
the Nipmuc words for everything,
or so I’ve heard,
but since I’m here and alone
and this is where the rock is
I lie down ear first to listen to it.
No idea of what language it may use
if it chooses to speak to me. No idea
if I’ll be able to pronounce it with this tongue.
Post Service
Time to light the lamps
on the end tables
in the clean, dated living room
and welcome expected guests
to your home for sitting time
where all will talk to each other
in awkward tones as they’ve not sat
together this way for a few years.
Now to the kitchen to unwrap
the gifted food and the soft drinks.
A few from the other room come in
to offer help and together you move
the food around, the plastic glasses,
the napkins, the paper plates.
Everyone’s so careful not to spill
a thing and in fact nothing spills.
All remains perfectly placed as if
that’s how the rest of the world
stays intact.
After, you speak out loud
to the remaining guest:
the invisible, the unspoken,
the one they came for.
“It was nice, wasn’t it?”
Living Inside The Boundaries
The boundaries implore us
to keep our heads in the game
and do our jobs.
Keep the homefires burning
but stop short of lighting new ones
if they go out.
We’ll be safe inside
but we should leave a door slightly ajar
for worthy guests.
Others are going
to try to get in. Remember
that there’s a lot of love here
for when the right ones knock
and want to shelter by the fire.
As for the rest, that’s what a gun is for.
If you need a penny at the store, take one
from the tray at the counter — but
only one per visit, you common thief.
Do not mistake
convenience for generosity.
Pay up or get out or just get out.
The boundaries come dressed
in dirty white robes that stink.
Could use a thorough airing out.
If you want to live here you have to
respect the boundaries even if they disrobe
and fully show themselves.
We wouldn’t like to see our boundaries
naked, though. You know they
wouldn’t ease up if they were stripped.
The boundaries thus exposed
would of course look less benign: all crotch,
no knee to bend in supplication.
Locked in, upright, decrepit, and cold.
Vision out of science fiction or perhaps
a frieze of history fully ossified.
It’s all you need. You don’t need a future.
The boundaries tell you how it will be
from now on: keep the home fires burning,
keep firing out the windows at the shadows,
keep your resources tight, expect nothing more
than a penny for your thoughts and all the ammo
you could ever need for when the fires go out
and you have to rob your neighbor
to survive.
Dark Matter 