We are all exhausted
from avoiding
teeth. Teeth in how
we live, how we watch
for death. The car stalls
at the intersection,
teeth loom on both sides.
The bills sever us from
a sense of security the way teeth
tear into flesh. Stained teeth glimpsed
behind apparently sweet lips
warn of duplicity. How we fear
being bitten, how everything
appears suspiciously vampiric
in this dimming light.
Before They Snap Shut
Dark Is The Night, Cold Is The Road
From past the dark edge,
a cold road back to safety.
No brakes; little fuel.
Go straight out for home,
full throttle for home.
How to live through that,
unclear as I am
as to the meaning of home?
I go straight for home;
nonetheless, for home.
You can’t go home, fool,
or so the old saying goes,
but I will be trying.
As long as I breathe,
I will aim for home.
For Joy
I love you old friend
with your bag of
deflated balloons
and stale cake
and in your back pocket
coins for tossing around
at parties
Here you come jingling
and jangling
all fancy
and Renaissance-y
speaking rapidly about
the last Faire you attended
in some beach town where
no one blinked at such garb
You make me want
to go there and see for myself
I love this dancing you sweep before you
I thought there was a doom ahead
but maybe in your lovely universe
no such thing can happen
You don’t even carry a sword
and the plague mask I expected
to see you wearing now
you proclaim
is inauthentic
and you will not be party
to such things
and I want to believe you
because joy is perhaps
a mistake but
in your hands perhaps not
You inflate a few balloons
and make a few animals
and toss a few coins
and when
I ask about the cake
you say one should always carry something sweet
for as long as it retains its essence
and to argue with that
seems to diminish more than just
the thought of such a possibility
and this is not the place
or the time
for that
Missing The Pine
The pine we used to use
for second base in the vacant lot
across the street from where I was raised
is long gone, the lot having been
transformed back then
by a split level
that was new, then decayed,
now refurbished to
the beauty it originally displayed,
which for me is none.
I still resent how
the builders took that tree down
before I developed
enough strength and courage
to get farther than the first branch.
All that’s left: the unclimbable
third base birches, looking
not a day older than they did
fifty years ago; those bent trees and
my anger that somehow
whenever I come back
this is the first thing and nearly
the only thing I recall
about a place I once called home.
Planking At The Afterparty
An event is taking place.
An incident happens during the event.
People run toward it from their seats.
People see what they see,
react to the incident,
then react to the reactions.
The reactions add layers to incident and event.
It all thickens and gets lumpy with all that’s being added.
History adds its own layers
as people refer to history
and then there are reactions
to the event as it also becomes history.
People rip the incident out of the event
and turn it into a plank for whatever floor
they will walk on from now on.
It doesn’t fit as smoothly in some as it does in others.
But there was only one incident in one event —
how can so many people install it in their flooring?
Maybe they were all watching different events
and there were many different incidents,
or perhaps reaction and history created
the multiplicity of planks people use to build their homes.
They walk the floor from now on
and other people who come by now
stumble on that plank because
it never is quite smooth enough
not to stick up a little. It’s not like it is
in their house, where to them the floor
is as smooth
as a good story.
All planks stick up a little to someone.
Everyone’s tripping on a different plank.
No one walks a straight line anywhere.
Every last one of us
tripping, stumbling,
falling into one another.
Boudin Noir, Boudin Blanc
Revised, from 2019.
It’s not enough
to just say sausage
in a world with
boudin, andouille,
sujuk, saveloy,
bratwurst, kielbasa,
chorizo, linguica,
mortadella, and more;
not enough to speak of booze
in the presence of
arak, poitin, tiswin,
pulque, Calvados,
lager, pilsner,
Henny, MD-2020, aquavit,
absinthe, corn liquor,
and whiskies galore.
This world is built
on specifics, motes
of savor and flavor
and all manner of tastes
pulled from local waters,
land and legend. To condense them
leaves you wanting.
To turn away from soft words
toward ones
with gristle
is to humble yourself
so you can sit
at rough tables
with tough people
listening to them
speak of joy and pain
as they suck the burn
of andouille, or
debate, laughing, over
boudin noir or boudin blanc;
as you all wash a thick meal down
with strong bock followed
by shots of schnapps or korn;
perhaps hear someone tell
of how they came
from some place
where the old folks
made one thing
that put all else
to shame, and
hear in that
a cry for a lost home
where the right words
opened the right doors
to where the world
was right.
The Bridge Near Walmart
This young couple
holding hands,
walking over the bridge
toward Walmart.
Her knee-ripped jeans,
his puberty-popped beard;
heads down, talking
with apparent intensity
about something we
won’t ever know and maybe
they won’t even know if
you ask them about it tomorrow.
It’s early April in the city
and the city spring, wearing its con-artist smile,
promises so much future to these two
they can’t see more than two steps
ahead of them. Cross your fingers
for them, friends;
cross your hearts
and hope they thrive.
Three haiku
NOTE: I almost never write haiku. Just not my wheelhouse, and I respect the traditions of the form too much to mess around with it…most of the time.
I have friends who are absolute haiku masters who would certainly question my adherence to the old 5-7-5 rule we all learned in school. That’s fine; just taking the form out for a stroll, leaving the training wheels on.
Violets clinging
to cracks in a lakeshore rock
Waves falling just short
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
A wind with no home
seeking rest under my eaves —
Roof rises laughing
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
This wind broken branch —
how shall I move it aside?
I let it lie, step around.
Freedom
The bodies in front of their former homes. The homes themselves burnt to hell. The bodies face down, some with their hands tied. The homes no longer tied together by mortar and nails.
You could say this has been an action devoted to freeing the bricks from the tyranny of structure. When you look at it from the point for view of the property, the land the structures sat on, this is an exciting new opportunity. Anything may happen now.
As for the bodies? Find a little property for them. Dig a pit and lime it, put the bodies in, cover them up, tramp the dirt down. It’s a simple process. It will be repeated, from bullet to bulldozer, as long as there’s property to be set free.
I don’t know how to say it but to say it plain: freedom largely is defined in a point plotted between the axes of property and bodies. I don’t know how to say it but to say it with a dirty voice of truth: your freedom is largely defined by your comfort with that math.
I don’t know a place on earth where there have never been bodies lying dead in front of their former homes, where the property mattered less than the bodies, at least for a time, sometimes forever.
You may or may not have put the bodies there. Whether or not you did, your freedom actualizes upon finding your comfort level with the faces on those bodies — the color, the shape, the time between their deaths and your realization.
Did they die because they insulted the rights of the property around them? Did they die because their property wasn’t handled right? Did they die in order to keep you safe, protect your freedom?
Ah, but your home is lovely, filled with artifacts from your travels and your long and happy family life. You occupy such lovely property, my friends, my darlings. Freedom has been good to you.
Side Effects
Sitting in the pharmacy
waiting to see if the booster will show
side effects this time or not —
and when it doesn’t,
I leave when my allotted time is up
and rush to go and buy things
I admit I feel I need more
than this cautionary injection
but the doctors are saying “surge”
at the same time they are saying
“it’s all over” and while I do understand,
I do understand why they can and do,
such contradictory words are so much
a part of the current walk and talk
that purchasing anything from
catnip to chips to canned corn
offers more hope and certainty
than all the drugs and treatments
the doctors can offer to defeat
the wearying waves
of suffering and dread
that never seem
to stop breaking
over us.
Clowned
Living unclowned
by others sounds
wholesome
until the day
you are taking
a principled stand
and the mockery starts
Your wishing well becomes
clogged with bad laughter
so you retrench and imagine
things are already different
and the clowns have been silenced
You imagine that
on the other side of the clowning
there will be the grace of
the trapeze artist flying
high above the astonished
and grateful crowd
so you take a deep drink
from the well and get up
and take your stand again
New eBook on the way for my Patrons
Just ended work for the day on the first quarter eBook for my patrons at the $15/up level, a volume of some of the longer poems and poem sequences I’ve done over the years. Most of these do not appear here on the Dark Matter blog, btw.
I’ve got short commentaries for each sequence left to finish and then I’ll format it for ePub and PDF, after which it will be distributed to the lucky (?) patrons.
Still trying to decide about one piece which I think is kind of an interesting but decided failure — thought it might be useful from an educational standpoint on process. Will I revise it or put it out there, warts and all? We shall see…
You too can join in the fun and be a part of the madness…if you become a patron. Rewards will be shifting soon but even at the $1/month level, something will always be there. Promise.
On Fire, Always
I do not
much like
my head being
on fire.
My head is
always on fire. Therefore
I do not much like
“always.”
“Always”
never stops, by definition.
It may cool down occasionally
but is always throwing sparks.
You think this is
a metaphor (as it is)
but real people come by me
sniffing the air, asking
“do you smell smoke?”
even when I am
standing in the rain
or when it is obvious
that I am in deep water,
in over my head by choice.
They ask me to come up
for air and ask if I can
smell the smoke. I say,
why do you think
I am in the water? why do
you think I am trying
to stay under? how is it
that you are not ablaze
as I am? I am
always surprised
that they are always asking about
smoke they can smell
and never about a fire that by now
they should be able to see.
Mid-Apocalypse Dreamtime Rag
These cats won’t eat
what I give them.
They come to bed,
sit on the dresser
and night stand, staring me awake.
Sitting right behind them?
Ghost cats who will eat
and are also demanding food.
What does one feed
a ghost cat? They’re so thin,
so ornery. Maybe ghost fish,
fresh from the docks?
I get up, walk to a harbor
not far from here
full of boats
but devoid of docks;
fog on the water, the boats
and their catch
rotting in the fog,
the exorcised demon fishermen
of twenty centuries
wailing to come
back to shore.
I flee. Is there a market
somewhere near here
that might have canned food
for ghost cats? I left the house
with no money, though.
I don’t have money in general,
but no matter: all the markets
are closed for a holiday. No chance
of filling my needs that way
so I head for home through
streets full of paraders, naked,
brandishing willow wands,
striking each other across
the thighs, everyone squealing.
I pass apparently unseen by anyone;
re-enter my house, throngs of ghosts
around my feet, their eyes glinting
like swords. If I go back to bed,
no matter; all that hunger will slosh
around the room and there will be
no sleep. Let me sit here for a while
with you instead. We can imagine
a better world where neither live nor dead
shall feel want. Where the boats
come back to port, where the willows
grow green in spring, where the naked
can wear what they want if they want,
where I don’t need ghost money to feed
my ghosts, where what I don’t have
doesn’t rouse me
from sleep to try and do
impossible things
to achieve peace of mind.
Stall The Engine
To be fully alive
one must stall the engine
that carries you through
this ossified human stage.
Egg as you are now, indebted
to your job and reputation
to hold you together
for lack of a being inside,
you must break the engine
with the understanding
that as messy as you may become,
you are on the verge
of true incarnation at last:
not reincarnation,
for that is your first life
gestating within
the thin tough walls
you have shown the world
while your shell ran on a track
toward the shattering moment
when you will come forth from it
not as human — perhaps as dragonish
snake or armored hawk; smoke
trailing behind you, the wreck
of the engine piled in your wake, at last
able to breathe deeply, to fly.
Dark Matter 