Dark Matter

Today is January 11
and I woke up before 6
with little to do but
accept that I’m not a man

I know it’s not true 
and that even the words
“I’m not a man” are suspect
and reek of Whitestench

except that when I look at
myself and all the failures
that even I call failures
it’s hard to argue that the ‘Stench

is just covering up a good person
instead of adding its flavor to 
the general reek of my 
utter incompetence at being alive

I mean of course I’m breathing and
excreting and God knows I eat
but how will I escape the way
I fail to prosper and no

it’s not just the lack of money
it’s the utter insignificance of 
my work when I think I’m 
doing so well and it’s brushed aside

without so much as a thought
It’s the reduction of my once-keen edge
to a pinprick the barely draws blood
It’s the shame of slowly recognizing

the mistakes and looming disasters
have not gone away overnight
as they rise to the top like old bodies
in the pool of darkness in my brain

as I wake up daily before six
slightly happy until I see them
and drag myself out of bed into
the cloud of chores that each day brings

And at last it’s the knowledge
that in a better world built
without Whitestench or Manstench
or Moneystench it might have been 

different but in the long run
I’m here now on January 11
already up and regardless of society
it’s still my fault that I was and am unable

to get away from all that smell
breathe some fresh air 
take one deep breath and plunge
back in to do what I can and must do

on January 12 and beyond

Did you imagine any of this correctly
back when you lay in your room
before dawn and school and first love
and tried to foresee your life? If you did,
did you get the background right as well,
never mind the foreground and the bad business
offstage that clouded the formal dialogue 
and gave it a layer of unease you could taste —
if you did, if you got any or all of it right, why
are you here now trying to survive all of this?
Unless you thought it would fade by the time
you got here, or perhaps that you’d be among those
who would vanquish all the awfulness? Maybe you are
still at it, still making it better on center stage;
maybe you’re part of the problem; maybe
you never believed it would happen at all
and you trusted your childhood vision was going to be
wrong. Maybe you can’t even say why you pushed on
and persevered but now that you’re here 
and the decay and rot of the world is so evident,
you look back and imagine how it should have been
so clear, considering how far you’ve come from 
dawn and school and first love
and how none of any of that
came to be or stayed true.

It has been more than a few days 
when I come back with some reluctance 
to the dance from the outer room, 
stopping for a moment
on the threshold to watch others
whirl around like teacups
on a theme park ride.

I stand there wondering
if it’s worth it to begin again,
to pay the fare and join in;

then I recall the joys 
of uncertainty, the worry
and the planning
for where things might go
if the ride breaks down 
at the height of the swirling;

I think of the dancers,
of the dance itself
leaping and careening
into a stomp from a waltz,
the orchestra shifting gears
from decorum to abandon.

How can I not join in
when it seems
that all I have resisted 
has begun to change
and who I am
and what I have been
will settle at last into
the music yet to come?

This is a message
from oatmeal and cinnamon

From blueberries and
dark amber agave nectar

It reads
You keep hope alive sport

All this will be worth it
one of these days

And then there’s a message
from a walk through the swamp

From trash below the boardwalk
and the sight of a fox not far off

It reads
Nothing is easy but restoration is possible

and what is worth restoring
is wary — but it is nearby

Finally a message
from the bed you so want to replace

full of lumps and bad springs
that eclipse all the wholesome memories

It reads
Get your rest while you can sport

You will need it 
in the coming good times

if indeed
they come in their own good time