Dark Matter

Someone
has to stare back from the dark.

Someone
has to volunteer
to hold the keys.

Someone 
has to open the door and look in
now and then to check on
what’s in there.

Someone 
has to describe it for us
although the nature 
of what’s within is, allegedly, 
well known. 

Someone
has to be there 
in case someone else
stumbles into the dark
while the door is open
and can’t find their way out.

Someone
has to go to war
when now and then someone else
calls the dark terrible
and tries to pretend it’s not worthy
of consideration and suggests
we seal the door to it permanently.

Someone
has to become what’s within
and the keeper of what’s within
and the guide to what’s within
and the fortress of what’s within
and now and then the caretaker of those within
when someone else needs to stay there
and make a forever home in the dark.

To think that all this
could be described as
what happens when
a stoned guitarist
plugs in every pedal available
stomps them all at once
and starts banging away
to create such glorious mud
that no one can hear 
a song within this 
so they invent one 
like a boat on a sea of meaning
waiting to be brought to shore
and toward that end we stand around
looking for the Player so we can ask
for this profundity to be opened
and plumbed in public and help us 
see the revelation therein
when in fact the meaning of it all
is that a stoned guitarist 
just wanted to see
what happens
when everything
happens at once
in a bleeding cacophony and the illusion
of this being a song 
is one imposed by those
hungry for the sound of
one clean line
buried under all
a boat seeking port
while a good old jazz standard
or ancient folk tune plays
somewhere under the storm
but in truth the guitarist
has struck one last blast chord
and walked away
across the water 
to find another place 
to play while
the crude wash of sustain
hangs on and on
and the feedback
is killing us

Inside a box
where I am fated
to punch the walls

for this lifetime.
I can’t see through the walls I punch
because they’re walls

and I’m weak; been punching
so long and the holes I’ve made
look small. Like mouse holes

from old cartoons. Inside
the holes mice lived
comfortable lives till

they went outside
but then again
what was out there

was spacious and they had
plenty of room to run
from death by cat.

Outside these walls are more walls
I won’t punch through
in this lifetime, I’d bet.

I’m too weak to run
from anything if I did
break through. So

back to punching
weakly at the walls
before the walls. 

It’s all I know
of all there is. 
I’m no mouse;

there’s so little
in here
that comforts me. 

There must be secret behavior
in the world of whales;
it cannot be otherwise; 
traditions they carry on
that we either do not see
or do not understand
when we do see them;

perhaps a convention they follow
when they begin an ancient song,
similar to saying, “once
upon a time;” a convention that does not
shift from bowhead to gray to humpback;

do they all slow and stop
wherever they are in any ocean
upon hearing it, as if it were
a supplication to those who knew of
Better Times?

Think of whales praying 
somewhere beyond the discernment
of humans. Other beings
suspending themselves in the deep
nearby, hoping the coming grace
will envelope them as well,

holding them
in a place we cannot see
or know.

I  cannot describe
the sound of rain
without referring to rain.
So I can tell you nothing
about the sound of rain 
you don’t already know
except that to me,
rain sounds 
like Friday night
any time or day I hear it.
Rain feels like a prelude
to something expected,
centered and endless,
might be cleansing,
might be flooding,
might never end or
might depart leaving brightness
behind. But what it
sounds like? It sounds like
rain. Like the smell
of how a week ends 
and another begins, even though
there is nothing primeval
about weeks or weekends.
We made those up long after
we learned to recognize
the sound of rain. We made
a lot of things up
once we couldn’t be bothered
to listen, really listen,
to the rain.

Sun after rain,
they say, is inevitable.
Why should we believe that?

The trend of history,
they say, is forever upward.
Why should we believe that?

Trust in the system,
they say, it will right itself.
Why should we believe that?

We’ll get them next time,
they say, if you stick with us.
Why should I believe that?

Because I can see
I believe there are fewer birds here
other than settler sparrows and starlings.

Because I can hear
I believe there are more people
screaming than singing.

Because I can touch
I believe there are waves coming
that will soon swallow entire mythologies.

Because I can smell
I believe in fire and how warm
the perfume from the Arctic’s become.

Because I can taste
I believe there is blood in our food,
on my tongue, in my distended belly.

We’ve got a plan,
they say, but it will take time.
Why should I believe there is time?

Because we decay and have decayed.
Because I am not alone in what I sense.
Because I have seen how little of what they say

ever comes true. 
Sun after rain begets rain begets
weariness, history drowns, the system is just

a way of praying
that I do not believe 
was built to do this work. 

Some people actually are serene; 
self actualized, purely aligned.
They are legends of contentment,
sit daily with their pain well in hand, 
and are still.

I am glad for their existence.
Their stories give off such hope
and if they feel such hope themselves,
then truly, I am at peace with these stories
and what can they do for others.

I sit too, on and among bricks
rubbled up in bone-breaking piles,
blackened by a long fire that started
before I was born and continues
to flare from time to time, but I do not move.

Tell me where I am supposed to go,
I ask the ones at peace. They say I need
go nowhere, that peace is found within
or nowhere. This is nowhere, I respond.
Come sit with me where I live. They do not come.  

All life is suffering, they chide and chant
from a safe distance while the fire
I live with is licking at their walls. I could teach them
how to stand the coming days of sitting in rubble
while alternating screams and shrugs, 

but they won’t come over here and I can’t
get there, no matter how I try, no matter
how I try to rebuild this house to look like theirs
it burns again. So I sit here. All life is suffering.
Easy to say from over there, but I am here.

Let the great bear of my history 
come seeking me by intuition
once I have put enough into the world
that my trace is pure, strong, and available.

Let the great bear of my history
come to me some August night
as I sit on my porch and imagine 
the scent of next spring’s lilacs.

Let the great bear of my history
stand before me, stinking of my past
mingled with the past of the world
beyond this one until all smells of the future. 

Let the great bear of my history
raise me in its arms and crush me
into the void, and let my body
be buried and forgotten soon after.

Let the great bear of my history
grant me the gift of the scent of lilacs
as a final memory, sparking the desire
to return by spring. 

Let me come back as a bear
foraging for history since that moment,
running up and down hills
in rejection of myths, flavoring the air.

Let me be the bear for another,
a wonder-filled being on a porch,
thinking of some good thing yet to come;
let me become the Bear, the Lilac Bear.