The sung sections of a new Duende Project piece, still in progress. Stay tuned
Everything has a political component
If you learn to see
you’ll surely agree
Everything has a political component
The slant hits you
as you think it through
Everything has a political component
Every gear that turns
Every tree that burns
Everything has a political component
Folks can help you see
but their time ain’t free
1.
Your family gladly tucks you into
the bed you grew up in
when you are sick, sick as
possible, even if you are
impossibly sick —
better still, in fact, if it is
an illness that is best left
undescribed in the refined company
they claim to have kept;
a disease of inches and spew
that will keep others guessing
long after you pass. But
do not dare to be healthy
if you desire their love. Do not
imagine that their embrace,
even in your worst moments,
is love at all.
2.
When you die do not allow
a physicist to speak at your funeral
of the undead nature
of your being. They know all that;
they are counting on it. Instead
I recommend an engineer, a
locomotive driver; someone who can speak
of how long it takes a train to stop
from full speed, how much force
its impact delivers; someone
to point out that the track you were on
only ever went one way and
looking back over the narrow rails
of where you were during your life
tells you little about the landscape around them,
the views that broke your heart,
the places you longed to visit
without them in tow.
3.
Understand that even after hearing that,
the family will never sell
your sickbed. Instead they’ll make
a museum of your room, keep it
unclean and sigh when they sell tickets
to anyone who comes by.
Ask the complications in your journey for their reasons,
or slip aside to an easier path; it will not matter.
It has come to pass that you do not have enough time left
to understand how the world truly works.
You will instead assign blame or glory to God,
humble yourself before natural law,
skin yourself naked
to defend the science of your success and failure;
no matter. You are wrong
in some ways, right in others, and you will never
be able to bet on learning the answer and have it pay out.
You are going to have to let the questions
ride their own wild horses over the flat plains of your future,
your mountainous past looming over them, your canyoned regrets
all around them, your mystery oceans somewhere beyond all.
It will not matter in the time you have left
whether or not you ever solve for the final, perfect explanation
of your passage. You are going to stand alone at the end
with your only choices a resigned shrug of acceptance
or a bitter shrug of defiance. It will not matter which you choose.
I find myself
walking unwillingly
(as always,
as I was born to do,
as I have since day one)
with the common version
of the devil
through the hot ash
of his world, sucking in
the fragrance
of his sudden irrelevance
as the structure he supported
for so long is
ironically brought down
by people’s actions
in support of him.
I find myself
ecstatically afloat within
on the knowledge that
in the long run
this demon only holds
illusion
and all over the globe
less crudely rendered visions
of him and his Adversary
are getting up after
their long nap,
cracking their knuckles,
and turning to each other
in symbiotic fashion and friendship
to resume their lives
with a hearty,
“Now then…where were we?”
The common version of the devil
looks at all the ruin
of what was done
in his name
and mutters, “I’m
fucked now, aren’t I?”
I respond,
“Buck up,
bud. I hear your partner’s
coming up from
the Harrowing shortly.
Maybe the two of you
can go grab a seat on
a mountain top somewhere
and talk yourself into
something like
retirement. You’ve
certainly earned it.”
On one of the rare occasions
twenty years ago or so
when I came pretty close to
Pulling It Off,
I lay upon
the bathroom floor surrounded by
concerned cats and pulled myself
together even as I regretted my weakness,
telling myself I was doing It
for others, staying here
for the fear of leaving
others to live in the wake of It
and how It would ruin their lives to lose me
that way and have all they knew of me
erased by the vision of me ending up
cold, bled out upon the ancestral tiles,
ringed by the only beings
who stayed with me
through the dimming
and the light going out at last.
Twenty years or so later
I question that choice, uncertain
that living on past that day didn’t ruin
more lives than Pulling It Off would have,
thinking of the saddened people who’ve met me since then
and the ones who were there who’ve endured so much more,
and while I’m better now to some degree
and wouldn’t do more than think now and then
about trying once again to Pull It Off
and still on occasion
regretting my weakness at the time,
I am glad there are cats around me here, just in case.
It’s a joy to watch myself
disappearing at last
from spaces I once felt
I needed to dominate.
Truly, I wanted to vanish
every time I showed up
but the best I could do
was be central,
larger than life,
and false,
so everyone looked at
my illusion
and not at me.
Now I am
old enough and voluntarily
diminished,
so far beneath these people
who never look down
that I can be both
invisible and more real
than I ever have been before
as I burrow away
from expectations and
reputation into the places
where I can do the most
good, or damage,
or good damage, praying
(in an uncharitably fulfilling way)
that they may they never know
what hit them, what tunneled
below them, what changed
the ground that no longer
holds any of us well.
In July the ocean
burned down. The Gulf of Mexico
on fire. The oil running up to the surface
and igniting. Fireboats flooding flames
fed by hellmouth far below. Water kills fire
on water that should not burn
and we breathe a sigh of relief.
That’s who we are now.
In June churches began
to burn down. Think of all
who might have taken
torches to the churches.
Think of terrified officials
setting matches to their guilt,
or think of the children
who did not live to see this.
Imagine it in your own way
as clean revenge, filthy cover up,
or tragedy with no concern for context:
no matter. Churches burn
and some sleep better in the firelight.
That’s who we are now.
Elsewhere precincts
and drugstores and
people burndown as if
the air itself were on fire;
in fact, the atmosphere
is burning down. Woods and homes
flash up and vanish. Lakes and rivers
drying into sinks and gullies.
Air thick with humidity and hubris
and get along to go along, fingers
plunged into ears against the screaming
of the losing earth. Burndown generations,
learning to live and die in the light of fireworks
blowing up for the last time.
That’s who we are now.
Open a window to see
how things have changed from yesterday,
or even as far back as the day before,
the last time the windows were open.
Look into whatever is out there:
a cloud obscuring a dimmed sun, a front yard
damp with failed promise. Having expected
so much from you, it looks back in disappointment.
The weeds keep returning and although
that is to be expected, every year it’s
a source of your submergence into regret.
Your landlord says he should have paved it all.
There are days you agree with the old grouch
until the moment the sun comes out of its obscurity
and you remember the pink and green-slate leaves
of the hen and chicks growing in the broken front wall.
You did not plant them or plan for them
but they keep fighting through to the light.
The weeds you deplore are doing the same.
Hope, in its many shades of green, always shows up.
So you sigh and dress for changing weather
and prepare to weed — taking the unwanted
away, clearing for the desirable. You think about
repairing the front wall. You decide to let that go:
what has filled in the cracks
is too settled to lose,
and too perfect inside the damage
where it grows.
If anything at all
could divert the train I’m on
to some destination not promised
on its itinerary, I’d gladly
make it happen.
Ride the line long enough
and you realize
it’s just a long commute
to an unappetizing job site
that’s been marketed as paradise.
They said we were bound for glory.
I see glory off on the horizon
and I don’t think the tracks
will pass through there, not if
we keep going as we have.
I could have been a gambler,
a midnight rambler — anything
but good and holy. So: next
slow curve, I’m jumping off.
Likely end up broken and dead.
No matter. I’ll be still.
If they never find me I will
be right here forever, off
to the side of the cursed track.
Could have been so much worse.
In all the time I’ve spent
everywhere but here,
I only ever wanted to be
anywhere but there.
Here is also there.
Here is more there
than I care to admit. How
to be present anywhere
is my Great Unknown.
On the shore I long for desert.
In the desert I thirst
for sea and shore.
In a monk’s cell I would dream
of dissolute throngs; in a mob
I would no doubt separate
and seek a nook in which to cower.
Family, did you ever imagine
I would ever settle well, nearby,
ready to drop in for a visit and stay a while?
Friend, beloved, did you ever fully believe
I was as much a nomad as you are?
Inside, the best face I can muster
is a sour one. All outside will see
sweetness, a lifelong facade.
I only know how to be absence
in your presence, and I am sorry,
but these times being what they are
it is a living of sorts. Onward.
the broken arm of lady justice
the evened-out rage of alleged allies
my own agreement with those
who urge agreeability over gunfire
Done with
the stink of my confusion over who I truly am
the longing to reconcile all my parts
the ornery spirit that then seizes my hands
and pushes them into this sodden mess of art
the damnation that adheres to them
when I pull them out again and try to simply live
Done with
the notion that living could yet be simple
the sunsets and sunrises that try to say there is hope
the hope that will not touch me as I wish to be touched
the touch that hope offers that will not do to calm me
this whole curse of a hopeless body
that stumbles over everything
the time I’ve lost recovering from stumbles
trying to right myself on the grand wrong path
the mistaken faith of others that
such an implacable path leads anywhere worthy
Done with
the days of staring at my inadequate garage
the garage itself as public tell of where I fell from grace
shame and anger and guilt and insomniac self judgement
over my blind acceptance of lady justice’s sullied grip upon me
the days behind the days ahead and the days between the cracks
in the mirror I have in front of me at all times
the legacies of all who put me here
my own ease in how I have let them matter
Done with
the compulsion to say all this and still claim citizenship
in a place where I was never meant to be
Done with
opening days always with a sneer
closing days always with a sob
Walking in America
wearing its mandatory shoes
hurts. They don’t fit but because
they are superficially pretty
and match the rest of the outfit
people try to tell you your feet
are the problem. It’s fixable, they say.
Having tried on and even worn
dozens of the annual versions
of America’s shoes, you disagree.
You keep walking
in pain. Shoes
full of blood, shoes
lined with gun metal.
Finding others like you whose walk hurts
in the same way yours does
is nearly tragic most days.
Finding a place where others
have stopped to kick them off,
even briefly for quick respite,
is its own kind of ache.
The problem, you say, is the shoes, not the feet,
but even some of your fellow striders
who’ve stopped beside you on the street
to pull the cursed shoes off and rest
say the next version will fit at last.
They’re finally getting it right. Look at
how much progress we’ve made, how
far we’ve come. The walk ahead may be
daunting, but we’ve certainly left
all the bloody footprints we need
to show the way.
When you refuse to
tie the shoes back on, they’ll be the first
to stomp your bare feet until you are dead or
so crushed you might as well be, so you
stop trying, drag yourself to the nearest funeral home
(because you can’t even limp there)
where they’ll box you up, hide your feet,
burn or bury you and call you a martyr
long before you are in fact dead,
when all you ever wanted
was to get home
without screaming inside
at every step.
Time to rise, my friend,
but before you do, a question:
if you were to die while dreaming,
would you know?
Would you lie there cooling in the bed
while wandering through a palace
or riding a wild dog along a red ocean
at the sunset of twin suns? Would your heart cease
in the middle of finally getting
an answer from your mother
about the troubling dates of her first marriage
and your birth?
While dancing,
perfectly abandoned,
with the never-before-seen Right Light
of your Life?
In other words, if you die
in the middle of a dream —
if you stop being, just stop —
do you continue?
Would you even know you are
no longer? Are you certain?
Are you certain it’s Monday again,
and that you will be rising shortly?
Let us pray on the questions.
Let us listen to the answers:
is church or swamp the holiest of holies?
How deep into murky water will you go to find God?
Heaven, Hollywood, Watts: how far apart are they?
Did Lowell George meet Sylvester at the Whisky back in the day?
Glory, glory in the Commodore Hotel;
a choir full of lust and memory.
Glory, glory, hallelujah on the dance floor,
as real as anything, as anything could be.
Is a dance floor less real than the seat of Heaven?
Is the church the only true entrance to paradise?
Preacher in white coveralls offers Scripture
with six strings and a spark plug socket.
Gay black angel in glittering wig and robe
unfurls wings below the sacred mirrorball.
Is any rock club you could choose any more sacred
than any disco you could name?
Is the distance to Paradise from your stage
truly shorter than theirs, or do you just measure them differently?
The door to this house is open,
leads nowhere. Once inside
you are outside again and you
will keep entering and soon you realize
you will never get in.
No matter how long you do manage
to stay there you will have no choice but to leave
and then no matter how far you go from the house
you will find you are inside. Once inside you cannot stay;
once outside you cannot leave.
The people who live in the house are
shells. Hard, sometimes showing a trace
of what they once were, but overall when you listen
to them? Ancient oceans, the cry of drowning
in sight of a house by the shore, forever falling into the sea.
Dark Matter 