Dark Matter

Just another aging ape in a restaurant
dining on some descended
dinosaur — chicken, maybe.

That’s what I appear to be
to others. Little do they know
who I really am –I can’t

tell them, of course. That would be
unrectifiable. It’s how I get by,
you see — allowing others

to define me by mistake and then
living up to the wrong billing.
All I’ve ever done, in fact,

has flowed from the mistakes
of others. My one true path has been
threaded through falsehood and

this ape, this unevolved fat boy
chewing with his mouth closed
in spite of his wanton instincts,

is satisfied. The chicken is good.
The people who think I’m good
are good with me. What I am to myself

is ridiculous and unimportant
to them. Inside though? Inside
the well fed body, the glittering

at my core would blind them
if they could see. They never will.
Let them think me small and ashamed,

or grandiose and self-important.
Everyone’s got it right as long
as they let me be.

I mention my pain out loud and
to facilitate my healing, kind folk
point me toward a hymnal for the Natural Congregation

of the Church of the Hairy Woodpecker.
Pick it up, they urge me. Go into the woods
and sing along, or better still, just listen.

I do and it’s certainly a lovely rhythm,
but not meant for me. I’ve tried
and the peace of nature’s not my language,

not in my range; I cannot fake it well enough
for the congregation gathered there
not to know and not to stare.

Instead I’ll sit here and keep the windows open
and think about what it would be like
to be rid of the kind folk, to just leave

the windows open and let the Church
say what it will about the one who won’t come
to the service. He’s got his own

God, or hymnal, they might say. If they’re right,
I’ll sit in waiting for that for the rest of my life;
the windows are open. Let it come, and let it be soon.

You make a damaged statement
and every last friend walks out of your home
while you sputter your mystified apologies.

Afterward, in bed, you lie awake just long enough
to be satisfied that you didn’t retire too early;
you sleep well for a change.

Isn’t it magnificent to be completely alone
and allowed to be the freakish, broken dog
you always knew you were? This is what

your family made you for, this angelic feeling
that you would be perpetually misunderstood:
whatever would come out of your mouth,

no matter when, no matter who was around,
even them, you would say the wrong thing.
You get up, offer a whimper, a bark. It’s all

annoying. It’s all the wrong language
for those around you. Hello, you say,
but it comes out good bye. I love you,

you say, but it spills out like a popped
blister soaking the earth and it’s too late
to shut up, to stop; no one’s listening

to what they call your bullshit
You might as well eat acid, a gun barrel,
a Nazi talking point, a dagger cookie,

and a baby one right after the other. It doesn’t matter:
you’re a bad dog. They don’t want you
anywhere other than on the killing table now.

Today I shall begin anew.
I will tell myself
I was born
to play this role.

Even before I get up I will lie here and pretend
I have changed overnight
into someone who gets the right things done
at the right time. I will lie in bed and tell myself

that if I do it right I will get to do this again tomorrow,
and again on the day after that. I will erase
previous days from my track record —
all of them, if possible. I will lie there and decide

that even if I wipe the record antiseptic-clean
I will keep my name the same so those
who have disapproved of me can change their minds
and praise me for the transformation.

All this joy to come from just lying in bed
and running new lines. I swear won’t think today
about yesterday and how I blew it. How I have
blown it over and over

by lying in bed too long and thinking about
yesterdays, the permanent record
of yesterdays strung into a necklace of lead.
I will lie here and think of anything other than dead weight.

To maintain isolation in this crowd
of friends, good people
gathered in a deep backyard
around food and smoke and
hours of catching up
after a plague year, seems
such a ridiculous pose.

To imagine that
a tragic face and story
should be your sole currency
among such friends would be a sin
if sin is real; instead
call it a willed stance, a facade —

which is not to say that
your story is not tragic and
your face does not bear the marks
of it, but to say that every face here
bears marks and yet somehow
there are still loud birds unseen
in the trees and lazy dogs and cats
and laughter all around.
You can be gloomy anytime.

Let go for one afternoon
and see a promise here that
after hard seasons
there will be softer days, and
even if you never attend
another, someone in the future
will recall this night
and your presence here
and be comforted by it.

I should be content
to look at a mountain
for what it is
and not as a comment on my life.”― David Ignatow

Outside something something
nature. Creature, plant,
rock, shadow on ground.

Inside something something
human emotion, insight. Illumination.
Metaphor as deep as depth.

Between something something
and something something a wall
unbreachable. Out there we call

“the world.” In here we call “soul” or
something. We call poems “keys.”
We try to make world into soul

with a key to a door we think we see
in the wall. Something, something;
something about the lock being broken

and something about trying to make things
work for us that are not our concern
while something laughs behind our backs.

That’s not door. That’s still wall.
That’s not a soul and maybe there’s no
world. This is a poem, or something, it seems;

a key that unlocks Nothing.