He’s the shit.
One of Bowie’s
original vaseline tigers.
Moving with tide, hiding
his creaks and fears;
a good snake sliding by
on fearsome wholesome
appearance and
remnant style.
He’s the shit
or used to be
and lives for that
more than is safe
for someone of his age,
and surely we should thank
some god
for that.
Looking back
at your past
and pointing
and shouting until breath
is punched out of you
by time
and awareness of time
as you tell everyone:
back there is the age
when I was
at my best, most fully me;
now that I am
no longer that
I do not know who
this older gentleman pointing
back to me must be
although he bears my name
and my memories.
I am not myself these days.
This is what ripening
to your peak on the tree
then falling to the ground
and left to spoil there
does to you.
Not to me.
I’m no
gentleman. I ripened
after I fell
onto this ground and
on this ground
these seeds of mine
can matter more
than I did
and because I never was
good enough to pick
when I was on that tree,
I am perfect now.
Fearing that my edge will fail
when I most need it to stay
sharp and ready
is to imagine myself
dropped upon rock,
dulled so profoundly
I would be tossed aside
for some newer blade,
left behind like my memory
of singing through air
long ago, opening a clearing
in which to build.
Was I ever that, though —
that honed, that useful?
I look back and see nothing
like a clearing there —
just metal discarded, glinting
like lost potential.
Bruce Springsteen is canceling his tour
because he has a peptic ulcer
I’m canceling mine too
because Bruce has a peptic ulcer
and if he can’t go on why should I bother trying
I’m pulling back from all my road gigs
in favor of gastric peace and quiet myself
after years of having few fans to speak of
gnawing anxiety that felt like a hole deep within
and a virus-broken voice that’s ready to give out
It’s not like I listen to Bruce much anymore
Though I used to listen to Bruce all the time
I know I’ve seen my last show
Something about pushing it feels wrong to me
You ought to know when something stops feeding you
it’s going to turn around and eat you alive
I’m not saying it’s that way for Bruce
I’m saying it’s that way for me
I don’t read many books anymore
I’m too busy pretending I write them
I don’t listen to much music anymore
I’m too busy pretending I play some
Truth is I’m too busy not bleeding to death
to imagine a world where I’m healthy enough
to keep being a fan of the things that I love
I’m too frantically madly behind the times
and the hole in my gut and the crack in my voice
are too huge to fill when I finally admit it
Bruce Springsteen has canceled his tour
I never made plans to see it
but I’m shocked at myself and who I’ve become
that all I did when I heard
was shrug
Ride through
time of day, not
a stop and see time.
That bar looks
as old-man bar
as any I have seen.
Maybe once
a biker place. Never
have seen one there.
As curious as I am
I will never go in.
It’s on my way home
but too far from home
for a quick stop. If I stopped I know
I would stay long enough to die
driving back on Route 190,
Route 2, Route 290, heading home —
I would one day not get there.
Whoever this is now
in here is not that old man
just when I fit the part at last.
I could nurse whiskies
a whole late afternoon
and evening in there.
I would be unmemorable
but later someone watching
the local news would ask the bartender,
“wasn’t that the guy?”
and the bartender would say,
“Yeah, maybe. Never saw him
before a week or two ago. Pity —
seemed ok. Just quiet. Didn’t say
much. Seemed to have
stuff on his mind.”
I would have had stuff
on my mind. I always
have stuff on my mind
which is why I don’t stop
at the Paddock Lounge
on my way home.
I make it my faith
to stay away. It’s always
ride through time, never
stop in for a quick one time.
I used to be that guy. Even
if I still am I don’t want him
out in public. I know him,
I know what would happen.
These days
I can listen to a song
and not like it for itself
(whatever that means —
for the totality, the wash
of what it is and how it sounds)
but still enjoy it for how
its rhythm guitar snakes around
and under keyboards or how
the drummer’s a touch
behind the beat or what that vocalist’s
surprising choices do
to amplify the meaning
or meanings if it’s
“one of those songs
with more than one;” I can dig
its parts while not digging
the whole wrapped package.
This is how it’s been
for years now — digging
treasures out of dirt
or soil if you prefer; it’s rarely
for joy in the song or singer
that I sit back now and close my eyes.
That is in fact how I take all my joy
in these latter days;
in clumps, in pieces, not as a whole.
It does not lessen
my joy that this is true;
rather, it concentrates my savoring
of what I have dug free
from the world, what
I have unearthed.
If you see me with my eyes closed
before the beauty of some ocean
at sunset, please let me be.
I am here in the now, here to be swept up
in the sound of daylight leaving
with no promise of another day.
What did the iris learn
as its bloom browned
and became thin as paper
before falling?
The iris is not dead.
The swordplay of the leaves
goes on. If anything
they’ve grown longer.
Almost summer now
and no shade
other than green
in the border of the yard
where the irises grow.
Nothing other than green
to draw in the casual eye.
One might say
the irises have become background.
From the annual brief riot of purple
they learned to thrive, to be here
no matter who sees them,
to trust in a future
where they will bloom again
even after their superficial charms
have failed to endure.
My all-consuming problems
converge in this ancient guitar
that sounds barely fine today
Not as fine as it did a year ago
It needs some work just to be solid again
but even now it’s too expensive to repair
The cost will double over time
so it remains here in the spare closet
as a memory of what it used to offer
A reminder that pain can sound like
the strangled tone and sharp chirp
of treble strings
when they try too hard to respond
to an urgent upstroke
A request to make it sound like it used to
only makes it more obvious that it can’t
This fragile guitar is past its prime
waiting to explode from the pressure
of being tuned to an accepted idea
of what is right and good and worthy
I restrung it yesterday and played old songs
and thought of new ones I might try
With a softer touch I drew something forth
It briefly felt like music could still live here
Irritating. Whiny.
Unpleasant fuckup.
A mistake, a problem
come to stay.
One disease
after another, one system
creaking along
but just barely.
Waking up
every morning, dammit.
Not what was prayed for.
Not what I’d hoped for.
This is not the way I thought
it would go.
What some call
coming into grace
I call sliding into
a grave with no purchase
to be had from the sides
of the hole.
Can’t even hold on
as I go; I can’t
close my hands and
can’t feel much anyway
as I’m numb from the prints
to the bone. To the bone:
it’s the bone I desire
to find in the mirror —
but there’s too much flesh left
to cover it. I despair out loud: after all
I’m a whiny fuckup, I despair
of ever getting to see the bone,
ever getting to see myself
as more than incipient dead. It is as if
the universe itself is out to mock me
that in looking up from the grave, I see stars.
In the center of the house
behind a locked door
are stairs you haven’t climbed
in many years, maybe decades.
Now and then, you swear
there is sound up there:
someone running,
faraway music playing.
Begins and ends
suddenly, startling you,
breaking up the monotony
of a flat June mid-afternoon.
You know you can’t
open the door and
climb those stairs. Couldn’t
lift a foot if you tried,
and furthermore
can’t remember
where the key is.
It all leads you to wonder:
who’s up there? The family
lives elsewhere, kids long gone,
you don’t believe in ghosts
and anyway no one ever
died up there.
If it’s all in your head
no worries except the most
obvious: what’s wrong with me?
If it’s not,
maybe you should assume
you might be causing
somebody up there
the same anxiety:
who’s down there?
They might
wonder about
hearing snatches of
TV game shows
at top volume,
a wheelchair rolling
on old oaken floors.
You must admit, it’s ghostly
no matter who
lives here, who doesn’t,
or who used to. It’s only surprising
that you can’t hear it
all the time. The unseen
is making such a racket
in this place it is hard
to concentrate on one thing
or another. You don’t need
to climb the stairs to see that
but you will think about it often
as you sit before the TV
and try to guess
the answers before
the celebrities do,
imagining your win
and everyone
throughout the house
applauding.
Used to be proud
to be on the shortlist of
everyone’s go-to.
Used to be ready for that
at a snap of boss fingers.
I could shake
anyone’s hand. I was
honored more or less
by others for my prowess
at being. He is wise,
they’d say. It is
fruitful when he
is called upon
and so we call upon him.
Used to be plenty.
Now I am empty.
They don’t call
for me; they don’t
ask for advice and no one
needs my touch or my voice;
my hands are clumsy,
my words are dead-salty.
I’m too much, or is it
that I’m not enough?
I keep the birds fed now.
I keep the cats fat. It is good
to be of some use. It is good
to look down and say, if no one
listens to me the least I can do
is try to replace praise from without
with benign neglect within
while I maintain
the little I do control
for others, for the birds.
It’s almost like work,
a small way to be of some use,
which is all
I’ve ever asked for.
Big vehicle
grinding by
on the street
Unfamiliar racket
brings me to my feet
to see
a truck
delivering worn furniture
to a neighboring apartment
that a week ago was emptied
just as early
with just as much noise
I’ve become
a senior settler here
I never thought
I’d make it
this long
Never thought I’d have to
Expected to be
elsewhere
Or at least not make it
as far as “senior”
here in this part of town
where old timers have typically
stared out their windows
and wondered
when everything quiet
and familiar shifted
toward racket and fear
without their permission
Does this mean
it’s time to die off?
I never thought
I’d be asking this question
while looking out
of this particular window
The thing I thought about
for hours turned out to be
in the place I thought I’d left it
when I at last got up out of bed to check.
In fact it was in the place I have always
stored it, which I knew again
when I went there first in my hunt
out of sheer luck or some sense memory
and there it was as it always is,
except when I worry
about it being elsewhere.
Maybe it travels on my insomnia,
riding my anxiety to see all the places
I have never left it, then rushes back home
when I stagger out of bed to search; now
I can’t remember what it’s called other than
the thing I thought about for hours that isn’t
where I left it until it is. A silly thing
to be crying about,
whatever it is.
At sixty-three I ought not to care
as much as I sometimes do
about what people think
I mostly don’t except for
how much fear I carry
about how much I’ve begun to forget
about the past and
what’s back there that people
might not find palatable
or forgivable and here I am
at sixty-three and I’m fretting
about how I shouldn’t care
if I’ve been forgiven for things
I don’t recall doing and offenses
I don’t recall giving
why are the old days considered
the best days when people I know
from the old days won’t
bother with me and here I am
at sixty-three forcing myself
to walk down these old paths
mostly overgrown and invisible
as if something said don’t go there
to everyone including me and
I neither listen nor care except
for the fear that I lost something
down one of them and somewhere
down one of them is a person
I don’t recall having met
who will look at me and say
you dropped this and I’ve
been holding it for you
and at sixty-three
it will not be
a good thing to have
to take and hold
Most loyalty will turn out
to have been misplaced.
The edge is always
closer than you thought.
The drop is usually
not as long as you’d feared
although you’ll still
be broken at the bottom.
Aging reveals itself
as a series of once scoffed-at
anticipations coming slowly
to fruition; eventually
you accept that all you feared
will be coming true. Hope
is more or less fleeting,
though no less satisfying
for being fulfilled
only briefly. As for
peace and love and harmony:
save them for a song. Save the song
to be played by others
at your funeral. At least
joy will rise around you
and envelope those left behind.
If you want to do something
right in this life,
don’t let on that I’ve told you
this. Keep such lessons
to yourself and instead
write songs that suggest
I’m wrong and it’s going
to be better for everyone else.
Dark Matter 