I can’t keep up. I can’t keep up. I can’t
keep up. I’m losing the ability to talk to anyone else.
There’s too much to navigate. Too much to
know. I dare not get it wrong for fear of being
laughed at, ostracized. I can’t keep up. I can’t
breathe in that atmosphere. I’m suffocating under
the movie talk. Who are all these characters? How does
a franchise differ from a series? Is this the one
with the dog or the one with the Sword Eagle, or
are those the same thing? I can’t keep up or
even try. There are bands playing songs
that sound old and new at once and I can’t decide
if I should like them out loud or keep silent. None of this
was designed for me. I’m not supposed to know it exists.
I’m supposed to have a bitter vocabulary about all of it.
I’m supposed to have a lawn all are supposed to avoid.
I’m supposed to love or hate but I can’t even recognize. I can’t keep
up with any of you. You are so far into the deeps of it
I’m afraid to follow. I can’t hold a narrative thread longer
than a minute these days and couldn’t hold onto a lifeline
thrown to me if I was drowning in all this. I am drowning in all this.
I can’t tell who I am out here without a reference point and there are none here
that you don’t already hold like a stronghold. Like a home base
in tag. Like a ball in a game of keep away. I can’t keep up,
I’m stupid. I can’t keep up, I’m lazy. I can’t keep up, I’m old
and it all reminds me of how little substance there is to me now
for so many people to hang onto. Everything I’ve lost is out there somewhere.
It’s been swept out of my hands and I can’t keep up the search.
Tag Archives: aging
Pop Culture
Effloresence
complications in the country my blood and the nerves of the hand have led me to distrust my senses and be flush with anger perpetually others think I should let this flow into my art and thus be cured jackass thoughts if my poems were ever therapeutic I’d have never gotten to this point think of them instead as efflorescence on the hide of a flimsy house of rotten brick that I have shaken off and let fall outside the house you think it’s beautiful there on the ground but the house is still rotten and I am still sick in this country where I am trying to nurse my syrupy blood and my dead nerves to something like an ending all can stomach I gave up on storybook happy a long time ago and nothing I write could change that
An Old Poet Contemplates The Family Business
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.
An Old Poet Shrugs It Off
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.
Through The Hot Ash Of The World
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.”
An Old Poet Skips Yet Another Open Reading
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.
Done With
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
Hawks and Vultures
Overhead, one bird of prey.
Most likely redtail but surely a hawk
surmised from shape and behavior,
but in truth its identity for me is uncertain
from this angle.
Not a vulture,
of course; those are obvious
from below by the fingered wings,
the circles tightening and lowering.
But otherwise,
no true clue.
I should know this.
Once upon a time, I did
or thought I did. I spent more time
outdoors, from predawn
to deep into the night;
I looked up more often. I was confident
every time I pronounced my
identification of the shapes above.
I was, I’m sure, as wrong
as often as I was right
back then. Am I smarter now
that I just shake my head and say,
“I have no sense of truth
when faced with this, other than
the truth that I am simply thrilled
to see it out my front window
and am relieved to know
that is no vulture out there circling me,
at least not one I can see.”
Readiness
With no regret for how I have been refined
by the decline of who I long thought I was
into this realization of what I truly am.
With no regard for what others may think of me
in my next stage — whether they pity me or break free
of me, whether they care for or studiously avoid me.
With no clear choice as to how I must plod through
the remainder of this current stage as it becomes
a bog sucking at my steps, begging me to stop, rest, and rot.
With no revelation in the transformation as it unfurls me
into some flag for others to marvel at or fear, the borders
of my territory becoming clear though little within is obvious.
With no usable personal history to back me up as I puzzle through
to whatever is next, and no proven sense of what might be next
as those who might know and pass this way cannot speak my tongue.
With everything I have said being true,
I once again come to the window in the morning
and, as always, raise the blinds to see the sun.
A Tub of Eels
Behind a small head of smoke
on a Friday night, taking care
of business, keeping it real, tight
and clean, at the same time weeping
at all these near-exhausted cliches
which so perfectly summed him up
without one ounce of novelty needed
to make them more precise;
how did it happen
that he had become
so easy to describe?
He’d stopped trying,
he guessed. It didn’t feel
at all that way to him,
he felt so tired
from what he’d thought
was strenuous work to maintain
his freshness,
yet here he was:
it had to be a clerical error.
It had to be a mistake in the math.
It had to be in the calculations
that decided what was effort and
what was just getting by.
Behind a small head of smoke
on a Friday night, baseball on the
television, words slipping
around themselves
like a tub of eels, the way
they always have. Taking care of
business, the business
of herding eels; looking for
the outlets they use for escape —
and still he’s so tired
of himself. So tired and stale.
He’s been doing this
for longer than the cliches
have existed. They were cut
to fit him, tailored to his form;
they fit too well to just throw away
no matter how worn they all were.
The Long Tract
The last time I looked
I had not fulfilled
any of my early promise.
Then again,
the hell with that.
The rewards I’d expected
were given by assholes,
and designed to reinforce
themselves.
It’s as if my early promise
had their scent to it but after a life
of stinking up their joint their way
I’d opened a window
and breathed deeply of air
that smelled so different
I smelled different
after one breath. They couldn’t
take me in now, of course;
said I was a dud after all, said deep down
they always knew I would be.
I’m still myself, of course,
award-free yet tasting
not at all like sour grapes, surprising
myself if I am to be honest,
which I thought was the point.
I always thought that was the point;
tell the truth, do it clean,
let the rest take care of itself.
Maybe there are rewards for showing
late promise? Maybe there are none
and the reward now
is the increasing scent
of the outdoors
and the diminishing scent of
where I longed to belong, the smell
of trophies that pass through
the long tract into filthy hands.
The reward now is not having
to scrub myself raw
every time
I look at where
I’ve been.
One Sick Session
Remember how sick that session was?
We all walked out the door saying that was one sick session.
No idea now who played. No idea now what we started with.
I must have had a red guitar but which one?
I must have played my heart out but I don’t remember.
You were there. You’re shaking your head but you must have been.
If you don’t remember it I’ll try to remind you. Remember?
You offered me a smoke and I turned it down because no filter.
I smoked Winstons back then. Haven’t smoked in what now, a decade?
You say you never smoked? I could have sworn you offered me a Camel.
I know we started with a standard — maybe “Stella By Starlight?”
I don’t even recall how that goes now. You swear you never smoked?
I don’t touch my guitar anymore either. Maybe I never did?
The room I recall was full of smoke. Maybe it’s all in my head?
That sick session I rely on to remind me of who I was — did it happen?
Did I ever play at all? The room had gray walls and a ceiling fan.
Did it happen to me? I can just see five or six shadows intent on music.
Was it on TV? Everything is, you know. We were wailing, I promise.
No cutting, not us. We wove and bobbed and it worked, it just worked.
Did it happen? Did we play together? Everything used to just work back then.
To Not Be Me
In one of my last decades now
(do not contradict, I know
where I am on the Path)
and still waiting to grow up.
What does that mean?
I’ve felt the same more or less
since late in the second decade.
They say it to everyone
and maybe it’s specious and
we never do, or we were already
but it scared someone
and so we were told,
over and over, that we were not
yet grown. That we still had
work to do, and we do, and we did,
but nothing really shifted.
I know I’ve walked the Path I was set upon early
and I’ve been much the same
for the whole time I’ve been walking
and I’m still ungrown,
still unseasoned into much
that is different.
So then, into
the last decades, still waiting to say
oh, I see now; I see
what they’ve always wanted from me
(do not contradict, I see clearly now):
to not be me.
I Said To My Hometown,
I’m just passing through.
I won’t live here again.
I can’t. I see too well
to dare to think it could be done.
Within weeks after moving back
I’d tear myself up, lay myself
in a hole in the ground, set myself in
cement for archaeologists to find
centuries from now. They’d say
I was typical of the townsfolk
of the era and they’d be so right,
but I wouldn’t care then because death
has always had a way of erasing truth
and replacing it with lessons.
If I am not already
a lesson about my hometown
and how to set things in cement
that were once alive, why would I care
about becoming one after I’m dead?
All I can do is strive to be alive now,
right now, while striving to stay
the hell away from you,
and let today become the past
when I won’t care about any of this
any longer. Today, though, I’m just
passing through. I will forever be
just passing through.
Cars
That which began to drive me to this point
was my dad’s battered Mercedes 219 from 1959,
black with a worn red leather interior.
No show car, no rich man’s prize —
brought it back from his last German post
driven it to its death as a family car
that at the end couldn’t carry a family
to conclusion.
That which then continued to drive me to this point
was a succession of my own rat-faced used cars —
’67 junkyard rebirth Belair
in brush-painted brick red, two Saabs,
an International pickup, two Toyotas,
three Subarus, five Hondas; somewhere
in the mix was a fifty dollar Volkswagen
which lasted as long as a fifty dollar Volkswagen
would be expected to last.
Whatever has driven me to this point
was never a beloved steed, never
a cherished ride; instead a series
of disheveled limited options exercised
only when absolutely necessary, only when
I had to get somewhere else than where I was
when the previous option had fatally failed.
Whatever drove me to this point
always came with just the basics and problems
that came from basic breakage; wear and tear,
bad choices badly executed, poor daily care;
now and then the good old wrong place,
wrong time. I sit now and dream of
how it might have been different if I’d only,
if I had only, if I had only…and that is
what drives me now: a theory of my past
assembled from regrets and misread directions,
rides that did what was needed in the moment,
and nothing more until it all fell apart.
Dark Matter 