As ever, I am blessed
by this country. As I
damn this moment, I
resurrect one that never
existed. As a wheel,
a cog, I am integral.
As a misshapen wheel,
a crooked cog, I
have been forced to
work. As
I am crushing, as I crush it,
as I am crushed I am
able to rationalize
my fault. As I live,
I can breathe. As I am made
safe, I breathe with lungs
not my own. As I dangle
over pits and fires, I am
daredeviltry of a prescribed
movie. As I stunt, I
fall short. As a wound,
I mostly just bleed. As a man,
I am thus drained. As ever,
I am blessed and healed simply
by dint of all I was born to
and no more than that as long
as I let that be. As it is, I let it be.
As it is I am ashamed unto death
but survive by
whispering, wait
for your moment. As it is,
that is all I have ever done:
wait.
Tag Archives: meditations
As It Is
Little Swamp
This little swamp
I’m standing in
is called the Belief.
That rock sticking up
above the dark, rooty water
is, I think, called the Truth.
I’m afraid of stepping onto it
as I might slip
and drown.
But I’m a man,
or so I’ve been told, and
should be utterly unafraid
to get dirty and wet when crossing
from Belief to Truth. So
what’s my story:
I’m happy in Belief
and threatened by Truth?
Or maybe
I’ve got the labels
crossed, and I’m sinking
in Truth and am reasonably avoiding
putting my trust in Belief?
Or do I not Believe
there is such a thing as Truth
and that’s not
a good foothold I’m seeing
but instead is
a Lie? Or is it that
the little swamp
is a little swamp,
and the rock is a rock,
and all the dirty water
I am standing in is filth
and stink, all the names
I give them are the script
for how I pretend to thrive,
and this dithering on and on
about changing where I stand
is the national anthem
of my country of birth?
The Sun I Used To Envision
The sun I used to envision
when I thought about
happiness (that word
that has to be attached
to something to be
real, that must be embodied
for it to mean anything)
has set over there, behind
my last memory of peace,
partially obscured by
an unstable cliff that might slide
into my path any minute now
and remind me of coming out
from a tunnel high up on the caldera
outside Alamogordo, New Mexico
as rain poured a pure red waterfall
laden with stone and mud
into the road
and I stopped
to look at it, afraid to drive ahead
into the city of atoms, unable to
turn around and return to
the reservation behind me
with its answers I could not learn,
watching this stream
tear across the asphalt
as if sent then by my happiness
to say you shall not pass,
you may not approach, this
is the limit and the sun you’ve envisioned
when you think of happiness
has set and this memory
of torrent and darkness and
blocking will define
your road from here.
Will
My people
I tell you
I am a broken bottle
and though I can hold
neither wine for celebration
nor water for survival
what is left of me
is yours to use
as decoration
(let my shards
be shattered further
into mosaic bits) or
as defense (let my ends
be cemented into walls
to serve as teeth) or even
for offense (take me in hand and
swing me
as needed)
Though I hope
I will be art for you
I will not flinch from being
fang or blade
for you my people
who will have need of all
of what little I can offer now
in these latter days
Library Tale
Look at this book —
someone’s
torn pages from it — a math
textbook — no mystery
as to what has been excised —
missing the entire
chapter on quadratic
equations as indicated by
a peek at the table of contents —
who would do such a thing — thieves
stealing functions —
And this book —
Organic Chemistry —
missing a chapter called
Introduction to Synthesis — how will
we learn synthesis without a proper
introduction now — who takes such things —
who deprives us of such
knowledge as this — how
we are built into being
from the basics —
Can’t find a full book
of history anywhere —
truncated civics lessons only — they’ve torn
proverbs from biographies and changed
dates, places — how we were before now —
but these books
that display the flowers
typically used in funeral wreaths — these posters
of disarticulated bones, muscles — these ancient
paintings of Heaven opening to judgment of
the corporeal, the material, the easily
touched? All intact — all mounted
in places of great honor — all placed
within easy reach —
as holy books
would be
If (Mother Of Moons)
Originally posted 10-12-2016.
If a window opens in a wall
where there has never been a window
and you are standing there at that moment
to see it open.
If a second or so
of your memory is lost,
and afterward
you cannot describe how it happened.
If no bricks appear to have been displaced
by the appearance of the window,
and no sound accompanied
the appearance of the window.
If you do not show amazement
or fear upon the opening of the new window,
and the opening seems to you
as perfect as the breathing of a newborn.
If you hold your own newborn up to the window
to let them see the moon,
and you look out the window
into a maze of walls, windows, and light from other moons.
If you recognize that none of the walls and windows
look anything like your own,
and the light from the other moons
changes you.
If you choose at that moment to call yourself
Mother of Moons,
though you have always been this;
if you are naming this for the first time,
then go out
to seek other windowless walls
and stand in front of them
until they change;
as every examined wall
becomes a window,
as all the windows
spring open at once,
you will know then how much turned
upon you taking hold of that given secret name.
What Buddy Guy Did
What Buddy Guy did to me
from the stage
of a college football stadium
in 1978
with Junior Wells
standing beside him
in head to toe
black leather
was an insult to all
the hard earned wisdom
of an eighteen year old
Clapton fan
from central Massachusetts
where my early ownership
of BOTH Robert Johnson albums
had made me
King Shit
of the
high school
blues boys
Now I had to
admit that I was
King of Shit
indeed and
I lay down on the muddy
field approximately
sixty yards back
from the cyclones before me
understanding that
I was no longer the
center of the
universe
It was fortunate
that I learned this
so early
in the day
as
Pharaoh Sanders
was
the next act
A Prayer For Those Against
For those
who have made
their existence in pain
that shifted early from
personal and acute
to social and chronic,
learning
against their will
how long it takes
to go from one gasp
of strained breath
to a lifelong struggle
for dignity, life, air;
for those
who see doors
open for some
and closed to others,
those who cry out
against the custom
of closing doors, those
who kick against
doors that are already closed,
those who put themselves
in the way of closing doors;
for those
forced to war against war
and those who reluctantly step to war
and those who step back from war
and those who lead others
to step aside from war;
for all those
arrayed against
what hurts and strangles
and blocks and combats.
I see you, am
with you,
not against you;
hear you and say
listening, not
talking over you;
say
yes, right here,
not over there; say
with you,
by your side,
at your back,
at your service,
at your call.
Buzzard Song
So.
An odd moment: the transition
from fearing for the world
and all I know of it
to being obsessed with
the numbness in my hand
and why it hasn’t ended
with a good night’s sleep
and how hard it’s going to be
to function until it’s gone…
if it goes…
if it goes…
at all.
Like a buzzard
who has been wheeling
and seeking
the dead,
like a buzzard
spiraling in
slowly from a great height,
certain only of
the fact of there being
something down there
that requires
greater attention;
how interesting,
this matter of
how the fear
that a short day ago
sang within me
in broad strokes
has shifted
to this small
humming
without missing
a note: the
same buzzard song
in a different arrangement.
Nothing Of Myself, Nothing
If you had asked me
when I was young,
I would have said
(upon the end of my first
and what I thought would be
my last and only love)
that my broken heart at least
gave me shards to throw
against every wall in town.
They made splendid noise
when hitting brick and stone,
even better when
I walked upon the crumbs
and crunched them into
a clay-red dust with which
I stained every bar and
temporary bed I could find
for weeks and months after.
I got a little over it soon enough
and said back then that I was
healed when I wasn’t at all,
but it was the right thing to say,
and it came true in time.
I must tell you
that it is different now, now
it has happened again and
I cannot say those foolish words
“broken heart” because now
my heart is so much weaker
than metaphor,
an aged and damaged muscle
full of scars and fat and bad motion.
I will not insult or weaken it by adding
this new desolation to its burden. Instead
I will call this a long howl of wind
as I try to move forward,
like the cry of a ghost
in my shirt pockets that appears
when I fumble past slips pf paper
that feel like they might have been
in her hands at some point;
I will call this a dimming of light
so subtle and so profound
that I re-imagine the color of pain,
seeing now instead of red everywhere
a gray fog that further blurs the dark
that’s already shoved its thumbs into my eyes
and leaves me sharply terrified
that I’ll never see a way past this,
that I am too old to do more
than grind it out from here,
day upon night upon day;
only letting go when,
spent at last,
spoiled for the future,
I am only left with her face,
voice, name, touch, and breath,
and nothing of myself,
nothing.
For A Living
When they ask
what do you do for a living
it is understood that the question
is about money
and that they say
what do you do for a living
instead of saying
justify to me how you stay above ground
They never intend the sentence
to be heard
with a word like
God or
glow or
love
at the end
Imagine if the sterile greeting
instead customarily meant
what do you do for a living glow
or
what do you do for a living connection to all other beings
or
what do you do for a living love
Or if it became known
as a traditional absurdity
meant strictly to break the ice at gatherings
as in
what do you do for a living lobster
or
what do you do for a living return
to those thrilling days of yesteryear
In your head now
is the germ of an idea
To respond now and then
What do you do for a living…what?
They will laugh and seem
nonplussed but
one day it may be
that one will look into your eyes
at the close of the odd exchange
and nod and say
indeed…that is a good question indeed…
and you watch
I promise it will happen
You watch
Both of you will feel at once
the world shaking
as it waits for the answer
Breaking News
Breaking news
from another city, this time
one of ours,
full tonight with new war: dozens
or hundreds of brand new dead or
injured in an attack
on a theater or bus station
or another place in which we are unused
to seeing such things; tonight, we see them
over and over, splashed in
the familiar colors of our flags.
At the same time, in the same old war zones,
the same old bombs fell again
and the same old dozens or
hundreds once again died or were wounded,
the same ones who are always dying or
wounded. Their bodies are only rarely
shown, chalk-dusted,
red-splashed, pulled
from ruined hospitals,
theaters, mosques, wedding
tents. They look the same
every time to us.
We don’t even bother
to post pictures of their faces
and who knows what their flags
look like? Who among us bothers
to learn their colors?
I want to introduce our own dead
to their dead in some place
beyond flags, somewhere beyond
the rooms where it is decided
what is breaking news and what is
a passing mention.
I want to see if,
once they are joined
in the aftermath of
such a sudden detonation
of their lives, they hold each other
and sob for each other
as we apparently cannot.
America Got Sick
America got sick,
turned and looked
for someone
to hear it complain,
said:
“Why am I sick?”
And people all over,
even right here, people
who’ve been sick for
a long time, some
sick unto death, replied:
“You’re sick from
eating the same trash
you’ve fed us for years —
just, perhaps,
a little more raw.”
Diet
Originally posted 11/1/2013.
To fall in love is to
gulp uncertainty
as if it were
fresh pineapple juice,
even if you
have never liked
pineapple juice,
even if you are
allergic — to fall in love
is to fear deliciously as you
fall into wondering
what will happen next.
To fall in love
is to burn the roast,
oversalt the potatoes,
boil the green beans
to mush, break
the good china, then
as you sit there
in the ruins of
a traditional family feast,
having watched all your relations
storm out to seek a meal
elsewhere,
you pick up
one green bean,
stuff it in your mouth,
and ask yourself how
one green bean could have
escaped the carnage to be
perfect, and enough,
how this one green bean became
sustenance enough
on its own;
to fall in love
is to swell with joy
and disbelief
at how
your questions
have been answered.
Purple
browbeaten
people glad
to hand off
judgment to
others and
curl up under
them. sad little
mouth open
no head game
people with all
the time
they’ve robbed
from the rest of
the planet. as it sinks
they’ll be seeking
hot dogs and
blast shields and
not in that order.
stoked to be
alone in charge of
wastelands with
the right flag flying
above. with a song
in their sores. with a
skip in their amputee
step. with a thought
and a prayer for
the descent into
finality as long as
jesus is with them
and there aren’t any
of those others
invited. wish there
were enough hours
in a time machine
to have done this
years ago. wish we were
in dixie, indebted
to the song of the
old south and the new
rest of the directions.
wish for a heavy stone
to cover all when it’s done
smoking in its crater.
wish for rain to clean it,
lightning to split it,
thunder to keep it
awake till something better
takes its place.
