In my late grandmother’s pantry
a leftover box of Italian sugar,
sole ingredient: “Zucchero.”
That is also the name of
an Italian blues musician.
I’ve never heard his music.
I’m ok with that, not because
I don’t want to hear it but because
I’m happy enough just knowing it exists.
I don’t have to experience everything
any more. Not, for instance, planning
to dip my finger into the box —
I know what sugar tastes like.
I know what the blues are like, too.
I can’t know perfectly all things
in every detail, although once I slew
several of my better selves
and some worse ones
in the pursuit of such knowledge.
Driven to know everyone and
everything; such knowledge was all
I had. I didn’t feel pretty or strong
or confident or human but the more I knew
the more I could fake those things. I bet
someone thinks an Italian blues musician
is faking it but I don’t. I don’t
know everything but I know
blues, blues and sugar,
sour and sweet; blues e zucchero,
aspro e dolce. I got the blues
for my lost youth and my vain
pursuits. I got the blues
for my grandmother’s cooking.
She’d cook and then sigh on a chair
in her kitchen, wishing my grandfather
was still alive. He died the same year
Robert Johnson did. So did she.
It was long before I was born.
I missed so much.
I can never catch up,
I can’t be satisfied,
and I’m done trying.
Tag Archives: meditations
Zucchero
Harambe
Harambe:
a Swahili word meaning
pull together
let us pull together
let us pull together as a people
Harambe
I learned it when I was a kid
I read it in a National Geographic
way back before Rupert Murdoch bought it
I read it in an article about Kenya
replete with requisite stereotyped photographs
Harambe
a rallying cry during the struggle for Kenyan independence
Harambe
pull together
let us pull together
let us pull together as a people
Harambe
I’ve never forgotten that
When they first talked about that gorilla named Harambe
I remembered
When they talked about the cage that gorilla was in
I remembered
When they talked about shooting him to save the child
I remembered
When they started to be mournful about the gorilla’s death
more than they were thankful for the still-living child
I remembered
When they talked so sternly with great condescension
about that child’s parents
I remembered
When they roared and roared for someone’s blood
to be spilled for the dead gorilla
I remembered
Harambe
pull together
let us pull together
let us pull together as a people
Harambe
A roar for blood
on behalf of a caged gorilla
who shared his name
with an independence movement
Harambe
I remember
Do you remember
Tatiana
a Siberian tiger
who killed one man in the San Francisco Zoo
injured two other men in the San Francisco Zoo
after escaping from her cage
after being taunted by some or all of the men
after having pinecones shot at her from slingshots
They shot Tatiana
There was talk afterward that the taunting was only publicized
to shield the zoo from repercussions
even though the men admitted it
No charges were filed
and no one remembers if anyone
roared for blood on behalf of
Tatiana
No one knows the names
of the African painted dogs
who tore a boy to death in the Pittsburgh Zoo
when he fell into their enclosure
from an observation deck
where his mother had raised him
to the railing to see better
No charges were filed then
It was deemed a tragic accident
Lawsuits were filed and settled
Only one dog was shot that day
The other dogs were removed
were sent to other zoos
The zoo replaced the nameless dogs
with cheetahs
who do not appear
to have been named
It’s dawn and I’ve been at this for too long
I don’t know how to pull it all together
which is fitting I guess
for a poem about a society
that can’t seem to pull it together
Harambe
The villains
The heroes
The gunned down
The living
The sympathetic ones
The blameworthy ones
The ones who write the narrative
Who get to tell the story
Who own the means of transmission
Who pulled the trigger on this
Who fell
Who declared the black and white of this
Who roared
Who loved the taste of blood in this
Who thirsted
Who danced around their desire
for all involved to die
from one bullet
from one choice
Harambe
pull together
let us pull together
let us pull together as a people
Harambe
Harambe
Is gone now
Is over now
Is over
and out
A Sudden Noise
A sudden noise
in the night
makes no sense,
so you turn on the light
and banish the darkness —
how foolish to do this,
to be this afraid of mystery.
To rush the process
of understanding upon
that which is revealing itself
at the moment it has chosen
in the setting it has chosen.
“It is better to light a single candle –“
bah! Why curse or banish
the darkness? It’s lovely in there
if you do not fear it. A sound
speaks there as it cannot in light.
Don’t you close your eyes
when in the presence of
Great Music?
Following Bliss
The downtown wizards
of modern magic
are up early — rinsing yesterday’s
sulfur from their mouths,
dressing their lithe frames
in alright costumes to follow
their bliss, striding
with great purpose into
the tiny autonomy granted them
in their compartmentalized jobs —
No! These are not jobs,
they shout at me.
These are careers.
Wizardry, they insist,
is a career,
claiming superpowers
owned in fact
by their bosses.
Bosses beat wizards.
The downtown wizards know it.
Hence defensiveness, hence
their longing for alright clothes
and purpose. How else to follow
bliss and climb
to a boss’s chair?
Some make it —
the ones
who stop rinsing away the sulfur.
Who may not glory in the taste
but who let it season
more or less
everything
until even the wizards,
as strong as they are,
pale when they catch a whiff
and fall to their knees
before it,
sinking down,
following
the idea of bliss
to its natural
destination.
Yankee Doodle
Originally posted 5/30/2011.
Watching the parade
I at once (somewhat
unfairly) distrust
the clergyman
walking amongst
the children,
the admiral
speaking of sacrifice
from the podium,
the policeman
approaching
the kids
holding
the Puerto Rican flag
on the sidelines,
the politician waving
and shaking hands
along the route.
I’m wrong to suspect automatically
that nothing is what it seems,
but after all
this is
an all-American holiday, and I’m
a Yankee Doodle Dandy,
Yankee Doodle do or die. I grew up
with an erratic Uncle Sam and
I wasn’t born yesterday. Certainly
I’m wrong
to automatically suspect
anyone of anything but
isn’t the larger wrong
how my mistrust has so often been
so well founded,
cheapening and weakening
any chance at an honest
Yankee Doodle joy?
Mirrors At War
Mirrors go to war armed with glass
and glossy bullets. Perfect aim,
lust for fame, long pained memories.
Effortless strategy, clear risk assessments.
Armies stare at each other
before battle begins. They recognize
themselves in the enemy lines. They
charge certain of who’s over there.
Mirrors at war break as any glass breaks.
All those silvered knives littering the ground
of battle. All those tiny, sharp reflections; civilians
will be shredding their feet and shedding blood
for eons after. Both sides ever
unable to walk straight. It won’t be forever
till someone angers up and takes up the charge,
and then it will be mirror, mirror once again.
A Little Something
Originally posted 9/15/2012.
A little something to chew on:
I’m neither Italian nor Mescalero,
and also both.
A little something no one wants to hear.
A little something:
this big paleface isn’t.
A little something:
I have no card to show you to give you government-level proof.
A little something:
you can gut yourself
bending over backward
to prove your value
to people you could care less about.
A little something:
the family was divided, but that doesn’t show.
A little something:
it came up every time
I looked at my father and knew he would say
I was one thing one day, the other on the next.
A little something my mother never spoke of.
A little something: my grandmother
called my dad a thief
every day.
A little something: I am a lot of poison.
A little something: I don’t trust.
A little something: on the rez I’m just another eyeroll, another shrug.
A little something: to my Italian family, I’m not quite there.
A little something: to supposed allies, I’m easily forgotten.
A little something: I have had White friends
openly reassure me
that it’s ok with them
and being Indian does not matter,
it’s not the same, it’s not the same as if I was…
A little something in my clenched hand.
A little something with talons in my shoulder.
A little something: you don’t have a clue
what’s behind the eyes of anyone, what they recall,
what they went through, what they go through.
A little something:
sometimes I don’t mention it
for months to new acquaintances
just to listen to them talk without knowing.
A little something:
sometimes I mention it at once
to new acquaintances
so I can get the stupid out in the open.
Sometimes I am surprised.
Sometimes I wish I was surprised.
A little something in my eye.
A little something behind me, whispering.
A little something: I can tell you are bored with this.
A little something: I can tell you think it’s overblown.
A little something: I can tell you think it’s not huge pain.
A little something: I never said it was,
but you can’t hear that
over your own damn noise.
Don’t deny it.
I can hear you.
You all say it,
you all say it straight or slant
and somehow
you wonder why I keep
a certain distance, keep
a little something
back.
On The Varieties Of Religious Experience, Part 2
The Great Mysteries
aren’t fiendishly difficult to solve,
which is why they are rarely solved;
too many search for
keys to the complex locks
so visible on the door,
when all they need to do
is push upon them and
walk right through;
the Greater Mysteries
have their solutions
written upon
the welcome mat
at the feet of the frantic
sleuths fumbling there;
the solution to
the Greatest Mystery
Of All
isn’t even on
the other side
of the door
but don’t expect to hear
anything about that one
if you refuse to put down
that key and turn away
from the door
that was put there
for the sole purpose of distracting you
and getting you to walk away
from the truth.
Chant: Emptiness
Considering the empty plate before me
Considering fullness of all our plates
Considering lack of nourishment there
Considering the Buddha-nature of a plate-maker
Considering the plate-maker creating emptiness
Considering broken plates that can hold nothing
Considering meals un-plated both good and bad
Considering a bowl of seeds
Considering it inedible yet so many meals to come there
Considering space that appears to be full of stars
Considering distances between them that hold next to nothing
Considering the pan my brain sits in
Considering the mind cannot be found there no matter how long you look
Considering an open door with a broken lock
Considering this a joyful damage as the room has emptied of its prisoners
Considering the words filling this page
Considering the silence in which they’ve been written
Considering my voice and its origin from deep caverns within me
Considering how I might never speak again and have no choice in that
Considering Death the great emptier that yet fills the world
Considering an empty place setting at a holiday table filling with presence
Considering hunger for its ample gnawing filling me
Considering a meal that empties the body of its hunger
Considering the empty plate before me
Wildest Dream
Never have had wild dreams.
Most of mine
have been quite mild.
There was the one, though, where
I carried the drowned body
of a large bird
into a room full of people
and it transformed
into a woman
who raised her head
and spoke to me, her face
like a Greek statue,
pale and bloodless
though she’d come
back to life,
her stone-gray eyes
restless upon mine.
What was wildest
about it is that now
and then to this day
I hear a voice
in the dark of the bedroom
and I know it is hers
though she never spoke
in the first dream
and I cannot make out
what she is saying;
what is wildest is how
I only dreamed it one time
and still recall it
and still wait for her
to speak and explain
how she drowned,
how she transformed,
why she did not fly away
instead of drowning,
how I found her,
how in death she transformed,
how she has stayed with me
for decades now —
how wild her voice,
how wild her granite eyes.
Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien
Originally posted 4/27/2013.
I turned around
at the end of a long corridor
to seek contemporaries.
Found a few.
Craned my neck
to find peers.
Found a few.
Looked then for friends.
Found very few.
They were distant,
at the far end of the hall,
whispering.
Little of what they said reached me
but from tone of voice I understood
that they felt I’d left them and
for me there was no way back.
No matter the clear corridor,
no matter the direct path —
there was no way back.
Edith Piaf’s voice rings out,
non, je ne regrette rien.
“I Regret Nothing.”
Her last words?
“Every damn fool thing
you do in this life,
you pay for.”
Fingerpicking Before Dawn
“John Barleycorn Must Die”
comes on the radio before dawn.
I play the guitar
because of that song;
when I was a boy I heard
the fingerpicking before dawn,
and I could not die
without having at least tried
to play like that before dawn,
sitting alone in growing light,
imagining I could pull the sun
closer toward the horizon with every note,
then break
into a hard and glorious strum
as it cleared the distant line
looking just as glorious.
It took me years to even come close,
and by then I knew how foolish
it was to think that I could make
things happen. I’d been like
the men in the song
who thought themselves strong
but ended up vanquished by
what they thought they controlled.
Like them, though, I’m still drunk on
the myth, and this morning
my fingers woke before the rest of me,
before I fully knew what I was hearing,
and they moved
as the light in the bedroom grew.
How The Dirt Accumulates
Sweeping floors
with a new broom
one finds debris and
is occasionally shocked
to recognize how old
some of these minute scraps
are, to recognize how long it’s been
since they first fell from their sources;
take for instance the corner
of a candy wrapper
from a few months back,
consumed in anger
while you muttered
at your body’s refusal to shrink,
after which you tossed all the candy
into the trash and haven’t bought
any since, so this is without question
from that wrapper you tore off
and that scrap is angering you
again, or your weight is, or
your sloth and slovenly habits are,
it never ends, a new broom
can only sweep so much clean,
why bother, why bother to sweep
at all, everything leaves its dirt behind
and underfoot it makes a sad noise
as it cuts into your sad feet,
needling and whining
remember, remember
as if forgetting was an option.
Good Night, Good Night
Good night,
good night. Off
these painful feet
for a while —
sleeping, dreaming
(maybe, it happens
so rarely). The bed
won’t hurt much
till morning;
the best part
of this day will be
spent unconscious,
darkly numb
in matching darkness,
soaking all night in that
without being aware of it.
Good night,
good night; no need
to say it again.
Dark Matter 