Each birthday you reach
is your last until
you reach the next one;
what are you doing
for your last birthday?
It seems only right
that there should be
some symbolic flame to it,
some burning down
of the previous years
as in a warrior’s funeral
or the high leaping fire
of any pyre anywhere
for at heart a birthday party
is the performed hope
concealed in the hot core
of the myth
of the phoenix.
Descent is
a word for
downfall, as in
I am of
mixed
descent, as in
I am descended
from and thus
am no longer
a part of.
I’ve fallen from
and landed below.
My current name
was pasted upon me
to cover up
whatever name
slipped off
during my
descent.
I do answer to it:
a sound
of hard landing
in a place I’ve grown
to recognize though
it never feels like home,
which some suggest
is better considering
how much hate
is attached to those
old names. Better, they say,
to have landed
and be renamed
as if I’d fallen
naked and new
and unconnected,
though I am not.
I don’t feel better
for anonymity and
erasure, considering
what distance I’ve fallen
to get here and how
broken I was upon impact.
It’s my descent
we’re speaking of.
I’d like to know
what the heights
I fell from
are like and I’d like
to think that someone
up there would know me
if I somehow returned,
could call me by name,
could help me find
my way back
to who I once was.
you’ve fallen into
gloom, feel
you’re drowning
in murky water,
think you have no
choice but to be forever
dimmed.
dearness,
darkness isn’t
all-inclusive simply because
it’s hard to see through.
its mystery
isn’t everything, doesn’t hold all
there is worth knowing.
look.
it’s full morning, long past
dawn.
a lacewing fly
has landed upon your forearm,
shining among your own
fine, shining hair.
you bring your face close
to see its glassveined
wings glowing, flicking
as it rests there upon you,
connected
to you through
sunlight. dearness,
if it were midnight,
you’d slap this miracle aside for
making your skin crawl. instead,
by having allowed it to stay
you will feel it
shining within you
for long years to come.
Morning’s here and
I’m ashamed:
I don’t want to work.
Don’t want to get up and
work as I always do. But
work is all I am,
so it would seem that
this morning
I don’t want to be
who I am.
That sounds
so much better.
I want a holiday from my tired name
and my unease, my contentment
at being so settled into routine,
my workout clothes, my uniforms
and rituals. So I guess it’s not that
I don’t want to work.
Will work for chaos.
Will work if it breaks me
of the habit, if it stops me
saying “my” and “mine”
about what gets done
for others
through these hands.
As you serenade me
with your inconsistencies,
railing against
your own fluid
nature, your failures
and poor choices,
ask yourself
as you wail: aren’t you
at least half in love
with this song
you’re making
from your
contradictions?
It seems so obvious
that you’ve
written your life
as rock opera,
grand bombast
with one eye
upon the charts,
that I can’t fully believe you
when you wish out loud
for a simpler tune
to dance to. All
you’ve ever done
is make this music
and call attention to
this music and tour
endlessly behind this
music and now you claim
it’s all been against
your own desires. It’s not
pity I feel exactly, although
I can imagine your pain
if it’s true; it’s not anger
or insult I’m feeling, as I love
you too much in my way
to fail entirely to see how
you do indeed believe this
on some level; it’s more
a fatigue with the soundtrack
of the tale, a sense that
it’s been overplayed, a dawning
irritation or even boredom
with the sing-song chorus, the
repetitive verses,
and that confounded bridge
like an earworm that keeps me
only half-aware of how badly
you need someone, anyone,
to listen.
The rock star for all time
stepped onto her stage
just as it broke and disappeared
from underfoot. Falling
toward death she began
composing a final song
to tell at last her full tale
of how having talent and will
and luck got her here —
it opened with grand chords,
shifted into slim-fingered picking
in the bridge, had of course
a singalong chorus, a fist in the air,
cadence building to catharsis —
it had everything
and she wrote it in her head
in the two seconds before she died,
probably for the best as it sounded
like all her others — all that drama
and urgency as she fell translated
into her being there anyway,
sprawled in the ultimate cliche,
her last song utterly ordinary
and thankfully unheard — making it
a song just like the one
we all sing upon telling ourselves
for the last time:
this time, finally, I’ll get it right.
No darkness like
American darkness:
scalp in one fist, treaty in the other; it wears a stolen feather.
No darkness like American darkness.
We all know what’s under the bed; it wears a white hood.
No darkness like
American darkness:
it stinks of plastic
instead of ancient woods;
wears menace like a tumbling skyscraper,
not like a sacred mountain.
No darkness like
American darkness:
it doesn’t wear black,
but green;
it doesn’t even care
if you can see it.
Seed to stem, stem to school, school
to work, work to bone, bone to hand,
hand to mouth, paycheck
to paycheck, worry to more worry,
desperate to despair, despair to prepare,
prepare to ruin, ruin to rash, rash to reckless,
reckless to reckoning, reckoning to armament,
armament to carry, carry to itch, itch to shake,
shaking guns drawn to sudden discharge,
steady guns drawn to clearly aimed executions,
bodies to fall, fall to faint, faint to disbelieve,
disbelief to convictions, convictions to whisper campaigns,
whispers to scream, scream to chant, chant to
march, march to war, war to end all war,
end to end and head to head laid in lines
border wall to wailing wall, silent sea to shining sea,
stem to stern, stern to solemn cry, cry to cradle,
cradle to cold and lasting grave.
Recently spoke
in mysterious tones to
a dog on the sidewalk,
not expecting a response,
and I got none; the point
of doing so was to exercise
a sense I had not used
in years — the ability to sense
God in a dark brown inhuman
eye, to recall that divinity may be
a muted answer to a clumsy
question asked in an absurd way
to an impossible
respondent. When there was
no answer at all, I did not despair
of God’s existence,
instead choosing
to believe I was rusty
and out of practice
and with more time
would get it right.
I swear now to practice,
to ask every creature
and plant I see
similar cryptic questions,
and to then think
on whether any further lack
of obvious answers
from them speaks more
about my inability to understand,
about an actual nonexistence
of God, or about how language
is so often just inadequate
for important things. I will figure it out
and in the meantime try
to simply enjoy
the silence,
fooling myself that
is all the answer I seek.
Israel dances a half-stumble
to Jimmy’s Corner Store for cigarettes,
banging through the narrow doorway,
all of his body-music colliding with
door jambs and point of sale displays
until Jimmy
(whose real name is unknown
but is certainly not Jimmy,
Jimmy having been
the original owner of the store,
Jimmy having been gone
for fifteen years at least)
shouts at him for raising a ruckus
and insists he buy something or get out,
and after he buys
his pack of Mustangs
Israel drum-bangs his way
back to the street,
Israel strum-dings his way
back to the street,
Israel smoke-songs his way
back to the street where Israel
is lord of the dance and his name
is exalted, though it isn’t his
real name either, not the name
he was born with in his homeland.
That name is long gone
into this city’s alleys
and distances
that instead named him Israel
for no reason other than he looked
like another guy named Israel
who walked these streets before him,
who bought his cigarettes from original Jimmy,
who had his own halting music to dance to,
who is himself long forgotten
having been easily replaced
through the city’s greed
for colorful characters
to people its own delusion
that it is in fact
a promised land.
So Israel dances out,
lights up,
butt-chunks
his path, spring-strings
himself along.
So Jimmy shakes his head,
watches him go,
turns back to the counter
and the sweeping up.
So I begin to forget that I
play my part too: the bemused
observer who makes it all possible
is necessary to the play; without me
to make it into a myth,
what would it be except
just another hard town
pretending
to be a home.
to save tomorrow
we will have to
extend ourselves
beyond our skins
sabotage the tracks
we always ride upon
dance damage
in whirls of foul steam
breathe uncanny fumes
from the mouth of hell
claim it for our cologne
waft it back at their sentinels
explain and explain
to ourselves
how we are the best church
we can belong to
how much self mastery
we shall need in the face
of the storms of laughter
from the throats of evil
coupled with abandonment
of our trivial principles of form
and substance just long enough
to shut that howling down
if we want to save tomorrow
in me all
either red or green
no yellow
don’t know why you need colors
inside anyway
no yellow
moving past the speed of
entrance into the speed of explore
no yellow
dead ahead is all the rage
stopping short is so last year
from now on only green
or red
full on charge or
sudden crash
headlong dash or
unplanned stop
no yellow
if I ever see yellow
I will shoot out its lens
cut short its cable
end myself before I will answer to it
When my left hand
goes completely numb
I fall into my bed
and lie there between sleep
and pain,
aware of
a third in the bed with us
whose name is Fear.
Is this a stroke,
is this the end
of something, or the beginning
of the end? Fear
chatters on and on.
I lie there among
states of being,
tingling and fretting,
and it’s not hope
that gets me back up later
but the discomfort
of how crowded
that bed’s become,
how noisy it is in here.
Originally posted 2/10/2012.
A whisky master says,
“I suck the tongue of truth
from the pit of every glass.”
A wine master says,
“This sweetness burning within
pushes my eye toward Heaven.”
A pothead prays
in riddles,
grinning at the answers.
Whatever we do to stone ourselves
revives within us the kick
we last used in the womb.
We fight toward
what’s out there,
though we have never seen it.
We reach for it. We may not be
steady, we may not be
completely sane.
We may not even be right
when we clamor that it is
all we need — but still
we go for it, kicking free
of our bindings, punching
toward rebirth.
Originally posted 9/28/2013.
A man I know
calls his preferred
prospective partners
“chicklettes.”
Because they’re young,
young and sweet,
he says.
Because of their fragile shells,
he says.
Because he spits them out
when the flavor’s gone,
he says.
This other man I know
has jokes up the wazoo
about women, about
“how they are.”
Because that’s just
letting off steam,
he says.
Because of the need for a break
in the battle between us,
he says.
Because it’s better than shooting them,
he says,
and laughs.
This other man I know
likes to stick his elbow into me
whenever he pretends he’s down
for women where we work.
Because they think I mean it,
he says.
Because as men we know the score,
he says.
Because, anyway, where were we before they talked?
he says.
Other men I know lose track
of bedmate headcount.
Other men keep track,
notch something to brag about.
Other men I know have heard about “no”
but they say it’s just a lock to be picked apart.
Other men don’t care much for locks,
bust down the door, swear they heard a cry
for help in there.
I know many other men who I’d have sworn
are none of these,
but too often I learn of one or more who are
not the men I thought they were
and now when I say
this other man I know
or
these other men I know
I stop and wonder
if other men are in fact knowable,
why I seem to know so many of these other men,
and why those other men
seem so comfortable with me.
Dark Matter 