History’s
all about
dust that used to be
under a Roman boot
or on a Union horse’s flank or
in the Triangle Shirtwaist fire
or on a slave’s chain, on
an old Apache’s
dead open eye, maybe from
under the burned beam
in a bombed Japanese house —
who knows
where all the dust on your hands
is from? Just try to remember
you’re always leaving it
all over everything.
Handfuls of dust smearing
Now. You are carrier of history
in all you touch and
you honestly can’t ever get clean.
Tag Archives: meditations
Hands Full Of Dust
Daybreak
Last night
came and went and
I’m still here
at daybreak.
A bit of a
surprise: never sure
these days if I
will be, but so far,
I’m holding on.
Not sure why
I’m so certain
that when it happens
I’ll die in my
sleep. Just as possible
that I’ll fall face first into
the dirty livingroom
or be discovered
sitting upright
and quite stiff
on the couch,
laptop hibernating
with a mediocre new poem
unfinished under the darkness
on the screen,
the cat anxiously
weaving her fear against
my legs and the window
still open,
some small breeze trickling
through my hair.
Will my eyes still be open?
I would hate to think so.
Whenever I visualize
my demise,
I’m asleep. I don’t want
to see it coming.
Would rather be surprised
to wake up, if in fact
this is how it happens,
in a new existence
with no sense
of impending transition.
I mean, when I die
it should reflect
how I’ve always lived:
shiftlessly, a lazy drifter,
shocked by things
everyone else
sees coming
miles and years away.
How I See You
Secure enough
in your person
to fall comfortably asleep
trusting you’ll
awaken refreshed;
comfortable enough
in your home
that you do not fear
steps in the night,
flashing lights, the sound of
official insistence upon
your yielding,
having to put all your hope
into a skin-saving
bow and scrape;
settled enough
with the Accepted Backstory
being correct
that you stop listening to
urgent offers and pleas
for changes in the narrative;
empty enough
of empathy
to get by
all the time, all
the livelong day,
with the news
being no more
than a buzz, a fly
you can brush aside,
a petty interruption;
easy enough
for your head to be always
shaking off
the daily showers of blood
as if they were nothing
but warm spring rain.
On First Glance
Originally posted 1/7/2010.
First thing to catch my eye
when I sit down to write this morning
is the plastic Halloween glass
with its images
of skeletal girls in pigtails,
shaking Jack-O-Lantern maracas
as they dance.
Two weeks after Christmas,
not the least bit out of place.
When the Tasmanian wolf appears
(said to be extinct but there it certainly is)
by the door,
I’m not at all
fearful. The animal
must have spun in here by chance
as the earth passed through
its current dimension.
Spider legs, stripes,
jaws like a car crusher:
in this salvage yard of an apartment
its presence make sense on first glance
since my place is full of discards,
second hands, re-purposed items
finding new lives. I usually can do something
with anything I get my hands on;
maybe that appeals to it.
I decide to name the beast Johnny.
It looks up when I call it,
comes to me as confident
in its power
as any other myth
would be.
There’s still some water
in the Halloween glass
so I offer the wolf a drink.
It begins to lap, the long pale tongue
flickering,
not caring that the water comes
from an off-season source
or that it’s going to become
a metaphor for something
as soon as it blinks back
into its usual state
of not being here.
It seems to sense safety
in this room I’ve dedicated
to taking something
that looks wrong
on first glance
and making it right.
Scrolling
Scrolling from cute dog pics
to Sandra Bland
to Donald Trump
to Pluto portraits
to recipes
to horrible jokes
to music videos
to requests for crowdfunding
to the next thing
and the next thing
and the next.
The world
an unending demand for action.
The action
a drop in the stormy blood ocean.
See myself in the dust swirling in the room where I sit and stare and stare and stare.
To rub my eyes and feel helpless.
To lose my shit.
To lose.
To fail my friends and loved ones.
To fail as a person entirely.
To age into my own obsolescence.
I only forget the things that are important.
Everything else?
Lint all over everything.
Spots before my eyes so thick
they catch my tears.
They swell to pillows.
They swell to smother.
They swell as I shrink.
I’m a beyond hope.
A dead letter.
A smidgen asked to tower.
I have no shadow left to throw.
The Oarfish
An oarfish came
to the surface to die,
rising into daylight,
a nightmare-seed
twenty-three feet long.
It entered the shallows near where
a man was painting
an eye of Horus on each side
of the bow of his leaking boat,
hoping to keep it just a while longer,
perhaps one more trip,
perhaps with luck and one more season…
He looked down and saw the oarfish —
frilled, silvery,
slow going, taking forever to pass —
and thought of luck and fate.
He looked into the new flat eyes
of his old livelihood, considered
how long he’d been here, how long
he had worked, how long he’d
fished without ever seeing anything
like the oarfish in a net or on a line,
and bent his head. Lord, he thought,
I am so tired, and my boat is so old;
there is so much left to learn, to see;
so little time to learn it in, but
learn it I must, learn it
I shall.
What the oarfish
thought of all this
is unknown for
by the eye of Horus,
by the eye of Ra,
there’s no telling
that tale of a life
spent in darkness
and ending in light
that would not have
too much of us in it
and not enough
of what the gods intended
when a poor man
was moved to change his own life
by watching
something he thought was fantastic
die.
Flood
Originally posted 12/05/2008.
Title poem from my Pudding House Publications chapbook (2009), now out of print.
I rarely revise published work, but this seemed to ask for it.
i open every night with a prayer:
sleep, come sooner than the flood.
then comes the flood
and the faces rising to the top:
julie’s blonde hair floating out.
paul robichaux’s rockabilly daring submerged in white.
grandmother’s dear severe wrinkles.
grandfather’s mean low brow.
eddie with his broken head still full of tar.
blue glaze of paul gentile holding a gun up to a temple.
my own head,
my own hands on my own ears.
palaces built of centipedes.
sharp stones set like crystals into
the back of a baby.
in europe they have gargoyles for moments like this.
in bali there are chants for moments like this.
in new england we simply do not admit to moments like this.
when they come we keep them under our scalps.
still, the lifting faces.
george and jerry barone
rising from the shell of their Volkswagen.
wayne king never knew me
but i knew him.
he was everywhere after he died
and now he’s here again.
that man died surprised
that he was the only one who did.
in the corner
my hands fling my head to the cement mouth first.
i spit a tooth out
and it lands and grows into the next piece of me to be terrified.
the myth of the hydra explains everything:
a horror killed begets more horror.
still, those lifting faces:
stricky the flying head,
veech the forlorn missile,
carole the rolling bag of bones,
jacob the ghost before he even passed,
martin the bisected prince of the railroad track.
all their sleep has lasted to this day,
and i am still awake.
those lifting faces.
that’s me in the center,
my eyes shut, squeezed tight,
knowing what is coming.
some sounds will not go away:
a woman’s voice saying
slink, dove, scrap, green face, sun on a gourd,
crumbs on a dragon, coupons, carver, slide, rumble, escapement,
clipping, stolen, pulse, penlight, painting, bands,
pickup, relate, lard,
gungrease, quillon,
medallion…
then, words appear that mean themselves and no other thing:
unspecific twoolyala,
skevot,
abbredient briest...
it may be my job to translate them.
no word should be without meaning.
deny that and the clock stops.
when those faces float up to see me
i pretend to understand heaven and hell,
perhaps even purgatory.
buying my peace from my parent’s store.
they never quite break the surface.
they do not speak.
i sink myself in the shallows
of the clouded pool.
sleep, come sooner than the flood.
Time In The Garden
I don’t have an answer
to anything anymore,
not one.
I can’t remember anything
new. I can’t remember
what just happened,
though I know
I once knew that.
I alternate between
ever refreshed rage
at the injustice
of each lost moment
and pained memories of
what once was,
so far long gone ago,
or so I’m told.
My one present pleasure’s
the garden —
the scent of the tomato plants
when I’m weeding in close
to their thorn-fuzzed stems. The dill
on my hands, the rosemary
in my skin. How I fret over
when things will sprout,
grow, bloom, fruit! I participate
in the old this way
while being aware
that there is a future
inherent in this work.
Gardening tells me
there can be happiness
even now, even as
all else
is slipping off
and falling away.
If You Wake Up As A Bomb
If you wake up as a bomb one day
awakening outward from sleep
expanding from the bed in all directions
If you wake up ticking
but choose to deny it until it
stops
If you wake up as a bomb one day
and don’t know it until
you are standing next to your trigger
Don’t know it until
the trigger is pulled and you
burst into one ruddy scream
followed by your own
unfortunately
fulfilled
silence
If you wake up as a bomb one day
and explode
I swear on the future
that I will recall
when you were not a bomb
and tell all around me
that you did not begin as a bomb
were not meant to be a bomb
did not ask to be a bomb
I will tell everyone
that like all of us
all you wanted
was quiet when the sun
struck your face upon waking
and quiet when it came time
at last
to sleep
Country Song
Dammit,
country —
I wanted to write a song,
wanted to sing, to play, to love and dance —
and then there was one violation,
then another and more, and I began
to see how many there were, how many
there are, how the waves of violations
sculpted and sculpt our shores, how the winds
of violations cut and have cut into our sands,
how the surges and ebbs of violations
have been the surges and ebbs of our
flags, how we are the surges and ebbs and
our eyes squint through the violations
as if we were free to sing, to play,
to love and dance with no restrictions, as if we
were free —
and I have no idea how it will be
to be free, how we will ever be free
to sing and dance and play and yes,
to love as if the violations
were not there in the sand and the shore,
as if the eyes we were born with
had never been violated, as if the flags
were not the whole story
of the violations…dammit, country,
how I wish you were truly mine
to love, to sing for, to dance with, to heal.
Hurricane And Tornado
Hurricane plodding on slowly,
snarling threats all the way
as stunned clouds open a lead
on it, race on ahead of it;
Tornado, that rabid dog
of a blowdown, breaking up
with sane weather
to fly along and bite all;
the weather gods
are not always
the gentlest of creatures
and they have ruled
longer than we have been
challenging them
and longer than we have even
been ourselves.
I place my faith in them
and them alone
for my understanding of
where we are going.
School For The Dead
When the bell rings
at close of day, none of them will go home.
When the next morning bell
rings, they’ll still be sitting there.
You don’t assign homework to the dead.
You don’t expect them to answer questions today
you posed the night before.
Every moment for the dead is the only moment
and it’s a myth that they are eager
to talk to us anyway.
All you can really do is lecture them
as they sit, dulled
and neither willing nor unwilling
to hear you. No one has a clue
about what it takes to graduate.
Not the teachers, not the administration,
certainly not the dead themselves,
and they couldn’t care less.
If they were to move on it would amuse
and astonish them at least as much as it would us.
So: why take such a job? Why teach
at a school for the dead? Because
though it’s a remote chance, a miracle
might happen — but mostly because the dead
can’t die before your eyes from gunshots
or abuse or disease. Because the worst
that can happen there
is nothing at all.
Misbehaving
In summer late at night
from the next house I hear
soca played
just loud enough to be
too loud
for that time of night.
Soca singers
speak approvingly of
misbehavior.
They speak of
bacchanal,
carnival,
wining,
jumping up.
Sometimes
the music’s just
the usual soundtrack
of the moment.
Then we hear
of people who
get wild,
go wild,
go crazy.
Roofs are raised and then burned
and sometimes blown off.
Faces melt,
asses shake minds free,
someone’s turned
up and turned out and
where are you tonight, love?
Not here, not in my
soft and resigned bed.
You’re elsewhere,
misbehaving, shaking,
crazy from the heat in the dark.
Happy.
I’m tossing Fats Waller
and his sweet jazz
off the radio
right now.
Leaving the house to burn.
I will come to you
smoking
from the wreckage
and then, then,
singers and rockers
and rhymers of every stripe
are going to have to come up
with something new to say
about joy,
and rut, and
abandon.
New invitations
to party.
New gasoline
for that oldest fire.
Ego, Shush
It is unimportant
that I am ripped within
by doubt. All are.
It is unimportant
that these hands are not
what I once imagined.
That thought
is the same among us all.
It is unimportant that
I can see so many
already farther along
than I am. They have
the same view as I, see
others even farther ahead.
What is important:
the music being made.
That there is music being made
at all. That there are musicians
is unimportant except as music
comes from them as from one body —
one must hear all
to hear all of it
or else spend time
wasting away
for want of connection
to the Great Road
As Walked By All.
That I think this, and
that I think this is true,
are unimportant.
Shush, ego;
ego, shush;
listen, ego;
listen, be still.
Forecast
A pink mist puffs out
from the splash
of a bullet into
the corporal’s gut;
a mutt tugs on
a naked, swollen leg lying
on the shoulder
of the ragged, blasted
road, and
all I seem
to be able
to think about is
what it’s going to be like
to go home.
As for the way
the corporal fell, the way
the dog squealed and ran
when we spanked him with
a thrown rock —
I suspect I won’t recall those
until I am home.
Then,
I suspect,
they will be the only things
I can think of.
Dark Matter 