Observation: some of the writers
are stuck in the wake of an eclipse
that was contested a week ago
and moved on serene from the wreckage
to today or nearby, calm as churchgoers
in the leavings of damage and mayhem.
Afterwards they thanked their stars and
moved on. Others held their breath
and remained stark and breathless
with the memory of near death, while some
exhaled and just moved on without seeming to care
about where they were or how they might
eventually place. A whole world collapsed
and nothing came of it for me. Nothing
moved on. The world remained intact.
Tag Archives: meditations
Nothing Changed
Say It All
Say it all. Put a meaning
on your sounds. Attach
other words to new words
and let them dangle and hang.
Love and theft and mistaken urges
like the longing for sense or the gasp
of the delighted lover over
the unexpected gift: give them your voice
and let them speak as you do. Say
it all as you do. All will be well
or it will not. You will stand
triumphant either way,
knowing that however dumb
you appeared, you managed
to release yourself beforehand.
You were free. You are free.
Blue Light Unexplained
Why she fell to her knees and
offered whatever she was
to blue light in the corner
of the bedroom remains
unexplained
This light around a lady
crouched on her familiar floor
suggested secrets here
Told us we didn’t deserve to understand
and we should not and would never
Next day at first light we thought about her
cold kneeling on the bedroom floor
Wondered about blue light
For which there was no explanation
Glow that remained without context
Next day then next day and all days to follow
First second third light of blue turned to red
A woman cold kneeling on a bedroom floor
We knew she was gone when they trundled her out
In a haze of blue light under neighborly gaze
Now she is fixation
Now she is figment of imagination
Now she is unsteady fact and myth of rejection
If we had known her we would have wept more
If we had been there when she passed
But instead she stayed and she stays and remains there
Shining with blue and then subsequent red
Calls out subtle and haze and blameless stare
She passed among us in such a way
That she has not left and shades every moment
Damp
A long night is over
and while there’s no dawn yet
it’s clearly coming,
There is always a dawn.
Always have been dawns.
Likely will be for seasons yet.
You are an American.
You get to count on things
like dawn being there for you.
You’ve heard of such things
as bombings and such. You’ve heard
of such things as sudden death.
It’s been a while and the news
gets worse, stays bad
and spreads like a wet spot
on a table. This is a local surprise.
An intrusion. An unexpected
blot on things. Dawn can be like that.
The light and the news spreads and
it’s feeling all Gaza in Massachusetts.
Feels like a mistake, out of place.
Look, you say — a body
on the sidewalk? Do I know that person?
Shake your head, turn away from it.
Gossip about it at work for a week,
then forget it. Gaza ain’t in Massachusetts.
No matter what death tries to tell you,
it has to have a reason even if
it doesn’t make any sense. And it doesn’t.
Dawn coming up a stained mistake.
Catch the glory of sunrise
over the changed world. Someone bought it
down the street. Don’t you feel damp now?
Select Insects
It’s like there are select insects
who know I’m decaying inside.
One landed on my arm
and waited there on my skin
for what seemed like
a season. I felt a change
in the weather. I tried
to memorize its shape
so I could tell anyone
who might come
how it came and I got colder
and how it was a little square
like a chitinous ice cube
and a little gray
like a piece of old bark or flesh,
but that’s all I could say —
something like a piece of death itself
sat down on my skin to wait
and I did not have the words
to explain that insect to anyone
who might have come by.
It was a bit of comfort, in fact,
to have to explain something
yet not have words for it,
to sit with it upon me
and know it wanted death from me
and not want to offer it up,
to resist without trying
to create words for that resistance.
I am not worthy of this moment,
I said; it just sat there
and perhaps I was resistant in that,
but one way or another
I was alone with the insect Death
and this time, at least,
we together chose without speaking
to let this passage wait for another time
while the flies buzzed beyond the screen
and something indistinct crossed the far floor.
The Phantom
Today is for
the streams of
“if only — “
if only the front room
was lush
with palmetto,
if only the sink
was not full
of sharks,
if only you’d grown up
on porches
on Mars
and spent hours there
thinking about the art you’d make
if you could live forever.
Today is for
faking happiness with what
replaced dreams unfulfilled —
a celebration
of your absence
from your deserved life.
For the phantom
you became
in its impossible place.
Metal For A Bed
What metal
did you sleep upon
last night
that conducted such dreams
and from what source?
You stirred
with every spark
that stuck you
in the dark; suns
and their entire systems
revealed themselves
as you breathed in charged
solar wind.
Was it copper
under your head,
was it gold? You can’t wait
to go back to sleep
and learn;
to travel again into
the burnished universe
you wish you could claim
was all your own.
Just Like Tony
I wear about a quarter
of my father’s face in mine, though
my dad used to look at me and say
my mother would never die
until I was gone. I can see them
both when I look closely at a mirror,
especially if I’m smiling, twisting
my mouth for a crooked instant.
I’m not sure I can see myself in there.
Not sure I ever have. Just a mix
of other people — his mouth,
her eyebrow; maybe that’s
a chilly, distant uncle I barely knew
in the left ear, a hint of
a damaged cousin who died
when I was newly born
sleeping in the curve
of the jaw.
I have no children, but surely somewhere
there is someone who shares
something of me in the worry lines
around their eyes.
I think it will take me being gone
before I am fully present in the face
of someone I do not know, some relation
I never knew existed; someone who recalls me
and sees him may say
oh, he looks just like Tony.
Coil
Calico coil
centered on
the living room rug
springs up to nestle
near me on the couch
as I weep and try to write.
All is right with that;
I try not to think
about her, take less comfort;
there are holy wars
and greed to resist
as always, of course,
people I know
say if you say nothing
of those, if you don’t
raise your voice,
you’re scum. So
I’m scum, I guess.
Still, the cat keeps me
from thinking
of my own death
and from turning
my eyes completely
toward darkness. Right now
death is greedy for me,
an unholy shadow
standing behind that.
Resistance
takes the form
it takes — sometimes
as tears drying
on the calico fur
of a cat curled beside you
as you fight for
your voice to strengthen
enough to be heard.
Ocean Ahead And Within
Ocean in view ahead
(and in time within) that resets all
with every wave breaking,
changing not just the land
but this man
standing on the land
watching, feeling the shift underfoot;
the country itself shifting, the nature
of what has felt solid shifting — yes,
it was illusion but all we have had here
has always been illusion and we’ve learned
how to live in it more or less;
now as the ocean —
out there,
in here, or both at once —
begins its
inexorable drive
to deconstruct
and then to rebuild,
utterly unconcerned
with the particulars
of what and who
shall crumble
in its rhythmic path,
this man on the sand
falls to his knees,
soaking them in the littoral,
wondering what may fail
as he may fail
as the ocean triumphs,
as the world
changes
without a choice,
as I change
without a choice
or even a chance to choose.
Of No Importance
It does not matter
where you find yourself.
End of
a cul-de-sac.
On the median strip
of the road to safety.
Alone on a trail through
woods you do not recognize.
It does not matter
whether you are wealthy
or broke; with failing sight
or deeply healthy; broken
or whole. All that is of little
consequence and has no effect
on how you will take the moment
when you look into
the eyes of the Inevitable
and say, “Ah. Of course,”
one more time,
one last time.
The Neighborhood
Come from the highway
up Millbury Street toward home
on a day that feels like
the end of a world
in the after-rain sunset.
On the sidewalk is
the woman I’m sure
a sitcom would name “Cookie”
walking away from
a pickup with flashers on:
walking in a long coat,
curly red hair full of handsome grey;
walking an Afghan hound,
leaving the disabled pickup behind
on her way to somewhere
else. Leaving what doesn’t work behind.
Taking her comfort with her,
like Cookie in a sitcom finale.
Filthy Silk
You have become so timid
about how things are in your world,
keeping to your grimy cocoon
even when it is touched
by something liable to break it
or tear into it before you are ready.
You’ll never be ready at this rate.
You can’t move in there, long ago grown
but unwilling or unable
to emerge. All you do is fret
about how it will be if you ever do,
about how certain you are
that it won’t measure up
to what you expect.
You have become so timid —
stop. Better to be devoured
out there, it is said,
than it is to rot in
former comfort,
filthy silk.
How To Talk American
We
is one of those words
everyone kisses
but no one loves.
They
is said feverishly,
furtively, side-eye given
toward its target.
I
exalts and wallows
at once, misery
grounding satiety.
Us
means nothing. Like we
it barely exists. Written always
in blood, it dries quickly.
To speak American
is to know instinctively
the importance
of such words,
then cast them
casually about
and let the blood fall
as it will.
Stunning
Stunning how the microplastics
catch the light as they float
in this glass of water
that I just took from the faucet,
how they spin in suspension.
I may yet drink it anyway.
It seems that I have little choice
if I’m to quench my thirst.
It doesn’t seem fair
that this has been done to us all
with only our implicit consent
by way of our consumption.
It doesn’t seem right
that the pollution, from
what’s in the tap water glass
to the red in the sky at sunset,
is pretty enough sometimes
to distract us from fear
and disgust at what
we’ve made of this place.
Still, I’m thirsty,
and so I suck down
the glass full of poison gems,
this acknowledgement of guilt.
Dark Matter 