You have no excuse
and there’s no absent Muse
to blame for it. It’s either work
or waiting in this, no in between
and when you invoke
the Muse like that it tells me
you don’t understand the work
or how blood must be spilled
in every place we make meat
from life, for life. This is not to say
there are no walls between you
and what you desire, but there are sledgehammers
too and that’s how
the walls come down
and the calves get dead. If you’ll
just turn around and pick up a hammer
you’ll note it is heavy enough
to break what stands before you.
Are you enough? The old question,
oldest one, the one Cain asked
even before he stooped for his own
tool. Think of that:
we revile his literal take now,
but his moment still offers a lesson
that something has to go if it’s between you
and your target God. Pick up the hammer
and stop waiting, we’re all
hungry here, and the excuse
you’ve named the Muse?
When she gets here
footsore and dusty, she’ll be
hungry too.
Tag Archives: meditations
How To Overcome Writer’s Block
High Water Mark
Likely high water mark
and I’m bereft.
Who’s going to answer
for this success?
I got here on a back or two
and it hurts
me. Hurts
more because I’ve been
lazy getting up off the mountain
now that I’m up.
Who were they?
Damned,
I can’t remember.
Lazy News
recent developments:
the sheets on the clothesline
speaking in soft thwaps
and weeds still pretty enough
to not annoy
old leaves now almost gone to soil
the first cigar in months feet stretched up on the stoop
no jacket
spent an hour thinking of this
not because of tension or struggle
but because it felt good
Afternoon
Smoke,
a lullaby
in the air,
curls around
the covers
of the Duino Elegies.
Feet up, coffee at hand,
the angelic explanations
laid before me
and a good cigar —
no,
a great cigar burning.
Thus, clarity
carries on.
Always.
Let Go
Let go, he tells himself.
You don’t count at all.
You haven’t for a while.
Words count (the speaking
of words is an action and counts
no matter the proverb).
A lot of good people
have been bastards,
he tells himself. Let go
the ties and be. Cut
words loose: write or say
four, pull back two. Do not
neglect the rage,
let go of it. Free it.
Qualification,
he tells himself, is pure
falsehood.
Justification contains
too many syllables
to waste. Let go, sharpen,
make a blunt object,
poison a well.
Let go, he tells himself.
You’re too old not to.
It’s expected now,
your job practically.
Customize at your risk —
words don’t demand
anything beyond utterance.
They will fail you,
of course. Let go,
fall as they may fall.
How far your fate is
from the top is
uncertain. Let go.
Find out.
Wisteria
she was wisteria, i think, wisteria
in its short bloom, she was warm days and cold nights
in mud season when blades come out of the soil
where they’ve been hiding like swords,
mute in moonlight. she was remarkable,
and i was lost as soon as she left me.
it was a night and a day and a night before i cried
for her. a long sweep of hours in numb succession.
if this is grief, i said, it is a cold wind. and a cold
night followed. unseasonable time. the flowers on the early vines
shriveling. i wept in the privacy of the bedroom
that was empty. emptied myself i cried more, the walls
inside me melted and i sweated them out. was paper thin
after. light passed through me and from within i was lit.
this is her doing, i told myself. that i have been
illuminated by her. that i shine. she was more than i had
thought to say of her, some sun of a distant unglimpsed sky
over a world i hadn’t explored, and i cried again as i would
and still do. she was wisteria, forsythia, the very bones
of spring unedited by interpretation, a sun i will not see again
and so i fail and enter a twilight of weeping and indulge the urge
to create and recreate the moment when i lost a chance
to stop and listen and let her expand within me as i should.
the moment of loss is deep weather, a season of interruption
when the simplest answers go unnoticed. i should have been
motionless and perhaps i could have held her here,
or perhaps not. she was wisteria, she had her time,
was gone. i remain. i weep, i shine with her within me
and light nothing around me.
Eating
So angry
a plant would cower,
but damned if I do not
hide it in savage feeding
on everything in the cabinet.
Keep it in — hold the line
against the fire. Don’t think
of sharpening the knife —
which of the many I own
would I choose,
anyway? Which should
do the job I dread and desire?
I slash at the eggs to make them bleed
with common cutlery —
it’s not enough, but I will make do.
I’d love to drain myself
tonight. Would adore the sight
of the pool forming in the tub around me
full of bile. I would lose a little
weight, trim down, finally stop caring
how I look. But instead
I stuff myself some more and think a while
on how deep I’ll have to cut
to let this out — put on enough fat and
it’ll be too much work to cut through it,
so I’ll be safe.
Safer but still angry. Still hungry.
Something needs to be in danger from me.
The Blindness
Close your relentlessly
interpretive eyes
for now
and let it be
that what you might have seen
has vanished.
Let the seeming
become
the unconceived.
All is apparently gone.
You might be seen
but cannot return the favor.
You are
loose in unobserved
life.
Freedom
appears as red grains
cycling under your lids.
Press fingers to them
and see darkening.
Feel blindness.
Take one step forward
and blunder into something.
Stay strong and learn it
with your hands,
tongue, nose, chest
and shins.
Can you name it?
Are you now in discovery?
This is what you wanted
when you closed your eyes.
Breaking new on familiar shores. There’s pain.
Create a new word for its color.
Breakfast
Some problems
are small enough
to be solved
over bacon and eggs.
Get to the diner
after the rush and sit
in the fat person’s booth,
the one with the movable table.
Sit a bit stirring coffee.
Listen to the businessmen
who had to squeeze
into the normal booth
talk about
underwriting a risk.
Cover the whole table with the plates
when they come and
dig in to the comfortable
and familiar. Slowly,
carefully, acknowledge
the issues,
sort them,
eliminate distractions,
and come to a decision
just in time with the last chew
of the last bite
of oversized Italian toast.
Leave a big tip when you go
and light a cigarette upon leaving.
Walk to the car
feeling full and prepared,
taking your time. Those homefries
were delicious, weren’t they?
The eggs were perfect, the coffee
strong but smooth. It’s all
going well. It’s all working
out.
Critter
a man
became a critter
creeping
over land
not seeing connection
to humans
he sat on rocks
turned em over for moral guidance
he’s a cemetery
of thinking —
left over
animal
reptile brained
chunk of reaction
fight and bite
sleep where it’s friendly
stay out of the cold
of other opinions
screw a little
when called to it
a story so common
you might be forgiven
for pretending it’s
just another legend
until you cross paths with him
while trying to fall in love
For My Daily Affirmers
You refuse to say
or read or listen to
anything negative,
only speak of God’s love
and the sun, place flowers
in all the corners of your house.
Lemme tell you something:
the cockroaches
say much the same
of the night, the filth,
and the stink,
and those flowers begin dying
from the moment you bend
to cut them loose
from the mulch they need
to live.
Magical Thinking
We came together
on a Wednesday night
to beat the ape
to death.
It was a warm night.
There were ribbons in the trees
and a firepit, wine and song,
and baseball bats.
The ape was strangely calm.
One by one she looked into our circled faces.
We do this out of compassion,
she is doomed already, the preacher intoned
as we raised the bats high. None of us
wanted to strike the first blow. Urged on
by our love, we swung all at once, she fell,
and then we finished the job.
Our arms were swinging, we crooked and twisted
away from each other to avoid being hit.
We threw the body on the fire and the fur
singed and ripped in out nostrils.
This was an ape, after all. This is how
we started on the path. From this
came the human, and from this came the war.
In killing our source, perhaps we could kill
the impulse to kill? It was worth a try,
we had said before we began — and now,
spattered and at peace, we sat and looked into
the bones in the flames, hoping against hope
that this burning might be the future at last.
NOTE: It’s been pointed out how much like a Russell Edson poem (“Killing The Ape”) this is…totally unconscious, I swear. I’m a big Edson fan, and how I blanked on that particular poem, I have no idea. I’ll leave it up, but definitely want to acknowledge the debt.
If Not Now, When?
When we have crossed the line
When we have stopped being unhappy and can see happy
When our teeth stop traveling in search of substance
When we demand
When we no longer beg
When we are imagined fully by another
When the sense of otherness is tamed
When learning is the equivalent of living
When it stops being a big deal
When getting up for work is jazz and not techno
When the lovers blow hot always hot
When the cool is demonstrated by a hand in a fire unburned
When street is asphalt and not adjective
When prairie takes precedence
When river is clean fuel
When ocean slips pregnancy to us through our eyes
When bird and snake combine to make historical marker
When tumbledown prisons become flower mounds
When we are heroin to the officer
When we are free of the baggie and are vaporized like old contracts
When the last of the butchers falls meatless into our arms
When the last of the lightning squad sits at our tables
When a mean mumbling is sampled and made to rock
When prettiness is established and common as every face we see
When this means nothing
When this is quaint
When no one understands this at any emotional level
When it is clear to all
Then
Cautionary Tale
A cruel and arrogant
prince once barked his shin
on a myth in his path to conquest —
you would think he’d be angry,
or humbled. No.
“Never mind,” he said, “no matter.
I will take it and put it flush
into the floor of my great hall
where it will be at once foundation
and trampled upon.”
He did. He took the myth for his own.
He trafficked upon it
until he wore a groove into it.
And when inevitably
he tripped over the groove he’d worn
he cracked his crown, and
so he died.
When we see those ruins
of his palace now,
we know that stone at once:
it’s red and smooth and
the stains he left all around it
remain evident
though the stone itself is clean.
Never worry
about conquistadors,
appropriation, those who steal
the myths of others and build upon them
and hold them
as their own. They fall,
always; eventually,
the stones they’ve stolen
catch them up and they fall.
Will Not
I will not spill over.
I will lift my head up
and let my eyes brim.
Will hold still, and see through
to a wet-bright sky.
No matter if moon
or sun above, no matter
if none are here to see
my face if I fail in this;
I will this. That I will not —
will hold my water
and keep my face raised —
will not. And when
I have not, I will
remain fixed on
how clear the air is,
how full of gems
and the sharp arms
of their shine.
