I just work here
with my feet on the ground
head on the ground
eyes just clear enough of the ground
to weep at seeing the sky
when I wake up for work
I just work here
cleaning up after the sparkle dogs
of the glitter folks
I just work here
on behalf of someone’s imagination
about the nobility of following my bliss
right into a pit brimming with broken backs
I just work here
not that far from the sky
and a sparkle dog of my own
(at least that’s what’s printed on my pay stubs)
I just work here
work I said
but they say voting is my job too
I need to vote sometimes so I vote
(about work)
and they say I need to kill sometimes
in the work (for the work)
so I kill occasionally
I just work here
and I cheer the killers if I’m not kiling
I just work here
high on shrugs and winks and nods
I just work here
with my feet on the neck of another
and the blood of the past in my drinks
that taste like hell
(it’s work to choke it down
and I work here)
I just work here
in the forges of the gods
in the factories of the demigods
in the cube farms of the priests
in the bank vaults of the faithful
in the gardens of the dog catchers
in the still-faintly-blue seas of the mariner warriors
in the starved ranks of the indigent
in the desiccated homes of the criers and screamers
I just work here and vote here and kill here
and vote for the killers to do it in my name
and work is work and the sparkle dogs
lick my hand now and then
for love or for taste-test
I don’t know
I don’t ask
I just work here
where they barely
tell me anything
I don’t already expect to be a lie
Tag Archives: poems
I Just Work Here
Mystery Upon Mystery
Mystery
upon mystery,
how we force
some creatures
into becoming
our dearest symbols;
then when the symbols
become extinct,
our mythology
grow stronger, as if
the death of eagles
is irrelevant to the death
of all that we have made
the eagles stand for,
as if we never cared
for eagles in the first place
beyond what we
could make of them.
Listening
Listening to
my old guitar
in better hands
than mine
causes no jealousy,
only wonder;
it seems that every song
ever played upon it
has been hiding in there
and all of them
are now ringing
around this room
as if every yesterday
has found its voice again
in those hands and
those strings.
If I let envy
stop my ears tonight, I fear
I may not be worthy
of seeking those songs
for myself tomorrow.
Every Everything
Every everything
An onion full of stench
Sometimes appetizing
No telling when or how
Every everything
A packet no one’s read
A black hole paperwork
An answer in there somewhere
Dream or how it just is
Fantasy or operating system
Direction or illusory urge
Did the land itself just heave
Every everything
A doctor with a Doberman face
A mistake on its knees for your pleasure
Doors that open on walls that move aside
Welcome to the newest of new
Every everything’s changed
Will you carry a daisy or a dagger
We will need both
Even more extra
Just uploaded “A Head Of Flames,” an eBook of my selected poems from 2019, for download by my Patreon subscribers.
A little extra
As you know the name of the blog is “Dark Matter,” but the URL is “radioactiveart.blog.”
Here’s where the name came from. The poem goes back over 20 years, and can be found in the “Poems From The Slam Years” page on the blog if you want to read it.
I’ve had the music for it for a while, but only sat down to record it tonight.
Hope you enjoy.
The Ghost
If you dance with The Ghost in
a miasma of brown and red
If you stumble whirl
into their pit of mad violence
If you have no love
for those fallen underfoot
If you cannot bring yourself
to lift those broken to safety
If your fear of The Ghost
stifles your love of Living
If you cannot kiss without panic
and The Ghost insists
on tonguing your twitching mouth
If you cannot smile without screaming
and The Ghost demands
both smile and scream
If you fall writhing upon hearing all this
because you know The Ghost
knowing neither name nor face
If you are not yourself The Ghost
how can you keep dancing
knowing you are dancing in blood
merely because it is easy
merely because you know this music so well
you need not even listen
Another Failure
I keep seeking music
in language, meaning
in both; all days
I struggle, most days
I fail, sometimes I catch
a tune, now and then
I fully sing, more rarely
something I sing
moves someone else,
maybe something
has changed somewhere
as a result, though I’m unsure
of that and do not trust
my hope for it. This is
what I am, what I have been,
what I have given myself to —
and now? Nothing within
feels like music. Nothing within
but noise I’m not skilled enough
to transform, and to sit in silence
hums only of death
which is more meaning
than song,
and no language at all.
Stepping Outside
Get out of bed
and step outside
in short sleeves today
when only a few degrees
keep the rain
from becoming snow.
Your skin asks hard questions
of you: why now, why today,
why is this necessary?
It’s not that you are
deathly cold, but it is
raw enough out here
to drive you to full waking;
why, considering everything,
in the midst of all things
being on fire,
did you crave
the routine misery of cold and wet?
Was it to remind you
of other
possibilities?
Anywhere But Here Looks Good Right Now
In this slim hole
named home
angels of discord
jostle for primacy,
raise up fresh dreams,
conjure new hybrids, misshapen
offspring of dreaded ancestors
and fearsome strangers
who somehow look familiar;
bring to mind names
we are afraid to utter
for fear of them turning,
smiling, nodding,
calling us kin.
Do you find yourself
wanting to run away? Do you
long for new and open country,
unfenced, empty and clear?
Do you find yourself yearning
to move somewhere new
and become someone new?
To escape these bitter demons?
More to the point: are you certain
you aren’t one of them yourself? Are you
running from yourself? Is it possible
that you are at heart, when faced with
what you consider unspeakable,
a colonizer?
The Haunting
how are you
he said,
worming forward
from the foot of your bed
to where he could
see you better, him being
almost blind from years
underneath
the corner dresser
in the dust where
you’d forgotten him
that time when he fell
off the bed and rolled
under there and now
somehow he’s back
as familiar and needy as ever
but you aren’t having any
and when he gets close enough
you toss the covers
and off he flies again
into the corner
where he has lived
although you thought
he’d gone away years ago
and now you see he’s not
so what does that mean about you
that he’s back haunting you
getting this close to the new you
you’ve worked so hard to create
how are you, he said blindly
as if he couldn’t see how different
you are now
proof of that being
how quickly you fall back to sleep
and how little he shows up
in subsequent dreams
but in the morning
you move the dresser
sweep underneath it
and everything else in the room
leaving the curtains and blinds
flung wide and the windows open
for hours in an exorcism
that’s worked before and you hope
will work again because
this is what you deserve
a night free of his voice
and a home as fresh as a good wind
Episodes
1.
I came to this moment
with my head in my hands
and my hands wet from years of sobbing.
It was not a journey’s end.
It was being roused
from dumb despair to find myself
in precisely the same place
and position I’d started from,
having mistaken
long nights
of shaking and staring into darkness
for progress.
Now I see that of course
progress is relational
and depends on how easily
people take hold
of those around them
in the dark. With my head
in my hands and my tears
drowning me, with no one
to shake me free of it,
how could I ever
have seen
that I was not moving?
I could choose to look up
and dry my face
now that I know, of course;
I could pretend I recognize
any of these concerned faces
and reach out.
But progress is relational
and this is not progress,
I think, but a change
of set-dressing. Still
the same place, faces
changed but still
not quite visible.
Reaching out from here —
my hands so wringing wet —
who can hold onto me long enough
to help lift me? It is practically
guaranteed that I will slump again
into this. Maybe
this time I ought to agree
with the dark that I should remain
invisible to all including myself, or maybe
I should try to stand on my own, convince myself
there is a path out, a journey
that will end up somewhere else. I cannot tell.
Hope or foolhardiness
look about the same from here.
2.
I pull my head off my shoulders
and bowl it into those before me.
They fall like pins, and this time there’s no reset.
I’m still sitting, headless
in darkness. It’s better.
The crying, at least, has stopped,
or at least is happening
somewhere
other than right here. I can’t hear it anyway,
what with my ears
on the detached head
that’s vanished into a pit
somewhere.
It will come back to me
changed. I’ll be alone
when I set it back onto
my shoulders and leave this place
for a real journey.
I won’t have to cry any more
or lose my place. I’ll be alone.
I’ll be gone. Loose headed
and so far gone, I’ll be on
a return track the whole time.
Around the world and back again.
3.
I came to this new moment
with my head back in my hands
and my hands once again wet.
But it’s different this time,
or so I tell me. This time
progress can’t be relational
because I can’t see any faces
around me when I lift my own
to look at where they were.
I remember the sound
of them crashing away from me
so well now. It’s traveled
around the world
and back again. So loud,
as if it was still yesterday.
So loud I wish
my head had never
come back to me last time.
I bury it again
where it was,
where I tell myself it belongs.
Gears
sand in gears
teeth scratched
cracked
gaps
hard stop
I hear
breakage
I cannot look
anything there
still running
right
won’t be running
long
a failed machine
is such a common machine
I am full
of sand
I am
that common
Early To Rise
I take a moment upon rising
to adjust my Whiteness
for the coming day.
Set the beard straight,
suppress irrelevant facets
of my core being, put on
the palest face I have.
I’d turn on
the television
for background noise
as I fetch coffee
but I’m so damn tired
of Europe and its tropes.
Sick of Thor and Halloween,
the fat man in the red suit
for equinox ritual. Sick of Jesus,
sick of Karl Marx, sick of
donuts and latte,
grand theft disguised
as industry, the right way
to walk, the proper way
to talk —
I have so little of who I am
beyond that,
having been robbed
of most of my Other before birth;
after, found myself pummeled
with family expectations
and contrary exhortations,
explanations as to why,
in spite of my White body
and White schooling
and White Messaging,
I’m still Other and
don’t ever
forget it, son, said my dad
who tried not to forget
the little he had left of
his Other.
Don’t ever
forget it, son, said my mom
who had set herself up
for never quite loving
her Other.
Don’t ever
forget it, kid, said the members
of the family who couldn’t
forget it either though
they did not quite approve
of Other.
Before the year begins
I take one more moment
in the mirror
and there is all that Whiteness
spilling out of my pores and
look at that hair and
diabetes and depression and
loveless moving through clients
and taxes and worry and
face it, I’m too near unto death
to change; maybe it’s time
to just fall all the way into the bleach
since when I strain to hear my Other,
most days all I hear
are gasps and screams
in a tongue I can’t understand.
They tell me
the source of my Other
met the source of my Whiteness head on
over 500 years ago
and did not win then but
oh, it survives in me
in spite of Jesus and Thor and Marx
and John Maynard Keynes and
white sale linens pressed hard over my face,
in spite of the Vikings and the chiseled superheroes;
the way they wear their hats;
the way they kill low-key.
No, I say as hard as I can, no, Europe;
no to your culture and your counterculture;
whatever it offers
I don’t want any more of that —
I am Other.
Except I’m Whiteness.
Except I am Other.
Except I’m not.
Like petals pulled
in that kids’ game —
love, love not,
embrace, repel;
I bet that game
of destruction as play
came from Europe too.
Rising Now
rising now
you are
leaf upon wind
lifting you
from where
you’d fallen
you dip and whirl
how can you possibly regret
losing your grip
upon the tree
that raised you
when this is how you are now
for however briefly
this last flight lasts
Dark Matter 