Dove-hearted lover
of a quiet life,
have you ever understood
how hunger can make you
loud even as it makes you weak?
Flower-eyed changeling,
sure of a place in this order,
have you ever seen how those teetering
on a ledge might rage at you
as they fall?
Moon-captured elf holding on
to mythic peace for blind life,
do you see anyone at all
out there in shadow?
They see you:
sparkling
like a target,
a singing bowl
empty of sustenance
by design.
So.
Sit back,
watch home burning.
Secret evil
soon be gone;
sigh in relief.
Concealed treasure
soon be gone;
grieve it in secret.
Open wealth
soon be gone;
gnash teeth and wail.
What was ever unknown
will remain so;
nothing to say
or do; so:
sit there
overlooking
ash-heap;
sit there
on unburned stone,
flameproof rock,
bothered
by one question:
what now,
with so much lost
for good or ill?
Sit back,
saying,
“so…?”
Voice, trail off;
eyes, close.
Poetry: damn
it for its
storm versus calm,
misplaced lightning
coming down,
metaphor over all
trench warfare way
of life.
If it weren’t
for poetry, I’d have gotten
more sleep. Maybe I
could have been happy:
a little blinder, certainly;
maybe a tad less overwhelmed
by just breathing on Earth
among all its poisons
and attacks; missing out,
of course, on how to speak
exactingly of what
another’s skin feels like
upon my own;
or of how when
at noon during a walk I stop
to sit on a stranger’s stone wall
and imagine that the sunlight
is the kiss of some god.
Poetry: this damned art,
this curse of primary sensation
that will not let go. If I had never known
of it, I’d be different — lesser,
yes, and I would have said yes
to that; it might
have kept me safer.
When I lay
my last tool aside
and turn to the West
to see the sunset
I know I will think
of how long it took
for the sun to cross
the pale hot sky.
I will imagine that my birth
brought heat and light,
though I was born
in late winter at night;
I make a myth
of who I am
as any one of us might,
as any number of us do.
The trick is to allow
a myth to be not a lie,
but a story told on behalf
of the truth, even if facts
fit imperfectly, even if
it changes as one lays
a last tool aside
at sunset, at rest.
While enjoying a meal with friends,
a person turning into a broken clock.
Stuck in a moment, struggling
to be present with each guest
yet only seeing each one as
the sum of past shared experiences.
As time moves forward,
finding it harder and harder
to move their hands
at appropriate intervals
to illustrate the attention
they are attempting to give
their comrades, each failed
gesture ticking louder and louder.
The hands struggling to move.
Unease spreading through the room,
broken clock losing their appetite,
stumbling to a chair, sitting immobile:
too jammed up
to even speak.
After the murders and fires
had cleared the land,
I was strenuously invited
by the arsonists and killers
to enter
Their House
and stay.
I looked in through
the back door —
the only one open to me —
at stains,
smoke-sullied windows,
a clutter of weapons
and waste,
then turned back toward
the ruins of the countryside
where green and gold
were preparing to run riot
after timid beginnings.
From inside they called after me
with hope and threats
as I walked
a good distance from
Their House
and began to tend
to wounded land
and water, doing
what I could do,
knowing what was to come
would likely take me
but would still be better than
how I would die
in Their House.
Love those social media posts
with the guillotines and shiny blades
With the red and the brown and the clever names
You’ve got that Revolutionary Style
Never touch a gun, never touch a knife
Wave a little banner, paint a little sign
Locked to a front door while they open the back
You’ve got that Revolutionary Style
Gotta dig that T shirt, gotta like your scarf
Gotta get me a whole bunch of stuff like that
Gotta get the right look for the march or the war
Gotta get that Revolutionary Style
Call it out lock him up lock him up lock him up
lock him up lock him up LOCK HIM UP
Incarceration is a crime but there are exceptions
when you’ve got that Revolutionary Style
In the haze of a burning planet
In the haze of a burning city
In the haze of the thickened gunsmoke
over bodies not yet cold
In the cries of the people seeking relief
In the steam of the oceans filling with heat
In the fear of the white fog filling the streets
where the future is bought and sold
In the moments before it all falls down
In the hours before you can’t and won’t
It’s a mystery to me how good you look
as you swing for the whirlwind cross
You’ve got that Revolutionary Style
and there’s gotta be a meme for that
Having been pushed
so many times
as far onto a ledge
as I can go
without hurtling off into
the quick void before
the dead Void,
I have learned
how to wrap my toes
so tightly onto stone
that I could break it apart
through stubborn will
alone;
learned a little about how
to reach back into evolution
and summon an ancestor,
an animal I need
to help me survive: this is why
as you face me you feel fear
in spite of your apparent victory
when you see I have been pushed
as far as possible, when you see my
yellowing eyes, when you feel
the ground crack beneath you
and talons in your arm —
ah, I can see
that you see
my sudden wings.
Used to feel
yes, yes;
now it’s more
no, no, no;
used to be
young, young —
and now?
Not so.
Had harsh words,
once, for
age and space;
agreed to disagree.
I lie here now,
choking on dust
from a life
I used to feel.
Did you, like me,
assume the best
of how your time
would flow,
only to sharpen
and shatter within
when it moved
toward stop from go?
My cocky shell
now broken up.
It pricks me,
and I bleed.
No matter that
my blood’s grown thin;
what little I have,
I need.
I bind my wounds
as best I can,
step back toward
yes and yes;
although the pull
toward no and no
is strong,
I will resist.
We depend upon
a fog of hope
to keep us from
having to admit
that we are tied to harm
with each step we take
and our march
to a better world
will kill someone
regardless of our intent
as the nature
of our privilege
is to keep us
from understanding
what level of poison
is required to maintain
all this glory
for our benefit;
even if we
go to the right meetings,
the right parades
and protests; even if we
talk and walk
the proper talk and walk;
even if we are
good and pure and
say our prayers at night,
the simple facts of
skin and flag
can shift us
from caring human to
unwitting monster
whether we walk
in dark or light.
Revised. Originally posted 11/22/2017.
I made a box
in which I keep the work
of my whole life:
how to be this divided
self, how to speak of it,
how to stay alive.
In the box I keep my races,
my bad brain, the sticky moods
that won’t wash off;
stars and scars,
every ink-bitten mistake,
each triumph over a mistake.
Sometimes I have to
crush what I put in
to make it fit,
but it’s all in there,
I promise. All of that;
all of me, except that now
someone has kicked it
and a side has split.
Someone has kicked it
and it’s not holding.
It’s all out there now.
I’m in danger of spilling out.
That which has been
crushed down and down and
compacted for long years is
now visible. In this light
some of those triumphs
look now like mistakes,
have been so pressed into
one another for so long that
they might ignite when exposed.
I can’t tell you what
is about to happen,
other than that
what’s spilling out
is possibly ugly and
if it burns it may burn
toxic and if the box
goes too we’ll all
see me for real at last.
I stare onto the world
through the now-fractured corner.
It looks like a slot canyon, a space
between walls or bars.
It looks straight
and narrow. Surely
it’s better in here
than it is
out there
but I’m about to see
if that holds true
and for how long.
I planted the right vegetables today
to be prepared for the summer
as long as nothing happens to kill them all
or me for that matter although they’d likely last
beyond my departure for at least a little while
If so someone will likely do well by the eggplants
and tomatoes even if I’m not here for them
Someone will get the peppers and the cukes
that will come in heavy if I’m gone by then
The butternut squash will be there waiting
and the summer squash will taste as fresh
in my absence as in my presence no doubt
Things shall happen with and without me
or with or without me
My presence or absence means little
to the bounty of the earth
Here is an overgrown boy
who cannot hold
his sick father’s hand.
Mistake, he whispers
in the car.
I was his greatest mistake.
I cannot take
more comfort from the man,
and how could I offer him comfort
when my existence was
his greatest mistake?
Here is that careless boy
all the way home listening
to his car rattling like bones
dug from lost graves,
telling a horrid story
of imminent failure.
Mistake, he says.
This car was a mistake.
The breakdowns, the rattles,
the whistling in the trim at
highway speeds. I am never
comfortable, never feel safe
on the road.
Here is a fretful boy —
at once too old and too young for this —
trying to think of his father’s hand
and how it would feel to be
touched, to have his hair
stroked while someone
spoke to him of mistakes
and forgiveness, of
how to forgive; of how
some mistakes
fail upward
in spite of themselves.
if we find
after the last act
that in the end
all it would have taken
was one thousand people
with tiny scalpels
crowding in and each
slightly nicking that Demon
till it finally
fell weakly down
we will die wondering
why we did not
issue a blade
to anyone who
could get close enough
if we realize too late
just before the last stroke
of the closing bell
that one full shout
from a million throats
could have blown the prison doors off
and rendered the cells
obsolete
we will wail in the afterdust
wondering why did we not
encourage folks
to gather and scream
bloody triumph
into the faces of our jailers
if as we die we recognize
that all it would have taken
to win
was to fight as dirty as they did
if we become extinct
because we were not willing
to pay it forward with small crimes
against the flesh of the big criminals
we will perish
having deserved
what we are getting
right now
This body in which I dwell,
this animal in which I ride,
is not your animal to decorate,
load with your baggage,
steal, or kill.
You ask me why
there’s no talk of beads
or buckskin in my words?
This animal in which I ride
is not yours to decorate.
You ask me why
I never speak of drums
or sweat or feathers?
This body in which I dwell
is not yours to steer.
You ask me why
I do not look upon myself
as you do, translating blood-drops
into culture without a care?
This animal in which I ride
is not yours to load with your weight.
This body where I have made my home
is not yours to open and occupy,
this animal in which I ride
is neither your prayer nor your prey.
How you see what I show you
is not my concern
and if this journey takes me
into the harmful path of your illusions,
if my ride fails and this animal
falls as a result, know
that I will free myself
from that flesh and rise and find
new passage, and
it still will not be one
for you to understand, much less one
to make your own.
Dark Matter 