Shouted angers,
sobs, hates.
Lovers’ soft oaths,
the barking of
distant dogs, unknown
stirrings in night kitchens.
The whizzing-by of fate’s
unstopped bullets. Hiss
of last breaths.
All to be found
on a road
to a country named Music
through which
all sound passes
at some point
to wait until chosen
for its place in song.
It’s not enough
to just say sausage
in a world with
boudin, andouille,
sujuk, saveloy,
bratwurst, kielbasa,
chorizo, linguica,
mortadella, and more;
or to speak of booze
in the presence of
arak, poitin, tiswin,
pulque, Calvados,
lager, pilsner,
Henny, MD-2020, aquavit,
absinthe, corn liquor,
and whiskies galore;
this world is built
on specifics, motes
of savor and flavor
and all manner of tastes
pulled from local waters
and land and legend.
To condense them
only leaves you wanting;
to turn away from soft words
toward ones with gristle
is to humble yourself
until you can sit
at rough tables
with tough people,
listen to them
speak of joy and pain,
sucking the burn
of andouille, or
debate, laughing, between
boudin noir or boudin blanc;
wash a thick meal down
with strong bock followed
by shots of schnapps or korn;
perhaps hear someone tell
of how they came from some place
where the old folks made one thing
that put all else to shame, and
hear in that a cry for a lost home;
a home where the right words
open the right doors
into where and how the world
is made right.
In the mornings, disciples argue
about the right way to pronounce the One Name.
Some stand strong upon there being no Name
for what doesn’t exist, so why discuss it
at all? They bicker and now and then
come to blows and bitter silence.
These many descriptions of God,
even the ones that deny a God at all,
all feel like wounds left untreated.
The flies buzz around the possible names.
Sometimes they sound like threats.
Sometimes they sound like laughter
and the scent floating in the air above them
is like flowers stacked on a grave
not entirely filled with earth.
A strong breeze brings healing
blowing in from all directions at once.
When the air clears behind it
there’s nothing to hear, nothing
to sense at all. The disciples begin to dance
to what they think is the drumbeat
of the True Name being spoken at last
but it’s only the wind stretching the grass,
bending the trees, shifting the ocean onto shore.
I pick a leaf off my windshield
in a parking lot far from home.
It does not look like a tree there
I can recall, nor any I can see now;
it must have fallen to the glass
somewhere along my way here
and now it is far from home,
as am I. I toss it to the ground
where it will soon rot and join
the soil, its foreign voice adding
to the patter of this place and
who knows what will happen
as a result; I will have played
in that a small part, a carrier’s part,
my own role near-unconscious,
soon forgotten by me in spite of
this poem and unknown to all others
in spite of this poem that itself
might soon fall and rot and disappear
into the earth, there to make
something happen none of us
can currently foresee. Without much hope,
I daydream the potential here
in this parking lot too far from home.
If you do not see
why some of us
are making fists,
consider that
our open hands
have been slapped away,
handcuffed,
bound to stakes for burning,
even cut off so often
that balling them
into stones that cannot be
so easily moved
seems to be
the last choice left
to us.
We reserve the right
to open them again,
buds becoming blooms,
once we can trust
that true spring
has come.
1.
cursed be the past in repose upon its legacy whether true or false.
cursed be the imagined landscape of plenty and peace.
cursed be the flag of mistake and protection of the one at the expense of the Other.
cursed be the song performed upon occasions of contest and symbolic war.
cursed be the paint by number picture of normal and right and ordinary.
cursed be the faces made up to seem divine and honorable.
cursed be the banners of cowardice and treason made to seem virile.
cursed be the weapons borne openly into street and school and synagogue.
2.
holy the color of truth seen in spite of prism and lens and curtain.
holy the strength restrained by robbed wallets and pockets sewn shut.
holy the fullness of the body in defiance of the shame of expectation.
holy the strength of the body when taxed with reluctance and sorrow.
holy the ground full of origin bones waiting to be dug up and displayed.
holy the diggers of bones as they lie awake in the storm of disturbed ghosts.
holy the mascots and caricatures donning their own skin again at last.
holy the snake in the deep crust writhing and preparing to break through.
3.
we lay the prayer upon the day whenever and wherever we wake.
we lay the prayer down on the table before the selective feast.
we lay the curse before the blessing as it shall be swept before it.
we lay the curse out with eyes open and skin ablaze from centuries of flame.
we can only be quenched when the fullness of the fire is revealed.
we can only be healed when the darkness in the center of the wound is illuminated.
we claim the curse as our own to bind it to our work.
we claim the blessing as our own and free it to go where it must.
A mountain spoke.
It ground its soil to jelly.
Sent itself rolling out
over former green.
The sea pulled back silently,
came in yelling larger than before,
slid its hand up over land
and covered all.
Air itself had a say.
It offered itself, full of spark
and drench, and when it left
it took all with it.
Fire muttered, snapped,
snarled, roared, but not
in anger; it felt hunger,
so it flared, fed, and filled;
after each of these, nothing more
to be said until the next time.
Next time it happens it will be clear
that no one has listened.
You claim
you have taken the entire world
as a faithful partner,
its hand in your hand,
walking the path with you;
kiss, kiss,
swing
and a miss.
This world owes you nothing. It is
not your partner,
the equality you feel with it
now and then
is just the balm
of you being useful
and when you are not —
you wake at night,
still with the world
but wondering
why and for how much longer and
you sit up lonely, startling
the cats in an empty bed — even you
aren’t there, are you? Meanwhile
the world pulls its hand back,
blows a kiss, moves away;
a matter of survival.
They tied people
I might have loved
to stakes placed high
on piles of gasolined wood,
bound them with ropes
they bought on my credit.
They set those pyres alight
with bills I handed them
from my wallet
and when the condemned
screamed, they turned
my music up loud enough
to make it seem
that the cries of the immolated
were distant,
discordant coincidences
not in the soundtrack
from the start.
I bowed my head
and looked at my hands;
empty, supplicant,
stinking of
accelerant, blistered
and scarred from heat.
They also held my tears
and though I wept for it all,
though my weeping
should have added
salt to my wounds,
they barely stung;
when I looked up
at the ones tending the pyres,
I saw my hands there.
It must have
felt good
to have grown up with
a God that looks like you.
It must have made
for interesting Sundays, listening to
words someone like you pronounced
long ago in your voice.
Must have been enough
to make your every current desire
feel like a holy command, every heavy debt
a wound waiting for redress in your deified heart.
Now people are pushing
new pictures of God,
claiming God has a different voice,
a long-hidden Word.
It’s must be hard to imagine
that all your throne years
might be coming to an end.
What now for you? Right now,
sitting there with your fists
balled up tight, your eyes
rolling rage, you look like someone else —
yet somehow, still very like you.
On Gardner Street the cobblestones
no longer hide under asphalt. It’s an
axle-breaker road, used by some
to cut from Main South
to a faster route to downtown,
one not as direct but with
fewer obstacles once you get past
the hard historic rumble
of Gardner Street.
Even though driving down Main Street
offers a straight shot it’s never been easy
to get to our shiny downtown from Main South,
even before the rebuild,
the driving out of the old tenants,
the tear down of the old church,
the ripping of old fabric in favor of something
artisanal and pure and much more
wholesomely rough;
if they haven’t
paved a condo courtyard down there
with vintage cobblestones yet,
they will.
Back on Gardner Street,
right near
the new Boys and Girls Club
(located off of what they used to call
Kilby Street
until someone decided
that name
reminded too many
of who ran the corners there;
GPS still calls it Kilby Street
though all the signs
are down and trashed)
drivers not already
in the know
keep slamming into
that open pit of exposed cobblestones
and either brake hard
or break down hard.
Townies know better. They know
what’s under
every shiny new surface. They
know what will render
your shiny ride useless.
Know what it means
to be shined on. Know
what their streets
used to hold. Know
real people live on Gardner Street
and they don’t always
just pass through.
Here are my books.
They have mattered
through most of my time;
right now, I’m not sure how
they continue to fit into me.
Here are guitars, drums,
cuatros, basses, more;
they have mattered as much
as the books, although now
they hang and sit dusty and ask
why they are still here.
The downward slide
of my aging hands and eyes
sweeps me away from
how I have self-defined.
I can’t make things work
as they always have worked.
It terrifies me daily
that I wake up
with no sense
of what will be gone in daylight
that I could see and grip
in the dark of the night before.
Here is my body.
The shadow behind it isn’t talking right now,
but no book or song can keep it silent forever.
This has always been true,
but at dawn each day now
I hear it clearing its throat.
I didn’t read about this in any book
and the music I swear
I can hear now and then
isn’t anything I want to learn to play.
There — a poet
saying
soul, crystalline,
illusion, diaphanous,
eldritch, mystic,
heartstrings, crystalline
(again);
and another
saying
justice, aggression,
oppression, supremacy,
revolution, war,
peace, justice
(again).
Over my shoulder
the voice of one
saying
nuts, bolts,
pencils, slipjoint pliers,
leaf-litter, lighters,
smocks, lighters
(again);
this is the one
I turn to hear,
the one
in which I trust.
A phrase
that stabs safety
to death.
Some shudder
whenever it’s uttered — say,
when they are stopped
by a roadside, knowing
that to reach for them
too quickly
or too slowly
or to question the need
to show them at all
might be fatal.
Others shrug, say
it should be routine
and if nothing forbidden
is happening, why
worry at all? These
are the folks
who do not understand
how much has been
forbidden to so many
in order for them
to live so snugly
in their cocoons,
ignorant of such fear,
such pervasive,
grinding fear.
Those who shrug
do not understand
how much depends
on that lack of understanding.
Until they fear you
as much as they make you fear them,
they will not feel you at all,
will not feel you as human
until you fell a few so they can see
you are as capable of mayhem as they are.
This is a blasphemy, you say?
A spiral down to their level?
You can’t be serious.
Once they were as you.
Once they understood. They did not
come to this on their own: they were
guided to it. Do not forget that
even as you tear into them
and teach them to fear.
They see you as insects,
pests, vermin; you must see them as
human, even as you strike them;
only if you feel no pain
at having to do as they have done
will you join them at their level.
Dark Matter 