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.
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
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?
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.
It is a measure of the fragility of my life
that I am cut so deeply
by each happening;
every time I am compromised
it is as if a window long ago paiinted shut
has been thrown open into me
and all can see the walls of the wounds
from wherever
they are standing.
It’s not like that at all.
I am surprised by all of it.
I look like the people in films,
nonplussed when the crevasse
open before them in what was
solid ground. You’d think
I’d be used to it by now:
the elimination of privacy.
The poet’s cinematic life.
You get insight; I get
a script for my own overexposure
as a tunnel into art.
I wish I could tell you
it’s fine. That I am at peace
with being so open,
even if it is not
of my own doing.
Surely am close. Surely
there will closure
for having allowed
such intrusion.
That is how it goes:
let it carve me unto death
for the sake of art and others’
healing. You say: stop.
I say the blades of poetry
aren’t mine. Tell me: how
does one stop
without dying?
I need, I need, I need to know.
In the paperwork
they called it
a “CVA”
A “cerebral vascular accident”
On the street
they call it a “stroke”
Like a sky-sent bolt or
a smoothing hand on skin
I don’t want
to call it at all
for fear of raising it
to fiercer life
I’m shaking slowly as I stand up
less than a week later
They say I got off lucky
Call it “tiny” and “minor”
I don’t have the luxury
to minimize
or slide it aside
as I try to stand steady
How much of this tremor
is fear and how much
impairment of a more
profound nature
Beats me right now
Beats on me right now
Is this a new normal
or will there be another to follow
and another and another
Blow upon blow
Stroke upon stroke upon stroke
Never to mean a gentle hand again
I didn’t mind getting older
I do mind getting old
Everything catching up to me
Now and now and now
Feels like all I have is now
Then is just a fiction I’ve told myself
A eruption in the brain
White dot on a scan
Like a snow cap
on a polar field
A tiny stroke of winter
on my earth
CVA — an accident
that happened
An equinox for a new season
I should have seen coming
Taking a walk around the neighborhood,
I see an older fellow wiping blood
from the arms and seats of his lawn chairs.
I slow down to watch, express my dismay
and concern. “Oh, nothing much
to worry about…just
the usual, just the everyday
mess.” He turns away to resume
the cleanup. I notice the pile
of bloody towels beside him
on his still-brown, slow-greening
lawn. I shrug, then head home
for supper
and the evening news.
It’s spring, I guess.
Of course that’s what it is: spring.
The world gagging on blood
as it tries for renewal. Some of us
strolling by evidence of the bleeding,
taking quick notice,
shaking our heads,
then heading home for
a quick word
from our sponsors.
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.
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.
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.
Note: This poem, written back in the 1980s, was published originally as part of one of the most unique collections of antiwar poems ever created. It happened in 2003, prior to the start of the Iraq War.
nth Position, a well known literary website, put out a call for poets to submit poems to be collected into a free, downloadable chapbook called “100 Poets Against The War.” The resulting chapbook of 100 poems was created in one week from over 1500 entries, and the file was downloaded over 175,000 times; copies were used at readings and protest rallies all over the world.
The poems were eventually collected into a book of the same title by Salt Publishing in the UK in 2004; all proceeds were donated to Amnesty International. I am proud to have been part of this powerful phenomenon.
And I am saddened and angry that it remains forever relevant.
For the people of Gaza.
T
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
What d’you call it
that thing
that thing that came in the night
that hung above our village
and a war fell onto us from its mouth
what d’you call it
What d’you call it
that thing
I couldn’t see it too well in the dark
I think it had grey skin
know it had red eyes
it wasn’t a dragon
it was too hungry to be a dragon
it was too angry
Whatever it was
a thing like that
ought not to be free
ought not to be let loose to do that
ought to be locked up
ought to be somewhere else
What d’you call it
that thing
that roasts your children
that cinders your wife
takes your father in flame
melts your tongue to the roof of your mouth
burns the consonants out of you
until all you can do is scream open throated, only vowels,
nothing to give shape or form to the sound
no words
and what words could you have had before this
to describe — this
what d’you call it?
Yes
I suppose
you could call it
a helicopter
a vertical takeoff and landing armored air support vehicle
an Apache
a Cobra
and I suppose its anger and hunger could be
a mistake
an unfortunate incident
nothing to deter us from our mission
but
HELLFUCKER – SHITCLOUD – DARKRAPER- CHILDBURNER – SKYEATER
STORMSWAN – DEVILROAR – DEATHBIRD – WIDOWERMAKER
FLAME GOD HAMMER –
all work just as well
There are no clean words for some things
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 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.
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.
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.
Dark Matter 