To lie in bed
and love the breath
sighing next to you.
To get up out of that
and notice the time
after having slept all night.
A smile in the pre-alarmed
dark of the bedroom,
one last one before
daybreak and its
struggles. To have
barely five minutes
before the misfortune of
sunrise: it’s not the
way it is supposed to be
according to everything
and everyone else, but
here I am, wishing once again
for reversal.
Tag Archives: poems
Reversal
Your Salve
When needed,
a hard heart
is indispensable —
for the eyes of their children
can soften your resolve, as can
their voices at dusk
before streetlights
come on and chase them
toward imagined safety —
don’t be fooled. You know
what they are, what
they will become. You
might need to wait them out
at first, but you will
get used to it. Till then
remember that anyway, they burn
brighter in the night, and you will learn
how to harden your heart
by the light of them twisting
in the night: your involuntary demons,
your salve.
Handwriting Practice
A quick brown fox
jumps over the lazy dog.
Handwriting practice.
All the letters you need
in one easy to remember phrase.
A quick brown fox
jumps over the lazy dog.
Picture the sentence hurtling
through a field. (Maybe
it’s escaping rocket fire.
Do they have foxes in Gaza?)
It comes across the sleeping dog
and lets it lie there wrapped
in its tight little cliche. Flies over it
the way your pen never did.
Your pen
had to be precise. No slop,
no blots, no hesitation.
You had to be so careful
when you wrote
back then — every letter needed to be
a shelter.
If you wrote badly
on the blackboard you’d be
mocked at the very least.
They’d blow you up,
they would.
A quick brown fox
jumps over the lazy dog
on its way south. You are
traveling as fast as you can
among the familiar ravening
of the wakened dogs of war.
Are there foxes in Gaza? Well,
there are now. There are
again. No need
for cursive script to write
curses. You needn’t
stop to write. In fact,
you can’t.
A quick brown fox
jumps over the lazy dog.
I’m up too late.
What good does writing do
in such a lovely hand as mine?
What good am I to the struggle
when it’s so far away?
And Samson went and caught three hundred foxes, and coupled them tail to tail, and fastened torches between the tails.
A quick brown fox, or rather
a pair of them, screaming,
jumps over the lazy dog. The lazy dog
burns and itself is screaming
like a rocket, like a fighter jet.
Everything is screaming and no one
can write their way out of this,
standing in memory
at old-school blackboards
trying to write a new phrase
but we can’t keep our hands from shaking.
No one is anything other
than a dog waking in terror
or a fox someone else set on fire.
First Thing
First thing I do
after getting up
is pet and feed
the cat. After that
I begin the lamentations:
the world, the job,
the pain of rising age within.
I feel indignities and
humiliations and above all
of them, like a creaking ceiling,
the whisper of one future day
calling out, “coming, coming
soon; you’ve seen nothing yet;”
but I did see the face
on Miesha when I gave her
her bowl, and at least
I started well and someone
loves me in her way,
and I can call upon
that small thing
whenever I am in need.
Scrap
Give me a smart time
and I’ll be all over it
like a dog on dropped steak.
I like a word that pushes back,
a phrase to turn my path
toward light.
But — one that takes me
for dumb or leaves me dumber
than I was before I read it?
Leaves me starving for honesty,
or which clearly jerks my knee
and refuses to understand why
I might take exception? I’m
not perfect. I’m often wrong,
but if you do not care to see
how we got there,
you choose to give me
bones upon which
to break a tooth, and
understand — I do bite.
I do bite back, gnaw,
suffer myself to choose
suffering to chase off
such chosen violence.
I will break a tooth
off in you. I will break
into pain for you.
I’ll bleed through my ivory.
I’m not proud of the bleeding
we both will do as much as
I’m proud not to be
unwilling to leave anything
undropped under the table.
Waiting In Joy
Before setting out for the day,
bathe your gut with a shot glass
full of olive oil. There is no evidence
that this makes any sense
medically, but I trust in
Mediterranean wisdom;
they live a long time there.
Every relative I knew from there
lived a long time.They loved
the sun and their gardens.
Loved the heft of a tomato
in the hand as it came off the vine.
On a cool night, kiss your fingertips
toward heaven and say “thank you”
in whichever language you choose.
It will be understood and you will
live a long life. Every cherished person
in my life offered some gratitude
now and then for their time here.
For the taste of tomatoes in olive oil.
For a convenient, chipped glass
cleaned with care before they retired
for the night, readied for the morning.
For a belief that was not abstract.
For sunlight in a garden warming them
as they sat at their worn table, waiting in joy
for whatever else
was to come.
New York City To Worcester
New York City to Worcester,
coming home from home.
Driving as if I’m ever far from home,
always longing for home.
My eyes and brain soften all
when I’m driving past midnight.
Everything on the road
has ill-defined edges.
It feels like all I need to do
is push a little more
on the gas and I would be able
to drive right through
that 18-wheeler ahead of me.
Slide like a ghost through its length
from the back to the front.
I’d surely get home faster.
Which is what I want.
I want to get home faster.
If I drive up to the back
and try to push through,
I’ll end up somewhere,
or maybe that place would be
nowhere. Maybe that would be
home. A new home? An old one?
Anywhere could be home,
I guess. Let me slide through
that truck ahead of me
and find out. I’ll let you know
how it turns out.
One
I broke my favorite cereal bowl.
Took a huge chip off the rim.
The ritual for keeping
order in the day
has been cracked
in a thoughtless way
while washing up after
breakfast.
It will nag me
like a snapped string
of prayer beads if I
do not buy another
before tomorrow;
instead of counting
to 108 tonight before bed
I’ll count to one…one…
one.
There had better be
a bowl in gray or
one in green like the one
I had before this one.
If not, then maybe in blue?
Everything living dies,
after all.
But I fear
what I am going
to go through
if I cannot complete
the ritual as required.
The chip in the rim
may widen to swallow
the moon,
the sun, my
last breath.
Maybe yours too.
Maybe all of them.
I dare not leave this house
to go shopping for fear of
what could fall from the sky
so here’s to tomorrow’s cereal
eaten carefully from a chipped bowl.
Here’s to counting on what I still have.
Here’s to one…one…one.
Keep Your Eyes On The Hands
Maybe I’d be happier
if I believed in something
currently absent
but said to be returning:
Jesus, or America. Maybe
that tug of hope,
forlorn as it might be,
could pull me up.
It is fall, aiming to become
winter soon enough. Then
it will be spring. I don’t need
to believe in that — it’s not
a myth but a fact. Jesus, though; well,
Jesus ain’t spring. As for that other,
it hasn’t earned my belief.
I won’t spend it on such grief
as it has given me. Some think
Jesus and America are one and the same.
I hope for my sake that’s untrue.
I find the devil more credible.
I know you are shocked. I wish
I was able to believe in your hope.
I know some good people who do.
I’m just not one. I’ve seen things
they haven’t, been seeing them
for over five centuries now.
It’s hard to forget that
and succumb to hope.
Maybe I should just wait,
depend on spring to pick me up.
If I was sure I’d get there,
I think I could hang on.
Till then, I’ll listen to you
sing your songs of Christmas
and watch you put your hands
over your hearts. See,
I have learned: regardless
of how much you hope, how much
you want to believe, you must always
keep an eye on where the hands are.
American Poem
From November, 2021. Revised.
If you are writing
an American poem, insert
a nature image here.
Purple those
mountains up, like a god,
then chew
that scenery
until there’s nothing left
to suck from it.
American poems
should contains a rigged dance
of myth and cynicism
in which we
step on
each others’ toes
then apologize nonstop until
the pain becomes so strong
we cannot help but lash out.
Every true American poem
should hold a throng
of exuberant ghosts
and babies, crying, screaming,
playing; doing just what
they have always done.
Some say not the babies,
please. Leave the babies out of it,
they are precious
and innocent. Buffalo shit,
you say; inside this poem it’s
the Fourth of July,
which
was built on
dead children.
In every great American poem
should be an America over half
of its readers do not recognize.
Check the mirror. There you are.
Still cheering, still writing,
but only backwards.
A good mirror
shows you your other side.
A better one shows you more than one.
This is an American poem
and if it’s any good
it’s chafing you
like the dish on the table
with the turkey
and all those sides
while the purple mountains
stand above it all
watching us and wondering
where they went wrong
that this is how it feels now
to write an American poem.
Car Radio News
Car radio news
is filled with black rocks
flying through space,
struck from hard places
on this hard planet,
becoming flame
wherever they land,
spreading fire.
Car radio news has taught me
and I have learned
and forgotten
and had to relearn
too many times
that all lives
are made of coal.
Anyone anywhere
will easily flare
and then be consumed
if touched by fire.
Car radio news?
Just turn it off,
someone says. Why not listen
to music? Old music
we danced to as kids:
water on embers.
New music feels too much
like rocks ablaze
above our heads, coming in fast
to strike us,
we who are heaps of coal.
Because, I say.
Because we are already on fire
and nostalgia offers no blanket
large enough to smother it.
Because, I say.
Because we should never forget that
everywhere is a hard place
waiting to be struck and
fling its black rocks into space.
Anywhere is a landing zone.
Anywhere can burn.
Everywhere is always ready to burn.
Everyone can burn.
But for you I’ll change the station
for now as we drive. For you I’ll find
something made long ago,
something made to play
by a fireside. We can pretend
for a little while.
This Must Be The Place
Revised. From 2016.
This must be the place
I bet I could run into the street
directly from stage
screaming “can I get some DMT here
and then I need to borrow a nail gun
just for an hour I promise”
and I bet no one will blink
They’ll call it creative
They’ll call it a performance piece
They’ll call me eccentric
It’s a lot like the place
where while on acid in college
I hollered
“you fucking pigs” at cops
while I was sitting outside at 4 in the morning
in nothing but shorts
cleaning my nails with a knife
with my back in a snowbank
I never saw the inside of a cell
They called me troubled
They called me lost
They called it an isolated incident
This is still the same place
where yesterday I yelled my way out of
an honestly undeserved ticket
by simply telling the cop
they were full of shit
and no way I did that
and did I look like the kind of person
who’d do that
They decided I didn’t
They let me go
They let me drive off still fuming and punching the wheel
This must be the place
where I get away with all that
where I live to tell the tale
where no one has ever tried to choke or shoot me
for being an asshole on drugs
for being a loudmouth on booze
for being righteously indignant
for being an idiot
for being a stupid kid
They have another way
They have an alternative solution
They have darker fish to fry
By Accident
By accident
I’ve cut myself.
Considering
the number of knives
in the house,
I am surprised it
happens so seldom.
As always, I put
my freshly-opened thumb
to my lips as if to draw
the freed blood back
to its home.
Surely it had rejoiced
at first touch of open air,
and I resented that joy.
What warm life, released
from its prison, would not
feel such release?
But to my mind
it belongs in the dark,
in my darkness.
I cannot let it go
so I suck it back in.
It may die on my lips, as so much
of what I’ve let go
has; nonetheless
I need it more
than it needs
to be free.
I bind the wound
out of habit. I wash the knife
out of fear of discovery.
I write this all down
out of fear of thinking more
about all this, and in the end
I put the knife back within easy reach,
back where it belongs.
Blaze Boy
Woke up
on fire
from some fiery
head-noise.
Outside high wind
and are those
crackling sounds at
foot of bed?
This is how my mind says
blaze, boy; bad boy;
get up smoldering, flare
with penance before punishment
alone in darkness with your
history; only freed up enough
to feel an all over diabolical
regret that scratching can’t help.
Later this morning when
I’ll be crossing town
to get on the highway north
to work, there will be
sunrise to my right
and windows
in downtown buildings
gone red to my left.
I thought sunrise
was supposed
to make my city look lovely
or some similar expected way
but I know I will be thinking
of nothing but unholy fire
I lived through last night,
heart and brain scorched
open; I understand I will
never heal at all. I know the song
by heart: Bad boy, blaze boy;
this is where you live now.
Friday Flatbed
Flatbed trailer
beside me in traffic.
Full load of wreckage
including one smashed up
white Accord with glass
gone from every frame…
look, I know it’s some reflection
or my fatigue but it’s looking
like Jesus is up there
behind that cracked wheel,
smiling and waving
and looking
David Bowie fine.
It’s been
a long workday,
a long home commute.
I’m sundown run down
and ready to fall down
on the couch
and just be lonely
and trust me —
no Jesus will raise me
once I’m down
like a pancaked car
and safe in the living room’s
everlasting arms.
Dark Matter 