I have to turn the heat on
this morning. The cold floor
is hurting my broken feet.
I’m shuffling in slippers
from place to place. I hear
my father’s voice
behind me again: “Pick up
your feet when you walk.”
I try. He’s been gone now
damn near a year. He used
to talk about how a teacher at
the boarding school would walk behind them
with a switch cut from some bush
snapping the boys’ heels as they marched
from dorm to class, the whole time
telling them the same thing.
I try to pick up my feet.
On behalf of my dad
I say out loud that I still think
I’ll be better off if I just walk
the way I walk instead of
marching, endlessly marching,
but I can’t just shake it off.
I never got the switch myself but
it’s still snapping somewhere behind me.
I miss my dad. I missed so much.
I say fuck and fuck again and
damn it’s cold in here, but
it is October, so cold
comes with the calendar. In fact
tomorrow is Columbus
Day — I know they’ve changed
the name but my feet still hurt
even when I invoke the new name
and say “no, it’s Indigenous Peoples’
Day. They fixed all that, remember?
Pick up your feet, Brown,
half breed, fatherless man,
as we march into a better nation.”
Tag Archives: poems
Indigenous Peoples’ Day
Tandem
Not a container
for your perceptions.
Not a box to stash yourself in.
Seek no hard place in me.
You should not feel free
to come in and grind an ax.
Not a brand
or logo to wrap around
some crap you want to sell.
Be yourself with me
while I am being myself,
precisely because I strive to be
wholly myself. Let’s enter into
tandem being.
Side by side. Enough.
Disregarded
I filled the feeders
and no sooner had I
turned my back
upon them that
the downy woodpecker
landed upon one
with me not being more than
a couple of feet away,
not yet even off the mulch
that surrounds them
in the front yard,
the front walk still
several feet ahead —
the concrete
that I’ve always seen as
demarcation, mine
versus theirs, and
when I turned back
to watch him, his red
patch bright before me
as he hammered so lightly
upon the seed block,
he did not seem concerned
and I was so honored to be
thus disregarded.
Anathemas
Quieting my
breathing until
it can slip past words
longing to leave me
so it may sustain me
through the fire of
wanting to speak
but not trusting myself
to say things
softly or with precision
Slowing my heart rate
until it is no louder
than thoughts
of righteous outbursts
terrifying self-exposures
infamous last war cries
My best work
is destined to remain
imaginary because
to put it out there would be
to proclaim anathemas
intended to be seductions
and watching
the world recoil
You Are Doing It Wrong
Suppose you stop being
an entire universe for one minute,
become static just long enough
to allow for a chat with the universe
you now and then think you see next door,
the one that claims
to love you, the one that suggests
a merger or a default recognition
of the folly that one is not one
with others, that there is in fact
only the One Universe and each of us
maintains our fiction of being separate
because without those individual perceptions
the One would cease spinning and weaving
and begin to collapse, would indeed neither begin
nor end its dissolution, there would be no slow
entropy toward closure but instead — eh,
I am getting ahead of myself. Suppose
you stop being whole for a moment,
give up the private chants and personal incense
in favor of looking to the left and right
and underfoot and overhead for signs
that you are not alone and physics
and chemistry suggest bonds beyond
your conception. The imagined universe next door
is just how you conceive of your inner separations
in order to justify locating them out there somewhere,
maintaining treasured fictions beyond credence.
There is no universe next door shaped like you, you giant.
You long to kiss or fight yourself, you colossus, you cosmos.
You are not alone and there is no wall
to be breached, you conqueror; you warrior: mounted and ready,
supple and loose for whatever comes next. I don’t know
what you think you might find in those eyes you seek
but there’s nothing there you don’t already contain.
Suppose you stop being your own universe
and see you are not the center, that you are not alone,
that there is only One, that it laughs at you thinking
such grandiose thought; that you are in fact held up
by the arms of the One as you spin through this;
that you are forever cradled, unready,
playing your small part, forgetting your lines,
forgetting your marks, allowed to lose face,
allowed to begin again.
Icons And Demons
Icons, in the natural order of things,
almost always become demons.
They spend their loosened time
in sulfurous celebrity bars.
They put on horned shoes,
run through hell collecting fire.
They come back burnt,
drunk on notoriety.
They buy houses next door
and keep you up as they party all night.
In daylight they take up all your time
making you worry.
What happened, you say.
They used to be so bright and such.
What happened, you say.
It becomes all your breakfast chatter.
Maybe there will be
a redemption arc.
Maybe a demon or two
will be proven to have issues.
Maybe they drank and were abused
and were bipolar and addicted to fame.
Maybe they’ll make a come back
and claim an expanded niche among icons.
Your breakfast chatter slows down.
You wait for the next icon turned demon.
There will always be a next one.
Without redemption arcs we are nothing.
We barely remain citizens if there is no icon
to revile or demon to embrace.
As we are not icons
we cannot do it for ourselves.
The Scales
All you need to do
is listen to understand
that the scales are buckling
and near collapse.
When they fail at last
and nothing
can be weighed and
the numbers trusted,
will we disagree
on what heavy
and light mean?
Maybe we’re already there.
A stone is thrown
and a child falls to the ground
to lie there unmoving.
The body fell with
a dense thud. The body fell with
no sound, as does a feather.
The stone was huge,
hurled with intention
by someone with great power.
The stone was light, simply tossed,
a great accident deeply regretted.
Now we’ve got to move the body
and figure out what to do next.
Whoever picks it up
needs to be prepared for how hard
that will be and how far
it will have to be carried
to wherever it will rest
and that lady we used to depend on
to keep the now-useless scales
can’t help with any of that.
Balloons
In a park, I recognize
a family in tears
as they release balloons
for a son killed a few days ago
in a confrontation with
police.
I hear someone near me grouching
about the environmental impact
of a balloon release
and no one talking about
the environmental impact
of a boy being dead
as the balloons rise away.
Tenor Guitar
I owned
a tenor guitar
once
for three months.
Four strings
over six seemed a
novelty, a downgrade
back then.
It tickled
something in me
to think of mastering
the antique. Soon enough
I gave
the guitar away
to someone more excited
than I was to try.
This morning
found myself humming
Ani’s “Little Plastic Castles”
(which is played on a tenor guitar)
and memory,
all this memory, came
rushing back
and now I want a tenor guitar again,
longing for
four strings I can’t play,
rebooting since
I can no longer play six:
my hands
full of recall
but unable to execute;
the desire for music
stronger now
as a way through this
to something
newly perceived as fresh although
I have
been here before:
more than once, with old guitars
and fancy pens, blank notebooks
and blank people,
things I bought or faces I found
that seemed to promise
surprise, any kind of surprise
that might
break the hard walls
of the hole within and give me
a chance to climb out and be new and free.
Strike Anywhere
wooden matches in
cellophane-sealed packs
three boxes to a package
found when I pried open
a cabinet drawer on the back porch
unopened for years
wrenched it open
with brute force and
a big screwdriver
that was all
that was inside
how old could these be
as the fireplace was sealed
decades ago and
the wood stove was removed
when my father
could no longer cut wood
and my mother didn’t want
to pay someone
to do it when the kids were too
far away to do it for free
this is why
the house has seemed so
cold for so long
they couldn’t get
to the matches
and there was nothing
and nowhere here
to set a safe fire
and make the home warmer
strike anywhere
printed on the boxes
but why test it when there’s
no reason and no hearth
when all you can do
after one test match is lit
is blow it out
The Whiskey And The Snake
“I always keep some whiskey handy in case I see a snake…which I also keep handy.”
― W. C. Fields
It’s a philosophy I can get behind —
carry the danger
and the defense from danger
with you in a deep pocket or
sling bag, easy to access,
within reach at all times —
poison and counter poison,
which is not to say poison
and antidote as that’s not quite
how it works.
Which comes first, the venom
or the liquor? No reason
to make a hard rule of it. Thirsty?
Peek into your bag
just to see the snake.
Take a few belts
of whiskey and soon enough
all you taste is snake.
Does your snake have
a name? Is it Daddy?
Is it Mommy?
Does your whiskey have
a name? Is it Money?
Is it Jesus?
Bipolar II
…congratulations,
you’ve done it,
expanding, blowing out
your walls, creating space,
going higher. Cresting
above your previous
high water mark.
A new pinnacle,
a renewed sense of
what’s possible. Listen
to what might be a fanfare
over there, a crowd
barely seeing you from
where they stand apart
on a small hill to your left,
eye level to you; the band’s
not playing for you, you ask
how that’s possible
when you’ve just risen
so far? How far down
were you that you are just now
leveling up to the yawns
and shrugs tier? Turn back
to your right and see
that where you’ve been
looks exactly like
where you are now.
From here you see it was dark,
it’s still dark, you seem to be
on the edge of a valley
and so once again
you slip and slide
down, down…
the body is fighting
this body is fighting
i say die
it says no
keeps wanting
it says
no
eat instead
drink some water
it says
ask for
kiss
for fuck or
for the sake of argument
ask for life
for seeing it through
(aren’t you
curious?)
i say
no
in the left side of my big dreams
there was sunlit order. in the right side
there was mist and if there was order
i couldn’t see it. why wait to find out
if it in fact made sense in there? i did
well enough in the time i gave it to get
this far. i did well enough to put to rest
worry for the future: whatever is there
is beyond worry. in the left side
the steps up are straight and narrow
and i can turn around anytime i want.
in the right side i’m not sure if the previous
step remains intact. maybe i can’t go back
without falling into nothing. maybe that’s fine.
and maybe the next step is missing. maybe
it’s all falling from here. maybe i’m falling now.
everything is a maybe
to this body being asked
to die
except for one certainty
it keeps wanting
to spite the dreams
it contains
my body
maintains left side order
maintains right side fog
all i do
between them
waiting
Apologia
More than once I’ve thought about
a man in his recliner watching football,
and told myself that it should have been me.
I should have continued my career,
such as it was, and worked myself to rest
fully funded and mostly healthy in such a chair,
or so it would appear to others.
More than once I’ve lamented
that I took what some would say
was the lazy road and followed
words down another path.
I could have done it part time
as I did for years and maybe
done more if I hadn’t been so bent
on chasing them where they went
instead of having them come
to where I reclined in comfort.
More than once I’ve mourned
the self I lost the day
I turned in my ID badge
and walked to my car with a box
of stuff I did not need which felt like
gold I’d mined and wanted to keep
as proof of my having mattered
in one specific place and time.
I was a fool, of course, then and now.
I had never mattered that much then
and I don’t matter now. If I stop now
in ten years most won’t remember
much of anything I’ve said or done.
It’s fine, really. Did I move
the earth? No, it moved
anyway pretty much
as it would have if I’d stayed
in that job. Did they miss me
when I was gone? No, at least
not for long. Did they miss
the gold I’d taken with me? No.
It was not real, as it turned out.
As for the time since: did I move the earth
with my words? No. Did they pay back
all I owed? No. Do I get to rest
now that I’ve acknowledged
how small I am? No.
Did I owe you all this work? No.
All I wanted, all I needed
was a recliner and handfuls of love
from those I loved in this life,
then silence in the next.
I’ve been told it’s golden.
I’ve been told it feels like peace.
Three Minutes At Twenty-Two
there were three minutes
in my twenty-second year
when I think I had a decent ass
that might have been
second glanced by anyone
half-seeking such a thing
or such a me
if they’d taken the time
to look past it and see me as me
and not consider my ass
which I did not think much about
back then and had forgotten until today
when the entirety
of my crumbling body
overruns my thinking
if you ask me now
what I think about
how others view me
I will shudder
fall to my agonized knees
and as if looking down upon myself
from the heights I reached
in my twenty-second year
I will not be able to answer
as this
is nothing
I ever considered
Dark Matter 