This place, my home,
narrowing to the width
of a sick dropping falling
from a sick hole.
Or, it was always this way
and I’ve gotten bigger —
not much, but enough
to see difference
between what I used to think
was vast and what I see now as
already small but tapering off even more
before it falls to the bowl,
the smell noticeably
more acid than rose,
now that I know
what a rose can be.
Sick to my stomach — is it
bad milk or White Male
Death Cult shockwaves,
bees in my right brain,
yellow jackets in my left,
the stinging from one struggling
to overwhelm the other
and the battle rolling, rolling…?
Sick to my stomach — is it
their laughter or their disregard
or both, the buzzing of all
the insects around me disorienting
the air itself so it all smells
like vomit, the coupled scent of roses
and lead, the flavor of
how long the disappearance of good
will be, can be, might be…?
Sick to my stomach…is it
the year? the news? the unexpected
drama from so many who should
have known? This is the Church
of Worship of Churches. Its incense
opens nausea windows in the world
we have known, people voiding
their rights, the bees making
a last stand against it all,
enraged, fighting, going for
their eyes, their balls…their unholy
conception of a god’s will.
Sandy’s coming up from the bottom of the street,
calling for her dog again — fat graying pit pull
who hardly seems the runaway type, too slow
to be hard to catch, too big to wriggle through
a fence; maybe the gate’s broken or too easy to open?
I’ve never walked down to see although it happens
once or twice a week that I hear her calling the dog:
“Busan, BUSAN!!” An odd name. Of course
no way to know why she chose it. Maybe given
by a past owner. Maybe she got the dog long ago
in Busan. I look across the street and see the dog
standing behind a car; it stops its slow escape
and turns to look at Sandy lumbering toward
the top of the hill. Soon the leash will be reattached
and they will turn back to the insecure yard
at the bottom, where Busan will hang out in the sun
and Sandy will recover from the effort
of getting them home until the next time it happens,
when the chances are good that I’ll be sitting here
still, mystified by Sandy, Busan, and their patterns
that lend themselves to incipient insanity
as they lead you to expect different results;
for instance, right now I’m saying “Busan”
out loud, tearing up, and thinking
of my dead father, the veteran, yet again.
I’m just here
for the days when
I don’t drop a cup or
a bowl into the sink,
for the days guitar strings
feel right again for even
a single song, for the days
the floor doesn’t yield
to my spongy feet and send me
staggering into a reach
for a wall, the fridge,
a door jamb. I’m here
for the days coping with
bothersome skin,
psoriatic scalp,
anxious pumping
of my thick blood by
my ever-strained heart.
I’m here for the hope
of touch yet to be given
and received, for peace and
finality; it’s too much to hope
for closure, too late for
resolution. I’m here for days
that feel more or less
unremarkable — no peak
or valley experiences, nothing
unique, nothing to write home
about if I were any farther
from a place that feels like home
than I am right now, leaning lonely
on the door jamb, waiting for
my feet to get firm enough
to take me where I need to go.
In the center lane,
the one cars use
to go straight through
instead of turning
left or right,
the driver
of a dark blue Nissan
is smiling, car dancing
to what from here sounds like
Doja Cat while her child
wiggles in the passenger seat
more or less in time with the song
and their mother’s glee.
It hurts more than a little
when I turn left
away from these
happy two and go back
to my empty home
where no one’s
waiting for me
(right now anyway)
and where the music
I play in the empty house
doesn’t make me dance
(I miss her too much for that)
and it’s not going to change
(not soon enough anyway)
whether or not I say so.
Your dilemma today? How to go quietly.
You’ve lived out loud for so long
people think of you as embedded
in a permanent echo of yourself.
The air is calling your name.
You can’t escape it. You are
honored as much as you feel
cursed and invisible — the others
don’t know who you are
other than what they’ve heard
on the wind. You know you are
at once better and worse;
more real, less solid. More
thick, less angelic. How are you possibly
going to get away from yourself
long enough to become silent and more real?
Made a public post on my Patreon site… I did a recap video of two of the poems I did last night in NH.
Give it a listen, and if you’re not already there, consider becoming a Patron for more exclusive content.
There is enough to work with:
ample material, strong skills,
easy place to work — so why
is this so difficult now, this
necessary stitching together
of old parts and new findings?
I’m apparently ready to be defined
by a failure, as if it would
render me immortal. Truth
is, it’s as likely to make me
invisible once the news,
now broken, is ground into
scraps and is no longer clear
to the historical eye.
They don’t want you
wreckdiving
for fear, they say,
of sharks.
For fear,
they say, of you
getting trapped and
being swallowed.
Somewhere
in the wreckage
maybe an explanation
and perhaps a breath
of truly fresh air.
It makes no sense
but maybe under the waves
there’s a better flag there,
one you could stand for
and salute in a clean
upright way in spite of
all the ocean above you
with its weight of
drowned history. Or,
maybe it won’t be
that way at all for you
and you’ll come back up
struggling and gulping
but at least you’ll know.
You’ll know how the bodies
went overboard and how
rescue was forbidden or at least
restrained. You can decide then
whether or not you want to swim back
to the shore you left where
they’ll be waiting for you
with the same faces
they’ve always shown you,
and what you want to say
and do as you come up on shore
with new eyes for them
and their own suffocating fear.
It’s such a wrecked world,
such a messy place
with piles of little damages and
headshaker…injuries? murders?
mistakes? Here are a few
that do not look so accidental;
consciously painful to consider
this, unconsciously thrilling to think
that someone’s orchestrating
all the chaos and that there’s no such thing
as accident here. It makes the world
more orderly for you to think
that it takes more
than random incidents on a preset path
to cause such devastation.
Gives you a reason to whisper, God,
and even though it seems insane to say it,
that soothes as much as it kills.
Common wisdom says
if you find yourself on fire
you must stop, drop, and roll
until there is no more fire,
but no one follows that up
with any wisdom at all about
what to do with all these ashes
and hard charred hunks
left behind by the flames.
It would be good to know.
There’s so much of this
going around
it’s hard to distinguish
smoldering people
from the land on which
they suffer,
the land onto which
they’ve fallen
rolling in agony
until they either
put the fire out
or spread it to
another,
and then another.
suppose you stop snickering
and get shut of the need
to scorn those folks over there
fingering slipcovers
in the discount aisle
talking only to each other
when they speak of
perfection and how well
these would go with
the drapes in the front room
and suppose
you quit sneering at those
who proclaim their love
for the Beatles as you cannot
distinguish between
an emotional bond to their
soundtrack of a lifetime
and your own decidedly
up-to-the-minute
lasting-maybe-a-minute
enthusiasm for whatever minute
you find yourself in
(unless
of course
it hits you
RIGHT THERE
like a never-ending
cryogenic block
on your future)
and suppose
you get your head
out of whatever fragrant
arrogant nook
you keep it in
and see yourself
years from now
dressed fifteen years
too early for retro fashion
choosing from cheap mirrors
in a bargain aisle
while humming
yesterday’s
greatest song ever written
While bending to plant myself
on the back corner of the kitchen floor
in order to clean the litter box
I watch myself lose the thread
and the balance
and now I’m lying down.
Becoming aware again,
face to face with the shit
this way, I can’t imagine
getting up again and no one
is home to help me change my mind
about lying down.
Maybe it will all hit the papers — the part
about being alone, the part about how many days
had passed and then some lines about
who they want to think I was before it happened.
No one, really, should stop to care about such things.
In the end, like everyone, I’m caught lying down.
There isn’t a lot for them to say
beyond that, so it’s your turn. Pretend there’s
something profound in the way
I will be found: smiling, you can
say — or maybe not. Eyes open,
or maybe not. Lying down, definitely.
I may hear you speak of this
from wherever I am, or I won’t
and even the idea that I still will be who I was
is likely just more of the same shit
I’m looking at right now from the comfort
of the cold ragged linoleum where I’m lying down.
This, though: there are things down here
I never saw before this moment. I see
long assumed truths and falsehoods
swept up in light and changing. Even the shit’s
changing, as is the light itself around me. I will not
call it beautiful yet. Right now, I’m just lying down.
Soundtrack:
“Walk Don’t Run,”
but I’m running.
I’m always running.
Do the ironists
care? How should I decolonize
my shoes
when I can’t stop
to take them off?
There’s a fucking settler
everywhere I look. I can’t
get them off my back, or my
mind. How does “Land Back”
work when the land
is thick with them and their
history? When half my genes
are settler genes? Maybe
the truest part of me
is settler. I feel
broken settling for that.
Maybe I should surrender to it
and just run through the colony
waving and smiling
till I drop dead and then that hole
they put me in
or the land where they scatter my ashes
will become land I get back.
And how do I stop
being a capitalist asset
when I’m so damn hungry
and money is so short?
Do the ironists care? Are they still
laughing, calling a dead man like me
who’s running in capitalist shoes
from capitalism and colony and
the endlessly fucking settlers
a lackey?
Maybe the problem is that I’m
running down the top of a fence
barely an inch wide and I can’t decide
which side will cradle me when I fall.
Maybe I should listen to the words
of the song.
I don’t trust anyone
who had a hand in building this fence,
especially me. No Marxist,
no Libertarian, no capitalist
apologists…settlers all,
and no one able to explain
how to soften the human cost,
how to even partially break
the looming fall.
The fields on either side
are too wide to let this fence
define them, but here I am,
running like it matters
which side I will die on.
You look like
you got a nice skull
under there —
skin and muscle
covering it up
but you can tell
Inside I bet
is a good-enough brain
and how about that tongue
flapping out
skull shaped
word sounds
Skull so hard
So hidden but words
shaped just so — as if
they’d passed through
just such a skull
By your words we know you
inside and out and
past the meat and skin
there’s diamond bone
impossible bone
white bone singing
ownership songs
hard and proud
wet from blood
and damp meat
each syllable thick
with marrow
each toothy bite
chomping down like
it comes straight from
the skull of your god
Dark Matter 