I cannot describe
the sound of rain
without referring to rain.
So I can tell you nothing
about the sound of rain
you don’t already know
except that to me,
rain sounds
like Friday night
any time or day I hear it.
Rain feels like a prelude
to something expected,
centered and endless,
might be cleansing,
might be flooding,
might never end or
might depart leaving brightness
behind. But what it
sounds like? It sounds like
rain. Like the smell
of how a week ends
and another begins, even though
there is nothing primeval
about weeks or weekends.
We made those up long after
we learned to recognize
the sound of rain. We made
a lot of things up
once we couldn’t be bothered
to listen, really listen,
to the rain.
Tag Archives: poems
Listening To Rain
Right Place Right Time
When music is right I say that whether
it lands upon us as hammer or feather
in right place at right time
music is life and is no crime
Soca calypso punk polka country
Metal reminder that wrecked hearts still beat
Right song at right time
Music itself is never a crime
Musicians may scrap and murder and steal
but music they make may yet save and heal
Right note at right time
Music itself is never a crime
Police drive up saying music’s too loud
Hands on their guns eyes on this crowd
Wrong place friends in a rebel time
It isn’t our music they see as a crime
Ancestors knew this and said it through drum
Children know this and cry when it’s done
Right place and no wrong time
Music is how we stay sure we’re alive
Woof
Americans
love to play
with the full abandon
of pugs let loose
in a dog park
under the watchful eyes
of owners who amuse themselves
by watching lapdogs
pretending they are wolves
while believing they are free
Americans
love riding with our heads out the window
in a big pickup truck
big enough to kill any witch
any fresh storm might drop them on
with a high grill for clearing the streets
and fat wheels for the rough roads
that bounce us around so much
make us so vomit-torn
that we cry for the paving
of as many as we can
so we can ride through the “wilderness”
and pretend we’re the ones driving
into the “frontier”
Americans
love getting home
and trotting around gargantuan kennels
with never enough closet space
in which to keep
songs
land
slang
and all the rest of the loot
we’ve been collecting
for so many years
we can’t see any longer
how stolen it is
Americans
love digging holes
in our backyards
in which to bury bones
we’ll claim we never saw
then digging them up later
to chew on
once no one’s looking
and the passing years
have turned them
so they taste more like
survivor guilt
than evidence of crime
Americans
love to wag our tails
whenever we hear “good dog”
right up to the very minute
we get the needle
Cat Food Piracy
Little Kitty
eats almost all
of Big Kitty’s food
before I have a chance
to fill and put down her own plate
which I always do first
and not with my back turned
to the two of them
except for this morning
when I forgot.
Big Kitty
sits there staring at me
while the piracy
is taking place.
I always cringe
when my soft brain fails me,
ashamed of what I see as
my cruelty,
intended or not.
“I’m sorry, so sorry,”
I say as I put Little Kitty’s
plate full of her preferred
mush before Big Kitty,
which she tucks into
as if nothing much
has happened.
I feel
more upset than is warranted,
I guess. My forgetfulness,
more and more common these days,
leads to these small harms
no one much cares about,
but I gather them and
hoard them in secret places
until I am rich with self-blame.
The cats make do.
I make mistakes, then coffee.
Mistakes
before coffee,
no one as bothered
by my failures as I am,
and me piling up words
about all of it:
a pirate stealing meaning
from a sinking ship.
The Troll
with all his unearned confidence
glistening through the screen
like flop sweat perfumed
with privilege —
although that seems
like such a sloganeer way to describe
a shiny little fraud with his
dog-hungry smile and his cheap
mistake of a professional demeanor
crossed with body armor —
best foot sticking out of his mouth
then put forward like a movie-cool
cigarette —
he drops
the ultimate weapon of his army
“LOL” at the end of the post
and his back up “j/k” right after —
it makes me want to eat his heart
and make it into better shit
than he thinks he slings —
roach of a man feeding in shadows
and dragging disgust behind him
as if a trail of slime could ever
come to a point —
the danger
of a thing like this is that
it thrives on notice and those trails
shine so that at the right angle
you might think it’s pissing pure silver
Ghost
Revised, from 2005.
Ghost, you call me. Not the ghost, but
“Ghost”, making that my proper name, not (of course)
my Christian name, but the older kind: one
that tells something about you
that remains true. There’s nothing new
about me being a ghost,
only that I’m called
by that name now, and I’m finally
comfortable with it.
Back when I was just a guy,
long before I leaped off
that bridge to get here,
I used to daydream about flying
and walking through walls.
I used to wish for the power
to blow through a window
so everyone knows you’re there
and you don’t even have to show up.
I never had impact, and didn’t want risk,
so my fantasy became impact without risk:
that would be the life, I thought. A good joke:
I’ve got the life I wanted,
now that I don’t
have a life.
As a kid I cringed when they told
scary stories at summer camp.
I remember that later on I laughed
at horror films, pretending bravery.
Once you’re here, you find
it’s nothing like the movies. It’s all so – routine.
You show up at regular times,
whistle a little in a dark hallway,
provide a moment of clarity
to someone who’s used to being
safe and warm. You become a lesson
no one needs until after it’s been learned.
But it’s not all bad.
This is a beautiful world
when you can’t really feel it.
It takes your breath away sometimes
to see the way it moves.
I spend years just standing
in front of the strangest things:
not sunsets, not rainbows,
but garbage trucks and fires
and drive-by victims.
It’s all so beautiful, the way
disposal has become an art form.
So, Ghost is what you call me, and I’ll take it now
the way I’ve always taken it:
with a bowed head.
Before, I would always
come when called
because I had no place to be
other than the place I was called to.
Nothing’s really changed:
I blow through, bother you,
maybe I’ll be remembered
in your children’s stories.
Maybe we’ll see each other one night
on the landing, where you might call me Ghost,
or you might call me imaginary.
No matter. I’ve always answered to either one.
Sun After Rain
Sun after rain,
they say, is inevitable.
Why should we believe that?
The trend of history,
they say, is forever upward.
Why should we believe that?
Trust in the system,
they say, it will right itself.
Why should we believe that?
We’ll get them next time,
they say, if you stick with us.
Why should I believe that?
Because I can see
I believe there are fewer birds here
other than settler sparrows and starlings.
Because I can hear
I believe there are more people
screaming than singing.
Because I can touch
I believe there are waves coming
that will soon swallow entire mythologies.
Because I can smell
I believe in fire and how warm
the perfume from the Arctic’s become.
Because I can taste
I believe there is blood in our food,
on my tongue, in my distended belly.
We’ve got a plan,
they say, but it will take time.
Why should I believe there is time?
Because we decay and have decayed.
Because I am not alone in what I sense.
Because I have seen how little of what they say
ever comes true.
Sun after rain begets rain begets
weariness, history drowns, the system is just
a way of praying
that I do not believe
was built to do this work.
Only A Fool Could Be You
Only a fool would say that:
a fool, or a writer trying
to make you notice them.
To make you think
they were deep,
or at least that the work
was deep. Something
the writer could claim was
channeled from a deep source,
not entirely their own.
That it was nonsense,
but contrary nonsense,
something the world
had forgotten. Selling
bullshit as wisdom is
the perfect skill, after all.
Anyone can go far in any field
with that, not just writers.
You can eat and drink for free
damn near forever on one
foolish bit everyone thinks
is brilliant. That you longed
for brilliance is immaterial.
That you struggled and failed
for brilliance is of no consequence
to anyone but you, if you are
so inclined to care, once you are done
eating and drinking off your failure.
Are you done?
I Am Here
Some people actually are serene;
self actualized, purely aligned.
They are legends of contentment,
sit daily with their pain well in hand,
and are still.
I am glad for their existence.
Their stories give off such hope
and if they feel such hope themselves,
then truly, I am at peace with these stories
and what can they do for others.
I sit too, on and among bricks
rubbled up in bone-breaking piles,
blackened by a long fire that started
before I was born and continues
to flare from time to time, but I do not move.
Tell me where I am supposed to go,
I ask the ones at peace. They say I need
go nowhere, that peace is found within
or nowhere. This is nowhere, I respond.
Come sit with me where I live. They do not come.
All life is suffering, they chide and chant
from a safe distance while the fire
I live with is licking at their walls. I could teach them
how to stand the coming days of sitting in rubble
while alternating screams and shrugs,
but they won’t come over here and I can’t
get there, no matter how I try, no matter
how I try to rebuild this house to look like theirs
it burns again. So I sit here. All life is suffering.
Easy to say from over there, but I am here.
The Lilac Bear
Let the great bear of my history
come seeking me by intuition
once I have put enough into the world
that my trace is pure, strong, and available.
Let the great bear of my history
come to me some August night
as I sit on my porch and imagine
the scent of next spring’s lilacs.
Let the great bear of my history
stand before me, stinking of my past
mingled with the past of the world
beyond this one until all smells of the future.
Let the great bear of my history
raise me in its arms and crush me
into the void, and let my body
be buried and forgotten soon after.
Let the great bear of my history
grant me the gift of the scent of lilacs
as a final memory, sparking the desire
to return by spring.
Let me come back as a bear
foraging for history since that moment,
running up and down hills
in rejection of myths, flavoring the air.
Let me be the bear for another,
a wonder-filled being on a porch,
thinking of some good thing yet to come;
let me become the Bear, the Lilac Bear.
Not All Boomers Love The Beatles, Man
Regretting time spent considering my teenage years
when I was compiling
banks of music, art, and literature
the world could use to define me.
Unlike so many boomer peers
I’m mostly no longer
in love with all that. Instead
I’m somewhere I’m not
supposed to be, forever chasing the new.
I’m a bad example of my peers —
nostalgia is for the easy
to please and I’m not that,
never have been. But
there are times when by chance
something from ages ago
stirs a new feeling, or someone
from long ago stirs a new pot,
and instead of disdain I feel
small hope that I might have
a final twist in me too,
or will at last be able to unlock
my one true thing, my one
best offering, and all the rest
of why I ever loved those artifacts
might make sense and I’ll at last
be unafraid to reclaim all of it
without looking down on the love I felt
as a relic to be left behind.
This Man Is A Hospital
He has lived from the start
as a hospital
taking in all
sick arrivals
Lining them up
so deep in his hallways
he can’t help but stumble
between chronic and acute
Rough way to live
he tells himself whenever
the crush of illness inside him
becomes nearly intolerable
Followed at once by
a sigh and a shrug
Reminds himself
it was his choice to let them in
and his fault entirely
that he’s so damn full
of such pestilence that
he can’t walk straight or think
healthy thoughts
Looks up at the pictures
of his family on the walls
The founders of the institution
The ones who set the mission
on its path
He trips over an old corpse
and chokes on the facts
It’s not their fault I’m a hospital
he tells himself
I ought to be used to this
by now and the fact that I’m not
is my fault too then he
pulls himself up by the gurneys
and bounces on down the corridor
answering pages and praying
he will code
Around The Mountain
— for Andrew
Looking to the mountain.
Waiting for Her to arrive.
Horses, wagon or chariot,
and Her, the unspecified Her.
She will be coming, the people say.
Feels to me like a set up —
keeping us all
watching that mountain for
a century and more now
and we haven’t been even told Her name.
Freedom, some say. Salvation,
some say. Or something like
those, or something less cosmic.
She will have news of what’s on
the other side of the mountain,
that much seems obvious, even if
it’s not the principal reason
for the trip. I want to know, certainly,
what’s over there. If when I ask Her
she disdains me for being prosaic, I’ll know
it’s no place I belong. If She
shrugs me off when I ask for Her name,
I’ll walk back up the road she just traveled
and go ask Her people what it is.
Not every mythic arrival is glorious.
Maybe She just had the good sense
to come here to get away from something.
Maybe She will be a fugitive or refugee
and after all the waiting we’ll just expel
or kill Her out of frustration for the long wait.
Or in fact perhaps no one will ever come
and the whole point of the song
is to get us to watch the mountain
while someone steals the valley
from under our feet. Maybe
She’s already here among us,
waiting for us
to figure it out.
The Colony As Compost (Yes)
In every delusion is sown
a bit of truth, yes,
a weed that explodes
cell by cell into a tree
full of inedible fruit, yes,
as the days become misshapen, more dark bulge
than light stream, yes,
as we are deafened by long haunted voices
of those brought to ground by others impressed
by different delusions, yes,
this is the nature of the new world,
the nature of bastard settler dreaming, yes,
blown out through veins of cold blood,
nuggets of truth run through a fuzz pedal,
a song drawn from disturbance operas, yes,
this is how we learn,
this is how we begin a new education, yes,
if we are to be grown whole from the land,
if we are to be open as we grow toward the sun,
new shoots shooting up and up and here we are, yes,
everything we are grown from has rotted into food
and everything we need is rising from our shame, yes.
It’s Only Wednesday the Fuck
“Wait, it’s only Wednesday. The fuck?” — MED
A friend of mine posts on Twitter
their dismay at the week crawling slowly by
with a single line,
“Wait, it’s only Wednesday. The fuck?”
that seems somehow to add a title,
an honorific, to the dread weekday name.
I develop in my head the image of a tapestry,
a medieval rendering of the cheap and elegant
Wednesday The Fuck, Ruler of
The Slow Lands, Head of The Legion
of Digruntlement, riding a bony white mare
through their domain as we peasants kneel and mutter.
Let’s face it: Wednesday IS a fuck. Too far from
last weekend and also too far from the next.
All Wednesdays ARE fucks. They sit there
on calendars waiting to be filled with Tasks
and Events that will keep us miserable
till we can boot scoot on down past Thursday,
get moshing on Friday, rave on through
till Sunday afternoon and the next go round.
Monday bears all our moaning while patting us on the shoulder
all day; it remembers our recent joy.
Tuesday mainly hurts us by taunting us about
what’s coming tomorrow right up to the moment when
Wednesday the Fuck shall ride again at the head of
columns of bland, deadly, We-Got-Shit-To-Do soldiers,
seeking conscripts to those miserable ranks.
Don’t do it, I say to my friend. Don’t fall under
the fucking spell of Wednesday the Fuck
and become old and bitter about time;
just keep on getting through it. Time is as arbitrary
as — well, as Fuck. If Wednesday needs to be overthrown,
we are the only ones who can do it.
Let’s plot the revolution right here, right now,
and start with Wednesday, which can’t even spell its own name
without adding extra weight in the middle — the fuck?
Dark Matter 