Started out as Friday
but became a Monday
and thus the weekend
became confusing. I baked
a flourless cake and wept
over a Sunday dinner
that felt more like Tuesday’s
leftovers, like the whole
leftover menu from the whole
week. Why do we bother naming
the days anyway — it reminds us
we once had schedules and places
to go on specific days.
I used to put on someone else’s
Sunday best, someone else’s
casual Friday wardrobe. Who
that person was I am not sure
I ever knew. Even the language
is missing its marks, drifting
from its targets, not achieving
its objectives. We used to talk
of safety and job security and
professionals and expertise
and those things meant something.
Maybe they will again, on some
future Monday that finally feels like
a Monday, a day on which
to resume our sacred hatred
of routines and dress codes
and learn to walk in lockstep
once again. I cannot wait
to see who it was
who used to wear these clothes.
Tag Archives: poetry
Casual Friday
Incident At Price Chopper
He’s standing in the dead middle
of the meat section at Price Chopper
screaming “HOW CAN THERE NOT BE
ANY FUCKING STEAK?”
Someone comes out bearing chicken
from behind the steel clad gates
of the backroom where they cut meat
and stage the cases.
“Hey, you got any steak back there?”
“Steak? No sir. None.”
“How is that fucking even possible?”
“Sorry, sir.”
Both men talking and everyone watching
has a mask on, at least; everybody’s standing
two carts apart. Looks like the last scene
of a spaghetti western right before the last shootout.
The man with no steak turns his back on
the man with no name in a black mask
to start putting out the chicken. Spell’s broken —
it would never happen that way in a movie,
after all; no one would turn their backs
on anyone else, then all would pull
their stoic triggers, just business really, and
someone would fall. That’s the way
it goes. No one would get any steak, of course,
but the steak is beside the point
in those films. What matters there is
the satisfaction of killing, of existential affirmation
through virtual elimination. It’s all
just a reason for the squint, for the stone
shine of focused gaze. For art, not for life —
for now at least; but maybe tomorrow…
“How is that even fucking
possible?” “Sorry, sir.
There’s nothing. No sir, none.”
“I don’t believe you.
Liar.
Fake news.”
Then, gun.
Then, done.
Delicious
How delicious it would be
to have a world that did not require
all this thinking — where instinct
and emotion were enough to carry civilizations
from birth to death — where guns
and brawn were acceptable in the face of
disease — where fear of the unknown
was codified into quick and dirty law —
where the individual could stand supreme
as long as they did not stand out too much
within the ranks — there would only be
a handful of Gods to choose from (if that)
to simplify the view — there could be
cultural differences if they were colorful
and easily adapted to commerce or control —
where those who dared to philosophize
or speculate could be swiftly neutralized
or vaporized — where appropriate addictions
could be nationalized — where the bees
flew in diminished numbers away from us
when we went outdoors — where the oil content
of every river basin was measurable
and extractable — where the sharks
stayed in the movies — where the scent of sex
was routinely worn behind the ears —
where flowers bloomed in the right beds
and only the right beds — where it all went away
at night — where night went away in the daylight —
where daylight was a property — where we all
understood the Rules and nobody balked at them
except to volunteer as a cautionary tale —
where the flags flapped regardless of wind —
where the wind blew regardless of flags —
where thought was good only for counting coin —
where coins looked their best on closed eyes —
where all our eyes could be closed at any time.
Where The Great Work Begins
We were all bone-tired
before this
exaltation of humility
came upon us.
We may have looked
more madcap, more animated
from a distance, but
if you’d looked into
our eyes, you would have seen
years of restless sleep
and no true relaxation,
regardless of what
yoga magazines told us
we’d gained.
Scoff as you want.
Had we been truly mindful,
we would have forsaken
our lifestyles of abandon
decades ago.
Now, we have
deep dreams
in our sleep and they
drive us mad. Now,
we sit at home all day
chafing behind the ears
and in the center of our chests.
Now, we try to see a way forward
back to that manic past
when half of us
walked around pretending
we weren’t waiting
for a crash into hell
and the other half
walked around pretending
this was just the ramp up
to some temple of gold where,
at last, we’d truly
get a chance to rest.
Meanwhile,
nature
(or something like it)
made other plans.
Once upon a time,
before this real exhaustion
set in, we were all bone-tired
but we invented a phrase
to cover it up: “and they lived happily
ever after.” Something
to which we aspired. Something
that kept these dreams at bay.
A phrase where every word
now needs to be redefined.
Get some rest.
This is where
our Great Work begins.
Not A Dusk
To imagine our worlds
as settled in some aspects,
to understand
that some people dear to us
are no doubt now part of our pasts,
that while we may correspond
we will never be in each others’
physical presence again,
yet still we shall continue
to speak to
and share in each other
in all other possible ways,
that we may even maintain love
and hate and care
at a long distance for the rest of
our shared lives
and never breathe
the same air again:
whether we sorrow
or rejoice in this,
the moment
we come to hold it
as a deep truth
and accept it
is not a dusk,
but a dawn.
The Houses Where The Dead Lived
Touring the homes
of all the dead who have ever lived
Even the ones long gone
burned buried torn down vanished
Wandering halls
Opening rooms
Crossing borders to see
all the places the dead have been
Trying to learn
what it means
to remain present
after the body has gone
It is not something
I have thought much about
until now
My friends will know me
till they’re gone
My family will pass
as I have passed
Not long now till then
Not long at least compared to
for example those who lived
and cooked and cleaned
the palace at Knossos
who spoke to me
more than the kings did
who are called
the inhabitants by history
History forgets the cooks
and cleaners
who whisper to you
when you walk the houses
of the dead everywhere
in this world
leaving bones and soot
in piles removed
from where the kings walked
caretakers who have left more importance
behind them for us to listen to
in the ruins of the kings
than the kings
have ever done
The Grand Mask
Some say we must mask ourselves
to save ourselves and others
Others say we must unmask
to save America
and as for the world
beyond America
it can kiss
our collective unmasked ass
Then again
the face we know of
America itself has
always been a mask
covering hypocrisy
with good intentions
Contradiction
is how it stays on
Putting a mask on a mask
like putting a hat on a hat
is as American as
viral pie
Ask anyone
Ask Batman or
his predecessor in that
all-American myth of
the wealthy fighting oppression
Zorro
Ask the bleached out
Lone Ranger
They’ll sing you
the Star-Spangled Banner
through the blood
clotting in their mouths
and so many people
masked or unmasked
will likely stand up
and sing along
as the Blue Angels
fly over trailing
the ties for the grand mask
behind them
Bed
When your memory holds
a bed of nails
you never truly rest.
Once you think
you’re comfortable
a single adjustment
of your back
or even elbow
brings forth blood.
You get up and sit
by the window pretending
you are loved
as you try to wipe away
the red that only you
can see but which tints all.
It’s the middle of
the night. You’re trying
so hard. The bed
you wish you could use
is in the next room.
Coming from there
is a tiny sound
of sharpening. You’re alone,
or thought you were.
You don’t want to think
about who you’ve let in
to maintain the bed
while sitting up
worrying. Bleeding
isn’t supposed to be
an attractant
to anything but a shark,
or so you’ve been told,
but there you are
making tracks to the bedroom,
in case it’s anything else.
If it is a shark
you might die, but
at least you’d forget why
it all went so
bloody bad. How the nails
got there in the first place,
how many years you’ve been
trying to rest and just how bad
at that you have been.
Getting On My Nerves
Originally posted 2016. Revised.
Longing this morning
to trade back my boots
for the soft soles
I surrendered to get them.
I can’t feel the ground
when I walk in these.
Doctors try to tell me it’s
neuropathy from my diabetes.
They’re half right, I suspect;
certainly some shiny whiteness
is to blame and whether it’s the sugar
or the culture, it’s killing me
from the feeling parts up
to the thinking parts.
If I still had ancestors to ask about it
I would but they’re gone and they
never knew me anyway. Maybe
it’s for the best that I’m numb
and becoming more numb the older
I get. Fewer things terrify me now.
I didn’t belong to those earlier times.
I don’t feel I belong in the ones we’re in now.
If I am afraid of anything anymore
it’s of finding a place where I truly fit in.
I still want to trade these hard boots
for the moccasins I had as a kid,
the moccasins people used to say
I should trade for the boots I wear now —
good tall boots made to hold you
separate from and untouched by earth,
the way it is these days;
even when you are put into that earth
they put you in a box
and that box goes into another box.
How is it right that even when I’m dead
I’ll have to lie forever in that tiny space?
Colonized in death as in life,
forbidden the right to return
to my own soil. It’s why I long
to trade my boots for moccasins
and walk away to find my own resting place
somewhere; if my feet burn
the whole way there, at least
that pain will be of my choosing.
Even if the grave I choose
turns out to have been dug from lies,
at least it will be mine. Any debate
over whether I belong there
will not be mine to argue.
I’ll decay and disappear
like moccasins and boots do.
I’ll be as much of a myth one day
as I always knew I would be.
That’s the truth. I walk toward it
deliberately, my feet on fire
in boots not made for walking
or for feeling. I still feel
for now, if not as much
as I once did, which I guess
is a bit of a blessing, anyway.
We Are All In This Together
but not in the way
some folks mean it
with all color slipping off of others
and all sexuality of others draining away
All accents homogenized
All devolving into shapeless
and nameless love targets to shoot at
and miss and miss again
because they have become
invisible
We are all in this together
but not in the way
some folks mean it
with a nod and a banged up
pot and spoon put to use every night
promptly at the same time to turn the heads
of the weary endangered folks
dying in droves to keep
some folks
from dying in hordes
All in this together
though there are some folks who want
more of us together than seems reasonable right now
but they’ve got the right skin to make them
more audible and the perfect copper-jacketed
megaphones to amplify themselves in front of
the perfect places to be heard that some other folks
can’t even get near on a good day
and these are not good days
I don’t know who this “we” is
that is supposed to be in this together
No “we” I’ve ever seen
No “we” I know of that is different from
the “we” someone has always insisted “we”
need to think of
whenever “they”
need us
Flowerpot
A painted clay flowerpot
broken, replaced by one of plain
red ceramic, replaced with
a thick plastic one
that is then forgotten
or abandoned during a move
across town, which is then replaced with
a discarded pickle bucket;
so goes the cycle.
Every year we plant the same small
selection of annuals
in this year’s pot of choice
or necessity. Every year’s
a tradedown,
but we try to maintain
the traditional facade,
which is why I’m drilling holes
in the bottom of this year’s pickle bucket
and picturing the flowers — petunias
or pansies or whatever looks good
in the store when we go —
spilling over the sides in glory.
Maybe this year
we’ll measure up — even after
downscaling, even after
the shrunk-budgeting. Maybe
this year, at last, it will look
like the pictures
on the seed packages.
Like all the pictures
we’ve ever seen.
3:30 PM
slippery
as a day getting away
from you
you look up and
it’s 3:30 PM
how did this happen
when there’s so much time available
just to watch the clock
it is possible that
the clock is dreaming you
and it’s the same time all the time
always 3:30 PM
and the day isn’t slippery at all
instead it sticks
is stuck and
that means no one’s
getting away with anything
except for memory
which is sliding down
the road away from you
all you’re going to recall
of this is how 3:30 PM
keeps trying to kill you
staking you to a dull moment
and making you believe
there will be a tomorrow
different from today
less sticky
you’ll seize that moment
and though it will wriggle
like an eel to escape
you will win and 3:30 PM
will do your bidding evermore
never again sneak up on you
never again offer such dread
you swear you will never be unproductive
at 3:30 PM ever again
once you get past today
Bipolar Nights
To sit up all night
crying because no one asked you
what you meant by something you said
that was thrown away by the listeners
in the flow of conversation
is to lie down in a field knowing
that you may look like a corpse
but since no one sees you out there
no one comes to see
if you are still alive.
To sit up all night
wondering why no one gets
any of your subtlety
when you metaphorically
gesture at your temple with a finger gun
then laugh it off as a joke
is to live in a ghost town
and one day fall into an old well,
breaking your self against the rock walls,
screaming for anyone other than a ghost to come.
To sit up all night
pretending to love yourself no matter
what you are or have been in the hope
that anyone seeing your effort will offer
to love you without condition
is to rise to the surface sputtering and choking
ten feet from shore, already beginning to sink again
but telling yourself the rising will continue until you
are high above the water in full flight
toward the stars.
The Black Snake
Standing in the marsh,
worried that the black snake
may strike here.
In the city, understanding
how the black snake owns me,
shaking at the prospect of doing without.
On the road ahead of
the black snake’s fangs,
driving on nothing but poison and fear.
In the bank built of
black snake scales,
the money hissing in the vaults.
In the home of homes, here is
God above dressed in greasy robes,
black snake in his pocket.
I start a fire in the clearing
where the black snake rises and sways
just beyond the light.
A wash of calm: I realize
I can learn to eat without
the black snake, I suppose.
Starve myself a while to starve it.
The black snake starves without us
as much as we starve without the black snake.
Look: black snake bones
under the moon, white as
a belief drained of its blood.
Listen: that’s not the black snake
hissing. Wind, perhaps. Water,
maybe. The sun, of course, is silent.
Taste and smell: no oil
on the tongue, no musk
of the black snake.
Feel the earth agreeing
with the departure of the black snake,
gone back underground now.
How clearly we can see now.
How easily we move on from this —
upright. Not on our bellies.
The Wrath Of Long-Forbidden Gods
A man — call him
Steve or, you know,
any name at all —
pulls his car, his home now
for months,
into a concealed space behind
the abandoned
machine shop where
he once worked.
Gets out to piss
on the wall between
the empty dumpsters
that somehow were never removed
after the place closed.
Stands for a minute after that
under the still-cold spring moon.
In another minute
he will spread a sleeping bag out
in his backseat.
Will use a plastic bag full of clothes
as a pillow.
By now he’s got it all down to science,
but before he starts
he thinks for minute about
a phrase that’s been in his mind
for weeks now:
the wrath of long-forbidden gods.
Shakes it off, or tries to.
Steve — if that’s his name —
has better things, more practical things
to do right now and after all,
this is America and we have
plenty of new things to worry about
without invoking old ones.
He shivers. It’s normal to shiver,
he reminds himself. It’s dark
and cold for April. You don’t
need to imagine disinherited entities
to feel the need to shiver,
and the monstrous wings he sees
skidding across the face
of the moon tonight
must just be clouds
transformed by
his hunger and loneliness;
after all, this is America. So
he shakes it off,
or tries to.
Dark Matter 