New poem.
inside this
clothing
an average wrapper of
slightly sagging skin upon
an average man
who’s been eaten smaller
by his age
he undresses himself
before sleep
stands in front of
a former enemy
a mirror
sees
wisdom about
and love for
himself
revealed in how
his folded hands rest
upon his loose husk
of a belly
those things
were once
so hard
to see
now they stand out
against approaching
Dark
and offer him
surprising comfort
before Sleep
Originally posted 3/20/2012.
In the history of government
there are a million examples
of how they begin, but only one
of how they end: they end
with the venal
gaming their way to power
and staying there regardless
of the labels they choose to wear.
In the history of nations
it doesn’t matter how the people love them.
They only love you back
a little, and only at certain times.
In the history of history
it doesn’t matter what happens,
only what is said about what happened
or did not happen, or is said
to have not happened;
in the history of history
there are but two nations —
the strugglers and the lords.
In the history of humans
there’s dancing and loving
and the making of art and music;
there’s good sweat, grand tears,
and a lot of laughter,
but do not confuse that
with the history of government and nation.
If you want to pursue happiness,
know that government and nation
pursue happiness too —
and they do it, always,
by chasing and catching
you.
Originally posted on 3/5/2014.
Stop
calling
what I do
therapy.
Stop calling therapy
what exists to spite disorder,
what persists after breakdowns and
attempts.
Stop calling therapy
what I would do more of
if I were less
a mess.
Stop calling therapy
what I call breathing.
Stop calling therapy what I call
my self, spread on paper.
Stop calling triggers on guns
material. Stop calling
triggers on others’ lips
material.
Stop calling too-blunt knives
and weak pills and slender ropes
and bed restraints and hours
of paying to talk around agony
“the dark timber of my art.”
Stop calling.
Stop insisting,
stop speaking
of therapy.
Stop in fact your fantasy of why
and what and how;
for me this is no pressure valve
and verse is not surgery.
I’ve written
hundreds of thousands
of words
or more;
if it worked,
if it was
as you say,
I’d be fine.
Originally posted 10/5/2009.
It’s one of those stolen concepts
that makes for easy internet memes
and casual adoption by everyone
from hipster ironists to hippie holdouts.
They choose the glamour critters
for their comfort and aggrandizement.
It’s all Hawk and Eagle, Crow and Bison;
none of it fits, all of it feels good. If I were to play along
I’d admit there’s not nearly enough Wolf in me.
Not enough ferocity, not enough
pack loyalty, not enough startle response and care
in the face of the world’s savagery and bounty.
As for Coyote, the smaller cousin,
the Trickster dog of dream and myth —
no, I’ve searched, and no bone of mine
holds a scrap of that holy canine.
No, I know my “spirit animal”
(if indeed I have such a thing)
is a snail or slug, unsure of which.
Cold slimer, afterthought drip from a Creator
who gave up
on pinning me
to mammal ways
and instead said:
This one will understand
how progress is inexorable but excruciating.
His trail will always be traceable
to its source.
He will understand
the nature of small and unnoticed lives
and the damage that can be done in the dark,
as ravaging as any drama and howling attack.
There are thanks to be offered
for such knowledge
but tonight,
it overwhelms me.
I have
no mouth or throat
to scream
for change.
All I can do is crawl
and hope no weight from above
falls onto me before
I get to where I belong.
Originally posted 2/22/2012.
Ever hear
that crack about
being cracked
that says
that’s how
the light gets in?
I was fractured early
You’d think I’d be full
of sunshine but
thank Hell
a good flow
seeped in
Dark syrup
no light
no filler
It crusted thick
It sealed my fate within
That badly broken
That closed up that early
I could only become one
of three things
Artist
who makes it shine
Criminal
who makes it pay
Amateur actor
who makes it disappear
I was two of those by nature already
So onto fraud
Of thee I sling
garbage in
and prophecy out
(or vicey reversa )
I said as much as I could
never stopping to breathe
Still at it
Still grinning
There is an analgesic effect
to wordslinging
You can forget a lot
by writing it down
If you want more
Buy the book when it comes out
This is the short con
You’re going to want the long game
for the full payoff
Trust me on that
Nod your head
Set the hook
You’ll call it art
I will too
if you’re still listening
Originally posted 8/30/2013.
The last hawk in this town
just lifted off from the Town Hall roof
and flapped straight over the river,
rising as she went.
I know somehow she won’t be back.
I know somehow we’re somewhat doomed.
I get an itch in my limbs just thinking of it.
It’s not going to be the same here without the hawks.
I’ve been trying to empower myself
with other animals’ symbolic value
but they all insist on living their lives.
How dare they! They really ought to be
useful. The hawks
have never understood that well.
Far beyond the river, a dim sighting
of many hawks plunging and soaring.
Such teases. What are they telling us?
How should we respond?
stiff-standing
antique figurines
are being sold
at auction
one’s an iron jockey
holding a hitching ring
clad in red and white
and blackface paint
another is
offering cigars from a wooden hand
the old wood’s
brown through and through
people are bidding them up
for (they say) the sake of
historical preservation
and the marking of bad memory
hard to believe
the prices such things command
among people who profess
to understand the offenses they bear
it seems the privilege
of being able to buy and sell
the past
is not cheap
Originally posted 5/18/2012.
Stupid you, cold drunk crashing
right through the knee-high fence
in your own front yard
and planting your face
among the weed-strangled old tulips.
Through the old weak fence
right on your old weak face
in the front yard where the neighbors can see,
and you don’t seem to care enough
to run and hide in shame this time;
you seem content
to lie there ass up
for all of us neighbors to see.
You’ve been stupid since you were a kid,
a drunk since you were just past that,
and none of us can count how often
you’ve tripped over that fence stupid drunk.
Stupid drunk, that’s what you are —
our object lesson, our signal disaster;
face down in the dead tulips with ass sticking up.
You’ve been in that position for a bit now,
at least an hour, and we’re all still laughing because
it’s likely the best job you’ve had, the perfect job for you —
no real effort required: just lie there,
let the neighbors point and laugh
and say things to their kids
about being drunk and stupid
and a public spectacle.
Now a crow, a real live crow,
has landed next to you and is inspecting you
up close and personal.
Never gonna let you live
this one down, asshole.
Priceless. I’m gonna see
if I can get close
and snap a picture —
if you can’t get up on your own,
you deserve this.
New poem.
This afternoon light,
picking up dust in the air
and the unmasked
then hidden at once
secret sadness
in the faces of
co-workers —
over the weekend,
the sudden spill
of light in the bar
at
closing time
that illuminates the writing
on the wall that says
“too long at the party” —
no difference in the light,
no difference
in the message.
New poem.
The road
from my ancestors
to me
is grassy and grown,
as green as it ever was,
still kind to the feet of those
born to it.
I don’t recognize
this toll road you’ve made,
the one
you are calling
“The Way Of The Elders.”
You read a book
of some half-understood
road maps
and made a turnpike
from it.
You’ve decorated the road
in trappings you don’t own,
maybe tricking yourself into full belief,
at the least
into believing others
will pay to travel it
and maybe they will
but I’m not one of them.
Those aren’t paving stones,
those are chunks of asphalt.
Those aren’t standing stones,
those are concrete falsehoods.
I know this weight you sell
and it’s not the solidity
of the spirit
but that of
a plastic shaman’s boot
upon my neck, upon
my ancestors’ necks.
Don’t,
says every gene of theirs
in every cell of mine.
Don’t.
Don’t pretend this is real.
Don’t pretend
that by stepping on me
and by stepping on them
that you are walking
any ancient path
except the one
that led you to our soil
in the first place.
New poem.
We travel too often into places
where deceptive shadows
promise mystery and romance
only to reveal teeth
when we lean in, eyes closing
before an anticipated kiss.
We travel too often into places
where springs that bubble forth
from those shadows
are cold and quenching but taste
of that blood-filled ground
in which they rise.
We travel too often into places
where we eagerly seek a home
before we understand
how where we’ve arrived
is exactly like where we came from
and how much we brought with us from there.
There’s no moral to this. There’s no
simple lesson. We travel to places
that promise those things
because we cannot recognize
that they will never be given to us,
that we have to take them where we find them.
To do that,
we have to stop traveling,
constantly traveling, in the hope
that what we find will be
well-fed, kindly, satisfied,
and waiting to meet us on our terms.
New Poem.
In meditation to starve
my greatest fever, I
realize suddenly
what folly this is
and lift my head from
pose to say: not
for nothing is there
such fever. Not for nothing
do we let a little of it in
to raise us to just under
boiling point — a small
concession but
with that concession
comes relief from full fever,
relief I never found before this
when I denied that fever existed,
or by claiming that
it could be forgotten
by rejecting outright our true need
for at least a little bit of such heat.
I return to meditation
more easily now that I have
told this truth. I am calmed,
whole, sated, and safe
knowing that full denial
of an appetite for what is natural
is neither my continued aim
nor my future false hope.
Originally posted 10/6/2012. Original title, “Drone Strike.”
Early fall,
window has been open for cleaning.
A fly’s gotten in,
sounds like
one last big bluebottle
for the season with a voice like
a Dangerbee. Should look
twice to be sure, but no time for that;
I klll it with one smack
of an already read,
soon to be recycled
magazine.
Done. And lo —
it was a
Honeybee.
How did it seem
so huge? Tiny, golden thing…
quick: brush it
into the gutter of the window
and then push it out
onto the ground
along with my small regrets,
telling myself
this would have been done
differently
had I recognized it.
Originally posted 2/7/2013.
I give a sorrow
opening. I
loose it on
a gap within. Soon come
ornery, tantrum, layabout and cry.
Going to victim this whole long day:
grow kudzu, a funeral bouquet
for neverending grief show.
Still, I got rocker hips,
roller hips, jazz groin and jazz lips:,
joy ends up somewhere
when pushed from head and heart.
Still, I end up one sad grinder.
End up bad into more bad sinking,
but still with one way
to set it off and hold it back — and so,
on to music. Still in the hole, I give
my dance, my bad, my deep
some resistance. Rhythm’s a big mole digging in
under the roots, a charged up winner
rubbling the dark; my earthly body
quakes cracking in the light. Whenever
I, frightened, shake fear, I gotta dance
my dance, my bad, my deep —
it’s my gotta happen.
New Poem. (?)
Did there are there to be a rejection
Did there are there to be fancies
Did there are there to be a response to balked desires
Do there be a forget time
Forget time
Do the slide and fashion fade
Did there are there be
Experience open sky forgetting time
I’m a going rate
I’m a getting going late
Do the slide and open fascist gate
Do the fastest fashion slide to mate
Did there are there to be a mistake
Did there do there a being fine and clear
Did they do they mystery mystic mad big gate
I’m a going rate a getting going late an open fascist gate
Forget time
Do a slide and fade
Do the mad mistake
No one’s cool enough for that mate
Dark Matter 