Vehicle of dissent:
car on fire
in a street market.
A call to arms:
the keening of those collecting
scattered, shattered limbs.
Uprising:
smoke — greasy,
dieseled, flesh-flavored.
The clouds hanging low.
Justice:
choosing what makes any sense here —
eye, tooth, noose, bullet, mercy.
Closure.
How we laugh in the cafes and alleys
when that word is uttered.
When a rose I planted
for a dead friend
refused to grow,
what choice was there
but to pull it out and
begin again?
When a second rose
also failed to thrive
and in fact died,
what choice was there
but to pull it out and
begin again?
Now a third rose
will not take.
Friend,
what are you trying
to tell me?
Perhaps
there’s nothing
after this life
and such memorials
are pointless.
Perhaps
in this life
you didn’t love roses
and I didn’t know you
as well as I should have.
Perhaps
I am a bad gardener
and kill what I put effort into
because enthusiasm is no
substitute for skill.
Friend, I have a dying rosebush
with your name on it;
what am I supposed to do with it?
Friend, why don’t you speak to me?
You went back into this earth,
did you not? Why will nothing grow now?
Tireless watching at the window
if there’s something out there,
not at all if there’s not.
Working when there’s work,
not at all when there’s not.
There’s always something to see
and always work to be done,
cry some. If you’re bored, you are
boring, they cry. And when I respond
eh, not so much, here’s yet another case
of blaming the victim, you
and the notorious Puritan
Work Ethic looking for a soft place
to set the hooks
screech like a box of peeved owls.
Owls only look wise. You know
that’s all in our heads. We see
the forward set eyes, think they’re human
as if that guaranteed wisdom — those
blamers, always yelling “Who?” Just like you.
So, tireless watching at the window
if there’s something out there,
working when there’s work and not at all
when there’s not. Boring happens. Someone
can bore me, can be behind or ahead of my page.
I’ll get over it, or leave of my own accord,
but maybe my best move is to get bored, to stay there
for some message about patience or humility.
Shut up about everyone needing to “do something.”
I prepare some of my best work when I’m doing nothing.
Let’s not talk about the heart.
We know the heart is never
in charge really;
it’s just
a good metaphor
for how the head
first grooves with
then wars with
the genitals.
Perhaps there’s a structure within
that holds court when we sleep?
Not quite brain or groin,
perhaps a fulcrum between them?
Dreams after all do seem often
to teeter upon something…
so if we call that balance point “heart,”
are we at all impoverished?
For instance, if
I keep a dream of you
on the point of balance I call
my heart,
am I a fool for believing
my heart will stop moving
without you?
Here I am
speaking of the heart
as I said I would not…
but as in waking life
it races all the time
for your presence,
I suppose it can’t be helped.
They don’t choose us
any more;
not now, not in the land of
free will.
When I choose the Alligator
he roars,
“Son, your bloodlines are desert
on one side
and mountain on the other.
Not a bayou in sight so
how the hell did I become
your idea of a spirit animal?”
I reply,
“Television, man.
It fucks up
your locality,
morality, and
spirituality.
But consider: as an Amurrican,
I bite on whatever’s
offered
so it seemed
appropriate…”
Tail thrash, jaw snap.
Over his shoulder:
“C’mon, then…”
She preached
of using lucid dreaming
to visualize material success.
She was earnest and spoke
of manifesting prosperity through
alignment of the chakras.
She was lovely, steadfast in a wan
ethereal fog, bent on directing
the Universe toward her goals.
I pitied her;
so, so sad —
so, so American.
To demand utility
of the unconscious,
to enslave it that way —
I shuddered and foresaw
the Snake Of The Inner World
tossing a constrictor curl across her throat
someday as she slept; I heard a horrid rendition
of the Star-Spangled Banner
as if gargled by a Dragon
being played
at her funeral; I heard her dreams
clapping triumphantly along.
Stop narrating:
hold up
a glass, a stem,
a feather, one
after another.
Let story
fill the space
around them.
Stop narrating:
leap randomly
around the room,
across the clearing,
from one
roof to another.
Let the angles of the path
define sacred
geometry.
Stop narrating,
suddenly cease even
to gesture;
freeze pointing up
and slightly to the right.
Let anyone’s eyes
follow that
wherever it goes,
any number of stops
along the way
will be valid, some few
will not be;
hard to tell them from
one another
and seriously,
it’s not that
necessary — stop narrating,
don’t say a word about it,
it will pass.
On a thick spit of land
where two swift rivers join,
someone’s painted car hoods
with quotes from
Genesis,
the Song, and
Revelation;
left them standing here
where they can speak to the foxes,
eagles, and deer,
and perhaps also
to the occasional person
walking there as a guest
upon the land.
A liquid song over my head
in the highest reach of the pines,
one I’ve never heard…and before me
a tale of the fruit of the Tree,
a mention of an Apple,
a warning of seven seals broken.
What is that calling above me?
It’s not the God of these Scriptures, is
less dire, more urgent.
I am trying, I am trying,
I will get this…first light,
overhead Song,
bubble-chatter
of two rivers joining,
old words rusting…
ah!
I have it!
are best grooved to
while you sit
on the front lawn
in your kiddie pool
while cars pass by
blasting them
from open windows
every ten minutes
for two seconds
as they pass
or while the neighbor
trims hedges with a radio
on somewhere
maybe from the kitchen
or set out on the porch
with the cord stretched
all the way from inside
while your fat ass is shaking
in two inches of water
your bald head is bobbing
in two inches of sweat
you look like a cautionary ad
for heat stroke and the danger
of summer hits
some of which
will never be heard again
BUT
summer is best grooved to
with them
in fact summer needs them
like you need a tallboy
while you groove
sitting ridiculous and cool
in that kiddie pool
all season long
Pulled
the wedding ring
from my finger
years ago, but
there’s still a dent there.
I bet
I’m dented for good.
I mean “for good”
in all senses it can be taken:
permanent dent,
valuable dent,
dented by the forces
of good.
Now I’m in love again —
for good,
I hope,
in all the same ways
I’ve listed above.
Permanently, valuably,
by the forces, etc.
Make no mistake though:
regardless,
I’m still dented.
Marked, not
truly whole.
A little wrecked.
It shows.
He blurts it out
or whispers it to himself:
“40/30,” and is secretly pleased.
What could that mean?
Forty over thirty reduces to
four over three,
which could be
an obvious statement
about what works
in a street brawl:
four thugs beat three thugs,
maybe not every time
but it’s the safe way to bet.
Maybe four over three
is the odds of something happening
that’s likely but not certain.
Could be a brag: “I over-achieved.”
Could be a formula, or a key to a code.
It might, of course, mean nothing at all
to anyone except the one for whom
it means a lot, or everything. Maybe
we are not meant to know
what led him to speaking of that fraction,
that motto, that driver of action: 40/30,
scribbled on a last page
of a manuscript, on a concrete
or social media wall. Numbers
can obscure as surely as they
clarify. Maybe it means nothing at all,
even to him;
when you get down to it,
in fact, I’m sure
it means nothing at all.
you don’t want that two percent
but it’s all they have.
you want that one percent.
that’s the good stuff,
what the one per cent uses.
the one percent are always thin and happy
’cause they use that one per cent.
it’s not too fatty, still tastes right, looks right,
not thin blue like insufficient skim
but as white as a bride, in fact
as white in a glass
as a tall thin bride.
you don’t know if the bride
could have gotten by
on two per cent.
you don’t remember the city
ever looking so empty.
you don’t know where everyone is.
you don’t know why they aren’t looking.
you don’t know if anyone
will look at the bride the way they used to
when she stood tall and white as a glass of milk
motionless in harvard square.
you don’t know how it happened
that you lost that ability
to make something out of nothing.
you don’t want to keep faking it.
you don’t know how to make it.
you don’t know why no one looks now
until you wave your frantic hands.
you only know the waving of frantic hands.
you don’t know how to stop.
you don’t know how to stop.
you don’t know how to stop.
here comes the bride.
tall, pale, frantic,
notching it up
yet again,
yet another
one per cent —
hell,
two percent.
do you have
an I love you is the right thing to say here feeling
a no need to say it feeling
a feeling like this will last feeling
a terrible mistake feeling
a late night hassled by drunks feeling
a someone walking behind you feeling
a lifetime of guarded feeling
a they’re following you in the store again feeling
a they’re shocked at how articulate you are feeling
a they are locking their doors when I pass feeling
a they don’t know that sometimes I wanna justify that
feeling
a meal behind the eightball hungry feeling
a this last food stamp won’t cover postage to my Senator feeling
a yacht purchasing feeling
a leveraged buyout feeling
a fucked again by the same two lovers feeling
a tuna sandwich lost in the bedclothes for a whole day feeling
a can’t get out of the bed for the restraints feeling
a Darfur feeling
a Palestine feeling
a Swedish camp massacre feeling
a there it is now death feeling
a stare the cop in the eyes and shoot back numbly feeling
a soldiers in the night again feeling
a that is what a drone sounds like son feeling
a New York state of mind includes sleeping rough near the Triboro feeling
a Boston sneers at me but I bought Boston Strong T-shirts anyway feeling
a Chicago Cubs feeling
a medications aren’t working feeling
a puppy is better at least for tonight feeling
a purchased love is only good for the first two minutes feeling
a whisky you’re the devil and I am anton lavey feeling
a seeds are exploding in the last joint I’ve got and she’s laughing at me feeling
a good god I am disgusting feeling
a good fucking god you turned out to be feeling
a damn myth you got me into mom feeling
a damn myth you turned out to be feeling
do you have
a stretched feeling
a pulled feeling
a yanked feeling
a torn feeling
a bull just shat feeling
a call and response feeling
a response to a call out feeling
do you have
a lazy feeling
a brainwashed feeling
a sheep feeling
a groping toward feeling
perhaps even
a shamed feeling
of your very own
Yet-to-be-fully-imagined
country we all want to live in,
country of peace groves
full of lemon trees, country
where we let
our own blood
into the garden soil
to feed it, where we all sing
in our own tongues in the front yards
and kneel silently in the back yards
under the open sky, seeking
guidance or a little rain; country
yet to be founded,
already rich and storied,
abandoned, rediscovered,
abandoned again and again;
country, not nation, not state;
homeland, not seat of empire.
Country yet to be ours, country
we’ll have to define — a country we’ll all
agree to defend against the poisons
of borders, flags, anthems, suspicions.
When we come to that country
we’ll look into each other’s eyes
and we’ll know what to name it
without hearing a single campaign speech.
We’ll know how to run it
without a single task force.
We’ll know how to love it
without a single weapon.
We’ll know we’ve truly settled there
when we look into each other’s eyes
and see a neighbor, a cousin,
or a self, no matter what else we see.
I turned around
at the end of a long corridor
to seek contemporaries,
found a few,
craned my neck to find peers,
found a few,
looked then for friends —
and they were distant,
at the far end
of the hall, whispering,
perhaps wondering
where I’d gone…
Little of what they said
was coherent
over such a distance
but from tone of voice
I knew, I understood, that
it is I who left them, that
it is I who cannot see a way back.
No matter how clearly I can see
and understand
how straight and direct
the corridor between us is,
there is no way back.
The strains
of the old song ring out:
non, je ne regrette rien.
“I Regret Nothing.”
The singer’s last words?
“Every damn thing
you do in this life,
you pay for.”
Dark Matter 