Dawn halo behind the wind turbine
on Holy Name Hill — and
a young buck in the fringe of the woods,
just back from the road, staring at you
seated behind the wheel.
Go home and
go back to bed, old man.
You’ve been around long enough
to know a day’s highlight
when you see it.
Deep in the new misery
of learning how the old misery
worked — as if I’d emerged
from a near drowning
only to find the surface world
on fire.
I say,
“This too shall pass,
as did the old pain.”
My lungs are hot
from past strain
and present blaze —
no wonder I breathe fire.
No wonder at my daze, at my
lost and unfound. I say,
“there must be a future here
somewhere,” but can’t see it
for the smoke. Ah well —
if it gets too thick
I can once again choose
to drown.
Taking a leaf from a new book
he will clean out his closets
and simplify his life —
take charge of his clutter
and follow his bliss —
birth the new him
and embrace the old him —
he will end up pooled
in the center of his bedroom floor
yet again,
clutching
her old T-shirt
and weeping into
the definition
of his bliss.
Jonah on the blanket on the sidewalk
yelling at the passers-by
to look at his paintings and sculptures
calls them philistines
confident that few will know
what it means
however the biker
who just kicked his face does
or knows at least he doesn’t like hearing it
Jonah sobs
as the biker picks up a painting
from the blanket
loudly admires its composition
tosses a greasy twenty at Jonah
exits laughing
Jonah wipes
his mouth
with the bill
straightens the blanket
and his wares
goes back to work
keeping an eye out
for more bikers
(just in case)
Tell me
for the love of this song
what’s this floor
we are dancing on
I thought
when I stepped into the room
it might
be a trap and I’d be falling
through to
the basement or worse
but it’s solid
and the music makes it more so
Tell me
for the love of this night
what the clock
is trying to say
I thought
when I took off my watch
it would
stop the night from advancing
but now
I suspect dawn’s found us
and the night
is a lamb waiting to be slain
Tell me
for the love of my love
what mister
she is trying on now
I thought
when I turned my back
she would
by her very nature follow me
but now
she’s dancing with everyone
and everyone
looks happier than me
Tell me
for the love of my name
what man
I am supposed to be now
I thought
when I got here
it all would
clear up the last questions
but now
I am forgetting eveything
and everything
looks like something I’d long ago forgotten
When presented with evidence
of an apparently effortless genius
at your chosen expertise
often you see it and fall
to your figurative knees
with what is either scream
or prayer caught
in your throat
Though you know in fact
there’s hard work behind it
you can’t see it and
you unworthy fall to
a state of worship and
envy
Pyramids for tens of centuries
have done this to us too
We argue about what it took
Some talk of magic or space
Others of physics and slaves
In truth we only ever
think we understand
and any view of them at all
raises mostly awe we can’t contain
Coming across a talent you can’t fathom
(as if you’d come across a pyramid
balanced on its broken tip) leads you
to supplicate and call at least within
from anger or envy upon
Deity, Nature
or Nurture
Magic
or Muse
a plea as to
why it was not
why it is not
why not
you
Thanks for that ignorance
which led me to pick up the cuatro
that first time in the music store, to put it back on its rack
still knowing nothing of it.
Thanks for that luck which soon led me
to a concert where I saw it played
by its master Yomo Toro, for that stroke
of light and awe that laid me down.
Thanks for the day in Lowell
where I met a luthier who made such things,
who cut them from living trees in the old style
and who played one of his own for me.
Thanks for the surprise of Yomo Toro,
again, appearing before me at a free concert
at the local Latin Festival, once again
allowing me to bathe in not-knowing’s joy.
Thanks, then, for what happened
when I heard he was ill, was dying.
Thanks, then, for what drove me
to the local music store that day
to find one, to play one, to know
nothing and play one, to find a song
upon it had gotten stuck to my fingers
and was demanding I take it home
so the song could come forth and breathe.
Thanks for the payday that made it happen.
Thanks for the heat of the day
that made me rush home to play.
So good to be a beginner again. Good to lay my pen and poems aside,
to leave the guitar in the rut we’ve made for each other,
to stretch and wiggle out the agony in my fretting hand,
to have no clue where I’m going from here with this.
Thanks for how my hands now hurt. Thanks
for this ignorance and this unclear path
to mastery, again. Thanks for the untutored
music I have made today — and
thanks above all for Yomo Toro, a fat man in a straw hat
dying somewhere in the Bronx, two hundred miles
from here, who does not and will never know me
and my clumsy songs, but who brought them surely into the world.
Man, you wanna know
what’s wrong?
She’s gone and I’m
just figuring out I
was in love with her,
I swear —
Krystle,
Krystle was a cashier
at
the Walmart,
at the Walmart
on 16, out by the new
Ford dealership,
the one that used to be
farther out on 16 but
moved closer to town —
yes, that one — anyway
Krystle,
Krystle,
Krystle —
listen, man,
stop laughing,
stop laugh-interrupting me, people
got to eat, got to work, and yeah
I’ve seen the damn website —
what you’re saying by laughing is
that you hate the people there
along with the store —
listen,
Krystle
was a friend from high school
and I was in love with her all these years
and I just figured it out
and she just died.
I can’t tell her as something
she wasn’t. Maybe —
no.
Man, I don’t even fucking know
you.
Don’t want to.
Go.
they all step away
from recent effort
saying “isn’t that the greatest thing”
a portion
then look back and say
“isn’t that the worst thing ever”
even fewer
say “hmmm…”
and get back to work on it
how few indeed of that last fragment
look at it when they’ve finished
say “it IS the greatest thing”
and then discard it
knowing that to have perfected it
is to have reached a dead end
those few drunk on growth
are the ones whose feet
I bend to kiss
Sourdough,
good ham,
codeine.
A sandwich,
a sip or two…
tang on tongue;
then, relief in head.
Hanging
in a hammock, at rest,
reluctant
to let go all my awareness
and slip under the
surface, but
I say it’s time
and vanish into
flavor, music,
thought,
worship.
Yes,
worship:
why do you care how I get to my God?
How is my path more false than yours?
I also break bread, sip syrup, am redeemed.
The only difference
is in the distance
to my Paradise.
Today
more than one
person (dog, cat, bird)
will leave home and
not return.
Tomorrow,
more than one husband or wife (or lover,
mother, father, or owner) will sit
nervously on a couch, twisting its hands
in its lap, turning them over and over
in a motion not unlike that of
a kitten tumbling with a ball of yarn
in happy ignorance of how the world
kills and takes away casually, every day,
as if it were nothing —
and it is nothing,
but do not speak of that
to the nervous ones.
Today, tomorrow, or
on the day after some number
of the missing will return, and joy
and recriminations will begin,
or joy alone,
or recriminations alone,
and some will grieve and among them
will be some of the returned
people, dogs, cats, birds
who only wanted a moment apart;
and there will be some who will not come back,
not at all,
not ever,
because some of them will have no doubt died
while others will have stretched their moment apart
into new lives far from former lovers, spouses,
parents, or other owners.
It will be impossible for the ones left behind
to tell the difference,
impossible to explain it’s not a certain tragedy
for all concerned,
impossible to recall that the words
“happy ignorance”
existed right up to the moment
the person
(dog, cat, bird)
slipped away.
A factory robot
living under the nail
of my right index finger,
that’s what that itch is,
that mechanical call
to work on a poem for the sake
of automation, for the sake
of output, for the sake of
stage time.
One of those
Fifties movie robots alive and
spring-armed in the center
of my chest,
that’s what
this desire to be a poet is,
a longing with clumsy brilliance,
stymied sometimes into silence
when it neither understands
human emotion nor gives it room.
The robots of my poetry are failing —
what’s the only thing you have left
when the factory robot in your hand shuts down
the assembly line and insists on retooling,
when the movie robot in your chest admits
it’s a short guy in a clumsy costume?
I don’t know what you call that, or me.
I seem to know a thing or two,
can get meals and drive and function
without thinking of poetry.
Seems happy, uninterested
in robots or drive or prosody or
even ambition.
I don’t know this well enough
to think much of it.
When no one is looking or listening,
I stare at it as if we were not the same body.
I have caught it rhyming, smiling,
tapping a rhythm while listening to
neighbors speaking, laughing.
I can’t hear gears or hydraulics
in anything it says.
Is anything in here still a poet?
Big Joe Turner
could palm a jump blues
like an egg,
handle it rough
but always
without breaking it.
Listening right now
to the opening piano ripple
of “Shake Rattle And Roll”
and Big Joe Long Dead
still smites with the soft club
of his voice.
Big Joe I Wish To Have Seen You
Just Once, this is how it must have been
back then:
discovery followed by imitation.
I think I sound good, as good
as you.
The shell fragments on my hands
and the sticky yolk say no.
The heart of me says no too.
Big Joe Turner,
they are starting to forget you
and all your kiss curled imitators too
but Big Joe Turner,
thanks for the musical ache in my bones
that won’t heal no matter what they do or do not do.
I am boredom, drugs
and virtual killing.
Maybe, occasionally,
I toss in
boning for shits
and giggles.
At least, that’s
the impression
I think I give off —
but I have so much love to give
I’m certain I work at odds to my needs,
and maybe I’m another altogether?
Not that it matters —
you’ll be dead soon and with either bad or good luck
so will I, if we can’t get past what you did
to the planet. Fuck you, I say,
and this time you deserve that,
all of that.
the black cat and I
are sitting up late,
watching heavy metal videos.
we’ve seen a few black cats on screen.
not many, and all were yowl-faced and claws out.
my companion seems completely unimpressed.
for tonight at least
I’m in love with hair band guitars,
with fast necks and eldritch angled bodies.
I’m in love with the moody faces of the balladeers,
the near-machismo of their eyeliner — everything
about the music, in fact, except for the music itself.
I think the cat feels about the same
as she leaves for the kitchen to seek food
just before I do.
kitty seems disinclined to be heavy metal angry
as she rubs against my legs, snaking between them
like a wisp of dry ice fog. I open the fridge.
ain’t no demons in there I can’t gobble up
but just for fun I brandish a stick of string cheese
like a microphone, tilt my head back,
mime a scream. the cat waits patiently
for me to get over myself. “if you think that’s
gonna happen any time soon,” I tell her,
“you got another thing coming.” I throw
a split in the middle of the kitchen for good measure,
and surprise myself by not injuring anything this time.
Dark Matter 