Today I want so badly to die

but October’s coming, sometime
soon, not tomorrow, not
the following day, but sometime
after August starts to bleed off summer
and the days begin to pale through September,
October will come. 

I hope I make it to October, to that month
when I’m glad to be cool, glad to be
needing a jacket, wondering how
I made it though the heat, happy to be watching
the trees turn and strip themselves
to nothing but bark and bone.

Ah, October, month of memory balanced upon
expectation, with its glimmers
of future want and last gasp days
of comfortable light and clarity — why does October
have to be so far away?  There’s too much fog
in the mornings now, and too much sweat

from late morning all the way to night.
What I wouldn’t give for October tomorrow.
I know it will come, not soon, not tomorrow,
not the following day;  but sitting here and burning up,
I can’t wait for October
when the earth will be naked,

when I may be alive.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations

If you send me one more request
to become your fan,
knock on my door one more time
with God in your fist,
exhort me one more time
to accept Jesus as my personal savior,
whip a finger at me again
to tell me I owe you my attention and my fate;

if you touch me again
as if you’d earned that intimacy,
ask me over and over
for a number, a key, a sign;
beg me one more time
to take you back,
coat me with unrepentant irritations
so I need a shower ten times a day;

if you look me in the eye again
and steal my glance,
raise my hope again
and steal my thunder,
pat my back again
and steal my spine,
stick your hand out again
and slice my grip —

watch me turn, then,
into water;
watch me sluice
down this channel between us
and wash you back;
hear me whisper like silk on steel
to try and melt the block in your head;
see me take your hands in mine
still covered with my own blood
and gently, as if everything depended on such a thing
being gentle, turn you back onto yourself
and make you feel how ashamed you are
of your fanatic insecurity
that makes you seek me out
to join you in your lonely cell.

Walking by a pond,
I shiver briefly
near a mound of rocks
and rusted cans.

Because I prefer the visible world,
the blare of neon and loud comfort,
I ignore the possibility
that has just occurred to me,
that the mound covers
a maiden’s grave
and that she is calling to me
to open the pile and see her face,
open to the world, her jaw gaping,
teeth gray with soil, her hands gloved
in the rot of years —

how many years
has she lain here?  No telling, because
I will not stop to discover
if any of what I’m thinking
is true, and not a fantasy born
of my unfamiliarity
with the unseen.

I do not want to know if she’s in there,
or if the ground I cover
on my hurried way home
contains more like her — Nipmuc graves,
broken colonial skulls, the wrecks
of more recent people who remain nameless
though they shake me
as I pass. 
Every pond may be a grave site,
every heap of stones
a home for a plane
I will not acknowledge.
I do not want to know
where women
who never got a chance
to speak of rape
were raped.  I do not know
where children were killed. 
I do not know
how the poor suffered
on these same streets
back before affluence
covered their poverty.

In the suburbs, I never have to think
about why, in the middle of all this
light and sound, I sometimes shiver
as if the light
was full of ghosts.

I’m not going to stop talking
until the shadow of the wheel
stops turning after the wheel does
I’m not going to stop talking
until the last panda goes negative
and black and white themselves reverse
I’m not going to stop talking
until the judgment pops its cork
and the fields of the sky bleach out
I’m not going to stop talking
until the islands become mobile
and flight from the flood is impossible

You ought to listen

I’m not going to give up my breath
until it is all but spent on futile gestures
and the last rattle of change fills my pockets
I’m not going to give up my hands
until their grip is gone and the ease of tension
breaks them open and they rest at my sides
I’m not going to give up my eyes
until light becomes too expensive to collect
and the darkness all around is all that’s free
I’m not going to give up my blood
until it’s all that’s left to wash the floor
and I need to clean up after the warriors are gone

Are you listening

I’m going to stand here with my mouth open
until somebody comes and drags me down
and my eyes fall from my astonished head
I’m going to be the hub of that slowing wheel
until the tread crumbles and the turning stops
and the axle bows and splits and is dropped in the sand
I’m going to champion and protest and call you out
until you can’t sit still without bleeding into your chair
and you slide to the ground relaxed and ready to sleep
I’m going to make the answers as loud as I can
until the ceiling caves into a wash of flowers
and the earth drowns in a haphazard funeral of song

If you’re listening and listening right
you’ll join our band of angel apes
You’ll evolve as fast as your ears can carry you
You see me up here now but soon with luck I’ll disappear
into a wall of pink and white and voice and action
I mean nothing without the listening
I hope I become extinct as soon as I possibly can
for what I do will only be worth doing
until your listening takes hold and soaks this dirty world
in sweet and attentive rain

Big Homie, they called him,
and yeah, he was big.  Around for years,
he got rounder through all of them,
and spoke more slowly over time
since it took the words longer to get out.

Big Homie used to balance on knife blades when he talked
and they’d watch to see how he didn’t fall. 
Now he’s bloody all the time.
His feet look like a cheese grater, red prints
on the barroom floors tell them where he’s been.

Big Homie used to eat lightbulbs like candy
and when he opened his mouth shone
like the Yukon at midnight in summer.
Lately he’s taken to speaking in the dark.
Lately he’s taken by how he can only talk in the dark.

Big Homie, they call him. Big Homie, whose light
and shadow aren’t on speaking terms anymore.
Big Homie, who one night knows he’ll get home
and the lamps will not light, the shadows will sink
into pure black, he’ll be alone, and they won’t care.

Crawling through a long swamp after growing up among jackals,
I came upon a house bone, relic of a family that had thrived at some point
before it vanished into the muck.

I put the bone in my hip pocket (after tossing the flask aside)
and carried it back to where I could plant it in dry rich sand.
If a bone could be a seed, I reasoned, it might grow into a home.

But all the bone did was stick up where I could trip over it
and I fell often, and hard, and bruised myself yellow and brown
and ached every time for a long time, so that I cursed the very idea

of home.  I tried to fertilize it and it did nothing.  I tried
to redesign my own place around it, stared at the blueprints
till they bled, and still the home I desired would not rise.

So I go back into the swamp every day and slop around seeking
that flask I dropped a while back.  If I see another bone,
I leave it there.  Better it should rot unaided by my fumblings.

Don’t ever give a reader
all the facts.

A good falsehood,
larded into the meat of the tale
like a dose of belladonna,
will make the readers’ pupils
grow wide.

They’ll convince themselves
they’re seeing deep
because of how much light
is getting in.

You’ll be a hero!
And
a million times
a million lies
inlaid in a base of truth
makes a heroic body of Work.

Make it vast enough
and it’ll give you time,
while the adulation and praise
for your vulnerability rolls in
to sit back
and try to differentiate
what’s a lie from what is true
at your uncomfortable leisure.