I’m supposed to be
among these massacre bones:
that’s where I was born,
after all, nestled
in a bleached nest of
what was once alive, and though
I got up and moved on,
I was not whole. Part of me
stayed back, remained
with these dead
who’d unwittingly cradled me
and lent me a certain air
of loss that I can always feel
even if others cannot tell.
I measure every day
against that sense. Sometimes
it surges within
and I can’t take a breath
without the scent of old bones
filling me, choking me. Other times
I can get by with only a whiff
or two here and there. Either way
those dead held me when young
and still hold
all the essence I grew from:
the knowledge that I live always
among those who, if they’d seen me
in another day, would have laid
a sword against my infant neck,
a rifle’s barrel against my child’s skull,
and not held back. I live
always knowing how little it takes
to unleash that urge,
how easily they could send me
back into that massacre pile
if given permission and
a flimsy rationale. Every day
I do not run screaming
to lock myself away
is a marvel; understand as well
that every day I convince myself
from dawn to dark
that you only look like them
and are not like them
is a miracle — not one
of trust, but of magical thinking
and provisional hope. I make
no apology for that. You should
expect none. You
should do more
than wring your hands
when there are
so many of these bones
still to be laid to rest.
Tag Archives: political poems
Surviving
Tired Angry
When “tired”
means there’s nothing
to give.
When “tired”
means your lungs
whistle dirges.
There are trees
bent more by the weight
of life than you are,
trees that grow
anyway, but you
are no tree.
So tired,
stunted,
stalled —
lonely too, or
alone at least,
even among friends,
lovers, family.
Tired, alone,
shortened, stuffed
down from full height
and wasted, too wasted
to rise again. Or so at first
you believe,
forgetting how
“tired” can easily become
“angry,”
shifting
in one breath.
When “tired”
becomes “angry, ” those dirges
turn martial, go loud.
When “tired”
becomes “angry” you
straighten like
a full tree, even if
a storm’s coming
full of lightning
and doom. When
angry, you grow.
You see who else
is angry alongside you and
realize the lightning can’t
take all of you. So
get angry, not tired.
Be what is needed.
Rise, grow, sing war.
It’s too early to fall asleep.
Please Come
Please come,
said something.
This voice was soft
and unfamiliar yet
had managed to get
so close to my sleeping ear
that I could feel it stir the air
as it spoke.
Please come,
it said again, there is
urgent need here, there is
a great famine, a profound
drought, a bitter war,
a rage covering us all here.
Please come, it said again,
and I rolled over to change
which ear was exposed as
I try keep some of my hearing
to myself and not let just anyone
in that way, but it got into
the pillow itself and denied me
sleep, clearly saying again
and again:
please come, we
are vanishing, we are being
snuffed out the way breath
takes a candle flame
and just as the smoke
from that small extinguishing
lingers for a short time and
ribbons back and forth until
it’s gone, this whispering
can only reach you for a moment
until it too wisps away. Please
come, please,
until I could take no more
and talked back to it
and drowned it
and snuffed it
and blew on it until
it cooled into silence
and left me in darkness
to sleep and
keep to myself —
but I found
I could not.
Exile
It does not happen
overnight, but
one day your neighborhood
reveals itself to be
your enemy. You realize
the streets long to cradle
your crushed face. All the familiar
walls are reaching out,
first to hug your back
and then to hold bullets
that ache to pierce you
through and through. Soon
it becomes a daily race
to go from stoop to work
and back to stoop
while menaced
the whole time by place.
You spend every night
huddled in a room
you are not sure
you should trust. This
is where you’ve always lived;
you know you should belong in
your town, your place. But
what you know
and what you feel
are different. What you do
and what you should do
are different. This place
as it is and as it should be
are different and
suddenly it appears that
exile is no longer a function
of where you live.
Blood, Broken, World, Dream, Moment
Certain words — blood, broken,
world, dream — pretend to offer
surplus truth when I use them lately.
It’s my curse of the moment.
(Moment is another currently
resonant breath that promises more
than it delivers.) I’ve seized on these
particular little bombs and deploy them
too often. It’s as if they are
stuck to my tongue and won’t let go.
Each day’s the same: I wake up,
shudder at the morning news,
bow my head to work and mourn
and out they come, stale prayer:
blood, broken, world, dream, moment.
They shuffle, rearrange themselves and me:
broken world, blood dream moment;
broken moment, blood world dream;
dream blood, world moment broken.
I am supposed to be better at this,
I tell myself. I am supposed to be
in control of words and that is now
in doubt. Even if the world moment
is a blood dream, I’m not supposed to be
broken when I face it. I’m called to be
better than this broken chant, to offer
better than a tired dream to this world
obsessed with blood at this moment.
I’m supposed to watch the news and
snatch a more profound vocabulary
with which to speak of it — yet here
we are and here I am staring into this,
a deep crack filled with echoes: blood,
blood, blood; broken, broken,
broken; world, world; moment,
moment; dream, dream, dream.
Go
Go.
Live a sunlit life.
Leave shadow to me
and my team.
Go.
Turn off the news,
enjoy the silence.
Leave the dealing
and terror to me
and my team.
Go.
Live in constant
yes to the feel of sun
upon your face.
Leave the moon
and all its gentle maybe
to me
and my team.
Go.
Get with your
folks. Get safe
and get comfy.
Leave the spikes
and road rash, the
holes and fractures,
the dinging of the fight bell,
the complexity of how much itch
you can take before screaming,
to me and my team.
We are out here
already. Born here,
in fact. It’s nothing new
to us.
Go.
Do the nothing new for you.
Leave the rest.
We got this.
We do.
Current Events, April 2017
All day,
out of boredom
and patience,
I stare at the news.
Red flags
to the horizon:
carpet for
a nation-sized room.
Too much red
for me.
Too many
stabs:
death of a thousand
cuts, and I’m
not even
their true target.
How selfish
of me to think
I matter
in all this.
How like me
to make it about me.
How like me
to know that,
yet be unable
to stop myself
from centering
on my own pain.
Immobility (Ludacris Remix)
Originally posted several times, in different versions, under the title of “Stationary.” Major revision.
When I move, you move…just like that.
Remember sticking a thumb in the air?
When I move, you move…just like that.
Remember turning a key in the ignition?
Remember the last minute ticket,
the just going,
the just getting out there?
Hell yeah, hey DJ, bring that back.
Tell yourself
we all used to travel without a lot of thought.
We all used to travel without a lot of anything.
We all used to trust one another.
Try to forget
it was instead
a flag-wrapped dreamtime,
a selective American walkabout,
a stack of ad copy woven into a myth of a collective self.
When I move, you move.
Just like that.
When I move, you move.
Just like that.
Tell yourself this is all new.
Tell yourself it’s a shame.
No one picks up hitchers anymore.
No one buys a ticket last minute
and gets on a plane without running a gauntlet.
No one rides a train.
We fear the buses will smother us
in other people’s germs.
We fear that the ship will sink.
We don’t drive at all
without a screen to tell us
where we’re going.
We don’t move at all
without a plan for what to do
when we get to where we’re going.
Tell yourself :
There are reasons;
things are different now.
Tell yourself:
It’s a necessary change;
things are different now.
Tell yourself:
Back in the day
cops gently patted every traveler down
exactly the same soft way;
things are different now.
Tell yourself:
Back in the day
they’d let all the folks
go easily on their way;
things are different now.
Tell yourself:
the bullets peeping from the cylinders
of those old police revolvers
were only there for show;
things are different now.
Tell yourself:
standing still
is all the safety you need
and you aren’t going to move
even as everyone else
blurs by you
because things are different now.
Insist upon ludicrous fantasy,
insist it has to go back
to some way it never was
for anyone but you —
when I move, you move. Just like that.
even as the world
turns its back upon you
and moves on.
Night Out
A room full of hookahs,
craft beers, slick cocktails,
and a blues-rock band:
are you surprised to learn
you could count the brown faces here
on less than two full hands?
Each of my hands is empty
as tonight I’m not drinking, not smoking,
just listening and speaking to friends.
I dig the tunes but feel
an uneasy itch inside me.
It’s one thing to know of
a slow acting poison,
another entirely
to be reminded of it
by a good moment
in a good place
with good people.
We leave early.
On the way back to the car, I fill
one hand with pepper spray.
Parked behind us:
a pickup truck
with a big bad flag
hanging on the back,
and I tighten my grip
on what little safety I have.
Getting Messed Up During The Late News
I’ve forgotten this morning
how right it felt last night
to grab a drink or three
as missiles fell over there.
It must have been something,
fire splashing up from ground to sky
the way whisky’s heat came surging
from gut to chest.
I’ve forgotten this morning
how right it felt last night
to smoke, a thick layer in my air
like a pall above a bomb crater.
It must have been something there,
wreckage obscured by haze, people
scrambling to take cover at first, slowly
taking stock afterward — counting, recounting.
I’ve forgotten this morning
about last night and what felt right,
or wrong, or scary, or justified
by logic or magic, flag or cash.
It must be something there,
everyone wondering how hell
could possibly be different,
could possibly be worse.
I wake up in selfish mourning
that I have such certain luxury here
to imagine all hell is overseas, to pretend
I am not myself a demon
for getting
messed up
during
the late news
then waking in the morning
to damn others for last night
when all I wanted to do
was not feel my own finger
on those buttons,
those triggers, the pulse points
on all the bodies over there
that have ever gone cold.
Goals (#MMTU)
My next goal is to eat my way out of this darkness that has swallowed me.
After that I want to eat the soul of the President
once I’ve established a stable residence
as I know how long and how tough a job it will be
to convert that thing into fuel and waste and memory.
It won’t be a good memory
but someone has to do that for the good of the state.
I think I have been chosen for that, for I understand the words
that keep appearing on the flag behind his head:
MENE
MENE
TEKEL
UPHARSIN
abbreviated for the convenience of the moment
and as a way to control the gag reflex:
#MMTU
It’s a lot of weight to carry in my mouth: chewing, chewing for days on end.
No one said it would be easy or quick or appetizing, of course.
After I’ve done my gross digestion, my next goal
will to find gainful employment as a dark muse
for someone equally constrained by the history of their appetites.
We have to stick together.
It wasn’t our choice to eat the souls of monsters
and foolish greed-dogs, to save the rest of you
the chore of small-bite revolution.
After I’ve done that we will band together
into a guild of songsters with worn out teeth and bowels
singing cracked and painful arias about urgency
and the sound of those political bones
in our teeth. We’re only doing it to exhort you
to help us. There are so many of those tough souls
to be eaten. Maybe a rousing chorus will help you choose,
won’t you sing with us, sing along,
MENE
MENE
TEKEL
UPHARSIN
#MMTU
I have eaten the damn President’s soul
It was heavy but not heavy enough
to keep me from that task
But the flag keeps waving
and the words the words keep coming up
If the whole kingdom must be consumed
you will have to open wide
we will have to open wide side by side
MENE
MENE
TEKEL
UPHARSIN
#MMTU
For Sound
They tell us
to be at peace,
silence matters most.
That’s what they tell us
with their mouths,
say it out loud, praise
silence with
their voices though
language brought us here,
carried along the whorls
of our ears, through the labyrinth
concealed within.
What we are now
is what the last sentences
we heard made us.
When they praise our silence,
urge us to be silent, sit
with nothing in our mouths,
say nothing,
they are saying
shut up,
we have no need
to be further built.
Write it down instead, they say.
Write it down,
we’ll read it in silence,
sound it out for ourselves…
they never stop talking about
how we should sit in stillness.
This is what they think
of us — two ears, one mouth,
they say. This is the balance,
they say:
more listening, less talk —
forgetting lungs, larynx, tongue,
lips, resonance from sinus, sonorities
built into our bones; we’re made
to have voices;
clearly there is something
to be said — so we
talk. They don’t like it. We
chant. They don’t like it. We
yell. They don’t
like it. They don’t like it —
shhhh, they say. Shhhh,
to people built from sound,
built for sound.
Your Alien Head
You woke up
this morning
blurting:
what if the head
on my shoulders
isn’t my own?
You only began
to suspect this yesterday
when a crude bias
fell off your tongue
out into the air
where all could see
and you stuttered out
what “the aliens”
told you to say:
oh, my God,
there is no way;
that is so unlike me,
I’m so embarrassed,
you people know me,
you know I’m not like that;
sorry, sorry, sorry.
Today you finally decide
it’s not your head.
It wasn’t you talking at all.
That’s the only explanation.
It wasn’t you.
When you think about it,
you can’t recall growing your head
from a stub into
the glorious but troubling orb
it is today, can you?
It might just be
foreign to you. It might be
alien country.
Maybe your thoughts are
an invasion flock,
a many-tongued
horde behind your face,
and you’ve grown up never having
a clue about its origin…
it would explain so much,
excuse so much…
and after all,
it’s what’s in your heart
that counts.
The Power Of Imagination
My goodness
is real, he tells
himself. Is pure
snow, cloud,
hay beard.
My intentions
are pale,
calm, bowl of
Cream of Wheat.
If it’s not
white, it’s
imaginary,
he tells himself.
There are
other shades
of world, but
they are his
to define. His
imagination
is all. My intentions
are my best
self, he says.
My goodness
is perfect, light
of a perfect
universe, gift
of a blinding
faith. White
as milk,
white as
the light
of some
cloudy dawns.
Of course
I’m clean,
he insists.
Of course,
I am without stain —
you are thinking
of my unbleached
ancestors, but know that
I did not inherit
a thing from them —
in fact, let me
put this to rest:
they are
imaginary so
my imagination,
my rules. They were
devoid of color too. This is
how I keep it real,
he says,
eyes closed so tight that
all turns white in there.
American Exceptionalism
This dissection of the body politic.
This level of disease being revealed.
This opening along natural seams.
This observation of
burst vessels
open sores
mottled skin
jaundice
desiccated gums
and lesions.
All routine. All
as expected.
What surprises us, then:
not so much what we find,
but that we find it
here
when we’ve been told that
inside
we are made of, not organs
and blood,
but
sweet light.
Dark Matter 