This story isn’t even remotely true;
this is myth on a skateboard
rolling through. It has streamers
and smells like fresh bread but
it’s as fake as a tail wriggling
in a predator’s mouth as the skink
escapes to grow another distraction.
But that taste…you want more, of course
and you’ll get more as long as you
keep your ear to the ground, your nose
to the grindstone, your shoulder
to the flat tire you are trying to make
round. Meanwhile all around you go
the fast stories faking their paths
and drawing merry millions behind them
with tails in their mouths
while scaly little truths
get away into the underbrush
and continue growing into
dragons.
Tag Archives: political poems
Here Be Dragons
Overheard Lament
It would have been better
to have been born now
rather than earlier.
There would already be rules
for growing into this.
This horror would be normal
and unhappy would be
default and somehow
there would be love and
silliness seeded among
thorns.
Daily news
would be a stream
of heartbreak
as it is today but kids
could shrug it off and
slowly accept gray as
a perfectly acceptable
color for lawns and
flowers. Someone
would make a game of
bullet casings and
police tape. Any songs
would be written
around the wail of
a siren,
and children would sleep
at least now and then
immersed in dreams of joy
fit for their times, dreams
that would seem
wounded and dim
to us today.
Lightning Over There
Lightning over there
already.
Here, we’re still just
waiting for it. Sitting outside
watching the sky over
the far hills blink red, listening to
the late rumble that follows.
It’s got a few miles to go yet
before it gets here,
if it does get here —
might only get a few drops,
might get a deluge
and a firestorm.
A few years ago
a big one took down
all the power here on the hill
and tore a branch off
the maple out back
that was the size of a tree
all by itself.
We stared at it
lying there the next day,
adjusting to how different
the backyard looked now
in changed, unfiltered light.
I try to remember
what it looked like before that
and fail.
So:
lightning over there,
and here there’s nothing
yet. We sit and shiver
from experience
of how much can be erased
in no time at all.
We say
maybe it won’t be that bad.
We don’t say
maybe it will be worse,
even though the sky
is as red
as a torn heart.
January Dreamers
The sleepers wake in January
and wring their white hands.
They turn to each other,
pale and damp, and say,
did you feel that? A sort
of wave in the air,
a plunge in the temperature?
Maybe we dreamed it.
Maybe it will go back
to how it was. Maybe, even,
it’s still the same and we know
it will go back. Yes, we’re sure
of it. Let’s stay up a little while
and wait for that and then
we can fall again to sleep
under the warm cover.
So they sit up and wait
until the air cracks even colder.
They shrug and go back
to sleep, dreaming
they will always have enough cover
to stay warm, dreaming
of spring’s return,
of fire on the hearth at home,
all the way to Beyond The Cold,
back to the Used To Be;
when they do not wake,
their dreams having been
trumped by the cold,
they are eventually pulled
from their beds and tossed
alive and unbelieving into
newly built pyres
of an ancient design.
My Hand On Fire
Are you truly so surprised
to learn that my hand
bursts into flame
a few times daily,
and that I have learned
to shut out the pain
and move on?
You shouldn’t be.
This is old hat
to many
who are
torched so often,
so casually.
We learn it early and well
or we die
young, curled up
in our own ashes.
Do not mistake
apparent ease
in handling it
as a form of
acceptance.
We still
hurt, we still
now and then
scream with the hurt,
still have problems
with grip and
feeling — and for me
at any rate, woe
unto those who offer
to shake my hand
while still holding
a burnt match, for
I will accept.
A Low Grade Fever
A low-grade fever
flaring: that is how
the chronic urge
to self-destruct becomes
acute, the same
for one person as it is for
a nation: sometimes
a dank heat goads one to
frantic energy, one begins
slashing at anchors; a desire
to let all go bubbles inside
like infection; one may
say it’s better to burn,
better to release and fall
to embers and let another
build again; no matter
how familiar it is
it seems so simplistic,
so terrible,
to feel in the daily news
a steam that resembles
the heat of
one’s own will to die.
January 7, 2017
Whisky sip,
smoke draw
across lips,
snow,
St. Paul
and the Broken Bones —
soundtrack sweet as
buzz: a breath of peace
before deluge and
plunge, before
what soul is, where it
came from, who
holds it close, who
cannot grasp it, is
forgotten.
We sit, temporarily
satisfied in deep night,
sibilance outside as
one storm hisses toward
ending, as another
approaches.
Another sip
of whisky. Another
deep pull of smoke,
another song, and
at last,
sound sleep.
Lifesaver
When I was a lifeguard
there was a shed on the beach
where they kept the tools for lifesaving
and recovery
including
a set of hooks
for dragging the bottom
of the pond
to find a body if all hope
was lost but
I was never taught
to use them
so I’m currently useless
whenever there is no hope
but I am willing
to learn
because even if all I can do
is drag and weep
in the aftermath
of what’s coming
I will be willing to learn
for
the willingness to learn
in the face of disaster
is itself
a small but vital
type of
hope
In Contemplation Of A Possible Funeral There Is Precious Little Humor
Funny
he said as he
put white and
cream yellow gardenias
on the headstone
laid flat into the ground
with dirt still fresh around it
from setting it there
Funny
he said without laughing
that the off-whiteness
of some of the flowers
probably would have had
the departed
shaking mad
Funny
how that struck him
amid everything else going on
To think that whiteness
would have been
mandatory for the one interred here
even in death
even after
such strict adherence to it
was so much a part
of what killed them
Funny
Singed Eagle
I woke up to
a singed eagle
perched on a limb
outside my window,
could smell burned feathers
through the glass as if
the bird was still smoldering.
It did not call out or move
once in all the time
I was watching it, but disappeared
silently once I turned attention
to the daily routine;
the smell lingered, clung
to anything it had touched,
so that we could not move
without being reminded of fire.
I Dare Not Speak
I dare not speak
of how snow has not covered us
yet this year. I am trying hard
to set myself apart
from my usual despair at white,
all white upon everything.
I dare not speak of how
night will soon come
to us, nor will I dare to assume
that it was designed only to conceal
what we love, or how shadowed
this town will soon become.
I dare not slander. I dare not
praise. I dare not utter any word.
I’ve laden so much upon my words.
They are beginning to break
as I am, as we are all beginning
to break. The sound of words breaking
in every stressed breath.
Each word pulled between lie and truth.
Each season, each time of day
open for interpretation. White purity
or poison, dark evil or joy,
light full of stab and soothe,
dark brimful of peace and strife.
That anyone bothers
to communicate beyond
touch and intimate connection
leaves me breathless. Words
are failing us, falling from our lips
with nothing inside them. To survive
we will have to do more than talk
and when we do speak we
will have to look each other
in the eyes and admit so much
of what we’ve let words cover:
our fears, or assumptions,
all the things we dared to do
from behind them. We will have to act
as if no words existed before this
if we are to remake this silenced world,
and I will be confident with neither praise
nor slander for anything that happens
until that great work is well begun.
Let it snow. Let it be an all white world.
When night comes,
let all the white world
fall into in that gentle dark.
I will build either way,
pushing new words,
like bricks,
into place.
The Task At Hand
You thought it was going to be
slow blues from here to death,
but here you are, fist up
at the edge of the pit again.
You thought these days would be lyric
and pastoral, and instead
you’re back in the narrative,
hoping surreal hopes.
Upon consideration
you surrender to it and see
that you’ve always been
at the mercy of surprise
whenever you thought
things were settled once
and for all. No matter how you try to be
for you, you always let yourself be drawn
back for all and as much as you know
you can’t do otherwise, as much as you know
you’ve never done otherwise,
you wish it had not fallen to you
to be here one last time —
fist in the air
at the edge of the pit,
shouting the story of
the dissolved timepieces, the bruised
American hearts you thought you could count on,
because this is such an American tale, isn’t it —
this fable of reinvention, this constant
faux-noble bewilderment at the rush
of circumstance through
your remaining time here. You’re
no hero, you know — just another
aged-out scene kid praying it makes
a difference when you put your body
and voice into one more time
on one more front line. Understanding at last
you’d do it with no hope at all
because you couldn’t do otherwise
and look at yourself
ever again. So: fist in the air,
waiting to die, hoping there’s one last
twelve-bar respite ahead of you,
you plunge into chaos
shouting against a bitter end.
Perfect World
in the perfect world
there is a king
whose breath smells
like John Wayne’s
plague sweat
in the perfect world
there is a queen
who has moved
mountains to make
grand graves
in the perfect world
their armies carry
guns of gold and
can stab you with
a sharp flag
in the perfect world
you are a creamy poster or
a near-white song of victory
a mascot on the sideline
a horse to carry their spoils
in the perfect world
the things they’ve stolen
back them up or lead them
like suicides
off your cliffs
in their perfect world
you are the Elder Race
they call upon to charge
their teams and weapons
with magic
in their perfect world
they don’t exist
any more than you do
as they are individually lessened
to increase larger perfection
How To Be Done With It
Shout “good riddance”
when lightbulbs burn out,
when discarding
envelopes that won’t adhere,
when contemplating
the bitter end of the bank account.
When the television
goes off for non-payment,
when the phone
goes off for non-payment,
when the heat and the lights
go off for non-payment
and the landlord has ominously
mentioned
“proceedings,”
sit there with either a sneer
or a triumphant,
head-lowered demeanor.
Don’t kill anyone
too much, except in your mind (admit
at least that you feel up for it though
before you shake that thought
out of your hands
and back into the steel trap you keep inside
to hold such wickedness).
Tell them
to bring it on,
whatever it is.
It’s time for it,
whatever it is.
It’s not like it’s been
sustainable for a while now.
It’s not like it’s been
a society for a while —
more of a cautionary tale
or a bucket list
getting checked off
more and more
aggressively,
so tell them
you’ve got plenty of pens
and all the time in the remaining
world.
The Story Of A Painting
Once upon a time
a painter stole a canvas
from some people he met
and painted over their work
in flat white.
Forced some other people
to help paint over it,
painted some parts
himself…and here it is.
It’s not all terrible. Some parts
are sublime in fact. But a lot of it is dreck and
some parts are just OK. How you feel about it
depends on how far back you stand.
Inadvertently, it’s high concept
and interesting. Execution is
imperfect and inconsistent. It’s
insistent and overdrawn and
it’s all compounded by having
a terrible frame. Currently it hangs
on a wall that’s on fire. Flames loud
as a band — some say it sounds like
NWA, some say it sounds like
Lee Greenwood. It just sounds like
fire to most who see it, though some
just like closing their ears
and warming their hands before it
while staring at their favorite parts —
this perfect flower, that lovely flag —
while thinking about
happily ever after.
Dark Matter 