because of
the intense
social pressure
because
of the wild
speculation
because of
the depth
of suspicion
because of
the climate
of fear
we are withholding
the benefit
of the doubt
are reviewing
the situation
from all angles
will determine
if a measured
response may be needed
and will implement
such measures
with all due speed
from 2013, revised.
Being Native
and White
on Thanksgiving
means being tired
of plowing the six weeks of stupid before this day.
Tired of explaining. Tired of walking on Pilgrim shells.
Tired of having to justify marking the day
as painful or joyful or neither
or both. Being Both on Thanksgiving
means I get to give myself the ulcer
I richly deserve. Means being hungry
in every sense of the word. Means
I want to give thanks for something
I stole from myself, or perhaps I did not;
being Both on Thanksgiving
means nothing is simple. I am thankful
for the tightrope, thankful for the mash-up
problems, thankful for looking like
I ought to be oblivious, thankful for
a good talking to. Being Neither, fully,
on Thanksgiving means I ought to give me
a good talking to. I am angry enough
to ignore much and fantasize more
over the boiled onions only my Dad eats
and the meat stuffing with chestnuts only my Mom eats,
angry enough to lose my appetite in public,
angry enough to be redder than the damned canned
cranberry sauce. Being Me on Thanksgiving
means I sit down to the table and eat like a fat man,
a continent’s worth of overkill, filling my dark gut
till I have to shed something to be comfortable
by the fire in the too-warm house of my parents
who are long past caring about anything but making sure
that the peace holds till night falls and we all go home
carrying the leftovers with us to feed on
for another whole year. Another harvest festival
passed, no guarantee of one next year, maybe
we’ll starve over the winter while being Native, being White,
being Neither, being Both, being the kind
who thinks it matters when you are choking on
so many bones.
It was sweet of you
to agree with me
when I said I mattered
Was sweet of you
to let me lick
your plate
Sweet as
hot candy
on a car floor
Sweet and soft
as shoveled earth
If I could I’d get up
from this shady grave
and hug you and pray
that you wait
until my back is turned
and I start to walk away
before you scrape off
the dirt that adhered to you
when we embraced
the dirt
you put me in
before you shudder
Revised from November 2021.
To write an American poem
insert
nature image here;
purple up those mountains,
you god.
Then chew
the scenery
until there’s nothing left
to suck from it. The
American poem,
a rigged dance
of myth and cynicism.
Right outside the poem
is where we step on
toes
until the pain becomes so strong
they cannot help but kick at us. Inside
the poem is where we apologize.
An American poem
should be brimful
of exuberantly shaded ghosts
and their decorative babies,
crying, screaming — playing dead.
If you write it someone will say
no no, not the babies, please.
Leave the babies out of it.
So precious, so beautiful.
Bah, humbug, you say,
though it’s not Christmas, it’s
the Fourth of July and the Fourth
of July is built on dead children.
Uses fireworks to justify
a war everlasting.
What’s that about the ghosts? You
don’t recognize yourself in there?
Still cheering, still writing,
strangely inverted? A good mirror
shows you your other side.
A better one shows you more than one.
An American poem
usually holds an America over half
of its readers cannot recognize.
See the babies
before their mirrors,
either clapping and laughing
or screaming, wondering
where we went wrong
that this is how we look now
from wherever
you find yourself
when you come near
an American poem.
The fireworks are done.
Sulfur and sizzle hang in the air.
Soon enough
I hope
we will retch
when on some lucky morning
we finally taste workers’ blood
in our orange juice
and after that move on
to sweeping the television
into a trash can
and after that recognize
that some so-called
“opposing political viewpoint”
is in fact
the smirk of a well-fed predator
seeking its next meal
and while it won’t be soon enough for all
I hope we will find the key
to the dusty old gun safe
and after only the briefest of stops
for unlocking and retrieving
step out into the day
with a hot spring
in our step
rude awakening behind us
and something resembling
a red but needed future
before us
and some
will moan about violence
but how you can think
they’ll stop smirking
without us being willing
to wipe that away
as a consequence
for them
feeding us blood with a smile
is beyond me
The boundaries implore us
to keep our heads in the game
and do our jobs.
Keep the homefires burning
but stop short of lighting new ones
if they go out.
We’ll be safe inside
but we should leave a door slightly ajar
for worthy guests.
Others are going
to try to get in. Remember
that there’s a lot of love here
for when the right ones knock
and want to shelter by the fire.
As for the rest, that’s what a gun is for.
If you need a penny at the store, take one
from the tray at the counter — but
only one per visit, you common thief.
Do not mistake
convenience for generosity.
Pay up or get out or just get out.
The boundaries come dressed
in dirty white robes that stink.
Could use a thorough airing out.
If you want to live here you have to
respect the boundaries even if they disrobe
and fully show themselves.
We wouldn’t like to see our boundaries
naked, though. You know they
wouldn’t ease up if they were stripped.
The boundaries thus exposed
would of course look less benign: all crotch,
no knee to bend in supplication.
Locked in, upright, decrepit, and cold.
Vision out of science fiction or perhaps
a frieze of history fully ossified.
It’s all you need. You don’t need a future.
The boundaries tell you how it will be
from now on: keep the home fires burning,
keep firing out the windows at the shadows,
keep your resources tight, expect nothing more
than a penny for your thoughts and all the ammo
you could ever need for when the fires go out
and you have to rob your neighbor
to survive.
We sit at home
with treats in baskets.
Lights on
because we fear
tricks committed
by men costumed
in camo, in blue,
worst of all
in pinstriped suits.
We give all we have and
turn the lights out for the night
then sit there waiting
for the late, ominous knock.
For our doors to be kicked in.
For them to tell us they want more.
Every day is Halloween
now. We know too well
what the ghouls look like.
Why do we even bother
with masks these days
when mirrors hold terror enough?
Icons, in the natural order of things,
almost always become demons.
They spend their loosened time
in sulfurous celebrity bars.
They put on horned shoes,
run through hell collecting fire.
They come back burnt,
drunk on notoriety.
They buy houses next door
and keep you up as they party all night.
In daylight they take up all your time
making you worry.
What happened, you say.
They used to be so bright and such.
What happened, you say.
It becomes all your breakfast chatter.
Maybe there will be
a redemption arc.
Maybe a demon or two
will be proven to have issues.
Maybe they drank and were abused
and were bipolar and addicted to fame.
Maybe they’ll make a come back
and claim an expanded niche among icons.
Your breakfast chatter slows down.
You wait for the next icon turned demon.
There will always be a next one.
Without redemption arcs we are nothing.
We barely remain citizens if there is no icon
to revile or demon to embrace.
As we are not icons
we cannot do it for ourselves.
All you need to do
is listen to understand
that the scales are buckling
and near collapse.
When they fail at last
and nothing
can be weighed and
the numbers trusted,
will we disagree
on what heavy
and light mean?
Maybe we’re already there.
A stone is thrown
and a child falls to the ground
to lie there unmoving.
The body fell with
a dense thud. The body fell with
no sound, as does a feather.
The stone was huge,
hurled with intention
by someone with great power.
The stone was light, simply tossed,
a great accident deeply regretted.
Now we’ve got to move the body
and figure out what to do next.
Whoever picks it up
needs to be prepared for how hard
that will be and how far
it will have to be carried
to wherever it will rest
and that lady we used to depend on
to keep the now-useless scales
can’t help with any of that.
In a park, I recognize
a family in tears
as they release balloons
for a son killed a few days ago
in a confrontation with
police.
I hear someone near me grouching
about the environmental impact
of a balloon release
and no one talking about
the environmental impact
of a boy being dead
as the balloons rise away.
Blue
or red
but both are
white as well
as well as
white as hell:
each built from
shaded interpretation,
then elucidation of
rationale for first mistakes
redoubled in each
subsequent mistake.
All I want
is to go home
to this place
of which they both speak
where no one I
have ever known
has ever lived.
A mystery home
of joy and backslapping,
of setting shoulders in unison
to the common wheel
to pull the bounty on board
forward to
the common feast.
That someone
has been from the start
under the wheel
and that the bounty on board
is far from
common to all and in fact
is crushing to many?
Details. A pittance
in the bank of memory.
All I want
is a home where I can rest
unbroken as I
have never been. Where
the red and the blue and
the white over our heads
is a banner, not a shroud.
1.
The queen
dies.
The ancient white storm eclipses
colors on the horizon.
Who will come rejoicing
from behind those clouds
to see the coronation
of the new monarch,
to come holding up the past
as proper future?
2.
Some of those who’ve been
struggling under that storm
for so long must now and then
dream of the mummified queen
on display in one
of their museums.
It’s not hard
to imagine the long lines
of the curious, wringing wet
as they come in from the storm,
filing past the case
she’s in, whispering
that they’d like to touch it
just to be certain.
The people
cackling madly
while they point and jeer
at what the vulgar old pig
and its brood stole
miss the sharp suited
emboldened criminals
busy stealing so much more.
The people
so insistent on
institutional justice for what’s been done
miss the need to mete out
individualized justice now
to those doing much worse now.
The people
screaming for indictments
other people need to serve
on the past
miss what they ought to do themselves
for the future. This is why
the people
cheering so loudly
for a well done speech
miss the sound
of switchblades snapping open
behind them in the crowd,
of weapons being switched
from one-hit wonder
to rock and roll.
Words to live by:
nickel and dime.
As in nickel and dime
all the way into next month.
As in nickel and dime me, lover,
all the way to the end.
Or one might say
a thousand cuts.
As in here’s a lifestyle
perfect for the man
with a thousand cuts.
As in to get to the core
takes a thousand cuts.
Maybe the next words
ought not to be words
at all. Maybe instead
the next message is
a backhand-slap
reimagining of
a national anthem,
any country will do;
you don’t get to sing along
because you don’t know
this melody. It’s not the one
you grew up singing.
It’s not what you were taught.
You’ve stopped sleeping and instead
wait for messages to come to you
in your dark bed. Your hope is that
the right one will come in overnight.
Your eyes sting in the morning
from eyestrain while
trying to read
something on the wall.
Ask the Colonial style furniture
on which I’m sitting.
It will tell you
I’m a heavyweight
but compared to the ledge
that juts into the basement
of this ragged, saggy house,
I weigh nothing. In 1890
instead of blasting
they figured it out and
put the house on that stone
then dug room for stone walls
around it and for 132 years
they’ve borne the weight
of all the wood and mice
and people who’ve been here.
Don’t tell that to my furniture,
though. It denies history
and the earth that holds it up.
It hogs the glory for bearing my weight
as if it has been my sole support.
Maybe it doesn’t know how often
I go to the basement and thank
the ledge and the dirt floor
for their years of service
to my big, dumb ass
and all the asses big and small
that came before me.
Don’t listen to the furniture.
It has forgotten that it came from
the same earth. It wants to take
all the credit for holding me up.
It’s as much
colonizer
as its dated style
would suggest.
Dark Matter
Dark Matter 