Old poem.  Published as a reminder of old poems done many years ago…

onward,
T

This is a very old poem, also a Duende Project track from our “americanized” album from 2007.
Link to the recording below the poem.

August 16, 1977:
it was pissing rain the night
Elvis Presley died

I want the night back anyway

the way I want the switchblade back
I threw in Thompson Pond that night
that German switchblade
with the brass shoulders and ebony scales
I want it clean I want it shiny
and I want the tip to be back to the way it was
before Henry Gifford snapped it off
trying to work it out of the floor
after we’d played drunken chicken for an hour or so

I tossed it in anger
as far out into the water as I could
and then I hit Henry Gifford
in the mouth when he called me a stupid fuck
for tossing such a beautiful knife so far away
and even after he apologized
I hit him again and again
until I saw his sister watching me

I want to take it all back
so Henry Gifford’s sister Diana
can see me again the way
she used to see me
and furthermore
I want to kiss her right this time
I want to kiss her the way I could kiss her now
not like the sloppy teenage drunk I was that night
all on fire with weed
and schnapps
and inexperience
I want her to not turn away from me
without knowing that I had just tossed
my beloved knife out into the nighttime lake
I want her to know what passion can do to me
I want my passion back

because I think I lost it that night
I tossed the knife into the lake
then let Diana run from me
when she saw me beat her little brother bloody
without having a chance
to make her understand why it was all so
necessary

and though I have had
many knives since then
even another German switchblade
just like that one
and though I have kissed
so many people since then
in love and friendship
and lust and grief

and though I‘m so much better
at all of this stuff now
because control is everything
and control is all I have at 47

still there are times – rainy summer nights –

when I get up late to use the bathroom
and while I’m standing there
I look out my window across the manicured grass
I can just taste
a ghost of peppermint schnapps on my lips

then I fumble for the light
I pick up a pen
and I write myself back
toward August of 1977
when the radio played the songs of a dead man
while I nursed
my bruised and tender fists
and cried like a baby
for the very last time

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The track from the album.

Revised. From 2016.

This must be the place

I bet I could run into the street
directly from stage
screaming “can I get some DMT here
and then I need to borrow a nail gun
just for an hour I promise”
and I bet no one will blink

They’ll call it creative
They’ll call it a performance piece
They’ll call me eccentric

It’s a lot like the place

where while on acid in college
I hollered
“you fucking pigs” at cops
while I was sitting outside at 4 in the morning
in nothing but shorts
cleaning my nails with a knife
with my back in a snowbank
I never saw the inside of a cell

They called me troubled
They called me lost
They called it an isolated incident

This is still the same place

where yesterday I yelled my way out of
an honestly undeserved ticket
by simply telling the cop
they were full of shit
and no way I did that
and did I look like the kind of person
who’d do that

They decided I didn’t
They let me go
They let me drive off still fuming and punching the wheel

This must be the place

where I get away with all that
where I live to tell the tale
where no one has ever tried to choke or shoot me
for being an asshole on drugs
for being a loudmouth on booze
for being righteously indignant
for being an idiot
for being a stupid kid

They have another way
They have an alternative solution
They have darker fish to fry

Revised, from 2021.

He was born 
in a hospital
and somehow
became a hospital

It started early with him admitting
every sick arrival
Lining them up
deep in his hallways

Soon couldn’t help but live his life
stumbling between chronic and acute
manic and depressive
expressive and catatonic 

Rough way to live
he tells himself whenever
the crush inside him
becomes nearly intolerable

Followed at once by
a sigh and a shrug
Reminds himself
it was his choice to let them in

His fault entirely
He’s so damn full
of pestilence that he
can’t walk straight or think

healthy thoughts
Looks up at the pictures
of his family on the walls
The founders of the institution

The ones who set the mission
on its path
Trips over an old corpse
Chokes on the facts

It’s not their fault I’m a hospital
he tells himself
I ought to be used to this
by now

The fact that I’m not
is my fault too
He pulls himself up
by the gurneys

Lives his life
on the ICU floor
answering pages
and praying he will code

Revised, from Feb 2020. Original title, “Movies.”

In the first film

you play a decrepit man
driving a rancid silver car
through the thick old towns
on the spine of Cape Cod,
your neck cranking side to side
as you exclaim over all
the colonial homes
you will never be able to enter,
let alone own. 

In the sequel,

you are
an arsonist.

Revised from 2018.

A fire from earth’s core
breaks free now and then

to remind us of what is possible
beyond our own capacity.

Comes to the surface
through generations of old stone.

When it catches anything,
it burns everything.

We stare into it,
offer it fear and faith.

Name it for a goddess or god,
curse it as an evil,

flee it and photograph it
and tell stories of

its swift re-creation of the land
it seizes, the ocean it boils.

On the horizon, its glow announces
the emergence of the central fire.

as the world is made new
in a fashion we cannot replicate.

No wonder we gave it a name
brimful of a divinity all its own.

Revised from 2015

An oarfish came 
to the surface
to die, a nightmare-seed
twenty-three feet long.

It entered the shallows
near where
a man was painting an eye of Horus
on each side 

of the bow
of his leaking boat,
hoping to keep it afloat
for just one more season.

He looked down
and saw the oarfish —
frilled, silvery,
taking forever to pass —

thought of luck and fate; looked back
at his boat and saw the new, wet, flat eyes
of his old livelihood; considered
how long he’d been here,

how long
he had worked, how long he’d
fished without ever seeing anything
like this oarfish in a net or on a line.

Lord, he thought,
I am so tired, and my boat is so old;
there is so much left to learn, to see;
so little time left in which to learn.

What the oarfish 
thought of all this
is unknown for by the eye of Horus
and the eye of Ra,

there was no telling
that tale of a life
spent in darkness
and ending in light.

Such a tale would not have
much of us in it; not enough 
of what the gods intended for the oarfish,
but this life could not have simply been

so a poor man would be moved
to change his own life
by watching something
he thought was fantastic die.

from 2005. Revised.

I ride this world as if Ganesh himself
had placed me on his back.
I will fall as I have risen,
and I am content.

I do wish I was nothing again —
just my parent’s desire, strong enough
to come forth and be, too weak
to be more than that.

I wish I was nothing again
for Nothing is worth saving,
Nothing sits in the doorway and thinks
before taking a step either way.

Some of you understand this: A tree falls,
the elephant straightens. A leaf falls,
the tree lifts itself higher. What will happen
if I fall? Nothing, I pray. Nothing at all.

Poem from 1999 or so, heavily revised.

In the year I was thirty-eight
the fragile man I was then
looked at the peonies
in the backyard 
and the progress of the year
seemed so fast

I thought about how quickly
those pink and white heads
would droop
and drop their petals
into the grass to fade and decay

I feared
that if the year of thirty-eight
continued this pace into
my year of forty-forty-one-forty-two-beyond
I feared that every thing I had learned
by putting myself together
would come undone

This is the year
I have turned thirty nine
The peonies did not die
as they always have before

The path has stitched every piece of me
at last into one person
and it is harder for most to tell
that I have ever been split
I have always known what I was 
and have walked around in fear
of stitches beginning to pull
and seams giving way

In the year
I turned thirty nine
I have learned
something more

Remembering today the scent of peony
Savoring the memory of those incandescent blooms
opening and surprising me with the heat of their pink
and the ice regalia of their white
that would fade so quickly
I have realized
that in all these memories
there is still enough of youth to make
my mortality
irrelevant

I have learned that thirty eight
was an opening and not an end
I have realized the sweetness of the peony
was the product of youth spent lavishly
secure in the knowledge
that not only would the dark strength
of the leaves and roots last
and not only would the cool shade below the leaves
last and refresh
Not only would the roots that hold so lightly to the earth
leave their legacy anyway after the year’s efforts
were spent and dried and gone

In this year I am thirty-nine
and the peonies have died but not as they have before
I have learned to rejoice
in how once the blooms and the leaves were gone
and the grey strong winter had buried their bones
the actual plants in the fullness of their beings
have risen again
from the poor soil along the garage

This is the year that has opened
my eyes my nose and my throat to the world

The year I passed through fear
to let my seams bulge and stretch

The year my senses
have saved me from falling apart

The job is to ensure
that the kitchen knives 
stay sharp

Sweeping the blades
at thirty degrees
across the diamond stone

to be certain 
they will cut
when called upon

and to make a place
for them to hang
within easy reach when needed

There was a time
when a kitchen knife
cut meat and roots and throats

with equanimity
and no one thinking
it should be otherwise

as the red gushing neck
of the hen too old
to lay any more

promised nothing
but a good dinner
and a hearty soup

Just part of the cycle
of the household
That whole life and death thing

which we no longer have
to think about
as we go about our day

from 1989 

1.

At the pre-shift meeting,
our ops manager
talks down
to the crew boss.

He repeats himself often,
speaks loudly,
pronounces Namthavone’s name wrong twice
and in two different ways.

He explains to me later
that he understands these people,
thanks to two tours he did in country.
“I had a lot of fun there,” he tells me.

I say nothing to this.

I am remembering
that Namthavone
once told a story in ESOL class
about his tattoos –
the script that runs
around his body,
up and down the arms,
up through his hairline 

at the back of his neck.
He said they date back to
when he fought in the Highlands
for the CIA against the Communists.
He said they were charms
against bullets, knives;
incantations
to avoid being seen
by those who would do him
harm.

2.
At dinner,
Larry explains
how Spanish women
are passive by nature.

Again I say nothing,
recalling Lourdes and Santa
after second shift last Thursday,
standing toe to toe with boxcutters
on the median strip
just off the factory property,
mad eyes hidden
in third-shift darkness.

Lourdes had just told Santa

that she was sleeping

with her man Ruben.
Santa replied

that must be where

he’d caught the drip.

I see them raise their arms
as the first cruisers arrive
and scatter the watchers.

It took three cops to tear

Santa from Lourdes,
four to hold Lourdes back

once that was done.

From where I sit tonight,
I can see the women seated
on either side of Ruben,
still bandaged, not speaking,
forcing alternate bites

of their cooking on him,
re-drawing the rules of engagement.

3.
Daniel Opong walks into work
and announces that he entered this country
under a false name
but now has established legal residency
and after ten years working here as
Daniel Opong
wishes to be called
by his real name,
Anthony Otoo.

“Who do they think they are?”
says Pauline, our personnel manager.
“That’s the third one this month. How dare they?”

I am told to fire him
for falsifying his application.
I refuse.

I suggest that she would do the same thing
if she were facing whatever
Daniel faced back home.
I lose. I am reprimanded.
He is fired anyway, nods when I tell him
about the personnel office’s decision,
then shakes my hand.

I apologize.
“You do not have to be sorry,
because I’m not sorry”,
he tells me
as he leaves.

“I would do it again.”

I am hoping I would.

4.
Araminta tells me
that she used to hate
having me for a boss,
but now she thinks I’m ok.

I don’t know
what I’m doing differently these days,
and I tell her that.

She doesn’t know either,
but she’s sure she’s right.

I tell her
I’m not sure I agree with her,
I think I keep quiet a lot more often
than I should.

She looks at me
for a long minute,
saying nothing.

5.
The management team 
always leaves
after everyone else is gone.
On a Friday night, we usually head 

to McGuire’s for a beer,
McGuire’s because we’re sure not to see
any of our employees there.

When I drive home from the bar
later that night,
the apartments
that line the road to the factory
are still lit and raucous.
There’s a party going on somewhere.

I recognize a few of the cars outside from the factory lot.

I don’t know who lives here.

Sometimes I think

none of us
knows
 anyone who lives here.

Revised.  Older poem — from 1999 or so?

Right after I turned eleven
Joe Frazier’s left hooks
were constantly on my mind
so, although I was a natural righty,
I threw one unprovoked
at Jeff Maxwell’s jaw
while we were goofing around
in the middle school gym
and laid him out
flat and crying.

I admit it felt OK
to see him there, sliding
on his ass away from me as I tried
to explain it was all in fun
to Mr. Tornello
as he shook me and dragged me to
his sweat-soaked office to await
my parents.

I learned something that day.

Right jabs and Muhammad Ali
were on my mind a few years later
when Henry Gifford
got dropped, this time in anger,
on the shores of Thompson’s Pond
for cussing me out over my being angry
because he’d broken my switchblade.
This time there was blood on his mouth
and I admit it felt OK
to see it shining moonlit black
on his face and I was shaking glad
that I hadn’t had the knife in hand
at the time.

I learned another thing that day.

Kung-fu movies and Bruce Lee
were much on my mind a few years after that
when it felt OK to deliver
a straight-arm open palm blow to the side
of Joe Peron’s nose in a work dispute,
and there was blood again
and the gentle snap of his bridge breaking,
and he knelt holding his nose in his hands,
and that felt even better than OK for a minute;
because we were men
we just shook it off
and told no one of the fight,
but Joe steered clear of me after that,

and I felt fine,
and I kept learning.

How good it felt then,
and how good it would feel again
if the opponents I have now
could be dispatched that easily.

I stand in despair
of unpunchable bills,
bloodless banks, ravening for me;
I’m helpless before
the creeping sense
of having no enemy now
I could beat. 

I can’t fight
what I am today:
old and body-broken,
weak and endgame poor;
obsessed with overthinking 
how much harder
I could hit today
if I could still hit,
now that I know
how it feels to be hit.

I stand in the kitchen
thrashing the kitchen air –
cross, jab, hook, uppercut,
palm strike, temple strike,
slash and stab, icepick grip,
sword grip, kick a support
off a rickety chair.

I was such a bully once.
I had such narrow eyes,
fixed always upon the easily defeated.

I’m learning.

I once again narrow my eyes.
The urge to admire again
the sight of blood I drew
is almost more than I can bear.
I don’t know
how much longer
I will want to hold on.

Originally posted on 10/28/12.

How to explain a new color?
How to define it beyond calling it
a crisp, refractive purple
only visible behind my eyes?

I sit in my driveway 
thinking of two women
panhandling in the rain at the end of our street
at the start of a hurricane, 

and of how
to explain this color 
I know I have
never seen before.

I asked them 
if they had a place to go.
One smiled and the other said,
“Thank you, bless you sir.”

I’m sitting in my driveway
looking at a color
with closed eyes, 
resting my head on the steering wheel.

Looking at a color I’ve never seen,
a clear and crisp refractive purple
in the crazed, urgent, irregular form
of a paper flower or a crumbling gem.

This is the color
of a blessing or a mercy,
the color of driving back down the hill
to take them to a shelter,

the color of shame when they refuse
to get in my car,
the color of understanding
why they refuse;

the color of a subsequent prayer
for them, the color of feeling
that I have not given enough,
to them, or maybe to anyone.

Originally posted 12/16/2009.

No one photographs him
more than once
after they realize

that the only pictures
that show him happy
show him onstage.

All other images
make him look like
a pillar of salt.

What’s his motivation?
He gave up everything
to gain a spotlight.

That smile you see up there
is genuine, if fleeting.
Stick with that.

Next time, use no flash.
Catch him standing there
in his natural setting:

darkness all around
as he pretends like mad
that he is the sun.