"How do I explain to my wife
that when I look out the window
I'm working?"
Joseph Conrad
Sunday, April 30, 2023
I'm tired of patriots.
the glorification of men
wearies me.
sick of heroes propped up
on the shoulders of the fearful.
sick of men chanting
freedom
with hatred in their eyes,
with death in their pockets.
freedom freedom
stab me with your freedom
will you break my bones
with your jackboots?
will you rend the skin
of my open hand?
2021
the world gives.
it gives and gives.
the world gives.
the skies fill with grey smoke
and I can't tell
I can't tell if the tears runnelling
down
are smoke tears
or are they tears
shed for the loss
of every mossy stone?
for every single thing
I have ever known.
the wheel turns.
it turns and turns.
the wheel turns.
I vainly thought
it would not
grind my bones.
10/18/2021
While living for a short time with relatives in central Florida as a teenager, I told the lie (thinking this mad tale of adventure would be my key to acceptance) of having seen a bobcat while walking in the piney woods.
I've seen precious few bobcats, always fleetingly and at a distance. A while ago, in broad daylight, unconcerned with my presence, one sauntered across my lawn, easily, gracefully climbed the woodpile, from there briefly perched atop the wall, then jumped down into invisibility. It was calm, deliberate, unhurried, completely self-contained, unmistakably untamed, master of its world.
Not at all like a lie.
10/5/2021
There was a small strip of waste land running along a leech-infested drainage ditch behind my childhood home. A few stunted trees, a maze of dank slippery paths that led nowhere but into dense, painful bramble.
It was Sherwood Forest, Darkest Africa, The Ardennes, Dan'l Boone's Dark and Bloody Ground.
Mad bull elephants were commonly heard snuffling, trumpeting, scuffing and stamping the dirt. Nazi troops were everywhere. Eager heroism breathed in every shadow. Keep your hand on your Bowie knife.
I went back once, years, decades later. I couldn't stoop low enough to enter the prickly tunnel into the bramble patch. And who was I to desecrate that simple place? Let Tarzan's bones lie undisturbed, mouldering under the leaf litter.
10/2/2021
killing two trees
not a lumberjack, no
not even an arborist
I spent a day
a full day limbing two trees,
pretending the lie of pruning.
in the eighteenth century
(the age of reason, we're told)
a guillotined head
would thunk
thickly into the merciful basket.
the eyes, for a second, two,
still bound unreasonably to the
world,
would scan quickly
with the finest wonder.
the tree turned away
from the giving sky
and shsh'd to the ground.
it hit the earth like a giant's fist.
how could a sound be so loud?
it shivered then, supine.
a thousand twigs whip the air,
a thousand whispered accusations.
the stillness came at last,
the air so slow, so slow to mend.
and then I saw
what I'd seen before:
a color not Linnaean,
a green untold,
a mottled gold
climbing the length
of the downed trunk.
climbing no more; now lost.
now lost.
9/30/2021
the harsh metallic mangle
of a rooftop fan
swallows the busker's moan,
leaves no space
for a lighter voice.
looking up from beneath
the broken brim
of her raggedy hat,
she mouths a mute song;
soft, soft strum in pantomime.
give me. oh give me.
the light washes thin.
the day wanes unmourned.
she packs away
her parlour guitar.
six sparrows bounce
and skitter
along the barren ground.
9/1/2021
We somehow fail to remember that this country was originally settled by religious fanatics. And then are flabbergasted and incensed when we discover the halls of government crawling with religious fanatics.
___
Notes from a town meeting in Milford, Connecticut, 1640:
Voted, that the earth is the Lord's and the fullness thereof; voted, that the earth is given to the saints; voted, that we are the saints.
8/3/2021
I awakened after dreaming that I was in love.
In the dream my self expanded and shone with an incandescent light. It was as though I could embrace the world, complete and without barriers.
I felt sure I would write about the dream. I was filled with a sort of messianic, proselytizing fervor. Knew the dream to be an overwhelming wonder, a mystery of potent purity to be revealed, shared with all.
But no... writing, talking about dreams isn't the same as dreaming. The dream resists. It doesn't want or need to come into the arena.
The dream abides in its own land, entire and sufficient.
7/28/2021
The older I get, as control slowly leaches from my life, the more pleasure I take in strictly ordering the petty details: the direction the toothpaste tube faces, arranging my socks just so.
The older I get, the more statistically likely it becomes that I won't be alive tomorrow.
My socks will have to fend for themselves.
7/17/2021
Coming out of the museum, he realized with alarm that some unnamed critical faculty had somehow deserted him. He had seen several sculptural busts, spanning centuries, produced by markedly different cultures: Head of a Warrior, Head of Buddha, Severed Trophy Head. They had all seemed exactly the same to him.
He wondered if he could any longer discern the difference between a Palestrina Kyrie and the barking of dogs.
He wondered if he ever could.
6/29/21
She cursed him, fluently. Not an ordinary, vulgar curse, it was floridly elaborate, free of expletives, and called down to him very specific, unpleasant harm.
He then pondered the efficacy of curses, the long history of humans wishing each other ill, striding with painful purpose through hidden corridors of occult ceremony. Trying to think about it logically, it came to him that he knew very little concerning the esoteric mechanics, the practicalities of cursing. Hollywood banalities filtered into his mind: a voodoo drum soundtrack, feathered shamans crouching in their cool jungle, gold-encrusted priestesses wielding chipped onyx daggers.
He scoffed "Jesus wept!" to himself, gave his shoulders a twitchy shrug, looked at her sadly, turned and walked away.
His hand reaching for the doorknob, he faltered, sharply wincing. As his knees, then his hands hit the floor the sound of drums filled his ears, coming from all directions.
6/24/2021
Saturday, April 29, 2023
tease out what I think
I know
from what is here
right in front of me.
the odor of a pine.
a black plastic bag
raggedly torn,
disgorging a musty yellow cascade
of last year's fallen leaves
to the dry earth.
a dove hoo hoo
hoo, away
off away in the distance.
an acid clear morning
like no other.
this clear morning
holding me in thrall.
5/23/2021
When a young man, I had a roommate temperamentally my exact opposite. Gregarious, effortlessly cheerful, unrelentingly outgoing, gifted with a nearly superhuman ability to expatiate eloquently and endlessly on the topic of his own daily existence. The telephone rarely left his hand.
Some of his anecdotes lost a little of their immediacy after the thirtieth retelling. I wanted to run screaming from the room: "I am not eavesdropping! I am not listening! I don't want to hear! Again!".
My wife wafted a thin smile across the coffee table as I (how many times now?) waxed eloquent on the evanescence of subtle flavors in best quality chocolate. Turning away, I thought I heard her run screaming from the room.
5/19/2021
standing in the grocer's line
I glance up,
catching the clerk
as she reaches back
with both hands,
shaking and freeing with a quick,
unconscious movement
the mass of her bundled hair.
before I could swallow
she had just as quickly
put it tightly back in place.
for an instant, Aphrodite stood
yearningly revealed.
then the clerk spoke:
did you find everything
you were looking for?
5/10/2021
I will not read
your autobiography.
feed your thousand pages
- dry, brittle, crisping -
to the bonfire
of indifference.
take instead my touch
to the root of your hair,
to the follicle
underskin.
trace the quiv'ring line
to the deepest heart
of you.
to the still, still heart
of you.
tug the shaman's mask
away...
another mask revealed.
a wasting, a cleansing,
an unsigned diary,
a fecund trial
met with frost.
4/17/21
When a child, I learned the sun would eventually wither and die; it has a lifespan like everything else in my experience. This knowledge filled me with a cobwebby fear. Sticky. Enveloping. And infused me with a pre-adolescent sense of superiority. (I know something horrible you don't...) A snot-nosed kid suddenly kin to Nostradamus.
I recently learned that long before the sun expands to nothingness, it will barbecue our planet to a cinder, well beyond any kind of survivability. This set my doomsday clock forward a couple billion years. Why should this still inconceivably distant event prick me, once again, with dread? Inexplicably, it does.
At least I no longer feel superior.
4/15/21
Stepping into the early morning elevator, I joined the crisp young man already in possession of the space. He announced his authority with a ringing good morning... And didn't remark my flaccid attempt to mirror his enthusiasm. The elevator bulged with his voice: he shouted out "What's that you've got?". I stuttered a feeble synopsis of the fifty-five pages I'd read of the novel in my hand, staccato questions, heavy with sympathy, raining about my head.
The ding sounded. The doors shunted open. Round one complete.
The victor strode away, heels punishing the newly mopped floor. I, clutching my creased little paperback, shambled quietly towards the softly humming coffee machine.
3/29/21
the pulse of a blind seed
pure unfolding white
pushes at your winter heart.
as though the flight of birds
could be sussed
by seers or psychics.
scuffled tracks
in corn snow
hold their meaning close.
this you know.
this you cannot know.
the priest raises high the host,
sees only bread...
as though that were not
miracle enough.
2/2/2021
as in a tale of fairies
the way was told
with mocking riddles
laid out plain.
far across the mountain meadow
where no track lay -
a rift in forest edge...
an easy opening, an inviting path,
which we took
though not the course described.
there a strange repast
was laid
on cracked
and broken plates.
dry marrow.
withered seeds.
for Catherine 2021
raise high the lantern
throw down the dog
jig a little jiggle
don't be shy
raise high the lantern
throw down the dog
jig a little jiggle
my oh my
raise high the lantern
throw down the dog
this is it! this is it!
one more time...
raise high the lantern
throw down the dog
when he comes knockin'
look him in the eye
2021
the counter-tenor's plaint
rises
like a skeletal finger
silver clad, sure and true,
from the dark bed
of massed, muttering sleepers,
touching, reaching further,
touching the averted face
of one who looks not,
hears naught.
- - -
the circus giant
put down his weight,
whistled a tune
till the sea rose to his eyes,
till the sea rose to his eyes.
1/14/2021
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)