"I believe that the truth of the matter
is far more terrifying. That the real truth
that dare not speak itself is that
no one is in control. Absolutely no one"
—Terence McKenna, "Dream Awake Lecture," 1994.
i. I Was Never Pretty
There was an hour between, maybe less,
but an hour, or at least a between,
when childhood’s sense peaked, the apex
of a little truth I return to, that cries
my heart not from sentiment but because
everything that came after, nearly all
of it, was a long, arcing sound of manacles
to the wheel, a choking, a consumption,
a human drive to slave the stars themselves
& make them squeal in capitulant song.
I was never pretty after that. On this cracked
desert floor tonight I confess. I was never
pretty. What I gave hard as any, give hard
tonight & still, is music, many musics.
I wage music against the slavers & hold
the stars will redeem what little truth I still bear.
******
ii. That Mirror Said True
What are the words untold for
other years?
What are the words for all that
floats & fires the night?
What are the words when its joy,
when its hunger, when its fear?
What are the words for the girl
with the stars in her hair?
******
iii. What Remembers Despite
There is the temple.
There is full moonlight.
I choose the temple to look at the moonlight
and listen.
******
iv. Least Prophecy
Burnished in the years are a few faces,
scatter of hours, a bench, a shore,
a night with stars like & unlike tonight’s—
this face, how I listened! breathed between
the beats—that one, the path I prayed
in that voice, from word to word to
touch to touch to heart’s final blow-up—
further back, before all the chemicals
hit & heated, I yearned more blindly,
undivided hunger for cosmos, new kisses,
what thrills the next day or God or
a new toy might bring—
& tonight, its yellowed knowing of
the many years gone by, its reluctant
kneel toward the mysteries still curled
within, & the great barking brightness
to come when at last they burst upon
some coming hour’s calm, expecting air.
******
v. That Idyll
What there is in magic comes to me
when the world is close, very close,
a purring wind, a crying, confessing music,
your kiss at dawn as we lie together,
two smiling, grasping souls, trying to parse
out the pain in men & women which
they push away & revere & call God.
We talked until the dreams came & took us
somewhere half-forgetful, not to where
the pain resolves & is gone, but a middle
place, where the hard things in this world
give a little &, if we can figure up
a tool or trick or utterance, perhaps
we’ll bring back a map or plan, tell one
& another, know the magic as it knows us.
******
vi. Pathos (To a son or daughter)
The queer of the joke is on those who say
life’s tale is told in the hand dealt you.
Four cards are turned over practically
when you’re born, but the hidden fifth presides,
it’s where you’ll find possibility, not chance.
Take your years to show it to others, but
an hour will come. On that hour, turn it!
******
vii. And the other one—
You won’t need the sun to direct you
to best thoughts of light, nor too many
books when there’s a rhythm or at least
a tinkering breeze nearby. You’ll sniff
the bastards, tend the angels, call it a song
by words you’ll make, or someone else will.
I won’t doubt you, if we meet in this world,
& if not, that’s what the harder dreams are for.
******
viii. Flinch-Bow
I was never pretty, but she was,
young & lithe & probably duller
than dust, but she was pretty &
I believed in pretty, its curves,
its colors, how it had to run,
how I had to chase, how I breathed
hunger in every hour & didn’t know
how to turn aside, how I didn’t
want to, & if she had turned even
once to me & said, "yes?"—
Then there were no words—
the chimes of manuscripts yet to come—
Then there were only the afternoons
we walked home from school on
opposite sides of the street—
Then there were only the nights
I lay in the shadows of her house,
spat my seed to honor her power,
& walked home riven with youth’s special
shame, unknowing the better & worse to come.
******
ix. Night Song
Looking out upon the night & seeing
better than a god’s possession, I reck
a mystery, a thrilling fury of lights,
a brilliant assurance that men govern
neither this world nor any other,
that myths from open hands & dreams
behind shut eyes are a little closer,
& still not very close at all. That whatever
this messy coalescence, this seeming
discordance of voices & phenomena,
the story yet to be wholly revealed
will ignore, perhaps explain, nothing.
******
x. 4th & Washington
As I tried to understand that hour,
the sea-water rushed my lungs & the more
I parsed out each word & gesture
the colder it got until I was every limb
stiff to my forehead. Slowed beating & breath
but—still beating, still breathing.
I wanted to know what you were to me,
this question I carry between my selves,
their discontinuous hours. What these
metallic clouds? Why those shabby leaves?
What had passed since, & what would not.
How I’d come to love you from deep inside
my own myth, & how I miss the myth
long after I stopped missing you.
The message I bear in my heart,
now gaining its pace, as is my breath, is not
for you but myself. That myth you made
was of sea-water, in your source, and
in your blood, & for every wild choking
you’ve taken, it will still renew & bear you home—
Whether the suffering & ecstasies are life’s
thin foam, or how is learned in human years
the deeper ways of the waves.
******
xi. 10 to the 16th to the 16th
When he was young, the truth & effect
of light on rain water was easy to explain.
Later, as he noticed the discontinuousness
of emotional phenomena, he hesitated.
And finally there was a night of total
darkness, when what sang the world
assaulted his heart. What mattered
so well had passed, & he opened out to the rest.
******
xii. Elemental Beings
There was laughter, & argument over
which beings were demonic, & which
simply impish. "How you can tell,"
said the Master smoothly, a hand coyly
on the bare leg beside him, "is whether
they desert you when the rent is due."
More laughter, more uneasy. "You are
waiting something prettier perhaps?"
Silence. "Most of us could not fly
our way out of a daydream!"
Whether he devoured them then or later
is probably unimportant.
******
xiii. Thirteen
When they buried your voice, & I was
afar, a stone & a paid patch of earth:
you took what beauty translates worlds
& whether or not you still sing it,
I know your music still plays on.
******
xiv. Prestidigitation
Many girls, many stars, many nights
of hustling among beliefs for a
carnal song, a poem with nice lips, yet
not romance if not music, & so the years
twisted until my eyes were telling my voice
when to sing, & when to yearn on.
So I learned this, & maybe less:
the relief is in the grave but the art
is shaping questions & chaos to beauty
& letting it float high out on the wind.
******
xv. Tall Pine in White Woods
What, then, the myth that renews?
If lucky, if obsessed, a man’s ideas
will bite his very blood & carry his miles.
An image of being struck & chasing off.
Once, years ago, I was struck & chased
off, unheeded the voices that called
to return me to safety. Among the pine,
into the woods, I played the song that lured me on.
******
xvi. The Way is Dis-Illusion
And years ago, on a city bench, the man
I sat with was sad, his woman was young
& had finally fucked him over. I wanted
to give him those words, the ones that heal,
even undo. But there aren’t any of those.
I’ve looked. Healing comes as afterward,
from wreckage, with too many memories
crowding into bed, & mornings that
need something & give little back. I sat
with him & told dirty whore jokes because
that’s about all there is. Gave him my hand,
pointed to the moon, the healing comes.
It’s dirty healing at best. Hungers return,
again need sating. The way is dis-illusion.
There really are no words that undo.
******
xvii. Stage Was a Planet
Truly when nobody was watching, I felt good
at last. Disappearing, body & memories,
noisy foam, a life, & returned now to the sea.
******
xviii. Psychedelic Dream (iv)
I am in bed, holding a sack of sand,
it is a precious thing, I am afraid,
I am holding it, & now I wake up.
I am dreaming that I am awake &
telling my lover about the dream of
holding the precious sack of sand, she listens.
I wake, but do not, & where is the sack?
I panic & seem to feel it again in
my hands but is it leaking? Am I losing it?
Awake this time? Seems so. The sweat,
the bed lamp, your movements to rise.
How do I hold this sack now, now that I know it?
******
xix. String Theory
Strum the cosmos & make something new.
Down among the strings, the arguments for
harmony get deep & many worlds will go.
******
xx. Prison Planet Blues
When the fat man with the blue doll
who looked like him said it, of course
nobody listened. He held his street corner
day after day, & spoke in deep warning,
nothing to it. Then the first ships appeared overhead
in late summer, silently. He tried to explain
but no, there was something else. We expected
something else, we want something else,
we deserve something else! He tried to say,
smoking his cigarettes through their filters,
holding his companion day after day, "what if
you are right? What if the Universe was
created by men? What if they have been
growing you for resources? What if the
doubt slivered into consciousness, & its furious
terror of death, could have been removed
by pulling off your pinkie nail, & bleeding
through to original programming, what life
was before we were marked for cultivation?"
He shakes his head. He looks at his doll.
Looks around his street corner. Nothing yet. No.
******
xxi. Secret
But then you might be me . . . me too?
What of me I do not know, afar, alive,
what are you? You don’t look like me,
you don’t do what I do. If we connect
by dream, & it holds, there will be more
to say, maybe to sing between us. Sing.
Do you sing? Will you sing to me in dreams?
******
xxii. Things Fall Apart
I remember the hour for each of you,
the one when your face & the moon & the
perfect music I’d been holding til then—
I turned it all onto the pyre & called stars in
to make sure the night burned & many
watched, that what I felt would remember,
& it did, & I do, & I don’t know if each
of you does, but what I wonder after
is where are those hours, are there ashes
of them adrift in the cosmos, with yours,
with all of yours, the hours, the faces, the music?
******
xxiii. Leader of Men
There were songs when you arrived
in the capital, & perhaps there will
be more eventually, but from on
hour to the next, one speech and another,
each wondered how to pull your attention,
persuade you a little more. For years
this jostle, today’s cacophony. Another day’s song.
******
xxiv. If Not Alone
Could I be walking around tonight
as someone else, too. That is, while I
sit here, I am also someone else
somewhere else? Who would that be?
Who would you be? What is the what
to say to you, to bring you back in dreams?
******
xxv. High Edifice
These bricks run with old blood,
nights when pretty things were consumed
& burned for the pleasure of old gods,
the kind that fade centuries-slow,
for you see, the sweetest elixir prized
by many is to be accepted, told the secret,
& if their piece of it struggles too much,
it’s nothing a fist & a manacle won’t resolve.
******
xxvi. Hidden Fifth
How to move like the universe moves,
that is, flowing, flowering, evolving,
undulating, & keep moving like the
universe moves, shifting, dancing,
wind on grass, a smiling woman closed
eyes in her passions, & not stop moving
ever again for dreams are not discontinuous,
they resume, & the music never ends,
the universe never ends, dance of
dreaming forever, never ends, never ends
******
xxvii. Two or Three
What if you were two or three,
meeting me in dreams, teaching me
new singing, are there other kinds
of songs sung lone & in concert both?
I would near you, I would learn,
if there was way, an instruction,
& if you were two or three why not more?
******
xxviii. This Is a Business
Other ways to watch a pine wave
in rainy breeze, or a strange girl
in a long hat smiling down a forgotten
autumn’s path. Other ways to work it
than fall stumbling sucker to the guitars
again & again & again. Could see the world
as a feedbag & try to build a thousand
foot high golden tit. All possibilities,
& a thousand others for slinging ass
& making way. But maybe there’s only
some years & the sound doors make closing.
Doors closing, & the hunger that everything matters.
******
xxix. Medicine for the Past
I cannot stop you from doing that,
or suffering that, or again, or
again in a new way, & how you
are alone tonight & it hurts.
You’ll drink hard or years later
you will eat a good high & some
comfort to be found. But I can
say that your pen is still moving
tonight, this poem brother to the one
you are writing like a glowing
motherfucker, to win that one back,
or summon the next, brothers
to you & your poem, & here’s our hope
together that other brother poems
will join our praise from many years hence.
******
xxx. Grind
To one day, one night, one hour,
grind this world true, heart open,
my face full in the light, grind it true,
my truth, the world’s truth, grinding,
& what might come, & what is coming.
******
xxxi. What’s Left of Prayer
The beast within roars his boneless frail.
From his roar a strong song, a cry to trees & moon.
Of his frail the nights crushed, the wet shame.
The lesson that any hour may lift.
The lesson that any hour may suddenly choke.
I sat here & nowhere, & I writhed.
******
xxxii. Angel-Leery
I met you twenty years ago today,
on a mountain path. You were dark-haired
& dark-eyed & smilingly curvaceously
pretty. You gamely threw & caught
a football with our group of hikers.
There was another too, but I chose you.
Our first dawn you slept on my couch,
I kissed you, & lay on the floor below.
You were a teacher in training, new
to the area, I think you liked me
well enough, I think it was better
than being a young woman alone.
Thanksgiving morning you talked of marriage
& I didn’t know then how close to it
you’d already been. Such talk ended when
your mother learned I was a grad school
dropout, working at a coffee shop, &
that my family genes were tainted.
By when you brought me to her mansion’s
door I should have known: I was no more
bound to last in your life than a temporary
teaching gig in a fallen factory town.
The happy autumn became the sad winter
became the despairing spring. It was over.
Strangely, something lingered. Hearts are not
chess pieces, bodies remember words &
touch, a clumsy laugh, the obsessed gestures
of the forlorn & true. When you moved far
I took planes to see you, share your meals
again, drive around your next home.
The light we shared & made faded as
months passed. Your yearn turned another
way, other eyes, other hands. I moved on,
too, because I was still young & the beast
in me dragged me through the worst hours,
would not let me off the humble way.
Twenty years ago: each of us lonely on
a mountain path. I never climbed it again.
******
xxxiii. Octopus Tree at Cape Meares
This sitka has no central trunk. Branches
root out in all directions, causing some
to have likened it to a candleabra. Tis also said
that the natives would bring their fallen chiefs
in burial boats to this tree, the Council Tree,
set the boat amongst its arms & let the
wind & tides take them onward. Do men
need the mystery or its explanation more?
******
xxxiv. Pink Noise
It was a pink noise I woke with &
heard on the shore today. The piles of kelp
drying, the furious tidal play. The sun consuming
its final hour & pulling down all the lights
with a gasp. A power that stirs, that drives,
that lives as one & by millions. It was
a pink noise that kept me into the dark.
******
xxxv. Ways of Waves
Some waves don’t reach the shore, don’t get
even close. They rise, roil, roll out their stretch,
then the rest takes them back. In their time of sun
there is something each sees, feels, touch
of wild air, sight of the others, near & far,
that have pushed to surface & tossed into
light. The ones who reach the shore carry the kelp,
the driftwood, the soft & boneless creatures.
Above there are gulls or herons in their ragged
formation & raucous chatter. There’s gift in
this twist of a moment, of being something in
this world, giving something to this world, &
feeling its sure recall when the best has been spent.
******
xxxvi. Sometimes, Capitulation
What the night cried back,
in all its colors & conflations,
its calliope of sensations & mysteries,
was: flesh. chemistry. consciousness.
The cage. The playing field.
What tools made for these
were tools made for an old war.
Romance no longer in the song
but by mastery of the singing.
******
xxxvii. And, Defiance
There is always that moment,
that breath, when the flesh’s hungers
retreat a moment, chemistry slaves
neither next option, when will floats,
a nod, a shake, what led here,
how the world looks right now,
something in it, this, mine, what? I ask,
& do not know. It will never get easier
than tonight & this hour, make that move,
use your bones, use your mind,
use that breath in you like it invents
the world new every single one.
******
xxxviii. What Left
My prayer of healing in song to you,
from this far, between us the many hours,
still-mysteries of lightless places & tongues
unknown by men. My prayer of healing
because I lose too if you fall, give in,
& if you do not, my reward is nothing
& everything, both.
******
xxxix. More Feedback
There was a movement in the shadow,
a flash of pink, a breath, a quick word,
maybe it was like the gesture that commenced
to create the stars, maybe it was
the men-herd feeding brutal & half-aware,
but you & you & I alike make the choice
what to heed, the masters to their duty,
the slaves to their dance.
******
xl. Screen Burn
Again you arrive to my dreams,
nearly twenty years since I last saw you,
& yet here you are. I squirm &
struggle for your heart, remember
that night we seemed about to—
We didn’t, & the hours became years, &
the world of my love for you sunk deeper within.
But here you are again, still 17, still perfect,
& you smile at me. Stricken anew, I nod, & I follow.
******
xli. Wage Slave
I would not work for you but these bars
I did not build nor can pull down my own.
I might work beside you if it could be said
we make something, a good day’s sweat
from it. No. What I build for you is a higher
pile of dead hours none will retrieve &
the only difference I can see is that
your dead hours pay for life’s shiny things
& mine pay for these angry lines of art.
******
xlii. Joy
The moment I knew I loved you was high
& deep in a desert’s night, when I saw
the shift among worlds would take
you & I by each other for a short
time more & I must bid you jump
or let you go. You jumped. My joy.
******
xliii. New Fixtion
The hunger that everything matters,
however casual a hand touches a hand
by night. Words without echo, without memory,
yet this hour, how it wilds to possess
the world! I wonder as it passes, its music
become another & another. Wonder without
why what this was, the avenue lights
flaring, traffic’s hard hustling drama, &
the soft remove to dreams, if removed at all.
******
xliv. Nihil
If a fuck is all that’s to it,
feed, breed, continue the kind,
if this is good, is it yet good enough?
******
xlv. Crippled
One sits alone in a half-lit room,
undone by the fleeing taste of sweet—
The noise of the street sighs, abates—
what’s next? the spirit asks—
What will you do? How to take that first,
new step toward, past memory?
******
xlvi. I Dream of Guns
I dream of guns often, & wonder at this.
Sometimes on an old car seat, sometimes
in a policeman’s hand. One time in an
office, used by a security guard to keep
me in sight, move me around. I suppose
the gun, those seen & those felt all around,
guards the hours, patrols the rich man’s
keep of golden coin & fine ass, lets the rest
know that we tend the steering of
a boat not our own, & that these controls
existed when guns were yet sharpened rocks,
& will exist on when men guard & direct
other men by harnessing starlight itself.
******
xlvii. Sparkling Lights
No perfection, all perfection,
the grime & glow of the hours,
not a dream to solve, a music to salve,
nothing but the world-crusted
mind, its unsorted well of crying
memories, the chance in every direction,
the fleeing, luring chance, come along,
it says, a guru, a demon, a bloom,
a soft voice, come along before
it passes. It passes. It passes.
******
xlviii. Self-Portrayt
I climb inside my own mind &
start to root around—
I climb inside my own mind &
here is what I found.
A beat-up orange football of foam.
A headless plastic horse. A few wrinkled Playboy magazines. A room, at least, of books.
Countless thrift store notebooks with filled
pages like this one. 1000 movie stubs. 1000 scatched LPs.
The beat clothes of a tall man never pretty to himself.
I find the flowing image of a woman,
continuous in every shadow, on every wall,
a want want want radiating about her
& the only question I have as a frame:
do I want her heart or her cunt more?
There are children who never grow up in here,
ever crippled, ever needful, & splotches
all around them of crying guilt & hardened love
& both of these are not mine but invaded
me long ago & will not part me til I blow into the wind.
There are voices, just voices, preserved
from long dead years. They mock my hair,
my height, the shoes I wear, the very smell
of my tired, confused, unkempt body as I grope
among them in markets & classrooms.
And there are trees, millions of trees,
& a moon above, & great of concert of stars,
& there a mountain, & over there the sea,
& sometimes all of this seems gone to me,
like only men & their savage waking blood exists at all.
There are demons, too, & we regard each other,
& I say who? what? & they say you,
& others, many others, every other, when will
you know? I say I wish, they say let be,
we nod, we smile, there is chasm, there is hope.
And, last, my pen, this pen, many before
it, many to come, & this page & this hour
& I am inside my mind which looks like
& not like this world. I breathe, relax.
A beat, another. These words are my music,
how I tell of life, & they shine in my mind,
so all told here may stand revealed, &
the room for so much more yet to come.
******
xlix. Vicious, Gone
A beast in me, a beast in you,
a beast roars from the heart of this world,
a beast roars out this world &
each of us its cry, its horror at what
its song looks like, this world, its song,
the beast who cries out this world,
lawless, because laws only name the chaos
without knowing or owning it—
lawless, because before then, before now,
before order, before death—
lawless, because the beast cries &
is cry both, & I am crying too—
I am crying too for how much I will never know.
******
l. Every Confession
You are all my brothers, every last
angel & bastard of you, & the trees
in unseen forests & the moonlight
on ocean waves a thousand miles
from land. All my brothers, those living
tonight, a thousand years ago, &
a thousand thousand years to come.
You are all my brothers not because
mystics & physics tell me so, not
because the dust I am once formed
many other things & will again
in what great hereon that I will know
otherwise, not even because my dust is yours.
You are all my brothers because this blood
in me is the sea & the sea covers
the world like a beautiful swathe
& there is stardust in my bones &
stars sing over the world like a first & last
lullaby & you are all my brothers because
even in my dreams you are there & what best hope
I have of hereafter is resting or dancing with you all.
******
li. God (.)
The woman smiled & moved like
flesh made music on her bed,
smiled as a few garments & then
a fewer, the garments were clouds
& she was the sky, so when they cleared,
the sky now clear, her body smiling
& nude, I said God. We invented you
to explain ourselves to each other.
She smiled & moved again & we invented
& you explained but nothing, nothing explains.
******
lii. All One Flesh
The lean & lure toward one end
& the other, a tan face in candlelight,
a thin book that points to trees, but
then all are one, a steely union
in spirit & unto earth, somewhere
down low & in between is the moving
word, the laughing light, the doubtful dance
best men of faith do in plain hours.
******
liii. What I Learned Today
A ragged man on the street passes me,
& begs a sandwich. I ask why but
nothing he says explains. I pass a woman
& her friend considering how much money
next year? The light red to green &
I have to get on, eventually to the
tall building, the pisser full of men,
I listen from a stall, one man has
such a bad back, the other does too,
& when at last all is still I remember
listening to that leader of men
saying his new war speech crushed him
inside. A smiling girl in a short skirt,
hot ass, dying heart. A broken bicycle
frame, crushed to a tree. Rains all night.
******
liv. Train Through City December
Rains all night. The way is dis-illusion.
I walk upright, herding my many musics
& a sometimes sagging heart. I see faces
struggle in the season of lights, what it is,
what to do, how to shock themselves to happiness.
******
lv. mamapapa
In this crimson chamber,
where heart beats memory, each breath a dream,
I sit with you again, forlorn & true, &
I ask, why did you make me?
What love did you know?
Where is this place?
Will I come again to be?
******
lvi. The Healing
Inside the truth there is no preaching;
there are still the doubts besetting all men;
but wearing a stinging belt of hope,
one begins to work.
But what if the truth is double, is many,
& doubt shines more sexy, offers play
when the work is too much, sings happy
of moving from lazy faith to lazy faith?
What if nothing holds too long in the primal
shiftings of both world & soul?
Better ask: why the ceaseless dance of beat & breath?
Why the key chased through layers of dreams?
Why the healing in new touch, the mystery again close?
******
lvii. Sentience All
You come to me in voices, or maybe
one great braided voice, a dropped pencil,
a scrap of lettuce, the sheen on wet
cobblestones, voices, braided voice, a cry
I cannot know but to feel, an urging
that I connect not just among men but
among all. The need of the world from
its cells to its peaks for attention, care,
healing, & no cry of weakness, no bent
despair in this, an instruction. Yes,
take the yellowed groping of your heart,
the shaped doubts you reck faith, yes,
take the inky wants you call your songs
but listen, near, crack the brambled
world of men, its heights & cities of dirty
mirrors, you come to me in voices
or maybe one great braided voice, dolls
in a junk heap, old terminals, fallen
oak walls, another’s long memory of a deep wound,
& for a moment become plain & ferocious
& say when will you learn to arrive at this hour,
& a thousand more like it, just to spark & begin?
******
lviii. Frenzied Faith
For the tall buildings feed me their despair,
& the green things feed me their mystery,
& my dreams feed me raw instructions,
& flesh’s want feeds my jerky dance,
& I wonder how to make it all music,
& I don’t know how to remember, how to know I know.
******
lix. Psychedelic Dream (v)
In that dream or high or song
I held my pen & looked at the page
& nothing came: I sit very close,
hunched into my pages, let the music
in my ears swathe my mind,
let the desert’s long full moon beams,
let the ocean’s wild fecund hustle,
led the woods replace my bones, tree up
my body, let the sun break me into
a thousand rays, let the love jingle
my mind & the pain trouble my beat &
breath, & I didn’t stop & I haven’t stopped
& I will not stop because something listens, something needs this.
******
lx. Season of Lights
It wasn’t years ago, like many of
these stories, no. There was no full
moon, as often is my light. I am not
telling one more story of fine ass &
tryptamines because I can, there are my
hours, this is what I do with them.
There were pain, but it was not stuff
of music, & I caused as much as
I got. Was it reaction, was it revenge?
What isn’t in this world, one way
or another? But there it was, not long
ago enough to be long ago, merely ago.
I sat alone, with many others, &
these were neither friends nor enemies,
& I worked, & we worked, & nothing
we made mattered, these hours weren’t
even pretty enough to be ugly. What, then,
about this? Why remember it to this page?
It was because I looked up, suddenly,
& nobody saw me do it. Looked up
at something, was it an insect flashing
by, tiny & up here on the 20th floor?
It was, & nobody noticed but I did not
look down, I watched it, this visible
buzzing, watched it for how it did not
belong here, & yet here it was.
Dissatisfied, thrown, now restless
to know more, yet what book, or
which teacher, what great human path
of knowing would explain? None.
I knew this. None would explain.
That’s how I ended up here. None explains.
And for a long time it hadn’t mattered
anymore. I had my work, alone &
among many others. I had a chamber,
a cupboard of food, a deck of cards,
& a body to fuck every night. None
explained but I no longer knew or cared.
Now I did, & I had to know, or at
least I had to look again new &
so I stood up & left my desk,
my work, & climbed the 20 flights
down to the street, a mid-morning
of drizzle & hustlers with begging signs.
I walked the streets, thinking how
do I unlearn all I no longer
know? How do I do this? I’m
telling you about something still fresh,
not an old tale with all that came
after. No. None explains. But I had to know.
And so here I sit before you, no cup,
no line to peddle. I sit before you
on this street corner, a shout’s distance
from that great tree of lights, &
I do not know. None explains.
But I ask you now, now, sit with me.
Sit here with me, a minute, an hour.
We don’t have to speak. Sit with me.
We’ll look at the lights. We’ll watch the faces.
We’ll wonder high & low because that’s what humans do.
We don’t have to speak but we may find we are singing.
We’ll feel the drizzle, the great miracle of doubt, & the love.