"Black ink. Psychedelia.
Try to love the world near & far."
i. Two Blooms
Cut roots, for a sweet touch,
living on water & packets of fresh,
I wanted to cross the line, wanted to know,
what did you see, rooted to the earth,
what did you see later in that vase?
Then one of you sagged, let go, was it hard?
I brought you to the empty flower box
of soil, just outside the window with
the vase. Closed the curtain against your
remain. Some of your petals discovered
still inside. I cringed but want to know
better than this.
The other remains inside, in the vase,
not yet, not yet, but soon. I speak of this
to noone, it’s mine, this, I’m loving you,
I’m mourning for you, I listen around
me to what men say of death & I think
of you. Nothing learned yet. A hunger. A terror.
******
ii. Gone is Gone
Your petals don’t fall like the other’s
but you burst from within as you droop
from without. Bloom gone, yes, I know,
& the strange fact of birthday flowers
now on the same table. And through
the window where the other is gone.
How gone is gone? Is gone?
******
iii. Shifts Shifting
Something. A deep something I cannot
or will not call dream or music or want.
This world is not ours. Every last bloom
of us falls, always has. Always will?
Maybe so. Maybe better so. What then?
An earthquake hit an island yesterday.
Today that girl smiled at him & one
hit his heart. Every shift contacts
every other shift. The bodies under
rubble. How she moves beneath him
in his dreams. That unsentimental.
******
iv. Remain of Remain
When you finally joined the other,
I was clumsy & your petals fell
scattered to the floor. I delivered
the remain of your remain
to the flower box, a lean, a toss, a departure.
Your bloom went elsewhere,
like the light after dusk goes.
******
v. Several Breaths
I look about me at the men & women
hurrying, shiny things for sale in shops,
the cold rain, the glaring streets,
shift & shift & shift again. Open my mouth
to ask, close it again. Open it now to breathe
& maybe that’s better, what I have sure for now—
& the want to feel things complexly,
& with several reasons, so that these feelings
will stick, stay, bloom wildly into a world
which cannot be throttled by a word,
a chance, an unlucky shifting, like a blade
sweeping all away at ground level
til nothing is left, executed cleanly by—
& you & I, the intense everything
of you & I, there was a moment
& its many echoes, perhaps several moments,
you are a face, you are a surfside,
you are a song, you are a line of words
that catches me halfway down &
holds. You hold. Then another hour
I hold, my hands clean of their
wavering ignorance, holding you, just you,
I hold you & I breathe & I say
“breathe” to you & you breathe & we breathe
together & another year & another place
& I am still holding you, “breathe,” &
you are still holding me, “breathe,” &
it never ends, “ breathe,” the world, breathe.
******
vi. Of the Moon
The rest of your colors going, went,
gone, & I sit here pushing sums of decay
into forces of memory, nodding one
to the bloom that came, & two
to the one which remains, for to be alive
is to swing new music from decay
& memory for as long as possible,
disbelieving the last note will come,
is coming, disbelieve it while nodding
the stars & what just can’t not be possible.
******
vii. How Nothing, But Then Everything
The touch I still have because never
given, a summer’s day & I do not know
how. Everything gathers in how
I look at you now, & in what you
see. How close? How possible?
Years from now, dreams & hard hours say,
I am still nearing you, breathing, closer.
******
viii. Tight Jeans, & Another War
This world is not ours, & the constant hustle
among men not to know, crash through
gravity, knit new molecules from several,
cry out a song or a ship or an orchestrated
violence great enough to bear it down
at last. The hungers within will to surround
the world in flesh or words or secret, subtle
fineness, possess until one is another,
& time stops & moves again with a gesture,
& she watches among pink shreds &
pools of descending fine, wondering if
the next touch will break or tend her want.
******
ix. Raw From Hours
The hungers within will to surround the world
in flesh or words or the gross massings
of godmongers, how a few men can touch
the map & decide. Mountains decide our fates
eventually, what the seas less willing yield,
how the skies change in color & the air
in subtleties, telling not a few men now but
all here & hereon how we’ve done—
So when I look at you, my love, think of what
you are by soul & spirit, how the few men
are shifting maps we reside, & how the mountains
will tend the world its unfolding when
these men lie again simply in her arms,
I think: what we do matters & matters,
& very much matters. And little, & less,
& none at all. The glare in one’s face,
the music of an excited night, the ways flesh
insists to its pleasures, the ways hearts
shape these further still—
I am left ever half-exposed & crying,
half-hidden, crouched close, in how much
I love the world & how much I love you.
******
x. Good Glare of Gone
I thought it was your eyes, or your laugh,
or wetly tickling your crack the way
into you & never return. A song, a bloom,
a ragged card wrought by my hours &
strangeness. But these were simply better &
worse blows on your outmost door.
Years to this moon & more willing you flow
me in on these absent nights, through
subterranea, & the mystery in how then
still touches now, forth & back & forth,
& where I still find you in my own.
******
xi. Get Clean or Die Trying
Another eruption, the earth wordless by
her live fury, I believe her, I believe you,
you are furious, human bodies live
on your body & abuse it, eat & breathe
of it & abuse it. And more eat & breathe
of it, & more abuse it.
Reach into my heart, mother, my true mother,
the one who birthed & cares for my kind,
reach into my heart, mother, deeper
than any has ever known me, feel how raw,
how twisted in music & want & brotherhood
for all, how angry, how like your fury
is mine, I am small, but I am like you.
I do not know of men’s gods & idols
this deep in me, little reaches me
but music, of breath, of beat, of dream,
& I wish to service you as you service me,
from this simple core & terminus, let me sing
& better know how to sing, sing for you
by gesture to all, for all that you love,
let me be plainly one of your musics,
let this power between us unbraid.
******
xii. Music of My Chaos
World hard from the groin & nothing
rhymes with moon. I keep asking
on the nights toughest with sinews of want,
keep asking when the soft word or
the mild touch, keep asking with
the years’ stretching howl of crazy blood
to tonight, what rhymes with the moon?
In the shift of lights, a few years of men
among the dozens boys, the mass willing
to live by more glare but less heat,
accede what the selfish gods of men demand,
whatever rhymes beneath the moon. I ask
hard from the groin, unaccepting the control
or the chaos, what rhymes with you, moon?
By the nights of mad vision when too much
felt, the world of men both vicious & dull,
the content is still found in singing discontent,
nothing rhymes with moon, nothing good
rhymes with moon. Or, worse to it,
everything rhymes with moon & I am years
past being bluster & man enough to say it plain.
******
xiii. Sky Isn’t Possible Tonight
The questions aren’t many. Who to fuck.
What to eat next. Whether a god is due
by praise or privation. Not many.
Whether a nation of men will betray
itself by its ideals or its hungers. Who to blame
& how to punish. How the books will tell it
so that further bravery isn’t possible & little wanted.
******
xiv. Urban Spectacular
An old, drunk man dozes near, with a clutch
of bills & coins, a cigarette for later,
a bill due but fuck it. The stars are somewhere
out there, they’ve always been, couple of
drinks now, the radio later at home,
with its remedies for skin & flatulence & time itself.
******
xv. Bauhaus (Til Next)
So I wrote here, for years, hard &
deep. Sometimes awful. Sometimes not.
A thank you. Remembrance. Til next.
******
xvi. Interruption
What rhymes with the moon is Art
What slips freely through the hours is Art
What flows between limbs is Art
What touches deep & lasts is Art
What builds from sleep is Art
What this broad new view in weakest hours
is Art
What now seen toward that distant rock
from this nearly drown is Art
What sings nearer is art, sings nearer,
a hand, a blind eye, a voice of leaves,
a white tree, lay with me, white tree
What do I want? “You want Art”
What do I want? “You want Art”
What do I want? “You want Art”
What must I do? “Rhyme with the moon”
What must I do? “Rhyme better with the moon”
What must I do? “You must return now &
rhyme better with the moon”
What of the white tree? “The White tree is Art”
What of the white tree? “The White tree rhymes
with the moon”
What of the white tree? “You must return now &
rhyme with the moon”
What rhymes with the moon is Art
What returns me from waves on hours is Art
What wakes me to my bed & my limbs is Art
What again walks me among clouds & men is Art
What remains, reigns, in the deepest forests
of concrete & metal is a shining, a white tree, is Art.
******
xvii. Birdy Say Ku-Ku!
I’d call it a soap opera,
the strange and flimsy human condition,
but sometimes not, sometimes it’s art.
* * *
Sometime’s it’s art, she looked at me.
Her failure. Her body’s strange exception.
Those poems are old, they’re mine.
* * *
My poems are old, not you.
Not you, my poems, some new.
You’re gone, here are new poems.
* * *
Here are new poems, feed from.
Trust of years, still here, these.
I tell another, trust the flow.
* * *
The flow, oh, trust the flow.
Art, the power, universe of lights,
how music travels, one to next.
* * *
One to another, laying heads close.
Strange condition, flimsy, old, new.
Always the flow, Art, the power.
******
xviii. Portrait in Sepia
The story was told under a glass roof,
the snowflakes hitting it from dark skies,
the doctor had assured us all that sex
tied souls deep into their dirt & the way
out was a hard strike & a crying release.
Most nodded, who hadn’t cum & seen a glance
of God, or lost & felt the fall within,
the kind nobody else sees, ground rushing close.
“But what of the rest? The moments tending
a sick mother, feeding her water, helping
her remember an old name?” The doctor shook
his head. “There are mysteries, grant this,
but the root . . . the root! of human anguish
is what I say.” Most still nodded, it was true.
Then I remembered another night, or it
was a dream. There were bodies, like always,
& the moon would have moved a few to couple
but, no, yes, there were drums among
the trees, there were shouts, the bodies & fires
danced one another like nothing was ever lost
& here it was again, returned. I woke up
alone in the morning, the ground, damp with dew,
a scattered, grubby soul, yet loved & needed by all.
******
xix. Rose Garden
Even shorn to picturesque the wilds bloom
through, noises of mate & make, trees great
against an unconquered sky. When aware,
when awake, my breath calms to all
becoming, there is movement, there is change,
all is well. Mine to know, mind to find,
if not good in every man’s eyes, still, all is well.
******
xx. Fears & Regrets
Several fears & regrets. More than that.
Anyone reading this, sure, nod, several, more.
I can think of faces I caused pain,
hearts I damaged, & those who damaged me.
I can think of places unseen, moments gone.
You’ll nod, you’ve got yours, whatever mask you wear.
Would you agree too: fucking sick of it?
Nothing goes away, nothing returns.
Everything’s here, alive, buried, somewhere.
And I think, then, why? And why?
I think it’s lack of seeing the world
as a world. Not a backdrop for human drama
but a wide, strange world. Green & wild.
Full of healing & death. A million hungers
combating that men can affect but do not own.
Somewhere, in all of it, every answer
to every question, here, this world,
a cure to sick, a plant to divine the stars & within,
every last delicious possibility of sense,
still, now, tonight, you with your fears & regrets,
me with mine. Several & more. And all this.
******
xxi. What Groove Low
I wanted to find the other for
what I knew wasn’t enough.
Listened, heard nothing. No voices from dreams.
No wonder at leaves in the wind.
I had to find other. Not a building of statues
& a grim book. More the mystery of a face
turned to another, a passing, protected moment.
I had to find other, if there were roots
to beauty not contrived by a man. If these roots
reached through & past a mortal life.
It became a question of “why?” & then
a question of even more. The more years passed,
the fewer remaining, however many,
no longer a question of the give or the take,
or finding the other, or the many others,
no longer any question at all, but how to sing
like beat & breath unknowing mine or the world’s.
******
xxii. War for the Moon
You see a dead stone with brute power to influence.
We see a companion living in the sky.
You see affect, we feel relation.
You use tools to dislodge truth from its darkness.
We feel the truth does not cower but stands
proudly everywhere, singing worlds to our deafness.
You vow to know. We yearn to remember.
******
xxiii. The Argument
A great leader grinds through to top of the mountain.
A good leader cuts a path.
A great leader leaves bodies in his wake.
A good leader leaves inspirations for others.
A great leader creates a legend & then goes.
A good leader creates a body of instructions
& never goes—
******
xxiv. Wage Slave (ii.)
I woke with a throbbing ankle & a need
to piss. I hoped she slept still beside me.
That day a boss had asked, “What are you
worth to my company? Bring me a list.”
A man less smart than sharp, amused
by his own occasional bursts of modesty.
Once a soldier, 20 years & 50 fewer pounds ago.
My ankle throbbed & I needed to piss &
I didn’t want to wake her. She hadn’t been
sleeping well. I lay close, shock & anger
mingled closer. Did they meet at my ankle?
How could that be? I finally rose for
a pain pill & to piss out the day. Walked fine.
She shifted & mumbled her concern. “Nothing.”
A piss in the dark is a low thing of beauty,
more relieving than the pill. I didn’t sleep
for a long time, my mind pummeling
the old argument between now, tomorrow,
& eternity. The first is mine, second to the boss,
& eternity to something like that long piss,
& my wish to keep a loved one in her peace.
******
xxv. The Celestial
The celestial is nearing, is breathing,
is moving in lights. The heated torso,
however draped, however slept with daylight
& polity, is clue, in arch & curve,
to celestial, what shines by lawless music.
I wonder how the chains instruct their own
release, how a turn, or a wrench, in that other
direction, & how freedom bleeds, how freedom flows,
how the celestial was never the treasure held in secret.
******
xxvi. Still, & Ever
Nothing learned yet, though the gurus
& kings will speak by fires & drums,
will line their platforms with a thousand
naked torsos, point to strange worlds coming,
where virtue fuels & starlight reigns,
nothing learned yet. Flesh is hunger, this is the strange new world, your king
are senses that behold, your guru
is how mind shapes the world as song of your days.
******
xxvii. World is Not Ours
In that dream I was with blood kin
on a happy wedding day, hours unreal
to memories, how the mind worries,
how it gnaws back, how that day
might have turned, it didn’t. Everyone
smiling, relieved. Weddings are good days.
******
xxviii. Quack: A Love Song
There was a newspaper article about
governments killing spies, their own citizens,
& someone turned to me with a sneer.
I nodded, every king rules with
a bloody hand, a darkened heart.
A man governed is a man in your shadow,
& the failing in how light could otherwise be cast.
******
xxix. Continuance
Here are new poems, the ones since
I loved you, & you, & you. Each one
crawling from the previous, from the ugliest
hours, the words, the breaks in flesh &
hearts. New poems, some to remember,
some to mourn, then a few to
simply look on. What next, & next,
& the possibilities for a long time
were few. Breathe in, breathe out.
Then new vines along the path, & then
many paths. Many paths, new poems.
New poems, many musics. Continuance.
******
xxx. East-West
Once I lived here, a small town in a green place,
& it was my home & where I loved. Here was here,
the rest was there. Years & years.
Then I moved here, for awhile, but the borders
were fuzzier. I read books & wondered about
there & there. Here was still here, but less so.
Bleeding, angry, curious, I fled from here to a
larger here. A deeper history, & for awhile
the waves of there & there receded from my steps.
Then returned, as myths, as mountains, as
far-stretching horizons, here shifted & shifted
again as though not to settle but to keep dancing.
Now I look over all the heres & decide to move on
by returning. An old here beckons new & I think
maybe here is just shorthand for everywhere & nowhere.
******
xxxi. High Porch
I will sing for you. It’s what I’ve come here to do.
I will teach you to sing too, whatever kind your song.
Now you will sing for me. We’ll twine our songs, & listen.
******
xxxii. Harvard Square in Spring
I think how the stone tables & cyberspace cross,
& the old man guitarist of this square
passed by laughing virgins with tinkling trinkets,
& the moon above half-noticing the few dramas
& many blooms below. I look around this
courtyard & feel old & young & perplexed
by living’s changing years. No secret to noticing
a pair of shapely chattering legs nor the
shallow breathing of the faces above their game.
A wish to remember, finely and fully,
& then ask, what else? What tonight? What the morrow?
Living things move restless, quick and slow,
cross the planet, dead ones at their ease.
******
xxxiii. Consideration
I left in a hurry, tired & hungry. A song
to chase, to make new, to find & lose
& find again. I became afraid, & age set in.
Pushed back, one bloom, another. Returning
still hungry, less fear, many musics, many trees.
******
xxxiv. Amongst Old Stones
Men depart this world free, yet wish a marker
of their visit, a widow, a stripling, an etched
chip of rock to note their bones. The poor will
take a few inches, the kings a foot or two,
or six, as though the earth receives in greater
& lesser order by purse & speech & polity’s
dirty divisions. Chaotic bird-noise here, this green,
green day. A siren rises among blarings & shouts,
distant music of a parade & the spring rain
of near church bells harking the new hour. We walk
quietly amongst these old stones, taking our notes,
leaving our trinkets for the heroes, nodding
without knowing why at the graves of babes,
& loyal wives, & dear servants without surname.
The trees stand, benign titans, their young leaves
a bidding to make the world new again today,
their roots twisted mildly among the departed,
bringing the news from above, when any
to know. Their world still.
******
xxxv. Leaving West
How glorious, how high, how dreams
will drive a man to chase a thought,
a sweet ass, a promise spiking his mind.
Years, the world moves & moves again,
& how does the hunger keep changing masks
without diminish? Nothing to heat the blood
but move & move again, & new marvel
at the animal heart’s ways of remembering it
all while keeping hope’s claws out for next bright ray.
******
xxxvi. Anniversary
Moving many pens along the years,
in distant rooms with strangest aches,
a heart wilting & blooming again in song,
among hotel armchairs where talk of
markets nears the erotic. Pause. Sweep
around. Dimming winter light outside, or
snow upon the glass roof, sometimes sweating
rage & want on the many sheets, & no why
but strange pleasures salve strange aches,
& each new pen uncapped with old hunger,
& the world is strangely beautiful at best,
& language clumsy reveals a moment,
the passage through, its striver, this hour’s sure going.
******
xxxvii. Mind Flowers
One of the mystics approaches with the truth,
not sure if a book or a glow, I back away,
he smiles, nods. “When you’re ready.”
I look around the night, how this springtime
northern city has such late, late dusks.
On this street, still open, an old barber shop,
an Afghani restaurant. Several art galleries.
The cafe I am saying goodbye to tonight.
I look at the mystic, & nod. He smiles,
moves near, touches my shoulder. Points.
Where? “There.” Where? “And there too.”
Then he does a little dance. Nods again.
“That’s it?” “What else?” Gives me a push to go.
******
xxxviii. Nothing Lasts . . .
There was an hour I’d like to tell you
about, because I believe you have had
these hours too, & they are few, &
they do not last. Nobody noticed us smiling
through these streets, we knew something,
it was between us, passed back & forth,
a fire, a glow, a light, street after street.
I think we must have sat down eventually,
it was getting night. There had been so many
words, there always are, for while
the loneliness itself has no words, not a one,
we spend our lives describing it, one to another,
& in our songs, our books, our high noise.
It trailed away, in lingers, in waves,
in dreams, then to now, & sometimes
gentle hits a wall, or a new face, a melody,
then a rhythm, then your face, your every face,
& it all explodes again, a rageless, freaking, human love.
******
xxxix. . . . but Nothing is Lost
Feel the great miracle of doubt & love,
it hurries bodies home in the rain,
to whatever awaits, get there, get there,
get there. The books on the shelves,
each one a try at luring a truth into cage,
call it a philosophy, call it a song, sing it,
sing it, so many hours to it, singing,
watching civilizations raise & decay
by their songs, looking forward or remembering,
& what if this time I simply fall back into
my couch’s cushions, & stop. Simply stop.
No movement. A barking. Distant lawnmower.
Begin to move again, not sure how, because it hurts
not to, hurts, & so move again, move anew,
with doubt & love, always, moving again. Better.
******
xl. CoffeeTime
Someone said you’d like it there, years ago,
& excited I came by streetcar to this
cafe’s armchair, this one, its predecessor,
oh I was a lorn, ragged soul but could
always smile at another’s freak try in
explaining love or the world. I entered
the caverns here & felt safe for awhile,
hours of safety in a life disintegrating,
coming here became precious, conflation
of place with sanctuary, & I came
often. Then I left a long while, remembering.
When I returned, my hand its better grip on
the wheel, it still mattered, many more times
I came & brought my suffering & my lights both,
like old, I kept it sanctuary in my heart.
And tonight I part you, how to tell this not
in mere sadness but in song, how to tell
what leaving sanctuary is like, this for another,
& yet another in the length of years,
& the idea of sanctuary is addictive, I confess,
in another’s arms, in music, & here, now,
these going hours, cement floor by painted wall by
open door by the breaths & ink I leave here with love.
******
xli. Strange Pleasures
Blooms wild into the world,
meet its heavy press with new music,
salve by touch, by question, by the force
of strange new pleasures.
Does the eventual mask grow from
within, or by contact with the world’s
hungry decay, its terror that the years
have taught nothing but survival
hardens the will, & the air itself feeds
on hearts sheathed for dance not war?
******
xlii. Here is Shorthand
Black cows riddle the manless scrub ‘scape.
No sight of the hands that built the fences
or put down the tracks or raised up
the electrical poles. Just black cows
nudging wearily for food, shitting every few
steps, fattening for plates on unseen tables.
******
xliii. Road Diary #13: Night Paving
Lightning slits apart the hour’s
dark flesh, exposing old moments
drying & too sweet to lightly tongue
for a memory. I look for your face
with the next flash but find nothing
but the exploding torrent that is sentiment,
& a line of restless cars damning up
the road as crews furiously repair
or defend the insoluable.
******
xliv. Fate Isn’t What We’re Up Against
Many musics, wake, blink, still the world.
Still no answers, disappearing between thighs,
through shutting doors, & the hour gone.
And the year gone. Red. Green. Yellow.
One’s soul divines in measuring one memory by
another, & the music in distortion & forgetfulness itself.
Many musics, some culled from the hours slept,
against an empty wallet, a crushed heart,
the heat, the cold, the hard thrashings of animal
among animal in this half-awakened
functionality. Fate isn’t what we’re up
against so much as me against you.
Many musics, uplift still in song with those
who praise to be alive. I praise, & I praise,
I do. But then restless with the night’s lamps
of both iron & fire. Restless, because blood flows,
it does not perch & idle. Restless because
why all that pain if not distilled to tonight’s better song?
******
xlv. Beware & Be Aware
I look amongst my selves to be certain,
to cohere & contact the light.
When not in concert at least I find instinct to carry through.
******
xlvi. Stoned Immaculate
Romance was such a drunken vexation
that no amount of lecture on pheromone
& evolution could have persuaded me
from dogging the secret of her scent in the shadows.
******
xlvii. Roll the Bones
I’ve learned to see luck as the charming
fluid one can attempt to seduce the world
by, with a medicine man’s grin & an eye on the door.
******
xlviii. No One is in Control
I’ve long not studied the brick beneath
my feet, how deep it binds, with nearby tree,
to the earth below, in every season,
the slapdash ways years pass for men,
under foot there is brick, root, earth.
I reck the world’s history is not the same
as men’s, charting change with less dissension.
What world without flow? Yet men would jerk
this way & that, a symphony of bolts
on how & why & what next & what might be.
Or blood & conquest over these same things.
In returning to my old home, a wish to gather
concert & conflict both, assail them by
the bricks below & their history of men,
& the roots below that & what strives
to be discerned common among all.
What beats, what breathes, closer than a word.
******
xlix. Beneath Tamarack Again
The passage of time is measured in the mind,
measured in the mind, & also the body.
Measured in the body, & where the blossoms go,
& last year’s endless snow. The snow
in the skies, too, ancient lights & their message
to keep moving & keep shining & no,
you will not elude time, in your mind or your body,
but behold about you the rest of the world,
its passing just like you! You smile, you age,
you creak, these stars might say but, long
after your last, you shine to some future amazement.
******
l. In a Bookstore
I watched her shadow-dark hair swing from side
to side across her half-nude back as she chattered
softly to another, & thought of other things—
Turned to the half-shaded window with its view of
drizzled shaking leaves, & forgot her,
& thought of other things—
I looked down to my journal & read of two writers
wrangling the words “empathy” & “sympathy” between
them, & forgot the rainy leaves & thought again
of other things—
Her hands reminded me, as they tossed & flew,
a glimpse of her garishly large hoop earrings
made me wonder their purpose—& I turned back
wondering to the leaves & how they live their lives in the air—
Coming back to the page I discovered my two writers
now in agreement: empathy & sympathy
are one thing, & run through all that lives—
looking up I saw the girl leaving with her friend,
swinging hair & blinking earrings & half naked back
& all—suddenly there were other faces &
noises around me, photos of sleeping or dead things
on the wall, countless books with their arguing hints,
& a new-struck faith that a million missing things still could be found.
******
li. Some of What
The way is dis-illusion, & the lesson
that what conceals shapes in the light,
by the lights shared by men & skies,
the lights grown up over years, centuries,
shapes a man’s mind even before he grasps
he possesses such a thing, wonders what it is,
or why. The way is dis-illusion, to feel it
deep & hard every hour, plain or golden,
feel it all hard as each beat forces a rush
of living blood, as each breath renews
& opens, every one of us a pore for breath,
for light, for each other’s little reasons
& greater fears. The way is dis-illusion
for all claims to heart, to land, to coin,
come to dust, & yet tonight we each & many
claim a little still, & claim a little more.
******
lii. An Off Night
Only disbelieve in nothing & the world
may move a little your way. Let a god in,
an angry one, a gentler one, the one
who sings of illusions & the one who says
the songs are illusions themselves.
Only disbelieve in nothing & see what
turns in another’s hand, what art he carries
to earn his coin, what secret art he carries
otherwise. There won’t be the reward from
the fist or the master’s flick, but something else.
Only disbelieve in nothing until it shows
behind the refrain, the rhymes for slaving
folk, the grit & frown that keep men
burrowed close together, closer than a thought,
closer than a sniff. Limbs & mind bound, disbelieve.
Only disbelieve in nothing & mercy
you are one of us. And mercy will you suffer,
and mercy will you sing! Only disbelieve
in nothing & one day your hand will
no longer make a fist. And open. And open. And open.
******
liii. Politik
Would a king or preacher know your
private most maps, ran light & fingers over
its terrains, its crevasses. But no god’s man
knows nor state functional. Where you yearn,
where you years later still bleed, or laugh.
The hour where concession & kindness
exchanged masks. The hour whose memory
tendered you for years. Devotion is not
for subtlety & obedience does not have shades.
In brief, it’s yours, the complex carcass
of your life, save for the numbers prayed
to obeisance, the child’s wonder & anarchy kept close.
******
liv. Romance
I wonder what most of you ever offered
but a tapping foot, a giggle, a touch of skin,
& promises not possible to keep, if ever intended.
******
lv. Spiritual
There’s that sound in the room—
after the spiritual’s been sung—
a breath within no breast—
it was here—did you feel it?
& then the slightest noise—
& it’s like a relief—
for none of us & this hour can be that holy—
can be that holy—none of us--
******
lvi. Zombie Love Song
Look at the lights, watch the faces,
how many years collected in doing this,
looking, watching, wishing, wanting,
hungering better explanation of a tight ass,
the brutal ways of men, the spiraling
instants of joy, reached, yowled for,
can’t hold on, tried, ride so long,
tried, look at the lights, watch the faces.
The tangle of men as the flesh & the heart
each make a bid, looking, watching,
wishing, wanting, a suffering of mind,
of body, of something else, half-sung
dream of another world like this one
but kinder, questions of coin & market
of less matter than who will tender you tonight
& how will the morrow ‘merge from your dreams?
The lights, the faces, the tangle of suffering
unsolved & ecstasy too much a novelty to hold
dear to days. Too many myths, too many gods
to parse the pain into tomes & laws of the land.
Tonight I sing to the creatures of this world,
what more possible? What beauty awaits?
What have we to fear in each other?
What strikes truer than kindness & love?
******
lvii. Not Alone
Trying to deduce from history
to this moment, idea of tree to this
shading oak, what the great poets
croon of love & what this live blood
in me wants. The music of voices,
growls, growing things, an insect I watched
smash my walls till it fell. The formula,
better than an old thought called God,
the one will please & sate you, push you,
out & up, down & deep, through yourself,
till we meet somewhere else that resembles
tonight but you cannot remember
your name or path, I cannot remember my own,
& we smile without history or consequence.
******
lviii. Come In Me
To distinguish by flesh & name,
& to discriminate, & divide, & divide again,
shape words to weather & its gods,
awl the path for better & lesser love,
& what songs to sing, what heroes do,
& confine to the edges some thoughts,
the daring, the renegade, the forbidden,
cloak dreams in the motley of fools,
give a nod to some desires, a cell to others,
to erect in tome & human structure an answer
to this world’s mysteries, encircle the chaos
& call it tamed, weight each heart
with myths of expectation, a punishment,
some reward, point far to explain here,
build a high, hard world of distrust for
simple instincts, gut the child’s wish
to share & wonder, flood each heart’s beast
with doubt, with restlessness, with half-said
faith that well-spent coins sate wordless surges
of loins, look at this world & say with me:
what else? what better? what more, & why not?
******
lix. Memory & Prelude
I woke this morning, early, writhing,
a dream’s lingering claws, stroked,
squeezed, & no more sleep, not even close
what was it? Not a woman, known or stranger,
nor a man, animal, god. A memory, old one,
released last night when I found a high school
essay. In a pile, a glance, a nod, none else.
But enough. A teacher I don’t remember but
he liked me. Those years weren’t pretty. He graded
me high, smiled, taught me with a worn man’s
hope that someone listened. All I wanted to do
was fuck a cheerleader. Or the poet girl
I adored. Or quite a few others. No why
in it. The rest of my grades made nobody
proud, nobody smile, hope. I skipped school
for the library, to write a paper on my
favorite books, the ones with no money &
a laughing kindess for all. I wrote & I wrote,
then typed & typed. He smiled, hoped, gave me
the best grade he could but knew it wasn’t
good enough. I wanted to fuck her, & fuck her,
& fuck her. Skipped school, hid, read,
wrote. Then one day came & suddenly I
remembered. This morning, no more sleep.
I had a friend, his name was John,
he was a rough piece of work. He liked me
too, & it mattered more. Here’s why. One day
he saw me getting pushed around &
stepped in. I didn’t have many friends,
none like him. His act, his word, protected
me. I didn’t know how to fight any more
than I knew how to fuck. Nobody had
taught me. I knew how to hide, elude, get
through the day, keep my thoughts my
own, close. I don’t know why he liked me,
or stepped in. I had nothing to offer me.
He could have taught me how to fight & fuck,
maybe, I would return & ask: “How do
you do it? Use your body’s power, its want,
its will? Show me.” Maybe he would have.
What did I have for him? It was another day’s
answer & maybe this is what wouldn’t
let me sleep this morning, what drove me
from bedroom to living room couch.
Is this a lesson, something like that?
I don’t think so. Or a lesson thus spoke:
shit happens. All the time. Maybe something
else. You see, he asked me a question,
this friend, John. And I answered because
I had no friends like him & no cheerleader pussy
& no skills to fight, make way in the world.
He was in the hallway, taking a make-up
test in the class where I’d given the teacher
hope. I came out to go to the bathroom
& he asked me to help him. The teacher
called it cheating later, when he caught me.
I suppose so. The teacher’s heart broke
& he crushed my grade down low. Probably
my friend outright failed. I went to college
& he probably didn’t. We were different kinds
of failures. I could contrive a sentence &
write it out. He could beat up a fellow &
then lay his cheerleader girlfriend
out smooth, give it to her twice hard, make
her moan, writhe, cheer, forget awhile.
And what was all this for? Maybe all these
years later I simply look back & wonder
how little connection any of us made then,
& how this not-much truth is so often true.
That hour, helping, cheating, hoping, breaking,
it passed, passed long, long ago. Nobody
left from it. Just an old sheaf of typed pages
I found yesterday, what was called onion
skin back then. A grade scrawled over it,
the dead bones of a gone pride. A breakable
certainty in me about the world years back
replaced by a working doubt. The universal
flow collects it all, whatever its seeming worth.
******
lx. Psychedelic Dream (vi)
“There is nothing. There is always nothing.”
—Pablo Neruda, “Past”
Dream is destiny. It became a question
of the questions & what musics in it.
Stop. Or at least pause. What a thing singing
anyway but a nose into the wind, what news
there, the bits sayable, pretty with effect.
Pause. Or at least slow. The rhythms
are always there, what the wind’s shaking,
how the sea talks in tides to shore.
What were the questions? Who will love me?
Who will fuck me? Who will sing my bones?
I think it now, tonight, more a question
of who wouldn’t. Most of the seething world,
& the lost idea of god. I still speak to the stars.
It’s just now I hear their like cries in return.
Dream is destiny. How close a truth to heart’s,
how navigable those words? I chased them,
without pause, or slow, it’s what blood cries
to do. Chase!
What to chase? A woman, of course.
A muse, a mate. Calls to full moon
over desert temples: let me find her.
Let me name her. Let me sing her.
What then? Dream is destiny? A good question,
the right one? I run with the elixirs & smoke,
the try to clasp cock & starlight in song,
I’m not alone, this is what men do.
Chase hard, in full moons, & high tides, &
with empty pockets & tiring bones. Chase,
& chase, til the breath & beats give out.
Better question: what until then? I don’t know.
The songs wait ascending staircases I know
but may see differently this time, in lights
reminding me, the rubble of sobering mornings,
the glints unspent by word in chords, & curves, & green.
But: there is nothing. There is always nothing.
And: dream is destiny. And maybe one too many
fine asses chatting agreeably with a sweet.
My hungers & my questions are the same
as ever & do not answer & do not comfort.
Dream isn’t destiny. Destiny contrives between
the songs, in the books one sets on a shelf,
the photograph carried in a pocket.
In the wordless & waiting hours of even
the most wordful & aware. Destiny knits
these hours without name, the gestures
most unnoticed. The breathing between laughter.
Not, perhaps then, a question of the questions
or the music. Maybe a fear that,
sans the questions, why the mind,
why the press moving flesh, what the hustle
of men among men? Otherwise loud beasts
playing elaborate polluting games to urge
doubtful urges & claim an old story for why.
What music to do with the least, the hungriest
of hours, bent half-smiling for another’s nod?
What music grips the knees, compacts
the loins, tells better than a headline
what next move in the dance? What music
true to the awkward shiftings of the dance?
I ask & still, because there’s music &
a waiting song in the worst of it.
Because the invisible threads the gossip
& deep magic hurries kings too.
I ask, by singing, mull traffic for a code
in its clashing glares. I ask, by singing,
because I believe the green in men may
still abide. The machines may in most futile
years to come simple point a hand to a hand
& say: clasp. Hold. Learn. I ask, by singing,
because I know none other path, & fail
to despair finally while a pen in my hand.
Singing, to myself, to you, to the world
in this way or another. Because dream
isn’t destiny. Because the path told of
later traced uncut through deepest woods
& tangled hours. Singing because there is breath
coming, & again, & the beat to push,
& the mind to trouble over the why.
No questions. No destiny. No whys.
Singing because the air tonight
is soft & biteless, & the full moon
is teasing a hint like always. The earth
below recalls her fallen & still fruits
by spring in reply. The scents of blooms &
decay mixture hungrily everywhere.
What musics in it? I went looking for
the questions & these are what I found.