The Hardest Wait

I am waiting for the last turn of the year
to bend its way into a cold corner & relent.
For the stacks of to do & to buy to be done.
For the messages to go ignored & the smiles
to settle: a body sinking into warm bed heaven.
I will trade this corner for the corner of a couch.
I will trade the daily driver's seat for an 800
mile holiday triangle: home, away from home,
old home, & back again.

                                     But you will be waiting,
won't you? Like the books, unread for time,
the stacks of half-ass scholarship & unlooked
lesson plans. An unlocked door between us and
nothing but a rising & setting sun holding time
from tearing itself apart.

                                     But the windows will
not fail. Not these that share a morning moon,
the lost seabirds circling, the semiotics of wind.
I will gladly trade them for a windshield view:
the sly Missouri bending near Rocheport,
the sad, dead paddle-wheels seen from a steel-
bridge view above the stubborn Mississippi,
the snow-stubbled fields of southeast Kansas.

There is no mistaking the way we slide through
time collecting familiarities. Though everything
changes, the way we see & the way we wait
remain. The rest is the stacking of goods.

Day 30: Lesson Learned (The End)

Denominator

"First, you must simplify your radicals.”
(Mr. K., teacher of math, overheard while
walking the morning halls of a high school)

The square root of forever is not now
and cannot be simplified. Loss is a
common denominator, but so is joy.

If love is to be cubed it must settle
for a fraction of its worth until the
time comes that it approaches infinity:

There, even parallel lines come so close
as to touch, or the already close are made
to somehow split apart or even cross.

The part that remains below the line
is not crushed but divided by. Roots
are made to be found not obliterated.

Let us not free our radicals too soon,
or over-simplify them. After all, every
atom belonging to you once belonged to me.

Let balance be our standard.
Let what is common stand as foundation.
Let a bird on the wing be our radical sign.


Source

Day 29: Steps

Presence/Absence

1

At the curve in the road,
geese flew low & in every direction.

2.

The roads where coyotes cross
was empty of all signs but stop.

3.

The place that the morning moon hangs,
this evening there is no sun to descend.

Day 28

 What Really Happened

He didn't come out of nowhere.
We were a few clicks south of Oskie
when our paths met: I south toward work,
he east toward sun & morning heat.

It is true that our eyes met, eyes black with fear,
mine--projected there, which was not panic.
No slow, no swerve, just we two & the slowing
of time (caused by the noticing of smaller incriments).

A last gasp before impact & the emptying of contents,
crumpling of metal, smashing of plastic & strength of glass.
It was not a decision to turn back instead of leaping into my lap,
it was momentum, inertia, and reciprocal luck.

It's also true that the day's lessons started too early to go well.
Returning home, there was nothing that could stop the deep sleep of the guilty.

Days 26 & 27

Day 26: On the Run

Push

There is nothing to run
from, but time, too fast.
Nothing to settle against,
but the push of age.
This balance between
youth & years:  
                        at fifteen:
there was only selfishness,
at nineteen: drunkenness,
misery & loss, at twenty-
two: a change of plans,
at twenty-seven: married
life, at thirty: fatherhood,
at thirty-five: the push,
the push, the push of
time,
time,
time.

______________________

Day 27: Blame No One

Drive

Dozens of red-tails & sparrow hawks can't be wrong:
This is a beautiful day.

There is no one to blame for this;
there is only the past sliding further & further away

like the massacre site, five miles off the highway,
or the old road that led through town & our family's favorite drive-in.

But these are only memories to be temporarily collected,
memorialized, photographed & moved beyond.

These are nothing to the hawk on the wing.
These are the thoughts from some tree perch between dives.

There is nothing wrong with this drive I've done so many times.
There is nothing wrong with multiples homes.

There is nothing between future & past but now.
I have no plans to speed up this drive & no need to stop moving.

Day 25: Thanksgiving

Break Something Beautiful

I had no intention of killing
that Thursday morning
pulling my way along a familiar track
toward the day.
It wasn't that I wasn't watching,
but there he was: too much urge
pushing into the middle of my way.
The look in his big black eyes
as time paused said:
It's everyones's fault.
No acrobatics could save us this time.

A month of unpredictable days later,
we belly up to celebrate errant gunfire
that brought an unlikely crew together,
the best of which brought venison, whitefish
& hope to a colony's future sprawl.
When all this wealth of food & family arrived today,
after much labor & love,
I could only hope that some Jefferson County table
boasted the windfall of that something beautiful
that my need for speed broke.


(In order to get this in today, it is unedited & typed on the tiny iPhone keyboard, I will revisit when I return home.)

Day 24

The Space Between Years

Birth order continues to matter,
as the time stacks up people change
without changing: five & a half years
is always five & a half years,
but the distance between family
expands & contracts by the minute
like bits of energy sharing a nebulous space always about to crash in or blow out.

There is no filling these voids,
neither love nor piety can overtake the force of familial gravity.

Day 23: Ghazal for Gobblers

Thanksgivings


My father, too, knew dooms of love.
When I squint my eyes, I can nearly see him shining here.

The snow will show its ghostly roots.
Winter birds assault the cold with griefs of joy.

It’s the coming home that twilight would rejoice.
But it’s never safe to live only for my father’s dream.

The table’s spreading seems to suggest the world’s as right as rain.
It’s community is more than enough to fill the spirit against the dark.

As children we hope to wake into a world of snow.
As adults at best concede to be as sure of spring.

I am not one born or raised to doubt a mind.
Or scoff myself the subtleties of old, dumb death.

There are things, my friend, we’ll never know, least as truth.
And, William, that uncertainty’s the whole, and more than all.



Source 1
Source 2
Source 3

Day 22: I thought I posted this yesterday.

Culture War


Let’s face it: it is all your fault.
No matter who you are, you did it.
Listened to the wrong ideas,
soaked in the loudest lies,
sipped or gulped them down
at breakfast or on the morning commute.

The space between our arguments is not
demilitarized, but booby-trapped & bloody.
Your choice of network defines you;
don’t you dare switch the channel.
It’s worse than you thought, Declan,
we’ve anesthetized the way that we hear.

If have no choice but to bar the door, man the fall-out shelter.
I'm selling my books for food.

Days 20 & 21

Permission

You don’t need me to tell you:

you can go your own way.

Stop here, go there, pause, rest, or run.

The things I’ve said, stories told:

they mean less to me than you.

As gifts, I won’t look for you wearing them,

but if I see some stranger in the street

holding them against the sun to check

the strength of the threads,

I will save my smile until I see you again.

___________________

All Wrong

Forgive me this small truth:

this old world won’t end

even at ten dollar bread.

But last Wednesday,

birds & leaves fell from the sky

on Nineteenth Street.

I could not tell

the one from the other:

black spots on a blue morning.

It was hard to be angry then.

I’m trying to remember that now.

Days: 17, 18, 19

17: Tell me why…

Don’t

tell me why it matters

that you read this or
write that when min-
utes or years later it
won’t exist as Emily
Dickinson anymore
but a person you find
yourself living with
or sitting across from
at a table asking you
something that is a po-
em or a riddle or a met-
aphor that really means
that when I say this I
want you to know that
I meant that, but your
understanding will be
the difference between
infinity & evermore.

___________________

18: Palindrome / Lost & Found Poem

O’Keefe

bones bleached
of desert
reminding
that
nothing ever living
is ever
                   dead
ever is living
nothing that
reminding desert
of bleached bones

__________________

19: Poem with a hole in it


This poem

This poem has a             in it.
Actually it has several          .
It will not matter that they are there,
because you can        them in. Or if
you don’t that doesn’t matter either,
because you don’t really         about
what’s missing, or else you would be





                         instead of reading this.

Day 16 (11.16.2010)

StackTumbleStack

            (for Liam)

one

beginnings:

tears, fears, hope

personified in

tiny fingers,

tiny toes.

     two

laughter out

of smiles, develop

into phrases full

of promise too

important not

to keep.

          three

we went

from three to

four before

a third Fall

counted another

number for you

& sharing with

a baby seemed

so easy for a

boy like you

     four

the conversion

to hero complete,

all the options remain:

über or noir,

the choice too close

to impossible, so

you settle for

being both

            five

school in,

you’re never

out of ideas:

words bloom

as letters form

easier & easier

on your tongue

& your mind

a trap that

catches all

the prey my

prayers could

ask

____

Five years of moments fall

like exploding stars, dusting

a world that keeps expanding.

There is no tumble down a

growing boy & his sidekick

brother won’t soon rebuild.

____

                 soon enough

yearonyear

                  need will slack

inchbyinch

                  infallibility fades

lifegoeson

  

____

thanks, 

son,

for 

your 

first

five 

years

I’ve 

grown

as 

much 

as

you 

have

Day 15

Workplace Hazard

Each time, stepping out in the hallway,
at high tide or ebb tide, there is
the chance that the breaking point
with finally be breached.

It might be a disdaining look,
or another indecorous shout
interpellating from behind,
to remind the cost of prejudice.

To fill a generic category,
to stand in loco parentis,
hour by hour, without the
pull of blood or home:

This must have made sense some
gone day, when the social contract
meant something other than:
just let me look the other way.

Day 14

Crossroads: Between Here & There


There was never a chance of turning away,
starting over, from scratch or in the middle of things.
This is not the same as stay the course; nothing stays
the same for long. Every day requires new courage,
new resolve. At the call each morning is a choice:
 
How will I reinvent myself today?
 
Like an accordian folding in on itself:
time's tuning requires touch to make sense.
It is a familiar sound, the morning music,
a slow, steady drumbeat that signals:
another day, another day, another day.

Days 12 & 13

Tradition No. 1

Forget what they say about poetry:
It really is that difficult sometimes.
It would be better to stop at that,
But a quatrain would be more poetic.

-------------
Tradition No. 2

What was it they said about poetry?
Spontaneous overflow of powerless bullshit, avoided in tranquility & willingly suspended when belief is difficult to come by. Tonight I'd rather play tennis without a net. At least at the beginning of the game it's love serving love.

Day 11/11

No One Wants to Know

It hit me today that they don’t really know who I am.

I certainly don’t know them, don’t need to beyond

the here & there hour, the rushed or well-thought paper,

the after school briefing, quick question, occasional cry.

When the needy one, full of storm-fear never grown out of

& compulsion—making it all seem like destruction—asked,

again, for the hug that was certainly a stand in for other arms:

I quaked and yielded. She did not want to know me,

but to know that someone would care enough to say:

I accept your fear with the same unreason that brings it.

No one wants to know what the other one is thinking,

just that for a minute’s time a faithful space is shared,

or hope is defined by a bit of community that will be

allowed to disappear, without a need for shedding tears.

Day 10: A Love Poem

Walking

Days ago, one of our boys asked:

how many steps to heaven?

while we were walking on a Sunday

through a park designed to let

the grieving have at least the horizon

to ease their sense of continued loss

with the evidence of perpetual growth.

There, in the autumnal distance,

change is as natural as the death

this space was laid out to memorialize.

Nothing is out of place from that far,

nothing is unquestionable, not even

the distance between innocence & loss,

between wanting to know everything

& doubting that answers exist.

Holding your hand & theirs, 

nothing was absent of truth. 

Any answer would suffice, 

but neither of us bothered 

to decide on one, 

but gathering strength beyond tears, 

we held each other tighter 

& went on down the path 

that led to the rest of the day, 

the rest their lives,

the rest of the time we have left,

whatever it may be, 

to hold on as tightly as we can, 

to know that it is the moments like these 

that bridge the distance between growth & collapse,

that solidify the pleasure that invents heaven 

and gives the idea of God temporary proof against doubt.

The Head and the Heart--"Down in the Valley"(Lawrence High School Classr...

God bless my friend Jeff Kuhr and LHS's Room 125 Productions!

Day 8 & 9: Agreement & Speed

Unsocial Contract

You choose language

uncarefully, shouting

this or that expletive

 across the bodies

circulating around,

oblivious, you:  

no sun but a burning

sphere of invective &

meaningless phrase.

Forgive my complicity

in your ignorance.

It’s just that the

language we share

allows me no bridge

to cross the distance

between your bold

star  & my humble

orbit through your

hurled words.

Circa 1905

Stacking minute upon minute,

the day works its way into

the week’s end then:

slow, now, slow.

Week by week, the years add

a number of epiphanies

& weaknesses, but at the

midpoint there’s a need

to  slow, now, slow.

Time may wrinkle face,

hands, & resolve, but

the day’s quick pace

pulses & pride thickens

into humility allowing

that begging voice at

the heart’s deep core

to urge more & more:

slow, now, slow.

Give us just a little

more, Time.

Days 6 & 7: Weekend Poetry is Difficult

Day 6:

Looking for Obscurity

Everyone wants clarity, some

pray for it, even. Give me a

cloud-filled sky, it’s November 

after all: let the ribbon of birds

lose itself in a temple of cumulus.

Let truth slip away unnoticed,

waiting for some rambler to

pick it up & call it something new.

Let all of us lose our senses

trusting that behind the darkness

is that same blue sky waiting

for the lightning to strike or a

new sun to rise up like a first fire

burning every preconception to ash.

------------- 

Day 7:

Pro-Memory

without it, we would

never exist but in the

tiniest segments

four shiny sea shells

a broken bicycle chain

a can of old coins

nothing is all gone

everything leaves its dust

choose your objects well

seven unplayed cards

one fractured black rosary 

a pile of lost leaves

Day 5: Friday Found Poem (mostly)

Before&After

Nothing is constant, but change
comes quickly or not at all.
Someday we'll be happy here
comes the sun, tomorrow?

Or is it rain or wind or storm:
Let storm! Life is ... born too
young into a world already so
gone too long to keep so dear.

What can you do for change,
on a lark, on the lamb, in a bus,
on the way to wherever you are:
you are, all the things you are.

There is no mistaking here:
Everybody know this is ...
nowhere to go but...up to no
good to know you too, pal.

Day 4: Stuck or Unstuck [in time]

Containment Unit # 231

We watch the movie frontwards, stopping
not often for questions & noticing, they would
rather plug in to their own headlessness.
I insist that they remain well postured.
This doesn't please the prisoners, who
don't buy that they are free to come & go:

stuck, unstuck

they renounce my influence: traitor,
liar, thief, hypocrite, warden, bum.
My ticks don't bother them anymore,
they react, only to keep themselves awake.
Even when they smile, their teeth shine
with disdain, or is it just the clock, shine:

stuck, unstuck

big hand catching up with little hand
seconds committing suicide with
a leap less of faith than absolutism,
to keep all the watchers hoping
& guessing that soon even this will pass,
at the top of every hour a pause:

stuck, unstuck

but what of these friends unshackled,
choosers, minds broken open to see
that what matters here matters every
where, that what is true is as uncom
fortable as a poorly engineered desk,
a false ergonomics of education:

stuck, unstuck

We are held here, we two, we many,
an invisible thread, a visible cell white
walled & dingy, speckled with useless
memorabilia, a story soaked wasteland,
unkempt wordhoard, ill used, piling up,
forever unread, only to contain us.

Are we really stuck? Unstuck.

Day 3: Woeful Wednesday

Here, KS

A colleague of mine's brother-in-law lives there,
all wrapped up in soft-spoken age & false teeth
letting slide the subtlest lies through a radio fourthwall.

Believable lies, willingly suspended, make his brand
of honesty so compelling. I believe in Irma,& Ted,
& even Jillian as much as any Chuck, Dave or Maryette.

But the state I live in is not all dotted with resolve, or
picked ripe as September's last acorn squash. Whatever
do they do with all those leftover pumpkins, anyhow?

See, here in our corner of a mislead & unheard populace,
we don't worry much about American exceptionality,
& sure as shit don't talk about settling our entitlements.

We just want to bring our children up to know the difference
between right & wrong is not often debated about on television.

Day 2: Two For Tuesday (on a Wednesday)

Cut the Noise

November comes in like a megaphone
& dies out under a blanket of regret.
With hope, we survive the season's
sadness & light our candles one by one
hoping that the coming cold will bury
all the fearful chatter: the throaty violence
of  peaceful overthrow. Let there be
birds collecting seed beneath the frost.
Let their red coats bristle in the freeze
& their pecking beaks strike harder
than the oil man's spike. May we all
find the silence our broken spirits
need to purge the liar's spectacle.
Let freedom's ring muffle under
the gleam of falling snow.


_______
The Truth about Disappointment

It rarely accomplishes what it starts,
but slides away to a delicate sense of loss
that suggests a permanence that is always a lie.
Nothing is worth sleeplessness except love.
So says the sleepy election day Kansan with his bitter pill.

Day 1

15/35

At fifteen, restraint meant not
sticking up for a bullied friend
or joining in when insults were
handed out by the dozens like
some kind of locker-room party favor.
When the situation beckoned, fists flew:
willy-nilly, a few even landing on a face
that years before was a boon friend
& minutes after was the face of regret
& twenty years later shame.

At thirty-five there is little fight left
& restraint is easier to understand,
nuanced by years of practicing patience.
A man comes to realize that who we are
has as much to do with what we didn't do
as what we did--assuming the dents
we made are equally as important
as the ones we received.
                      But at the midway point:
perceived weakness & pretend strength
are equally unimportant. An aging face
shows all the signs of childhood fear
without the need for mask or lies.

http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/CategoryView,category,NovemberPADChapbookChallenge2010.aspx

Presences Impossible to Confirm

Something on the end of a fishingline,

hanging on, or gone, isn’t the same

as something slipping through fingers,

falling gracefully into the water beneath

your feet breathing in the rain.

You know when I talk about birds

that I am at my most faithful:

just today the absence of a

blue heron nearly killed me.

The ancients read from left to right

auspiciously, and right to left with

apprehension:      birdbrain

roadkill, birdsign, emptiness.

When memories of gone loves

gather in dreamscape,

do they remember one another?

Do they all wake up disappointed?

What is God but authorfunction?

Hopescape, prayerfield, amen.

If I scan all your old haunts are you

more likely to show up in my dreams?

Do ghosts still believe in forever?

in punctuality? in omniscience?

apologies?

Which big fish story started all this lying?

When I pull up the line I always expect you to smile.

I will never stop being five years old.

Polaroids never lie.

You’re still not here

____________

Forgive me. I've been reading Li-Young Lee again.

A Good Man’s Son

His first wife was a private detective, and he had a tendency to undermine his own best wishes. It would seem that things were doomed from the start. Their son, by the time I met him, had developed a healthy sense of disinterest, but then again this was high school. Long, stringy hair, in Cobain style, ten years removed: even down to the holey jeans, sans cardigan or hospital gown. He did his work, he passed his classes, but there wasn’t any care for it. In the best moments you got the sense that he was curious about things, that in some future he might have a chair where he’d sit and read a book, or even write one. He might just as likely never pick one up after graduation. He would graduate though; he owed his dad that much: a diploma, a photograph, even a real smile and the same shy slouch on a sunny day in May.

I never knew his mother, never met a private investigator, not that I’m aware of anyway. They spoke of her rarely. She wasn’t dead, but she was more of a ghost than a physical presence. Someone they both knew, someone they shared, who was no longer a daily part of their lives,  but you got the feeling that she moved through their memories, their imaginations, taking stock of their shared deficiencies but loving them in spite of them, most of the time. Then again she was gone; she left them, these men who barely needed speech, alone with their silence, with their television, headphones, and disappointment. And they had their cats: Tom, Whitey, and the one with the limp. These would never replace the woman that connected them, but they were faithful, they were quiet, and they were seldom disappointed.

None of this explains how it happened: how he had his chance to become a household name, his fifteen minutes. The east/west commute was brutal, only thirty miles, but the sun both ways. Mostly he took the bus. On this particular Tuesday he was early. His general psychology class didn’t begin until 10:00 am, but he was at the bus stop and on a bus at 8:15. He sat down in the middle of the bus, the sixth row from the front on the right side. He liked to be able to see out the south window on the way into the city. He enjoyed the way the landscape was so predictable, how a slight rise and fall here and there laid out where farmers would settle, how they would rotate crops, how roads would be charted and someday where housing tracts would be settled on and quickly developed, finally linking the larger metropolis with a series of what used to small towns. He knew each rise of a hill, each bend of country roads, and could mark the early autumn changes in the old growth trees.

When the car in front of the bus suddenly slowed, jerked, and rolled, he was looking at a familiar man-made mini-lake used by the college’s water-ski team. He ripped out his ear buds and gripped the seat back in front of him tightly, preparing for whatever impact or slide might occur. When the tires hit the shoulder and the brakes were applied, the slide into the deep ditch was inevitable. Most of its passengers were oblivious, but not Travis. By the time the bus came to a dusty stop on its right side, he was already on his feet and looking to help. By the time those who were sure of themselves were on their cell phones calling 911, he was out the emergency exit and running to the small blue car to check on its occupants.

She was unconscious when he arrived. There was not a lot of blood but enough that he was scared to move her. Her seat belt had kept her in the small car while it rolled and skidded, resting finally right side up and still purring. The windshield was gone, as was the driver. He felt the girl’s neck for a pulse, steady. He looked in the distance for her driver, another quickening of his heart and he was running again. Twenty yards south, slumped and unmoving, the driver was waiting to be saved. By this time the survivors were gathering and waiting for the first responders to make the scene, but Travis was on his knees palpitating the man’s chest counting out a rhythm as if he was still listening to a favorite song.

That evening on the news no one’s crying family members were interviewed. No memorial services were celebrated days later. There would be no roadside shrine erected in this spot. The odd image of a young man sitting on the side of the road with his ear buds back in his ears was multiplied through the papers and broadcast on the region’s various nightly newscasts, eventually reaching the television of his mother in a distant town and prompting a nervous voicemail message. Just like at the scene, Travis declined to be interviewed. This above all things would make his father proud. 

Great men? Great women?

Whitman Notebook, mid 1850s

Democracy is not the right word for it, nor is Republicanism. Conservative. Liberal. Reactionary. Progressive. Left. Right. All terminology, somehow: wrong.

This is nothing new, after all, over 6o years ago it was written: "The words democracy, socialism, freedom, patriotic, realistic, justice have each of them several different meanings which cannot be reconciled with one another" (Orwell, "Politics and the English Language" 1946).


And here we are now, 2010, nearing a mid-term election that has all the markings of a "sea-change," "referendum on...," "mandate," "blood-bath," "wave election," "sweeping change," "critical barometer," "another 1994/1982/1946," and I could go on.


What all this, and the punditry, polling, & pandering in the media, has me thinking about is a need for a positive political movement. As we continually relearn: it may be possible to win a campaign on "Hope & Change," but those concepts are exceedingly hard to live with or live up to. Political campaigns, after all, have by definition a remarkably short shelf-life and are peppered with the wrong kind of rhetoric. But a political movement, even a movement of one or two or three thoughtful people can last and have small but important effects, especially when positive.


Perhaps this is what Walt Whitman was thinking about in, say, 1856 when he was scribbling in one of his pocket-sized leather notebooks about a city and a house being "great" because of "great men" and "great women." As meaningless as the word "great" has become (and most likely was already in the 1850s), the sentiment of those scribblings still suggests that it is the people that create, maintain, and evolve the system: government, civil society, cityscape, and home. A little bit of greatness of confidence, consensus, and candidness just might scratch up something positive.


The trouble is not finding the willing followers. The trouble is linguistics. It is so much easier to define a political movement in the negative, as protest, using fear, and threat, and anger. These are not qualities that we lack or that we need, but what we need cannot be found any longer through words. 


At this point there is only one word that comes to mind. Happiness. Not "the pursuit of" because that is too reducible to property. Not "a return to" because that too is a defining by negation. Not "don't worry" because there is indeed much to be worried for. But just the simple slogan: Happiness. To cut some of the fear, anger, hypocrisy, bribery, and gridlock. 


I am not sure how far we can get with this one word. We could hope for something "trans-formative"... but there I go again with that problematic diction.


Wish us luck.

Field Trip

     The Child is father of the Man [Turdsworth]

     In the woods too, a man casts off his years, as the snake his slough, and at what period soever of life, is always a child. [Emerson]

I still don't know what Wordsworth meant, though I appreciate the sentiment: the aging adult turning child again for play, for love, for acknowledgement? 

Or is it, actually, that the child fathers? Leads the man into an honest sense of who he is when he's free to be himself, as he did before he cared who he'd become: the child before he was a man.

There is a third alternative: the kind of father the man becomes begins when he is just a tripping child full of wonder & fear.

But all of this is less important than a morning spent walking in the woods on the first day of Fall on a first field trip for both father & son. 

On that path in the woods: the child, the man are equals: both now & then. 

Walking, looking up at migrating families of butterflies, he unexpectedly grabbed onto my hand. I shrunk, not out of fear, but out of wonder. In that moment there were no words that could be worth saying, however poetic or philosophical, just two boys in the woods. 


He lead; I followed.

Megafauna

Zoology: the large mammals of a particular region, habitat, or geological period
Ecology: animals that are large enough to be seen with the naked eye
(www.oxforddictionaries.com)

1.

Here be… Megalania?
The ring’s just not the same,
the legs too short too, &, alas,
no wings. But still Diptrodon
was no match for: razor tooth,
paralytic venom drip, & speed.
Or was it the tyrant lizard who

first inspired stone throwers to
venture out for hero-quest?
After all, his feathers now suggest
that once or future flight: a short
leap between continents to behold
Microraptor: gliding between palms.


2.


Once upon a time in The Great Lakes,
Castoroides ohioensis loomed large
the Indiana nights, with or without a
paddle tail, her six inch incisors gleaming
in the moonglow on the Kankakee marsh.
With a heft the size of Ursus americanus,
this rodent was no easy prey, and her pelts
were not taken often, if ever. But a dam-
less life & another glaciation left it lacking,
unfit: only a fossil’s life left for collecting.


3.


But it’s the seas that breed the biggest beasts:
No, not Nessie, but Ocean roamers tiny necked.
Kronosaurus, nearly fifty feet of nastiness,
writhing through the briny depths to avenge
his namesake’s punishment for Titanic lust.


Medusozoa’s Cambrian forbears, dried up,
dread-snakes & all, found by flat-footed
Kansans in the (underwater) deserts of Utah,
tableau the slowness of earliest thought:
nerve-nets that not so soon became brain.
Still the largest living roam with Lion’s Mane,
or gather in Nettles, or wander as lonely Cannonballs.


Cethorinus maximus is “cosmopolitan” despite
his open mouth & krill swilling intemperance.
What it basks in one can’t be sure, but brine’s
whitest glow brings it up to feed & feel the glow.
His teeth unnecessary but for the hold-on that
ensures the wild ride that provides propagation.
This gentle giant tugs at what is fathomable for
we, newbies, so allegoric to the dark & deep.


4.

But to speak ecologically: even the tiny are mega.
As when the eye picks up a miniscule speck of red
migrating across sidewalk earth—or a flattened book
beast hides in the precipitous gutter of an old tome.
These tiniest megafauns still loom large & long.


To look carefully is to know the difference between
the (mostly) harmless clover-mite whose worst is to
deposit an algae haze on my redbrick, of colossal scale,
& their larger cousin, Trombiculidae, whose chigger-itch
can send their more mega-host, us, scratching the walls.


But it’s in the longer term that the mini-mega show
their stature. Take up the book again & search that
middle ground between old & new to find the little
diggers eating at the truth & lies of paper-immortality.
Psocoptera & Silverfish, paper-dragon & book-shark,
hole their way through tragedy, comedy, & history alike,
so the small may be large, long before the first become last.

Off the Grid

turning, a face in the wind:

as if there was nothing left

that the earth could hold,

no need or want that

couldn’t be found some

place else, some sky:  far.

-----

we meet here, daily

it seems you wait for

me around this corner,

near the tracks, near

fields that rise & then,

again, fall—or, rather,

are taken down:   cut

short,   like a life that

served & in going gave

["Off the Grid #1" US-59 Spring 2010]

where were you this

morning when I looked

to the lines for your

sign & found nothing

but someone else’s

power surging into

morning light?

-----

this too is a made place:

dreamscape, without

grid or track or high-

way, no need for

wheel or wing, but

only mind, eye, &

sleep: here, where

 irregular is nothing,  

we travel together,

flitting, fleeting,  &

until all has flown.

when I wake, will

it be unmade, dis-

integrated, lost?

will I be permitted

a return?

-----

there is little left

to say that hasn’t

crossed a line

somewhere, or

that a mind won’t

soon send across

space to rebound

near me as a

figure of glittering

text: moveable,

removable, &

mostly un-noticed.

there is nothing

new under the

sun, but your

wings as they

gather upwards

& away: allowing

shadow to reach

across the span

of your farthest

points, between

you & I, between

acceptance & need.

Readings

[Note: This is inessential reading; this might be tedious even for the small (and kind) audience gathered here, but I wrote it, and enjoyed writing it, so I thought I'd post. Feel free to skip and move on to your next "reading" project.]

Concertina wire, twice,

the words: entered

my field of vision: once

in juvenilia by a general,

secondly, a poem by a

Topekan, a quick learner,

one of the under 40s the

foundation loves.

I am not incarcerated, at

war, or of an imagination

that craves boundaries

or blood, suggested or

shed. All I could hear

was the soft bellowing

of distant music, that

might have been

birdsong.

_____

The Englishman responsible

for the idea: image-nation,

told me a story in three

pages of a Japanese brush,

a French swimming pool,

a Cambodian, arthritic

swimmer & her husband:

I did not weep nor smile,

but the minutes were

strong ones that passed

by:  both noticed & un-

noticed. I can attest to

them but did not count.

_____

A white H on a blue field,

& no need to turn is a

blessing. The sounds of

ambulance, firetruck,

& cruiser are distinct

but can be read in

several ways: help,

trouble, prayer, relief,

fear:       or just go

without notice.

In the rearview: the letters

arrange themselves, even

without the noise, but

staring straight ahead

familiarity fades.  Luckily,

when need arrives

sound can be enough,

& with any luck, you’ll

never need to know

anyway.

_____

From what I can recall:

Villon’s songs were in

one voice, but several

characters, while Hugo

always sounded like

several people speaking

at once. Or was it the

other way around?

_____

And then there’s work:

Winthrop, Bradstreet,

Taylor, Edwards,

Franklin, Paine,

Wheatley, Irving,

Poe, Hawthorne,

Melville: All

weighing in their

own way these

next three weeks.

_____

A red-eye jet, I must

assume, just shook

my sleeping house

(metonymy?)

not enough to

wake the dreamers.

Isn’t noticing this

a kind of reading,

too?

_____

There is a poem that a

certain Laureate likes

that de-grades a gathering

of homeless, fire-warmers 

by suggesting that a poem

will make readers see

the cold they inhabit

more clearly after  they

finishing reading.  The

argument is actually

the poet’s, but I blame

the elder too, because

he didn’t even correct

him for failing to mention

the way the exhalations

of each man mixed with

the others & while

one choked a bit from

too much smoke or

from too many nights

outside, or too much

exhaust from the

commuters as

they pass by (not

reading a poem

but listening to a

book on tape about

global markets or the

death of journalism)

the others rotated

just enough that

he could catch his

breath before

the smoke

engulfed

his lungs.

_____

I must confess to

poly-reading,

there must ten or

twelve cracked

spines now waiting

to be shelved &

pushed back to-

gather with the

masses: a mystery,

 the  other halves of

 two collections of stories,

the rest of Stevens,

Kumin, Kenyon,

& too much Wright.

_____

Finally, a dying man

chooses, carefully,

what he reads:

those books

remaining, a

friend’s last

novel,  prayer

or curse filled

emails & online

posts, but mostly

people collecting

as culture, what he

has spent his life’s

years waging

some kind of

war on, to make

peace with an

answerless cosmos,

he writes last

dispatches from

that tropic few

 hard-living

critics survive.

There is so much

left to read,

& he keeps

adding more.

_____

There is more

that I could tell,

but, after all,

one must protect
at least some

of  his sources.

Camerado: The Birth of a Word

I mentioned in a previous post that one of my earliest formative poetic moments was reading Whitman for the first time, specifically, the section of "Starting From Paumanok" pictured below. The Whitman Archive has made available "The Blue Book" or Whitman's annotated copy of the 1860 Leaves of Grass. The page presented below shows, in Whitman's hand, his coining of the term: "Camerado".

I realize that I am a bit of a Whitman-nerd, but I find it quite exciting to have access to the development of what is certainly one of the most important books of American (World?) poetry. In addition, as a writer, poet, teacher, editor (ha!), this digital copy of that ever-evolving (and devolving) book provides a window into how creation happens and continues through revision. It seems we could all learn something about the power of re-seeing by perusing Uncle Walt's epic task of revising a behemoth.

Enjoy!

September 2010

                        (or, 15 years)

My father already gone,

when my mother dies

I’ll be an orphan. Mind you,

she’s well  & I’m too old

to be a ward of any state.

My wife & children will

have to care & foster me

until finally I grow up.

This being said:

I am a grown man,

who lost his old man

in a selfish age

& it didn’t kill him,

like he expected,

when he imagined,

as a boy, being

fatherless would.

That being said:

dead dad’s do haunt

& mostly it’s for good.

In dreams & costume

clad they enter as

memories re-clothed

as Indians hunting

what-might-have-beens

but they never tell

where they left unfinished

manuscripts you know exist.

When I die, one hopes not

so young as he, I will return

a songbird that follows my boys

to whatever landscapes,

real or imaginary,

they believe in enough

to look for me in.

Soon: Winter will arrive.

The redbird will sit patiently

in the hedge-row, which will be

dusted lightly with the snow

that might just be the distinguished years

some old men never get to use.

_______________

This is another re-found work from last year, now revised. I wrote it in December(2009), but it is more of a September poem.

Farewell August

It is no joke to say:    "August,
you are a cruel month."   Heat
that won't quite quit, be cut--
rend through.      This morning,
its last, was already heated at
first light. Rain evaporated
before it had a chance to
settle on windshield,
road, or fingertips.

Tomorrow, September calls:
"Friend, there is always some
one who'll remember."   Cool
will come, breeze will blow,
fruit will fall, and crops, crease
& fade. The road that is always
the same will slow. The sun will
lengthen, later. This is my cue.

The past is never really gone.

Carlson's Last Day

This is not a sad story. This is a story that could have been true.

            Today, Tuesday, was Carlson’s last day.

            Or it could have been. Every day might have been Carlson’s last day. Any day now. He will know for sure when it comes. The day he walks out of the classroom, without his things, without his canvas bag, without his blazer, his keys in the pocket, his half-empty flask of coffee on his desk, his notebooks of lectures stacked in piles on top of the stereo, and book shelves, and countertops, his graded and un-graded essays in colored folders on the corner of the desk. He won’t touch any of them. He won’t call the absence reporting system or check his email. The meetings will go on without him and no classes will be cancelled. In the grand scheme of the public educational system, he doesn’t really matter. When he realizes this, he will walk out that door, marked with the arbitrary number, 321, the tattered cartoons, the ripped poems, the fading newsprint, and the gift postcards & stickers. He will not return, and yet he will still exist.

            I imagine that what he will worry about the most is that his friends will have to pack up box after box of books. Throw countless, meaningless scraps and reams of paper into recycling tubs. Take down and sort through all the accumulated rubbage and packratery of a decade of residence in a 600 square foot classroom. They will forgive him because somewhere in their most honest moments they admire his abandonment. And they will understand when he doesn’t answer their calls. Eventually, and sooner than you might think, they will stop talking about him. Stop signing his name at faculty meetings out of respect or for a joke. They will not forget him, his walking away means too much, but they will think of him less and less until he hides away in the part of memory where one stores, or temporarily loses, what was at one time a daily bread.

____________

I wrote this story last October during a particularly difficult semester as a public educator. I hadn't re-read it until now, nearly a year later, while cleaning out some files. In writing this story I was allowing the part of me that was Carlson to walk away so that the part of me that isn't him could stay. It worked. For now, I'm far from walk-about, but I thought I'd share anyway. It ain't great, but it sure was fun to write.

The Impossibility of Silence

"Holiness is a force, and like the others can be resisted."
      Annie Dillard, "A Field of Silence" in Teaching a Stone to Talk (1982)


1.

First thing in the morning
is the ringing of artificial bells
that once inspired H.D.T.
to cast aside "mechanical
aids" for wakefulness.

The daily glide & spin
creates a noise like
liftoff & sustains
through the hour
a tunnel's windy
rattle & hum.

Then there is the shouting
above the nonsense
of the braindead 
megaphone.

The internal
monologue always
warning that too much
talk might ruin even
the eagerest of ferns.

The click, the buzz,
the vibraphones
in every bag
& pocket
taking their
turns at
rippling
slightly the
delicate air.


2.

It is about this time
that one longs for the
desert's haunting emptiness
of sound, with footsteps'
constant pounding the only
sound external & the sole
saving thump of sanity.

To stop is to feel the heavy
drum of circulating blood
the hum of neurons firing.
leaping, gathering speed
to tips & return.

This terrifying solitude
is impossible to forget.
Nothing more frightening
than one's internal
holiness.

The only chance you have
is to run, and keep running
until sleep or its unruly brother
gathers the quietude around you
& hums the sound of a silent sea.


3.

But here, the gift of constant noise
keeps away the fearful quiet
(the voice of God?)
& headphones at the bedside,
a t.v. on the wall,
supply the soundtrack
of an always moving world
that spins us through
the night & at least
one more day.

For Ed Bedford

That time we fished below the dam,
the crane appeared, as white as Sunday,
and impressed me more than any fish,
and I didn't catch a single, slippery one
and you slow reeled the morning away.

Everyone knows you don't need to talk
when the thin line glides the water.
And at breakfast, talk's but a background
for a meal that's never rivaled by ones whose
starched white cloth might once have been nurses' hats.

This is friendship. It doesn't need a lot of wordiness.
For that reason, its poems often sing too much.
Take Dick's "Last Words" for J. W.,
a poem worth loving without praise because it makes
of friendship & poetry something stronger than critique.

But there is more (and less) to all of this. Time
makes its holes in everything, from memory to resolve.
Even on the good days it's simply that you catch the same fish twice.
A lack of fame doesn't hurt as much as it seemed,
and a lack of love would burn bitterness through & through.

The thing about friendship is it doesn't come & go.
Neither time's speed nor distance's slip avails
when we need a break from pretending we were someone else.
A friend always sees more than he tells and waits for the light
to break when a dark time is needed to avoid the mirror.

Of all the Eds I've known in adult years, it's only
you who'd accept the title.Though acclaim eludes,
poetry's always at the edge of what we say.
We only fished that once, and that without much luck,
but when the bird finally flies, I hope you'll be there too.

This is Your Life

"Geography is key, the accident of birth."

Annie Dillard, "Life on the Rocks: The Galápagos"

from Teaching a Stone to Talk, p.124)


It happens this way: you become

who you were going be all the while.

There are hundreds of possibilities,

most are out of your control,

but the details are in your hands—

like the network of crisscrossing

lines & curves etched into your palms

year by year. You may add scars &

decoration, but the body is determined

by time & by place: geography, genetics.


There is no such thing as the unexamined
life, but honesty is as rare as selflessness.

Though neither are recipes for happiness,

they are the control you have day by day.

Be careful not to confuse humility & pride,

these twins will catch you off guard just

when you think you've figured them out.

Minute by minute, choice defines you,

but it is difficult to avoid the accident of birth.

As the universe continues to expand,

we buzz around a shrinking globe

unable to escape who we were born to be.

Take heart, no matter what parallel holds you,

that it might always have been worse:

you might have thought all the time

that you were supposed to be someone else.

  _________________________________________
This hasn't turned out to be what I intended yet. I've been reading a bit of Annie Dillard every day lately and the above sentence hit me hard because it brought together several thoughts that keep coming back to me: 1) the idea that a life has a trajectory that begins out of one's control and although a person makes a life out of the choices that she/he makes there is still so much that cannot be controlled, 2) because of those choices, a person's life might have been so much different than it ends up (by the way, though I think about those other possible live sometimes, I am quite happy with the one I have!), 3) I get so angry when people do not understand that by "accident of birth" inequalities abound; therefore, those of greater geographical birth-luck should calm down a bit, curb the fear, and tone down the political anger! I wish that latter thought could have made it into the poem.