Don’t think I’ve forgotten
How to do whatever it is I’m doing here.
I believe that absence
Makes hearts grow dull.
Blunted.
A weapon nonetheless.
I am not here
To be used
As I see fit.
There is only use.
I pull my sentence from
A worn scabbard
And open my palms.
Watch as my sentence takes
Flight
into the moment unseen
To deliver
Itself
Elsewhere
I can only tell you that you will never be satisfied with this explanation.
You are looking for a permission-scale.
An absolution.
I am only willing to offer you a truth that sets no one free.
An obligation.
You have not expected.
This invitation,
slid under the door
along the linoleum of your aging kitchen.
My words-
A noxious gas,
A mix of chemicals that grow appendages,
claw open
your eyes,
sear your nostrils and retinas,
and scorch themselves as cave markings
In your memory.
We are not spared the knowledge.
A duty is ours to accept, always.
But even if the duty is kicked out into the cold winter evening, the door slammed in its face, and the locks fastened in a chilled finality-
The shouts of what we leave outside
will echo.
Little bit of salt in the wound
I inherited it from a passerby
6 degrees of separation
Won’t save a festering wound.
Won’t alleviate the sting
Or the burn.
There is pain enough for you.
There is pain enough for me.
There is pain to spare.
Never a shortage, never for us.
Little bit of soap in the wound
To clean out the foreign bodies.
The burn is guaranteed,
But the wound is in a spot
An angle, a pull of the skin
Where relief is unlikely.
This week’s theme/starter is the word “hierarchy.”
Rules for existence begin and end with knowing what to eat and what eats you.
No man is a king of
this jungle.
We may have the crown
and the scepter,
even a self-fashioned throne.
All of it
poor substitution
for teeth,
claws, and
speed.
Our prey, too,
must remove its finery,
depart from a regal state.
Send away its royal court.
Our weapons and our intellect
Our substitution for teeth, claws, and speed,
a far more effective method
at this scale.
Eat and be eaten.
Muscle to ash to soil
to what is eaten for strengthening
what has outlived our own usefulness.
Another product of the weekly theme series for the word “Destination.”
Gold standard
Fused with partial sunlight
Sneaking through the dense foliage
Of trees in full bloom.
The shade,
Patchwork as it is,
meets with the swaying
of the trees
from a noncommittal wind.
The sound of an unknown
creature-
Critter or Magnificent Beast
rustles the path.
All appears
as if we have found
the hub
of the great wheel,
and we
are witness
to its mighty spin.
Here.
Now.
Slow, rambling river.
Flashes of gentle rapids;
A brief flash of white.
Another year
I’ll make more promises to myself
to remain faithful
to the words.
Another year
For me to say: I’m still writing.
Dodging the work in favor of other
activities.
I’ve been staring at the pieces of
something
long enough
and hoping that the pieces
will magically transfigure themselves
Into a coherent
Whole.
I know who I am kidding.
It is me, the one who is trying to be fooled.
I know what cures this disease.
I know it is time to stop sharpening the blade.
Time to begin cutting
Through sound
air
Various solids and liquids
ideas of all kinds.
Time to let the blood flow.
Let the blade fly and catch whatever is its path.
To do some damage, Devil please care
Please
Care
When my umbilical cord was cut
It rained pocket thesauruses in the
maternity ward hallways.
Fortunately they were paperback editions.
My father, curious about the sound, stepped into the hallway and was pelted by 3 different editions. Opening them, he discovered that the even number pages were all removed in jagged tears.
In that exact moment, an announcement was made:
“I birth the body electric!”
It was a voice that no one had ever heard before, a voice of spring and birdsong and Parliament Light Cigarettes.
Then, the noise of “Hey, lady, how did you get in here?” Followed by a sound of objects falling and static.
The nurse, a woman with wild eyes and long grey hair pointing at eccentric angles, was comforting my mother, who was holding me for the first time. “Must be a Tuesday.” She said.
My mother nodded though she didn’t understand what the nurse meant. My mother was, however, a little distracted.
My father stepped into the room. He was intent and paging through the thesauruses he pilfered from the hallway storm. “Did you know a synonym for arrange is array? I wish I knew more but then next page is ripped out.”
The nurse shrugged. “Last time it rained here, it was feral cats.”
“Well, at least this one helps us learn.” My father said, laughing.
“We all learned a lot that day.” The nurse’s eyes narrowed, her voice cold. Her arms pulled close across her torso, maybe in an act of self-love.
The room frosted over with the dull breeze of silence.
The thesaurus storm ended in the hallway. The sound of the janitor sweeping and cursing burst into the otherwise quiet room.
My parents checked to make sure I did not have a tail.
My brother was born in another hospital.
Rend pavement
Into the statues of war heroes
In unflattering poses:
Mid-war crimes unspeakable.
Crying to God to bring their dead loved
ones back as they contemplate the end.
Embracing a mistress for solace.
Picking fights with locals at a bar.
Cement retellings.
Smelt gold
to forge a monument of me
and you in wartime,
in the poses of everyday life,
worrying about the little concerns
of tax return filing, watching or studying baseball team performances,
Or just sitting in general comfort.
Place us side by side, cement and gold,
at our finest museums.
Let it tell the story no one wants to tell themselves.
I am living in the simulation and the simulation’s sole goal is to get me Old Testament angry so I will snap and ruin everything for the people around me but I’m not going to let it dictate my thoughts and actions.
I am aware of the shortcomings of others like I am aware of the sun’s gradual growth to swallow the rest of us and I have to tell you that it is not a comfort to see the way these two become a perfect Venn Diagram.
All of my energy is dedicated to keeping the ground beneath me firm and real and not a tear in the fabric of time and space and the remnants of fossilized hopes and dreams.
Please remind me that I am still able to do the things I need to do when I fall short of expectations and leave everyone else wondering how it all went so wrong and why is Leonard sitting there in the corner with his teeth chattering and mumbling about heat death?
Fill the bucket with water and watch it drip out of the hole in the side and keep filling it until the water runs dry and the dependents realize that it’s going to be a long summer.
Give me the fix to what ails us and I will drink my fill of it and then share it with other inquiring minds.
I have said enough but I wonder if any of it will matter after I finally close my mouth and let silence have his say.
Unsettled from the usual rigamarole
I opened the almanac to check what might be headed my way.
I found portraits of the skeletons of rats.
A portentous omen.
Perhaps I was to be double-crossed by
Someone
from a long-buried past?
Perhaps,
I am just paranoid.
No longer the warrior,
A reduction in sound.
A fragment of my initial splendor.
But then,
A cry from the backyard!
Onward, to Danger!
Cerberus, be warned!
My sword is still warm with the cleaving of small trees in my backyard
from this morning’s lawn care.
I am not so far removed
from glory.
You are not so far removed
From Hell.
I will meet door. Air will meet face. Hero will meet villain. Destiny will be faced.
A story will be finished.
You don’t come to me in dreams
as much as you arrive
when I drive the stretches of farmland
in the drier parts of winter.
You are beside me, pointing to the way the trees at the edge of the farms bend.
The paths away from the roads, dirt and asphalt both.
I used to look at you,
I’d see your crooked finger
think that inviting smile you presented
was a covert sneer.
You became the fields and the trees.
I sneered at your lack of polish.
The clipped words.
The anger you displayed when one of the farms disappeared for another development.
“This used to be a fertile place.”
I didn’t believe you.
I’ve been here too long, I think.
I’ve felt the backwards movement of things. Seen the way I move forward and the land slides against my feet. Fighting a current of ground, pulling me closer to something I did not want.
I Felt superior to you.
Known it in my ligaments and tendons that this was not the place for me.
There was too much I couldn’t say to you.
Fear that you’d see what I was thinking.
Better to smile and nod,
to dream of the day I’d leave these roads forever.
You, though.
You had something in the way you spoke to me.
Some truth underneath the lilt of your broken words.
And you were persistent.
One day, long after I believed I’d be gone, I noticed
your finger pointing
beyond some bent or spent spot that blurred when driving by.
Pointing instead
to the unending sky
as we crescendoed
to the top of a green hill.
On a slow, sunny day.
Leaving the road, sunshine enveloping us. falling upward into its endless reach.
“All of this, is mine.” You said.
You waved your arms in large circles.
Your smile felt real.
And for the first time, while we continued to drift past clouds and into the an even greater space, I accepted
A truth.
For all of the things I was so sure about,
I knew that you were, in fact,
beautiful
All along.
Like a broken saltine.
Impossible to get out of
The rug
And sofa.
Like the view of the ceiling when flipped upside down.
Where will we put our feet?
Like a broken clock’s stuttering minute hand.
Like wind.
Like a dream that I remember when near the water.
Watching the rapids and the flow of time.
A glimpse of what was something I never experienced
But still seem to know.
Like the faucet’s sparing drip.
Like the falling of leaves.
Like the sound
Of feet, leaving a room.
Like memory.
Like now
I am sure
That deep
In
Luxurious, cavernous walls
The truth
Shines.
History will absolve
Those who
Tried.
I am doubtful
We will
Notice
Any real effect
From said
Absolution.
It’s the thought,
Allegedly, that
Counts.
Trudge
Over the gravel path.
Feel feet slide on uneven
Pebbles.
Trudge
Through the muddy clearing.
Feel feet sink deeper
Below the grass line.
Trudge
Along an aging wooden floor.
Feel toe catch on a nail.
Acquire splinters.
Trudge
Forward
Until you find
What you have been looking for,
Out there.
We set up my drum set in your kitchen.
Warm, summer day.
Made noise.
The freedom of sound.
Creation without direction.
No tape recorder.
No microphone to pick up the sounds made.
Sometimes, in an afternoon nap,
The feeling comes back to me.
I begin to remember the patterns.
The riffs.
I try to put the model ship in the bottle.
A summer spent
In the trees of another season.
Dodging wasps
Poison from the ground.
Mornings before
Another shift
Into the night.
Both the wolf and the sheep
Punching cards
To make minimum wage.
Sunrise meets sunset
melting between
Silence and noise.
No time for the model ship or the bottle.
But
I’ve consumed this old reliable
An artifact of the future and the present.
Comfort in something
Repeatable
Always a familiar path
But something ever new to notice in the layering.
This Cold Vein
Taking my weightless form
And drawing it to concrete
And the fog.
Maybe it’s the dim light of memory.
Maybe I’m guided by the Morse signals of the light out on the ocean.
Maybe, it’s my desire to be back into a moment.
The ones of magic.
The ones of monotony and the slow passage of time.
Repeatable and unable
To be Replaced.
Maybe I’ll remember
It differently later.
Is anything really the same
As we remember it?
Or, are we just playing dress up
With our thoughts
And wishing for what we thought we wanted
In the moment?
