No one lived in it. No one was in there today.
Hardly what you’d call a remote location,
Stuck at the end of an ordinary driveway
In a closely packed neighborhood, once
An early suburb, since overtaken by the city.
But it was isolated, all the same, because
No one bothered to visit it but an alley cat,
And even the cat only sniffed and went on.
Watching from a window of an empty home
Not belonging in any sense to me, daughter
Hundreds of miles and weeks away from me,
I thought I detected the faint movement
Of my soul through that windowless wall
At the end of the drive, past where the cat
Had gone, perhaps into the mountain snow.
Thursday, November 30, 2017
Wednesday, November 29, 2017
Small Circles, Salt Lake City, 29 November 2017
The falcon closed in on a hole at the center
Of the world. The Great Salt Lake drained
Into what remained of the Great Salt Lake.
Nothing fell apart. Nothing failed to hold.
A vortex underneath the sunset puckered.
At a table in a breakfast room lit by dying
Daylight, an oddly shaped individual bent
Over a flickering screen and typed, seeking
Out a key to the tourniquet twisted around
His chest. He wasn’t trying to get away.
He was trying to discover why the worst
Had not convicted him. Best he could say,
A kind of ecosystem near the bottom made
A green dream of exhaustion in the shade.
Of the world. The Great Salt Lake drained
Into what remained of the Great Salt Lake.
Nothing fell apart. Nothing failed to hold.
A vortex underneath the sunset puckered.
At a table in a breakfast room lit by dying
Daylight, an oddly shaped individual bent
Over a flickering screen and typed, seeking
Out a key to the tourniquet twisted around
His chest. He wasn’t trying to get away.
He was trying to discover why the worst
Had not convicted him. Best he could say,
A kind of ecosystem near the bottom made
A green dream of exhaustion in the shade.
Tuesday, November 28, 2017
Empty House, 28 November 2017
For a few hours, the house got on by itself.
Light shifted across chairs and floors,
The fundamental machines functioned,
Heater, refrigerator, etc. The world did not
Collapse. The little lump of humanity
That sat at the table, filing applications
For teaching jobs and healthcare, smiled.
Even sick, down with a bug, even decayed,
Broke, and broken, it was pleasant to be,
Literally, momentarily pleasant just to be.
There was more he could be doing, there
Was less expectation left than ever before,
But when the universe looked the other way,
It felt almost safe to dream in the monster’s fur.
Light shifted across chairs and floors,
The fundamental machines functioned,
Heater, refrigerator, etc. The world did not
Collapse. The little lump of humanity
That sat at the table, filing applications
For teaching jobs and healthcare, smiled.
Even sick, down with a bug, even decayed,
Broke, and broken, it was pleasant to be,
Literally, momentarily pleasant just to be.
There was more he could be doing, there
Was less expectation left than ever before,
But when the universe looked the other way,
It felt almost safe to dream in the monster’s fur.
Monday, November 27, 2017
The Sickroom, 27 November 2017
Peach lights in the clouds at dawn and then
A resolutely grey day settled in. The body
On the bed could hardly stir, as if that were
Any excuse in this world. Life is motion, ohoy,
The marriage of flesh and air. This flesh
Had married despair, a bad romantic choice,
But oh well. Mind imagined the body from above,
A discombobulated lump under rumpled covers,
Sweating, shivering, and feverish, a scruffy head
Poking out an old and bulbous nose. It’s hard,
Mind thought to self, to vote in favor of such
A body as this one, crooked and broken,
Careless and barely healed, underpowered,
Overweight, and getting quickly just plain
Old and grey. On top of which, it’s sick today.
But body hadn’t gotten this far by paying
Any mind to mind. Body, slug that it was,
Was the only one who had dragged the whole
Mess out of the icy water and across the frozen mud.
Body was therefore, however pained, unimpressed
By any advice suggesting it should end
Its misery under duress. The grey day alone
Couldn’t keep the flesh, coughing, sagging,
Shivering, heavy from dragging out of bed.
Here we are, someone laughed, and this,
This is what it's like, to live life after you’re dead!
A resolutely grey day settled in. The body
On the bed could hardly stir, as if that were
Any excuse in this world. Life is motion, ohoy,
The marriage of flesh and air. This flesh
Had married despair, a bad romantic choice,
But oh well. Mind imagined the body from above,
A discombobulated lump under rumpled covers,
Sweating, shivering, and feverish, a scruffy head
Poking out an old and bulbous nose. It’s hard,
Mind thought to self, to vote in favor of such
A body as this one, crooked and broken,
Careless and barely healed, underpowered,
Overweight, and getting quickly just plain
Old and grey. On top of which, it’s sick today.
But body hadn’t gotten this far by paying
Any mind to mind. Body, slug that it was,
Was the only one who had dragged the whole
Mess out of the icy water and across the frozen mud.
Body was therefore, however pained, unimpressed
By any advice suggesting it should end
Its misery under duress. The grey day alone
Couldn’t keep the flesh, coughing, sagging,
Shivering, heavy from dragging out of bed.
Here we are, someone laughed, and this,
This is what it's like, to live life after you’re dead!
The Forest, 26 November 2017
Before she left for far away, daughter sat herself
On the couch beside me and began to play
With two small, hand carved and painted
Wooden figurines, belonging to her grandma,
One of which was a sly old woman in a kerchief,
Cutting her eyes sideways, the other a sly old man
In a flat cap doing just the same. Pretty soon,
We were enmeshed in daughter’s narrative,
She and I, about a grandmother going to visit
Her twin granddaughters on the other side
Of a deep forest in which she planned to camp
Two nights on the way. The old man was
A sea captain who had grown up in the forest
As the son of a woodsman and who offered
To help the old woman on the dangerous path.
Across the couch and through the woods
They walked. When they stopped for the night,
The old woman pitched her tent while the old man
Built a fire, cut a switch from a low-hanging branch,
Pulled some twine from his pocket, borrowed
A pin from the old woman that he bent
Into a fishhook, and went to a waterfall to catch dinner.
That evening they, improbably,
Ate fresh-caught salmon with mushrooms and berries
The old woman had gathered, and when
It was dark and time to sleep the old man
Offered to sleep on the ground outside, but
The old woman showed him the bed she’d made
Inside the tent and invited him in. The second day
Went uneventfully much the same, although
This time the old woman did the fishing
And they more plausibly dined on trout.
The third day they reached the house at the far edge
Of the forest, where the old woman’s tall twin
Granddaughters with lustrous black hair
And Thai dancing costumes (they’re adopted)
Invited her and her new friend in. They gave
The old man a tour of their stucco mansion
And then performed a welcoming dance for him.
Then it was time to leave. Daughter left the figurines
Sprawled akimbo, hugged her father fiercely
And whispered to him, for his ears only, “That’s
The way it was and that’s the way it should have been!”
On the couch beside me and began to play
With two small, hand carved and painted
Wooden figurines, belonging to her grandma,
One of which was a sly old woman in a kerchief,
Cutting her eyes sideways, the other a sly old man
In a flat cap doing just the same. Pretty soon,
We were enmeshed in daughter’s narrative,
She and I, about a grandmother going to visit
Her twin granddaughters on the other side
Of a deep forest in which she planned to camp
Two nights on the way. The old man was
A sea captain who had grown up in the forest
As the son of a woodsman and who offered
To help the old woman on the dangerous path.
Across the couch and through the woods
They walked. When they stopped for the night,
The old woman pitched her tent while the old man
Built a fire, cut a switch from a low-hanging branch,
Pulled some twine from his pocket, borrowed
A pin from the old woman that he bent
Into a fishhook, and went to a waterfall to catch dinner.
That evening they, improbably,
Ate fresh-caught salmon with mushrooms and berries
The old woman had gathered, and when
It was dark and time to sleep the old man
Offered to sleep on the ground outside, but
The old woman showed him the bed she’d made
Inside the tent and invited him in. The second day
Went uneventfully much the same, although
This time the old woman did the fishing
And they more plausibly dined on trout.
The third day they reached the house at the far edge
Of the forest, where the old woman’s tall twin
Granddaughters with lustrous black hair
And Thai dancing costumes (they’re adopted)
Invited her and her new friend in. They gave
The old man a tour of their stucco mansion
And then performed a welcoming dance for him.
Then it was time to leave. Daughter left the figurines
Sprawled akimbo, hugged her father fiercely
And whispered to him, for his ears only, “That’s
The way it was and that’s the way it should have been!”
Saturday, November 25, 2017
Singing with Offspring, 25 November 2017
We took turns, one inventing a scat pattern,
The other improvising melody and lyrics
Over it and then rejoining it, time to time,
Before concluding it. Rhythmic silliness,
The synchronized nonsense vocalizations
Of parent and child, about as unalloyed
As joy gets. Grandparents bore witness.
The house walls sheltered and absorbed us.
A mournful freight train reminded us there was
An active, rhythmic night outside of this,
This spontaneous life that’s best and happiest,
Because happiness must be temporary
And therefore any rhythm lacking innovation
Is prisonous and dangerous. Adjust. Adjust.
The other improvising melody and lyrics
Over it and then rejoining it, time to time,
Before concluding it. Rhythmic silliness,
The synchronized nonsense vocalizations
Of parent and child, about as unalloyed
As joy gets. Grandparents bore witness.
The house walls sheltered and absorbed us.
A mournful freight train reminded us there was
An active, rhythmic night outside of this,
This spontaneous life that’s best and happiest,
Because happiness must be temporary
And therefore any rhythm lacking innovation
Is prisonous and dangerous. Adjust. Adjust.
Friday, November 24, 2017
Zamani, 24 November 2017
Long time ago, after the ghosts had gone
For good, the lack of resurrection was
The beginning of forgiveness. It’s not true
That anyone could separate forgive and forget.
The one presupposed the other, in humans
Anyway. Bones excavated in Eastern Europe
That had nothing to do with remembered
Atrocities or historical wars, bones that were
Five thousand years old at least, bore traces
Of the Plague, suggesting that the nomads
Who shouldered in off the steppes cleared
Demographic meadows for their descendants
With the mindless aid of the very same miseries
That had driven them away from home
In the first place, the same murderous pests,
A prequel in a sense to the smallpox blankets
And the waves of parasitic decimation
Much later Europeans would unleash
In the Americas to devastating effect. But who
Curses those bones for curses they carried?
It’s like that. There are actually many stages,
And dying from living memory is just the first,
In a species that keeps grievance records.
There’s the passing away of history, which
Can take hundreds of years before beginning
To exhaust itself and fade into amoral anecdote
After a millennium or two. There’s the passing
Of ethnies, religions, and languages, which
Dissolve the bonds of resentment as they sink.
There’s the passing of prehistory, and then,
Earlier, of the other, competing subspecies, which
Had made it harder to feel lonely while they were
Still remembered, a gap that remains a depression
In the hollows of many folk stories concerning
Lost races of little people, trolls and such,
Mostly caught under the ground. Out and out,
Further and further towards no memory at all,
Not even false, and then it’s nothing but
Forgiveness and speculations about beginnings
Near the end. Significance recedes asymptotically
And, along with it, pride and blame. Zamani. The same.
For good, the lack of resurrection was
The beginning of forgiveness. It’s not true
That anyone could separate forgive and forget.
The one presupposed the other, in humans
Anyway. Bones excavated in Eastern Europe
That had nothing to do with remembered
Atrocities or historical wars, bones that were
Five thousand years old at least, bore traces
Of the Plague, suggesting that the nomads
Who shouldered in off the steppes cleared
Demographic meadows for their descendants
With the mindless aid of the very same miseries
That had driven them away from home
In the first place, the same murderous pests,
A prequel in a sense to the smallpox blankets
And the waves of parasitic decimation
Much later Europeans would unleash
In the Americas to devastating effect. But who
Curses those bones for curses they carried?
It’s like that. There are actually many stages,
And dying from living memory is just the first,
In a species that keeps grievance records.
There’s the passing away of history, which
Can take hundreds of years before beginning
To exhaust itself and fade into amoral anecdote
After a millennium or two. There’s the passing
Of ethnies, religions, and languages, which
Dissolve the bonds of resentment as they sink.
There’s the passing of prehistory, and then,
Earlier, of the other, competing subspecies, which
Had made it harder to feel lonely while they were
Still remembered, a gap that remains a depression
In the hollows of many folk stories concerning
Lost races of little people, trolls and such,
Mostly caught under the ground. Out and out,
Further and further towards no memory at all,
Not even false, and then it’s nothing but
Forgiveness and speculations about beginnings
Near the end. Significance recedes asymptotically
And, along with it, pride and blame. Zamani. The same.
Thursday, November 23, 2017
Crowded Restaurant, Salt Lake City, Thanksgiving 2017
Affinal relatives were everywhere, all kinds
Of fictive kin. Belonging was a metaphor
With overlapping layers we all nestled in.
Forgive me, incapable of almost anything,
For thinking you might want me to explain.
The metaphor of the individual in the single
Body, the identity relation, patrolled
By proprioception, was one place to begin,
And then the father and daughter pairing,
Granddaughter and maternal grandmother,
Grandmother and her husband, beginning
To stretch thin the biological metaphor
Of generational descent, the other tables
With their own arrangements of family
And friends, the occasional acquaintances
Temporarily holiday-adopted in, beyond them
The whole restaurant, a system of roles
And functions, a team, locally well known
For pies, especially at Thanksgiving, when
Literally tens of thousands of them were sold
From this location in the course of one long
Weekend, the pies themselves becoming
A tradition, a kind of identification, organized
And sold from tents outside, long lines
In the parking lot, itself a part of a system
Of boundaries, outside and in, also the city,
A thing to belong to, also the Beehive State,
The hegemonic nation state, the state
Of being in this era of technology, the state
Of being human, caring about belonging,
Comforted by caring, caring about these things.
Of fictive kin. Belonging was a metaphor
With overlapping layers we all nestled in.
Forgive me, incapable of almost anything,
For thinking you might want me to explain.
The metaphor of the individual in the single
Body, the identity relation, patrolled
By proprioception, was one place to begin,
And then the father and daughter pairing,
Granddaughter and maternal grandmother,
Grandmother and her husband, beginning
To stretch thin the biological metaphor
Of generational descent, the other tables
With their own arrangements of family
And friends, the occasional acquaintances
Temporarily holiday-adopted in, beyond them
The whole restaurant, a system of roles
And functions, a team, locally well known
For pies, especially at Thanksgiving, when
Literally tens of thousands of them were sold
From this location in the course of one long
Weekend, the pies themselves becoming
A tradition, a kind of identification, organized
And sold from tents outside, long lines
In the parking lot, itself a part of a system
Of boundaries, outside and in, also the city,
A thing to belong to, also the Beehive State,
The hegemonic nation state, the state
Of being in this era of technology, the state
Of being human, caring about belonging,
Comforted by caring, caring about these things.
Wednesday, November 22, 2017
One Man Band Diner, Nephi, Utah, 22 November 2017
It took me a while to figure out the concept,
The red phones for orders at each booth,
The red lights telling you it was time
To fetch your order for yourself, the register
At the end of the grill. The thing was meant
Literally for a single person to run the show,
And one did, taking orders while cooking,
Stepping sideways to ring up a customer.
Little place starred with old publicity stills
Of Audrey Hepburn, James Dean, Frank
Sinatra, Marilyn Monroe. Nostalgia in a town
Named for a figure in the Book of Mormon
Under a massive pyramid of a mountain
Named for a place in the same book.
The layers and layers of human naming,
Human signifying, human gambling on what
Other humans will pay, a thick honey baklava
Of creativity compiled from the simple need
To eat, survive, and breed. Nothing simple
About it. For the thousandth time and more,
I caught myself, a deadbeat near the end
Of greed, contemplating what it was taught
The ancestors to try to really speak. What
Cost dropped to trigger the benefit, what
Benefit rose above the cost to cause this
Thing of ours, alone among the beasts,
To get so carried away by communication
As a means to cumulative invention? What
Tipped the balance in favor of this strategy,
Removed the blocks from under the wheels
Of what became our runaway train? We eat,
As I ate, according to the opportunities
Our own species metes, not merely
According to the availability of any given
External niche. The one man band nodded
At the vintage jukebox as he flipped meats,
And someone shoved in quarters, delighted
At how quaint the setting and the machine,
And out poured the recorded and long-gone
Deceased voice of John Lennon, screeching
Hoarsely at the end of a midnight session
More than half a century ago on an island
The other side of the world from here,
“Shake it up, baby, now! Twist and shout!
C’mon, c’mon baby now! Come on and work
It on out!” I knew right then, as the pink sun
Set over the desert, I would never work it out.
Tuesday, November 21, 2017
Why I’m Never Gone for Long, 21 November 2017
For me, the long reach of memory.
For me, the irreversibility of change.
I stuffed two dozen lined sheets of paper
With chicken scratch, top to bottom
And on both sides, to testify
To the enduring longing for escape
Despite considerable endurance
Under house arrest in reality. There is a door
That can’t be gone through, and that
Has always been the only door for me.
Every time I rush out of the room
And into the darkness without a clue,
I come back because I went through
Something, yes, but not that only door
Not death I was born to hurtle through.
For me, the irreversibility of change.
I stuffed two dozen lined sheets of paper
With chicken scratch, top to bottom
And on both sides, to testify
To the enduring longing for escape
Despite considerable endurance
Under house arrest in reality. There is a door
That can’t be gone through, and that
Has always been the only door for me.
Every time I rush out of the room
And into the darkness without a clue,
I come back because I went through
Something, yes, but not that only door
Not death I was born to hurtle through.
The Cry Concerns No One At All, 20 November 2017
"We make a dwelling in
the evening air,
In which being together is
enough."
I
think of lonely Stevens
Now
when I reread the poems.
They
always seemed wise to me.
To
me, they still seem that wise,
But
the haunted man behind
The
wisdom, the tall lawyer,
Insurance
executive,
Caricature
of burgher,
The
company man who walked
To
work each day and voted
Republican,
the cartoon
Of
someone so unlike me,
The
cardboard cut-out backdrop,
The
comical enigma
No
longer satisfies me.
I
think on the feckless tourist,
Drunken
and punched in Key West,
The
incompetent husband
Who
never took a lover,
The
father of one daughter.
He
tortured reality
And
the imagination,
Cranking
that hurdy-gurdy
So
it groaned. He never sang
Of
failure, never confessed,
Never
got more personal
Than
wondering if he'd lived
A
skeleton's life, old man
Asleep
in two worlds. It made,
He
wrote, so little difference,
At
so much more than seventy,
That
wisdom came from a fool,
Emerged
from his foolishness,
Impatient
for the grandeur
We
need in so much misery,
Finding
it in misery,
That
afflatus of ruin.
Now
when I reread the poems,
I
hear a secret proposed,
An
unwritten mystery
Propounded: wisdom's the fool.
I'm Not Aiming to Start Preaching, 19 November 2017
I'm
going to say it baffles it me.
I'm
not coming down on one side
Or
the other, but given the cruelty,
The
infinite, infinitely inventive
Cruelty
humans visit daily on each other,
The
small kindnesses fascinate me,
Beguile
me, especially among the down
And
all but out. I've seen recidivists
In
holding cells offer help to frightened souls,
Seen
those who not hours ago committed crimes,
Albeit
mostly minor, help someone confused
Call
bail. I've seen the unsuccessful suicides
Like
myself, penned up and medicated
For
anxiety, voices, insomnia, paranoia,
Denied
shoelaces, phones, and pointy pencils,
Tenderly
watch each other's backs, hold doors,
Make
room for each other at the group table,
Help
the panicked one find a nurse.
What
is this that brings us to destroy our lives
And
then offer a gentle word, to be spinning
With
indifference and despair and the urge to be kind?
Gigantic in Everything But Size, 18 November 2017
There
is no more damaging
Admission
than being good
At
lying. Admit to that
And
you'll never be believed
When
telling truth again,
No
matter what truths you tell.
Any
particular lie,
Even
a whole pile of them,
Can
be forgiven,
But
let the truth slip you're good
At
lying for its own sake
And
all the gods will shudder,
Ulysses,
except for one,
Athena
of the strange eyes,
As
fond of you as disguise.
De Plus en Plus, 17 November 2017
The urge to make a secret
Of what's not real, even if not
Especially important,
Breeds a special kind of lie,
The kind that scrub jays favor,
Busying themselves with false
Caches to keep the real ones
Hidden, the kind that pharaohs
Tried, constructing false chambers,
Hoping to keep grave robbers
Away from the heart
Of their pyramids
And usually failing.
More and more, I find myself,
My true self defined by this
Ostentatious signaling
That here I am burying
Treasure buried somewhere else.
Allowed Items in Acute Inpatient Psychiatry, 16 November 2017
Crutches are too dangerous
For psych ward; here's a wheelchair.
No, no stapled notepads--
What people do with staples!
(Paper cuts okay.)
Toxic emotions
Go without saying.
After all, you're here, aren't you?
Also, non-toxic crayons.
Three books at the most.
More books than that might sustain
A barrage we'd have to duck.
Wedding rings. Bite-sized candies.
Humility and kindness.
Behavioral Access Center, Saint George, Utah, 15 November 2017
1. How Did You Get Here?
Each interview is different.
Everyone wants to help you,
But everyone brings their own
Individual
Blend of background and beliefs,
Fears and personality
To the questions that they ask.
There are those who want to laugh
And like to see you laugh, too.
There are the suspicious ones
Who interrogate for lies,
The soft ones who get teary,
And my favorite, the shepherds
Who want you back in the fold.
There's the one who chides
You for invoking magic,
Then says, "This was meant to be."
2. Workbook
Alone with the evidence-
Based "Wellness Recovery
Action Plan" and forbidden
Access to the internet,
I stared at the words "wellness"
And "well" and wished I recalled
Their full etymology.
Every page of the workbook
Assumed I knew what "well" was.
Other words, words like "trigger"
And "toolbox" and "action plan"
Were glossed, but "wellness"
And "well" never were.
Before I tell when I'm not
Feeling well, or what I'm like
When I'm feeling well,
I'd like to know what I meant.
Good? Cheerful? Benevolent?
Healthy? Contented?
Normal? Competent?
Full of clear water
With a bucket to fetch it?
Just ok? I'm well, thank you?
I thought, I feel well
When, well, I don't feel like hell,
When I'm safely in my shell,
No one knocking, can't you tell?
3. A Nature Poem
What do you think of
In a room without reading
Or viewing materials,
A beige room without a clock
Or a window or a soul?
The chair is comfortable,
The air uniformly warm.
There's no annoying music,
No music of any kind,
No television noises.
Only the printer behind
The nurses' desk hums.
How could you possibly hurt?
I'm going to write a haiku.
4. Lamp Sunrise
A night in a recliner
After seven interviews,
No windows in sight,
Ended with a light
Switched on overhead
By the newest therapist
Arrived for her morning shift.
I'm getting better
At writing with bendy pens
Too soft for self harm.
I miss my daughter--
I miss my freedom--
(The limitations
Of my flesh, I get to keep.
My failures, I get to keep.)
There's nothing to read.
There's food on the way,
Then more interviews.
It's pleasant in a strange way.
But it's not the dawn highway
Where I could pretend
This was my world in the end.
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
The Good Liar's Breakfast Before the ER, 14 November 2017
It kills me that we blame ourselves
And praise the world that made us,
Kills me that we instruct and punish
Each other to praise the world that made us.
We make our gods and tell each other
All about great gods we made that made us,
Made us in their images, made the world
Just for us, so how could we be less
Than essential and beloved to this world,
This heartbreakingly lovely world that made
And then ignored us, our parentage
Most evident whenever we feel
That we have to abandon or hurt us.
If we can’t be better than what made us,
That doesn’t mean we must be worse.
And praise the world that made us,
Kills me that we instruct and punish
Each other to praise the world that made us.
We make our gods and tell each other
All about great gods we made that made us,
Made us in their images, made the world
Just for us, so how could we be less
Than essential and beloved to this world,
This heartbreakingly lovely world that made
And then ignored us, our parentage
Most evident whenever we feel
That we have to abandon or hurt us.
If we can’t be better than what made us,
That doesn’t mean we must be worse.
Monday, November 13, 2017
The Cretan Paradox, Sand Island, 13 November 2017
Epimenides,
Two thousand six hundred years
Before now, wasn’t trying
To create a paradox.
He was chastising
His fellow Cretans
For the heresy
Of saying Zeus was mortal,
That’s all. Just a man angry
At modern impiety,
A type we still have with us.
Oblivious to context,
The apostle Paul
Would quote Epimenides
To chivvy Cretan Christians.
A century or two on,
Clement would quote Paul
Quoting Epimenides,
Writing, Cretans don’t believe
Christianity’s the truth
Because Cretans are liars.
So Zeus wasn’t immortal
After all, ironically.
Maybe Epimenides
Was the liar, and then Paul,
And so on, all those irate
Theists calling out doubters
Of the immortality
Of their historical god.
They’re all millenniums dead
Now, although their words ghost on,
The real gods, hungry whispers.
I’ll write it myself.
I’ll make it airtight.
Everything I write’s a lie.
There, now. Evil beast
With idle belly growling,
I wait here by the dry wash,
Out of resources,
But loath to leave my daughter
And still reluctant to die.
The song says “you have to lose
It all before you can find
Your way.” Your way back? Or out?
There’s no righteousness
Or anger in paradox,
Just the despair of the choice,
Just the despairing of truth.
Two thousand six hundred years
Before now, wasn’t trying
To create a paradox.
He was chastising
His fellow Cretans
For the heresy
Of saying Zeus was mortal,
That’s all. Just a man angry
At modern impiety,
A type we still have with us.
Oblivious to context,
The apostle Paul
Would quote Epimenides
To chivvy Cretan Christians.
A century or two on,
Clement would quote Paul
Quoting Epimenides,
Writing, Cretans don’t believe
Christianity’s the truth
Because Cretans are liars.
So Zeus wasn’t immortal
After all, ironically.
Maybe Epimenides
Was the liar, and then Paul,
And so on, all those irate
Theists calling out doubters
Of the immortality
Of their historical god.
They’re all millenniums dead
Now, although their words ghost on,
The real gods, hungry whispers.
I’ll write it myself.
I’ll make it airtight.
Everything I write’s a lie.
There, now. Evil beast
With idle belly growling,
I wait here by the dry wash,
Out of resources,
But loath to leave my daughter
And still reluctant to die.
The song says “you have to lose
It all before you can find
Your way.” Your way back? Or out?
There’s no righteousness
Or anger in paradox,
Just the despair of the choice,
Just the despairing of truth.
Wednesday, November 8, 2017
An Art I Do Exceptionally Ill, Although It Still Feels Like Hell
Hypothermic suicide,
Induced through sitting
In an ice-fringed lake at dawn
Was not the best strategy
For an avid lake swimmer
With a walrus-like figure.
Sunk to my shoulders
Wedged among aspen branches
Fallen in the lake,
So as not to drown
Accidentally
Once securely comatose,
I waited for the promised
Symptoms in sequence,
Shivering, of course,
More and more rapid heart rate,
Failing coordination,
Mental confusion--
And then the good ones--
Apathy, low blood pressure,
Inability to walk,
Followed by coma,
Sometimes preceded
By the weirder traits,
"Paradoxical
Undressing" and "terminal"
Burrowing." But no,
Not for me the chilly death.
My feet ached underwater
Like baby seals being clubbed,
But never went numb.
I never stopped shivering.
My torso shuddered
Uncontrollably
In the grip of the water.
Who knows what damage
I did my vital organs?
I breathed the cold air deeply,
Deeply as I could,
But my heart only thundered
And my one moment
Of confusion occurred when
The moon I had been tracking
As it set in the bare tress
Went missing. Maybe
I could also count
As a derangement
The moment when I let go
Of the wet branches,
Reached for my crutches
Underwater in the silt,
And staggered, up to my neck
Now in the painful water,
Avoiding the shore
Because I knew I would fall
If I walked across those stones.
I labored through muck,
Disturbing a strange creature
That propelled itself
On fin-like legs, leg-like fins,
Or did I imagine it?
Reaching where I'd parked the car
On frozen clays, I hauled out
In immense concentration,
Like a drunkard determined
Not to fall over,
And got to the car,
Shaking and woozy
And reeking with grey pond mud.
When I started the heater
The car informed me
That although the sun was high,
The outside air temperature
Still hovered around freezing
And the car clock read
Two and a half hours later
Than it had when I stepped out
And waded deliberately
Into the water to die.
The sun, then an orange smudge
On the southeast horizon
Was now well above the trees.
I shook another two hours.
It was one whole hour before
I could get out of my clothes
And a half hour to struggle
Into dry clothes from my pack.
Everything hurt the whole day,
But without meaning
To do any such thing, I
Had somehow survived
An entire morning
From dawn to nearly lunch hour
Soaking in wet cold enough
The survival manual
Gave favorable odds
For death in under an hour.
Now what to do with myself?
A wreck with another day
To get through, a cold ruin
With neither needle nor noose
Nor gun. Why I am around
After what I've done?
Tuesday, November 7, 2017
A White Horse, 7 November 2017
I kept refusing
Opportunities to die.
Good opportunities, too,
Excellent chances.
The bright new penny
Landed face up in the mud.
So did the smooth worn quarter,
Then the dull nickel.
Three times I had asked
Should I come down the mountain?
Should I try another day?
The odds of three heads
The same as three straight
Pregnancies inheriting
A dominant mutation,
Long enough to seem a sign
But not nearly long enough
To be sure of it.
Better to lie here and die
Or live one more day and lie?
A hawk was watching,
As was a white horse.
Conquest? Pestilence?
I went back down the mountain.
Next day, there I was,
Nothing resolved or conquered,
My own mind a pestilence.
But I did greet a sweet dawn
And moonlight as white as that horse.
I got to hug my daughter.
Opportunities to die.
Good opportunities, too,
Excellent chances.
The bright new penny
Landed face up in the mud.
So did the smooth worn quarter,
Then the dull nickel.
Three times I had asked
Should I come down the mountain?
Should I try another day?
The odds of three heads
The same as three straight
Pregnancies inheriting
A dominant mutation,
Long enough to seem a sign
But not nearly long enough
To be sure of it.
Better to lie here and die
Or live one more day and lie?
A hawk was watching,
As was a white horse.
Conquest? Pestilence?
I went back down the mountain.
Next day, there I was,
Nothing resolved or conquered,
My own mind a pestilence.
But I did greet a sweet dawn
And moonlight as white as that horse.
I got to hug my daughter.
Monday, November 6, 2017
The Reservoir Drained, 6 November 2017
Fifty five trips around the sun held more
Stories than the most gifted storyteller
Could tell, and I was among the least.
Leave no trace, no shallow graves, so go
The slogans of the wilderness visitors,
But none of them really wished to leave
Without a trace. We liked to think we could,
With concentration, make the world
A better place, the way the sea foam wishes
It could leave behind a better wave.
We dreamed we left none but a noble trace.
In any case, I was bound to leave some lines
Behind but hardly any of the kind most of us
Hope to leave or find. And why would I wish
That everyone after me knew I was here
If I’m bound to not know I was here myself?
I remember my lost daughters, lost wife,
Lost parents, siblings, other relatives,
And casually lost acquaintances. They don’t.
They don’t remember me or themselves.
As soon as I’m gone or forget, there will be
No one left to recall the exact appearance
Of my one found daughter’s head crowning
Between her mother’s pinhooked knees.
I know it looked like many other such births,
Like millions, like billions of others. But like
Was never is, is never is, is never the same.
After hours of pushing, her soft skull still
Emerged as a sphere, a theater in the round.
Her eyes were open when I first saw them,
Blue and unfocused, unfinished and being
For the first time something human to see.
I remember so many, many things. Wrong,
Dead wrong, if you say I can’t take them with me.
Stories than the most gifted storyteller
Could tell, and I was among the least.
Leave no trace, no shallow graves, so go
The slogans of the wilderness visitors,
But none of them really wished to leave
Without a trace. We liked to think we could,
With concentration, make the world
A better place, the way the sea foam wishes
It could leave behind a better wave.
We dreamed we left none but a noble trace.
In any case, I was bound to leave some lines
Behind but hardly any of the kind most of us
Hope to leave or find. And why would I wish
That everyone after me knew I was here
If I’m bound to not know I was here myself?
I remember my lost daughters, lost wife,
Lost parents, siblings, other relatives,
And casually lost acquaintances. They don’t.
They don’t remember me or themselves.
As soon as I’m gone or forget, there will be
No one left to recall the exact appearance
Of my one found daughter’s head crowning
Between her mother’s pinhooked knees.
I know it looked like many other such births,
Like millions, like billions of others. But like
Was never is, is never is, is never the same.
After hours of pushing, her soft skull still
Emerged as a sphere, a theater in the round.
Her eyes were open when I first saw them,
Blue and unfocused, unfinished and being
For the first time something human to see.
I remember so many, many things. Wrong,
Dead wrong, if you say I can’t take them with me.
Sunday, November 5, 2017
Ghel Dheu, 5 November 2017
Hope more improbable than magic dogged
Me around, panting as insistently as its buddy
The blues. I rejected the presumption
That we fail when we fail to connect.
If you lie to escape a lie meant to contain you
And destroy you, in what way, tell me, exactly,
Did you, did you die? You can’t not be what
You knew never was at all. The handwriting
Was lying when it sketched across the wall.
Impermanence brings the permanent end.
Everything else is living in ignorance; everything
Is living and ignorance. Nothing is knowing.
Glamorous moon, the name of a ghost,
The hunter high past mid-autumn sky.
Shine little glow worm, glimmer glamour.
I wanted the uncut drug, the overdose
Of the improbable. Why? Because if it comes
To you, statistically pure, the improbable
Validates you, tells you that you had meaning,
The rest of the compulsively lying world be damned.
Thus the dying think to themselves, this may be
The last time I touch this person, see this scene,
But they are wrong, headed as they are
For no time, for never was at all. It’s the longer
Living who will search their memories and say
That, that was the last time we touched the dead.
Me around, panting as insistently as its buddy
The blues. I rejected the presumption
That we fail when we fail to connect.
If you lie to escape a lie meant to contain you
And destroy you, in what way, tell me, exactly,
Did you, did you die? You can’t not be what
You knew never was at all. The handwriting
Was lying when it sketched across the wall.
Impermanence brings the permanent end.
Everything else is living in ignorance; everything
Is living and ignorance. Nothing is knowing.
Glamorous moon, the name of a ghost,
The hunter high past mid-autumn sky.
Shine little glow worm, glimmer glamour.
I wanted the uncut drug, the overdose
Of the improbable. Why? Because if it comes
To you, statistically pure, the improbable
Validates you, tells you that you had meaning,
The rest of the compulsively lying world be damned.
Thus the dying think to themselves, this may be
The last time I touch this person, see this scene,
But they are wrong, headed as they are
For no time, for never was at all. It’s the longer
Living who will search their memories and say
That, that was the last time we touched the dead.
Saturday, November 4, 2017
Lava Point, 4 November 2017
Up at lava pond, a black beaver scampered
And a white horse cantered free of fences.
A woman with heavy dark hair stood there.
Her name is Samsara and sooner or later
She’s going to fix your little red wagon, she is.
Sooner or later, she’s going to settle your hash.
One day when I was seventeen and it was
Spring, blossoms and new mown grass, etc.
In the air, my future as bright as it ever cared
To get, she herself started in on me. I stared
Out of my dormitory window at the green,
And I put my God in a box because I wanted
To love her. I asked Him to do something
For me, which was to speak to me, to answer,
Anything He wanted to say, just so I knew it.
But nothing outside my own head was said.
I tried again, occasionally, and not with God
Or gods only. Here and there, I offered a dare,
An opportunity for something, anything
Supernatural, superhuman, or in any event
Nonhuman, to engage in conversation with me.
You will say I was obtuse and stubborn. I was
And I was, but I was hardly alone in offering
Prayers, making requests, or looking for signs
And omens in coincidences or the heavens.
It’s as human as talking to beg favor of the world,
Which was, in the end, what I came to: pure
Propositions put to the world as a whole,
The planet, the cosmos, the universe, the whole,
Assuming there was a whole and that it knew
Itself as such or some part of it knew and could
Answer for or even if not the rest. Whatever.
Still, the odd things dominated and the hope
For structured responses dimmed. Latterly,
I’d come to be numb enough to ask only
That the numbers, the nonmiraculous odds
Of those meaningless fairies, the numbers
Agree with me when I most desperately
Needed them to agree. That would be
Miracle enough for me. By way of response
I got my own dreams served to me in my head
On a platter, garnished with irrelevant surprises,
A pretty day at altitude in November, a black
Beaver waddling into the rushes, slap of tail
And then gone, a marvelously solitary,
Unsaddled, unbridled white mare in the fields
Of dry grass beside that beaver pond, crossing
The road behind me, then accelerating
Into a trot that looked like a break for freedom
Over the broken fences into the aspens.
Yes, it was all lovely but it was not symbolic,
Not predictive. It answered no prayers,
And still I can see her standing there, face
Hidden in her extravagant dark hair.
And a white horse cantered free of fences.
A woman with heavy dark hair stood there.
Her name is Samsara and sooner or later
She’s going to fix your little red wagon, she is.
Sooner or later, she’s going to settle your hash.
One day when I was seventeen and it was
Spring, blossoms and new mown grass, etc.
In the air, my future as bright as it ever cared
To get, she herself started in on me. I stared
Out of my dormitory window at the green,
And I put my God in a box because I wanted
To love her. I asked Him to do something
For me, which was to speak to me, to answer,
Anything He wanted to say, just so I knew it.
But nothing outside my own head was said.
I tried again, occasionally, and not with God
Or gods only. Here and there, I offered a dare,
An opportunity for something, anything
Supernatural, superhuman, or in any event
Nonhuman, to engage in conversation with me.
You will say I was obtuse and stubborn. I was
And I was, but I was hardly alone in offering
Prayers, making requests, or looking for signs
And omens in coincidences or the heavens.
It’s as human as talking to beg favor of the world,
Which was, in the end, what I came to: pure
Propositions put to the world as a whole,
The planet, the cosmos, the universe, the whole,
Assuming there was a whole and that it knew
Itself as such or some part of it knew and could
Answer for or even if not the rest. Whatever.
Still, the odd things dominated and the hope
For structured responses dimmed. Latterly,
I’d come to be numb enough to ask only
That the numbers, the nonmiraculous odds
Of those meaningless fairies, the numbers
Agree with me when I most desperately
Needed them to agree. That would be
Miracle enough for me. By way of response
I got my own dreams served to me in my head
On a platter, garnished with irrelevant surprises,
A pretty day at altitude in November, a black
Beaver waddling into the rushes, slap of tail
And then gone, a marvelously solitary,
Unsaddled, unbridled white mare in the fields
Of dry grass beside that beaver pond, crossing
The road behind me, then accelerating
Into a trot that looked like a break for freedom
Over the broken fences into the aspens.
Yes, it was all lovely but it was not symbolic,
Not predictive. It answered no prayers,
And still I can see her standing there, face
Hidden in her extravagant dark hair.
Friday, November 3, 2017
Cold Water, Utah, 3 November 2017
All Death’s birthdays passed me by, and then
It was just November. The canyons were still
Gold by the creeks and unseasonably warm
But toothed with shadows all day long, while
Up high, in the aspen plateaus and small ponds,
All was bony white and properly cold but bright.
The rowboat with two men talking and fishing
Felt like a haunting from earlier autumn, as if
The same boat, same men from weeks ago,
Years ago, decades ago, were an apparition
Doomed to float around the lake in all seasons.
I looked longingly at the cold water. To swim,
Even convulsed with shudders, is better
Than to fall. To lie down in minuscule wavelets
Like the scales of a slumbering monster of ice,
To lie down like an incision in the water’s side
And float like sutures on the surface, allowing
The wounded water to slowly close over
And heal—but not while that damn fishing boat
Floats by—that would be better than dying
In the usual hospital bed or accident.
I had heard that it takes a long time to cool
The blood of a pulsing mammal, a long time
To get safely past that mad moment
Of hallucination and leaping about, stripping
To skin. But time is not a quantity to be measured,
Only a measure of what’s lost. I love how cold
Water reflects the least bit of light and shines.
It was just November. The canyons were still
Gold by the creeks and unseasonably warm
But toothed with shadows all day long, while
Up high, in the aspen plateaus and small ponds,
All was bony white and properly cold but bright.
The rowboat with two men talking and fishing
Felt like a haunting from earlier autumn, as if
The same boat, same men from weeks ago,
Years ago, decades ago, were an apparition
Doomed to float around the lake in all seasons.
I looked longingly at the cold water. To swim,
Even convulsed with shudders, is better
Than to fall. To lie down in minuscule wavelets
Like the scales of a slumbering monster of ice,
To lie down like an incision in the water’s side
And float like sutures on the surface, allowing
The wounded water to slowly close over
And heal—but not while that damn fishing boat
Floats by—that would be better than dying
In the usual hospital bed or accident.
I had heard that it takes a long time to cool
The blood of a pulsing mammal, a long time
To get safely past that mad moment
Of hallucination and leaping about, stripping
To skin. But time is not a quantity to be measured,
Only a measure of what’s lost. I love how cold
Water reflects the least bit of light and shines.
Thursday, November 2, 2017
Out of Pocket, Arizona, Dia de los Muertos 2017
I came to the door of disaster like a dog
Looking for a home. Don’t drive me away,
Oh kind one. Don’t refuse me a master.
But I’ve been hanging around the perimeter
Of the apocalypse ever since, never let in,
Begging for scraps of catastrophe, which I get,
I always get. Oh, to be inside the door. Oh,
To not be anymore. Oh to be fed on the bread
Of pure corporeality, of things unaware,
The being of unliving, the breath of the dead.
But not to have to go there, not to cross
The threshold first. That’s a truth about some
Dogs—we whimper at the door, but we are
Too afraid to accept the invitation in.
Looking for a home. Don’t drive me away,
Oh kind one. Don’t refuse me a master.
But I’ve been hanging around the perimeter
Of the apocalypse ever since, never let in,
Begging for scraps of catastrophe, which I get,
I always get. Oh, to be inside the door. Oh,
To not be anymore. Oh to be fed on the bread
Of pure corporeality, of things unaware,
The being of unliving, the breath of the dead.
But not to have to go there, not to cross
The threshold first. That’s a truth about some
Dogs—we whimper at the door, but we are
Too afraid to accept the invitation in.
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
Desperately Seeking Bony Lady, 1 November 2017
An unfathomable ocean of atoms separated
His gaze from the nearest glowing peak
At sunset. What chance had he to sway that sea?
He remained very much the study of a man
Who’d left the world of getting and spending
But never fully joined the forest of fairy tales.
The music of the north, the forever north,
Visited him. “Our lady of the holy death, come
For me, comfort me, provide for my survivors
And sole descendant. There are cedars
And their cousins in the canyons that belong
To no one. I mean to become an end among them.
Watch over my bones and bring them home.
I surrender them in the hope of fortune
For the soul that was more than me, other
Than me, the souls of those surviving me.”
He thought, in the lamplit moonlight, I’m not
Praying rightly. The forest remains too thin.
I want the cedars giant, young, and closing in,
On the coppery canyon walls another sunset.
His gaze from the nearest glowing peak
At sunset. What chance had he to sway that sea?
He remained very much the study of a man
Who’d left the world of getting and spending
But never fully joined the forest of fairy tales.
The music of the north, the forever north,
Visited him. “Our lady of the holy death, come
For me, comfort me, provide for my survivors
And sole descendant. There are cedars
And their cousins in the canyons that belong
To no one. I mean to become an end among them.
Watch over my bones and bring them home.
I surrender them in the hope of fortune
For the soul that was more than me, other
Than me, the souls of those surviving me.”
He thought, in the lamplit moonlight, I’m not
Praying rightly. The forest remains too thin.
I want the cedars giant, young, and closing in,
On the coppery canyon walls another sunset.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)