L
The beginning squeezes back
like a hermit crab retreats
deeper into its ever-tightening
shell. This moment opens
into and closes off the last
and next, as we each pretend
we are a cumulative consequence.
God, if extant, does not care
about time and its causes, the click
and clack of the marble rolling
through preordained mechanics,
not the butterfly landing on her hand.
I fear pat endings’ homilies,
as if someone turns off the lights.
(February 15, 2019)
Last year on Valentine’s day, my students were working on three of the stories which are alluded to in T. S. Eliot’s the Wasteland. On the way home that day, I listened to NPR’s reporting of the shootings at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, where seventeen people were killed, and another seventeen injured. Since the Columbine High School, Every time there is another school shooting, I think about the students I teach everyday: the joy, trust, hope, and curiosity they bring with them into the world. As news of another killing happens, I cannot avoid thinking about them bleeding out on the floor of my classroom. I am horrified at the “solutions” offered by our political leaders: arm the teachers, “harden” the schools, conduct live shooter drills as casually as fire drills. Last year, I responded personally, the way I respond to most of what troubles me by writing into the horror. A few weeks later Shantih Journal ( https://shantihjournal.org/issue-2-2/) put out a call for writing about social justice after the March for Our Lives protest in Washington. I sent them the poem I wrote the day of the shootings, which they graciously published. I would like to think that there has been a change in people’s political will to do something that will end the slaughter of our children, but I fear we are too mired in sclerotic thinking to change. Here is the poem I wrote:
Today’s Lesson
“These fragments I have shored against my ruins”
–T. S. Eliot
my students work over the abstract
idea of redemption in three stories
as a preparation for the wasteland
which we will read for the next class
one thousand miles away students
hide as their classmates are killed
and we are told there is nothing
nothing we can do except pray
prayers are useless balms for the dead
and pale recompense for the living
who must clean blood from the walls
and mix memory into the earth
devoid of hope near an open door
we are in a hell we have created
(February 14, 2018)
From “Renditions of Change” a work in progress
Caught in a tight
spiral of self-loathing,
I try to scrape
and cut away
memory,
like a benign tumor.
Yet, I return and return
to each malignant moment,
and paint my face
in ritual guilt,
as if one could absolve
the past, and be free.
(February 12, 2019)
in explanations explanations
that happens
to him to her to us
the story starts
well before this
then as now
more unfolds
within the seams
than seems
then as now
contexts inculcate
like wisps of mist
dampening fields
as god not us
speaks from silence
(February 11, 2019)
from “Renditions of Change” a work in progress
A
Tentatively, I stumble down
the hall in the dark. This time,
this is not a dream. I tell
myself I will kill myself
tomorrow. I laugh, as if
I was joking. Then I hear
a draft of a first line,
and hope I can hold it long
enough to write it down
before I drown in a river
of my own clotted blood.
(February 9, 2019)
F
from “Rendition of Change” a work in progress
The stories I teach
open a space.
Our day demands
patience and rest.
Following our talks,
my students leave,
their candles leading
away into the night.
(February 9, 2019)
A
Even against prevailing winds,
the pattern persists—Happiness
is a myth. Too troubled to
untangle this moment from
the last, I am trapped in
a quandary of happenstance,
an Irish know woven from briar.
Unlike Lao Tzu by a pond, I hesitate
allowing decisions to pass undecided.
I don’t wait for the wind to fall,
or the murk to settle into clarity.
(February 8, 2019)
from “Renditions of Change” a work in progress
Music plays under the earth;
its poetry delights,
like fireflies.
(February 8, 2019)
from “Renditions of Change,” a work in progress
I’m too proud too often
when time’s safer
to stay humble,
thus unnoticed;
the gods take joy
in slapping down hubris.
(February 8, 2019)
from “Renditions of Change,” a work in progress
As I teach my students,
I try to be honest
in who I am;
yet, fear
I’m a fraud.
Teaching’s resistance:
how to read,
analyze,
break meaning from words–
then rewrite
in the students’ voices
without becoming
a lie that exalts
the life
they are not.
(February 7, 2019)
S
As if with a spoon,
she scoops the words
from his pliant mouth.
The rounded vowels,
and crisp consonants
shred her tongue
with shards of ice.
Meanwhile, with slick
knives, he carves
all conversation,
leaving bits of blood,
like rose petals,
to stain the ground
in a red-wet lust.
Neither he, not she,
can speak into
what was said.
They stare, stunned,
past empty eyes;
their mouths slack
like the recent dead.
(February 5, 2019)
from “Renditions of Change,” a work in progress
We ate a simple shared meal,
a sixteen-bean soup with bits
of Christmas ham. Afterward
we played a counting card game:
They laughed and talked awkwardly,
as players dropped from the game.
I realized, once again,
I do not fit in.
(January 31, 2019)
Our Trespasses
From thick decades,
memory emerges, with
miniscule shames and sins,
to taunt and accuse again.
Laced like briars between
raw sinew and bone,
the castigating voice
scratches and pricks.
Unable to forget, thus forgive,
all the awkward trespasses
harbored in memory
claw their way free,
like lizards from eggs,
hungry and ready to feed.
(January 31, 2019)
from “Renditions of Change,” a work in progress
Stand Still (Stagnation)
Teaching shatters
my attention;
I return home
to a still silence.
After the storm,
the cistern’s full.
(January 30, 2019)
from “Change,” a work in progress
Other’s discontent wears
on me. No peace exists
as time’s delusions
divide all eternity.
(January 29,2019)
from “Change,” a work in progress
T
In my oafish way,
I step quite softly—
Wary as I write,
I set myself aside,
and then laugh.
(January 25, 2019)
from “Change,” a work in progress
Our government horrifies me,
and I feel powerless–
Each day I read and talk
with my students;
they exude such optimism
and hope, I’m humbled.
A slight breeze stirs
the oak leaves;
dawn breaks slowly
over all.
(January 25, 2019)
Lisps and shadows pulse
an aura about him—grey
partial truths like a tongue
along the edge of a lover’s lip.
He’s seduced into his dreams,
limply tangled with desire
for different words, altered spaces;
until his waking life’s effaced,
and he vanishes into mockery
as if he only existed as parody
of everything he once believed.
(January 25, 2019)
to Lisa
from “Change,” a work in progress
Holding Together
For decades now—
I cannot imagine
waking without you.
We move together
like rivers
through the earth.
Even when lost
in tidal shifts,
we are an ocean
holding together
who we are
in the world.
We share this day,
with each small embrace.
(January 25, 2019)
from “Change,” a work in progress
Poetry, like dark earth,
contains my strength.
(January 24, 2019)
from “Change” a work in progress
My story is
not the same
as yours.
(January 23, 2019)
from “Change” a work in progress
Too often, when I find time
to write, the clamor of the day
staggers about drunkenly,
muddling my thoughts. So,
I wait, go for a walk, cook.
Eventually all the falderal
falls away to silence;
and, I write again.
(January 22, 2019)
I found myself
without looking
for myself.
Only fools question
and question, then
doubt again.
I was there
from the start;
I simply noticed
where I had been
all along.
(January 21, 2019)
from “Change” a work in progress
Finding water,
roots slip past
earth’s grain;
I cannot decide
at which fractured
line to start.
(January 20, 2019)
from “Change” work in progress
I am open
as the earth;
all rivers flow
through me.
I walk out
following the sun–
radiant with intimations
from fate– here,
now, light flows
into the dark
forever determined
to be free.
(January 19, 2019)
from “Change” a work in progress
Once,
I was
not here;
but still,
I am
today
In time,
I am
complete;
Ouroborus
becomes
the egg.
(January 19, 2019)
Amid twilight’s slow dance,
along a moment’s periphery,
always some other lurks close,
whispering him toward the rocks:
“Don’t stop. Over here, no here.
Somewhere other than where
you are, someone other
than the person you are.”
As the voices rattle like bones
in a box longing to be heard,
he barely notes the susurrations,
never knowing where he goes.
Thus, the lackadaisical waves
slip him limply past the shore.
(January 16, 2019)
Like lover’s forgotten notes,
disturbed dreams fold
into night’s pocket. I wake
into another dark morning,
surprised I was still asleep.
It’s wearing to be aware
even in one’s dreams. The days
protective surety thins
and the ground falls away
into air. Too often I return
to you, who does not exist
beyond my desire for you
to exist. Like stepping
suddenly into a forest
clearing, each narrative
trace left from dream,
or memory leads me into
a present space. Not caught
up in past complications,
nor the fractal explosions
on the verge of occurrence,
I notice momentarily
the effulgent light along
The edges of the shimmering
leaves, and I am happy.
(January 15, 2018)
Since I do understand the importance
Of narrative, I tell stories without
Telling stories, like now, as I write this
Poem. I’ve created a fiction of me,
Truthfully, yet still a grounded fiction,
Who is speaking to you, someone absent,
As if we were strangers ordered to share
A rough table in a pub. But instead
of talking about the local football
team, or rudely about the government,
I talk to you as if you are in love,
Listening, as I speak, rather than write,
These simplistic thoughts upon this blank page,
And pretend you did not leave years ago.
(January 11, 2019)
We exist in mirrors
And shadows, the curve
Of the maze wall.
One way’s through;
One way’s return.
Devoid of shadows,
Absent reflection,
Each moment’s alone
In cold clarity.
Memory has no place
To go, so must be
Continually reshaped
In the turn and return
Of worry and doubt.
(January 10, 2018)
I cannot stop
thinking: thought
takes tangent
from thought
like traces
of bubble chamber
particles, arcs
spin angles skew
to the intent
as if even
a tendency
toward a line
could be maintained
for any strand
to cohere.
(January 6, 2018)
(a post-modern renga)
(draft 1–this is the complete 46 stanzas, I will remove the numbers (syllable counts) when I finalize the whole. I am looking for comments
(23)
Lights break auras
As night deepens
The rain. The solstice
Grows closer through the dark;
Grim days shorten.
(28)
Half-way back
To summer’s long heat—
In afternoon hours,
It hurts to step
Outside as if someone
Near waits with knives.
(14)
Patient enough now
To watch all this unfold
Into spring.
(40)
Outside, another cold day:
Most of the leaves have fallen
From the sycamore outback;
Its white bark stands in contrast
To the stark grey sky. Beauty
Lives with our view.
(43)
Nietzsche said, among other things,
We experience only ourselves—
Even when I shift toward you,
It remains me who must see
The shadow which falls starkly
Between us on the floor.
(36)
If no one hears the Eliot allusion,
Does it make a sound?
Or should one pretend
A studied nonchalance
To carry one through the late afternoon?
(39)
Thus, an old ritual snickers
To a close, the porch lights
Turned on, the curtains
Drawn. I feel safe,
Less exposed, contained
With the pattern—
A spider moves toward motion.
(34)
We’ve woven our disparate dreams,
And become subsumed beneath the totality
Like ocean waves rolling upon themselves
Far from shore.
(28)
My anger sits at a distance,
It does not go away—
It whispers discontent
Like whip’s end striking wet flesh.
(41)
Ubiquitous as fear,
The air tightens
Without provocation.
Yet, still we sing,
Sing our song,
As if redemption
Can be gathered
Like bags of wet cotton
Blotched with blood.
(23)
I caught my breath,
And did not speak.
Is writing equivalent
To speech? I loved you,
In silence.
(42)
Self-doubt’s constant
Caterwauling echoes,
Like now— I mock
Attempts to quiet:
Hush, hush
Little baby hush—
All these scorpions
Are your own, each
Tail-strike skitters
Across skin.
(11)
Memory circles back to savage the corpse.
(42)
If only the dead would remain with the dead;
The past cannot so easily be revised—
I know what I desire to have happened;
Yet a mirror cannot be unbroken.
(12)
I can only see what
I think it is I see.
(4)
A lens warps light.
(38)
We are woven through our day
Despite our proclivities
Or desires. A thread’s easy
Enough to trace in retrospect
As being a part to a whole.
(31)
And here I am
Beneath a December moon
Waxing its way
Across a gray night.
Fate, or circumstance,
Is of no consequence.
(36)
He touches his forehead
To the damp ground
In a patterned response
To appease God’s chaos.
Here things are quiet;
Here one pretends
There is this center.
(6)
She waits, then dons her mask.
(7)
He scurries beneath the rain.
(41)
The sideways shift and snip
Clatters across the sand.
It’s easier to move out of the way—
Trouble passes, one remains
To proceed with plodding step
Along one’s path.
(3)
Time’s slow arc
(34)
All the variables led here
As inevitable as this morning’s
Sun striking the sycamore’s white
Bark; no god laughs as our choices.
(14)
A left, a right, a yes, a no:
Life’s crushed to binary.
(16)
I close an eye
To see the obvious
Connection: the moment.
(15)
I stumble step across a bridge
Swinging above a crevasse.
(21)
No saints guide us home,
Nor care how far we fall.
The emptiness opens
Like an aura.
(43)
This morning everyone sleeps in
As fog drifts between the trees
Near the creek and the gray sky.
The last brown leaf has fallen
From the sycamore; the solstice
Passed under a full moon.
(30)
Dusk and dawn, progressive
And simultaneous, flow through
The landscape. Yet, we think
Our futile actions have consequence.
(3)
I’m a lens.
(19)
Like you,
Light bends
Along each wave’s edge
Into separate
And singular parts.
(36)
I live on the periphery
Whispering songs
To the dry wind–
No bold flights
Of choirs or timpani rolls
To assuage the silence
Which surrounds me.
(15)
Edges, like borders,
Allow difference
A false consequence.
(5)
Mirrors are echoes.
(26)
Like Narcissus,
I see only
What I want
To see; like
A song wedged
In my ear,
A flower grows
Nearby.
(35)
Another flower flowers
As if it were made for you
Each flower flowers
From bud to petal fall
The flower flowers
With or without you
(35)
In action, the noun is
Verb without separation.
The sentence inscribed
In bone, slippery as blood
Along a knife’s edge,
Leaks into our veins.
(34)
The sun moves and spins;
The earth spins and rocks;
The galaxy twirls along
Its own circuitous dance.
Nothing stops. I am tired,
And wish to rest.
(45)
The creek behind our house has risen
As the rain has been unrelenting
For the last few days. Work begins
Again tomorrow; over time I’ve grown
Accustomed to the pervasive fear.
(36)
Each day leads to another;
As do such platitudes; thus
We humbly don our daily masks
As those we meet present their own,
Forever and ever.
(12)
Rituals bring comfort,
Like an old dog its bone.
(16)
I keep revising the past—
Hoping for a new denouement.
(32)
She unfolds the origami crane
Next to his bed, but does not
Write the note. Oblivious,
He cannot erase what is not there.
(40)
We make only one choice.
Possibility’s extant only
In possibility. The first
Motion’s desire, which
Collapses upon itself
Continually.
(1)
Choose
There are no gods
to absolve
vain transgressions.
Stripped bare,
little’s left,
but flesh,
and a sack
of broken emotions:
shame, regret,
hollow laughter–
a thin grist to feed
what ever’s left.
The man remains–
the fool!
(December 30, 2018)
Syntax chains words
To you as if preordained;
There is no control.
(December 27, 2018)
The moon through tree’s lace
Illuminates the cracked night
A winter solstice
(December 25, 2018)
(41)
The sideways shift and snip
Clatters across the sand.
It’s easier to move out of the way—
Trouble passes, one remains
To proceed with plodding step
Along one’s path.
(3)
Time’s slow arc
(34)
All the variables led here
As inevitable as this morning’s
Sun striking the sycamore’s white
Bark; no god laughs as our choices.
(14)
A left, a right, a yes, a no:
Life’s crushed to binary.
(16)
I close an eye
To see the obvious
Connection: the moment.
(15)
I stumble step across a bridge
Swinging above a crevasse.
(21)
No saints guide us home,
Nor care how far we fall.
The emptiness opens
Like an aura.
(43)
This morning everyone sleeps in
As fog drifts between the trees
Near the creek and the gray sky.
The last brown leaf has fallen
From the sycamore; the solstice
Passed under a full moon.
(30)
Dusk and dawn, progressive
And simultaneous, flow through
The landscape. Yet, we think
Our futile actions have consequence.
(19)
Like you,
Light bends
Along each wave’s edge
Into separate
And singular parts.
I compass my direction,
my life, my time, only
in retrospect; I drift
disconnected, less
flotsam than jetsam,
only arriving here
with some awareness
after events
shuffled past
in worn slippers.
(December 20, 2018)
(Work in Progress)
(23)
I caught my breath,
And did not speak.
Is writing equivalent
To speech? I loved you,
In silence.
(42)
Self-doubt’s constant
Caterwauling echoes,
Like now— I mock
Attempts to quiet:
Hush, hush
Little baby hush—
All these scorpions
Are your own, each
Tail-strike skitters
Across skin.
(11)
Memory circles back to savage the corpse.
(42)
If only the dead would remain with the dead;
The past cannot so easily be revised—
I know what I desire to have happened;
Yet a mirror cannot be unbroken.
(12)
I can only see what
I think it is I see.
(4)
A lens warps light.
(38)
We are woven through our day
Despite our proclivities
Or desires. A thread’s easy
Enough to trace in retrospect
As being a part to a whole.
(31)
And here I am
Beneath a December moon
Waxing its way
Across a gray night.
Fate, or circumstance,
Is of no consequence.
(36)
He touches his forehead
To the damp ground
In a patterned response
To appease God’s chaos.
Here things are quiet;
Here one pretends
There is this center.
(6)
She waits, then dons her mask.
(7)
He scurries beneath the rain.
(in progress)
(23)
Lights break auras
As night deepens
The rain. The solstice
Grows closer through the dark;
Grim days shorten.
(28)
Half-way back
To summer’s long heat—
In afternoon hours,
It hurts to step
Outside as if someone
Near waits with knives.
(14)
Patient enough now
To watch all this unfold
Into spring.
(40)
Outside, another cold day:
Most of the leaves have fallen
From the sycamore outback;
Its white bark stands in contrast
To the stark grey sky. Beauty
Lives with our view.
(43)
Nietzsche said, among other things,
We experience only ourselves—
Even when I shift toward you,
It remains me who must see
The shadow which falls starkly
Between us on the floor.
(36)
If no one hears the Eliot allusion,
Does it make a sound?
Or should one pretend
A studied nonchalance
To carry one through the late afternoon?
(39)
Thus, an old ritual snickers
To a close, the porch lights
Turned on, the curtains
Drawn. I feel safe,
Less exposed, contained
With the pattern—
A spider moves toward motion.
(34)
We’ve woven our disparate dreams,
And become subsumed beneath the totality
Like ocean waves rolling upon themselves
Far from shore.
(28)
My anger sits at a distance,
It does not go away—
It whispers discontent
Like whip’s end striking wet flesh.
(41)
Ubiquitous as fear,
The air tightens
Without provocation.
Yet, still we sing,
Sing our song,
As if redemption
Can be gathered
Like bags of wet cotton
Blotched with blood.
“Desire is a moment with no way out”
–Anne Carson
I parse each moment’s possibility
Pretending the past can be reconciled
With present desires. Memory wears me
Like a palm stone smoothed from idle handling,
Until no difference exists between
Me and what I have perceived to be me.
The unstable threads interlace with all
The lies, the truth, the last dry sip of gin.
The metaphor for myself unravels:
The little that was left unsaid is said,
And the air sparkles with embarrassment.
I have built constructs out of Tinker Toys,
Vast whirligigs of simplistic ideas
To clack and flail in an ignorant wind.
(December 6, 2018)
As if braille,
I cannot be traced
Without a quick
Flutter of fingers
Across the page.
Even as I hide
Within words,
My handwriting,
Like kudzu, disguises
My intent.
I don metaphor
And stand still
To cloak certainty
In comfortable
Deniability.
My whispers are
My camouflage—
Hints and misdirection
Like bells nearby
In the dark.
(December 3, 2018)
I project myself onto a new world
Which is not mine, but simply becomes mine.
These become moments when something happens
And nothing happens. I exist tangled
In marginalia, a handwriting
Stitched upon the edges. Another book
Becomes a palimpsest to my tired thought,
A filter to strain away the slither.
Roman priests examined the intestines
Of animals slaughtered for sacrifice.
To devine auguries in the moment,
When something happened, and nothing happened,
They would take the eviscerated signs-
The clots of blood, the bits of flesh, as truth.
(November 30, 2018)
Owning the room
As he does
With ease,
Insecurity
Blunders
Through the door,
And takes
His place
On the sofa
Near me.
I try to leave,
But can’t.
I’m not sure
Why.
(November 29, 2018)
“but I was only bruised”
—Denise Levertov
I thought you were a butterfly,
But I was just a construct.
I thought I was an open wound,
But you were not a surgeon.
I thought you were my subtext,
But I was just a shallow novel.
I thought I had healed,
But still I wrote this poem.
(November 27, 2018)
W
“and I am
out with hanterns, looking for myself”
–Emily Dickinson
Despite the lights in the house,
The darkness penetrates.
It assumes positions in corners,
Presumptuous in its domain.
Like lions pace a cage’s confines,
I am lost in loops of thought
Looking for a set of keys
Which will let me inside.
Yet, there is no rest within
Nor without which can comfort
Enough to bring a closure;
Locked in my obsessions,
I worry each item in turn,
Tangled like tumblers at a fair.
(November 26, 2018)
Above all the clouds—
almost a full moon:
look up from your life.
(November 25, 2018)
An image like a flower,
something simple, a cliche
even, to distract away
from the slight of hand performed
beneath the mark’s open gaze.
Like now, for instance, you turn
your attention from the poem,
secure in your own slow thoughts;
what you trust to know trembles
as if a leaf in autumn.
Here exists my truth and yours.
I can explain myself true,
in a way that you cannot.
Thus, seeds grow into flowers.
(November 25, 2018)
