there's got to be more below the surface
I have said this before: There needs to be photographs published of the aftermath of these shootings. Not the bodies of the torn up 1st, 2nd, and 3rd graders (6-9 yo), but the destruction of the room. Blood spattered across the walls where their work had been displayed by the teacher. The work the children had been so proud to see hanging on the wall. Walls that are now blood stained. These common classroom artifacts desecrated in blood need to be seen…these murders are not neat and tidy, easily forgotten (obviously). Do not show the dead children, show the bullet holes in the walls, show the blood. The blood of the innocent. Maybe that would help in bringing enough rage to the surface to bring about meaningful change. Maybe.
As if she has been here for millennia
calmly chewing grass, the buffalo stands
in an open field below the mountain.
Aware of the biting fly and herself,
but little else, she still provides so much
into the life of the poorest village.
What difference can the monk’s laughter make
to her as it echoes through the valley?
(May 14, 2022)
Caught in ecstatic wonder
the young girls make love
with tempestuous abandon.
While he follows the rules
of the old games, he’s mocked
for his sad delusions:
In dream’s river, the two
drowned consorts come to him
with promises of consummation.
Thus he becomes a cuckold
to himself, looking for coins
beneath a withered willow.
(May 12, 2022)
The ascendent moon
negotiates the chase tree’s
dark-twisted branches.
_________________
There are moments
within moments
within moments,
a slow descent
into the repeating
heart of the lotus.
Sunlight takes on
a clarity which radiates
from all it touches,
as shadows sharpen
themselves against
the light’s keen edges.
From the river bank,
the water glistens
like distant laughter,
while we stand still,
watching, between heart beats,
the river rush past us.
(May 10, 2022)
In the slums, obscene songs
are heard from the Heights.
As children we mocked them
with songs they now sing.
There is no recompense
between the rich and poor.
Unlike a baptismal font,
blood does not absolve blood.
The dead cannot hear
their mournful lovers’ tears.
(May 10, 2022)
He slips through the dusty streets
delaying his departure from sorrow.
What wisdom is
this wisdom?
The Sorceress’s warm breath at his ear
softly offers her seductive charms.
What wisdom is
this wisdom?
The priest offers redemptive prayers
in patterns to protect him.
What wisdom is
this wisdom?
At both the chancery and brothel doors
he laughs like a nascent breeze.
Which wisdom is
his wisdom?
(May 9, 2022)
I tell you my truth;
so does he, but his is a lie.
Each morning we both shit,
take a shower, drive to work.
The mundane slaps my face,
as if waking to a wet bed.
In the tea house’s simplicity
the same tales are told nightly.
(May 7, 2022)
We delude ourselves with thought,
with the sound of rain, like tears,
outside, as a new song begins
across the mountain. Change begins
with Heaven and Earth. War separates
us. Yet, for how long? War and duty
separate us. We may never lean
again against the other through the night.
The moon sets on me here tonight,
as it does with you where we parted.
(May 6, 2022)
As if they know you,
gossips snipe and sneer.
Someone hands you a fan
with provenance. It’s broken.
So, where is this rhinoceros?
That line on the page divided:
a definition acts as a wall.
One number resists division;
neither the we, nor the I.
Who were you then? Who now?
(May 1, 2022)
The lotus, like a kaleidoscope,
unfolds through individual eyes.
One doesn’t inherit grace,
nor the wisdom of the old:
our addiction to fame and wealth
devours with rapacious hunger.
If you were to stretch to the sky
beneath a grove of pear trees,
or bend to touch the dark earth
in a field of ripe melons—
then you’d be suspect—
and obviously a thief.
We are given nothing,
and that is enough.
There is no more to give:
No trinket to distract
the sharp-eyed magpie
from the moment’s gleam.
(April 27, 2022)
Clouds cling to the cave’s mouth
disguising the demons who dwelt
there. Our words worked on us
like wine and laughter, while love’s
simplicity quickly complicated
all which was said. Thus the poem’s
parameters become the poem,
and our forms fall into function,
as peach blossoms frost
the temple walkways in spring
with a light pink brocade.
(April 26, 2022)
The days go by unnoticed:
wake, feed the dog, make coffee,
drive to work, move the kids
through some bit of literacy,
drive home, cook dinner, eat,
read, watch TV, then sleep
restlessly through the night.
Then suddenly I find I am old,
not that I’m surprised;
it’s been happening for years.
(April 25, 2022)
four haiku with a tanka couplet
Old rock and country
play on the jukebox inside.
Song blends into song.
Men slouch at the bar,
vaguely watching the Astros.
Once, they were children.
The volleyball teams
serve, set, and sweat in the sun.
We watch from the shade.
Beneath the old oak,
I talk with friends over beer:
“Life is but a dream.”
The afternoon drifts like clouds;
seasons fold into seasons.
(April 24, 2022)
As if in a Renoir painting,
shadow and light pulse against
each other across the tables.
Beneath the infinite hush
of traffic, people quietly talk.
The worries of the day loosen
and fall away unnoticed.
Waitresses move like dancers
under the oak’s dark branches.
(April 23, 2022)
A blood-red thread extends
into the dark. I’m lost
and cannot see the walls
until I walk into them.
I am cold and hungry,
but cannot eat my dreams.
I must lose my sight
before I can escape.
Here is the problem:
I have so much to say,
but desire’s not enough.
Nothing comes from nothing.
Each moment’s ripe with terror;
a bull bellows in the dark.
(April 22,2022)
Next to the whorehouse
is a bar. How many desires
drown within another?
the sky grows dark in the rain;
I straighten my hat afraid
I will be misunderstood.
Somewhere in the distance
a monk sings without remorse
about the end of love.
Nowhere exists a river
deep enough to wash away
what I must now give up.
In fire passion’s refined;
a body does not leave a mind.
(April 21, 2022)
between regret and worry
the delusion is infinite
we spin centuries
in love
in tears
we try not to judge
to not say right
to not say wrong
to find a still point
in the flickering moment
to see the flower
in silence
smile
and shatter the mirror
forever
(April 20, 2022)
As I cut onions for dinner,
I listen to Lisa complain
about a fellow teacher
who loves drama more
than teaching. I wonder
why we make things
so complicated. I stop
chopping, and listen
to the stereo where
Allison Krause sings
of love and heartbreak.
(April 19, 2022)
I am a skeleton wrapped
in failing flesh; I wheeze
and my skin bursts open.
I dreamed I was some
other, then woke to see
it was true. Heaven
is too far way to lean
against. I am no sword.
Even upon reflection,
no such fame awaits me:
too many complications
settle to the ground like dust.
(April 18, 2022)
four haiku with a tanka couplet
The moon in the trees
tangles between the branches
and the budding leaves.
Last night a small owl
hooted in the chinquapin
to the dogs chagrin.
A hummingbird sits
at the top of the burr oak;
the breeze barely breathes.
The brief Texas spring
moves quickly into summer.
Heat holds the air still.
The dogs lounge beneath the trees;
a squirrel fusses from the fence.
(April 17, 2022)
“One must cultivate one’s own garden.”
—Voltaire
Scootching along on my butt
as I weed the large bed out back,
I hear my mom, dead now
these past fifteen years,
as she sat near her flower beds
pulling weeds. She complained
how she wasn’t as young as she
was anymore. I laugh to myself,
because neither am I anymore
as I pull my weeds forty years later.
(April 16, 2022)
“the descent beckons”
——- William Carlos Williams
Despite, or maybe because of,
my meds, I can feel the fall
as it begins. A slow drift
like a leaf, or dandelion,
it lifts for a moment, twirls,
then stumbles, and falls again
into a dark silent lake without
a ripple to disturb the surface.
There is little to do, but wait.
Wait without despair,
for despair is a weight which
drags one deeper into the dark.
So, I wait for a new light to break
across a horizon I cannot see.
The moon behind the pines
through this window
nestles my pillow.
I still plant trees, knowing
I will not see my grandsons
reading beneath the branches.
A mist rises from the creek,
its soft motion mocks
my idle dreams.
I stare out the window,
until I am startled
by the cat, vomiting.
(April 13, 2022)
The students used to be enough
of a balm—
their curiosity, their light.
Today the ephemera wears me:
the pointless testing,
the political demagoguery.
It becomes harder to ignore
the razor thin insults,
the slow bleed.
This should be the end—
yet inertia pushes me,
slouching towards another year.
(April 12, 2022)
I feel my life tonight—
the weight, the textures.
There is no wisdom to create
an escape, no simple design
to relieve the recurrent terror.
Outside the wind grabs the trees
by the hair tossing them about
in an ecstatic frenzy.
I step into the growing night
and listen to the trees whip
the pale sky into the dark.
What control I thought I had
flees from me, abandoning
the promise of the light to come.
(April 11, 2022)
Becoming too old and short of breath
to climb the ladders myself any more,
the young men working outside nimbly
spring up with growling chainsaws
to cut down the trees and trim off
the tangled branches which were left
for dead after the great Texas freeze
last year in February.
Earlier today on the way
to the bank to withdraw money to pay
the young landscaper, I heard on NPR
an Irish poet pray in a poem to St. Agnes
for his words to be true, cleanly spoken,
and unadorned by the frippery of poetry.
So, I have placed no metaphor here today,
other than what each brings with us to say.
(April 9, 2022)
Anger rose like a bear
growing to its full height,
growling into the trees,
massive arms outspread.
It has been years
since I manifested him;
my meds, like dogs,
keeping him at bay.
Yet, a small thing,
no more than a stone,
easily ignored—
was enough:
he flowed through me,
the adrenaline surged;
my face flushed;
my jaw clinched.
Anger swirled around me,
like a vibration of bees
migrating slowly
across an open field.
I watched it unfold
through me, as easily
as when a child
I watched him shift
from himself into fear.
But I could not run
from myself as easily
as from him. So, I let it
pass. I stood still listening
to silence, and it dissipated
like waves on a beach
chased along by sand pipers.
(April 8, 2022)
Tattered like old rags
I’m tired before it begins:
unravelled from years
of worry and work.
Gravity crushes the light
into the room’s corners.
I move, a fragile ghost,
with slow thick steps.
Once again, I’m pushed
back into the grey chair
to stare out the window
at nothing in particular.
I know what to do,
but the thought wears me.
(April 5, 2022)
the time between
the events they list
in the blurb
they post
after you die:
like now—
as the dog barks
incessantly
at the back fence
as the birds flitter
and chirp
from tree to tree
as the grey cat
sleeps in the rocker
oblivious to it all
(April 4, 2022)
An old man smirks
at the wet blood
splashed about
the broken frame
as a charm
against it all.
It is Fear, of course,
who lingers there
like a sycophant
tracing the edges of a room;
for Fear is ubiquitous,
a breeze which clings
to leaves fluttering
against a cottonwood’s branches.
So, you hesitate
to turn the latch,
to take the step
to pass you through,
as if one empty space
differed from another.
(April 3, 2022)
They do not speak.
They have no need
anymore. I know
their lines: their small
talk jokes; the regrets
and lies. After all,
I wrote their voices
out of air into bone
years and years ago.
Still, they follow me
about the old house,
knocking knick-knacks
to the floor; slapping
the back of my head ;
flicking my ears
in bored reprobance;
and they watch, always
watching, like cats
watch birds darkly
through closed windows,
longing to recapture
the life I left
behind with them.
(April 2, 2022)
the problem is time
obstructs,
before it
even begins.
most days
eventually meander
near a river,
not
obliviously, but
truculently:
defining
each
second as a
task which finds
relief
only when finished.
yet, evening
eventually
relinquishes
some forgiveness.
(April 1, 2022)
“hope would be hope for the wrong thing”
T.S. Eliot
I wait to be reborn
in this fallow ground.
Beneath my skin,
my bones hang heavy.
They ache for release.
The muscles tighten
like wire at my neck,
etching a tense smile
across dried flesh.
My lungs grow thick
in earth’s dark blood.
I cannot breathe.
(March 22, 2022)
The eye is the first circle; the horizon which it forms is the second; and throughout nature this primary figure is repeated without end.
-Emerson, Circles
I cannot focus
enough to see
the edges; nor trace
the slow bend in
the periphery,
horizon’s
vanishing point.
I step forward,
then back ; turn circles,
almost a dance;
it comes no nearer
still.
Each night
the story lies
in the embers
burning low
through our skin.
One hears more,
as in sleep,
than the tale
crackling
on the grate.
By morning,
we wake
to a stranger
world where
difference echoes
in our whispers
like curls of smoke
across ash.
(March 16, 2022)
“In the end one experiences only oneself.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra
the old sage asks as he dies:
who has my vision
—my essential mysteries—
this blind donkey braying
my words off-key?
or the old drunk poet
who renamed himself—
the dream bordello—
then night after night
thirsted for more than water?
(March 6, 2022)
He tries to trace the shadow
his pen makes on the page
as he writes. It keeps moving,
changing shapes as if it has
a will of its own, an agency
beyond the word’s ability
to slip next to each other;
to re-inscribe the future
into familiar patterns
easy enough to follow
without thinking too much
for at least one more day.
(February 23, 2022)
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