We drown in our waste,
as history fragments, like
ice shelves to the sea.
(October 1, 2021)
-
Set and Setting
“till we turn to see
who you were, who you are, everpresent, vivid
luminous dust”
-Denise Levertov
Like wolves feeding on a fresh kill
steaming in the snow, each dead second
is pulled apart. No matter the effort,
time disallows the past to continue
fully formed. The future devours us
leaving little tufts of fur and bone bits
to decorate our current troubled paths
and explain away our broken sorrows.
I am hungry for something I don’t know,
a freedom from imposed obligations,
an escape to a place I am not known.
Yet, where I am, and who I’ve been tangle
like the strings of old puppets in a crate,
waiting for someone to haul them away.
(September 28, 2021)
-
Dad at Work Repairing Antique Furniture
by
There was always a way; a way he knew
to map an idea out of the landscape
lying before him like an unfinished
puzzle; some way to reshape creation
with a simple jig. His mind danced about
the problem, as he rose and sat, sat and
rose to walk across the yard cursing his
thoughts for not seeing it: so simple, so
obvious. He’d lumber back to the bench,
pick up the pieces of wood and begin
to cast the abstract into the concrete.
Beneath his broken hands, he would divine
a new pattern from the pattern inscribed
in the broken palimpsest of the wood.
(September 26, 2021)
-
Happiness
Happiness
—after Jim Harrison
The wine and whiskey, I am certain,
do not compliment the anti-depressants,
as well as I wish they would; yet, “all this time
counting the mind, counting crows”—
I pour a new glass with a touch of ice
to begin this conversation:
Hell has come to us as a heaven
we will never know, like Sappho’s apple
dangling slightly beyond our fingers
which grasp only at still air.
Where do we go when things fall apart?
In 1978, Buddha’s birthdaywas three days after my eighteenth.
I was a crumpled bag of emotion:
my father had died two months earlier;
I was in love (and still am) with the girl
I would marry. I moved, two months later,
125 miles to the north, leaving my hometown
forever, yet still trailing all my doubts and fears
behind like crows along a fence line
who caw and flutter, marking
their constant presence with darker eyes.
We think we can escape ourselves,ignoring the crows flying in and out
between the twisted oaks nearby.
We flee burning madly as we go;
yet, we can only be ourselves,
and, most days, that is not enough
to keep our fears balanced tightly
like circus clowns spinning plates
atop long fragile poles through the night.
(September 15, 2021)
-
Worry
by
the darkness festers
into the night, then lingers
through the waking day.
(September 12, 2021)
-
So Afraid, Always Afraid
“but in the end one needs more courage to live than to kill himself”
—Albert Camus
Any tremblethrough the trees
contrary
to the first
wind, the
next wind,
or no wind:
always afraid,so afraid
to simply be,
with no
definition,
with no
place to go,
nowalls left to build,
no excuse
left to believe,
no end;
then again,
no end.
(September 12, 2021)
-
Confessional
by
“what I lack is myself”
—Susan Howe
The door’s full like words
in an open mouth,
blotting out the space
it opened onto.
An entrance becomes a wall,an allowed space disallowed,
as keys and locks
become ritual.
Such small sacrificethe tongue becomes,
burning clear
any lost syllables.
Nothing’s left to say;everything’s unsaid.
-
Negation
I’m lucky not to drown,
second by second, as I
walk down the street—
what with all the lies
and recriminations
I mouth, then swallow,
like a gluttonous beast
devouring itself wholly.
Perhaps it’s fate not luckwhich keeps me afloat? But that
requires some god to blame,
and explain the curses directed
daily over rosary beads, like
mendicants to a self long lost.
(September 5, 2021)
-
Map a Return Into the Ocean’s Lost Metaphor
by
There is no causality, no maze
to transcribe into memory,
simply a chance to breathe
near the bottom of the stairs;
and, like a mouth singing
arias, I crack open the bones
in my chest to find a way
into the warm flesh, to dip
my worn fingers slowly in,
to feel the heart’s contours
define the next last moment,
to map another return into
the ocean’s lost metaphor.
(August 25, 2021)
-
Teaching in a Time of Covid
Tomorrow I go back on contract for my 33rd year of teaching. Last year was one of the worst years because of distance learning and the lack of contact with my students. The Students are always the best part of teaching, and for the last eight years (starting my 9th) at Ann Richards, I have had the best students ever, every year. Last year it was important that we teach remotely. The students, their families, my fellow teachers, my family and friends were at risk to this horrible deadly disease. We stayed at home and did what we could through a screen full of little boxes, because we had to. This year there is a more deadly, more virulent version of the same disease, and even with the vaccine, which a too large group of people refuse to take, and with no vaccine for the under 12 group…. which means ELEMENTARY CHILDREN….. It is more dangerous than ever to go back. Yet, here we are.. going back into the classroom. Cases are already being reported at my school, and the district where my wife teaches, and across Travis county. I fear for what will happen over the next few weeks and months, as we go full bore back into the schools.I fear for my students. I fear for my grandchild who is starting in a pre-k program. I fear for my family. And all of this is not necessary, we could stay remote. At the very least the elementary schools should stay remote, until the under 12 children can be vaccinated. I don’t understand what is the end game of the politicians like the Texas Governor, who seem to want children to die. What is the benefit to them? I want to believe in a hell, so the people who are forcing this to happen have some place to go.
-
Always a Model Nearby
by
“Props and other disinherited
paraphernalia are never enough.”
—Susan Howe
My hands cradle my face,
covering my dead eyes.
Worn thin like ragged cloth,
I am tired of my life:
Before sunrise I wake,
slowly move down the stairs,
and start again. Morning
rituals of coffee
keep the old dramas near,
private. I want to wail,
long howls into the dark.
Instead, I feed the dog,
whose tail wags happily
as she eats her kibble.
(August 9, 2021) -
Campfire Story
A nostalgic old man,
whose whispers adhere
to the flames’ tongue,
tells his one story again.
You are charmed.So the chains slip
into your veins,
your heart, your lungs.
The air thickens your breath,until every song you hear
is the only song you hear,
then you can no longer dance.
And the fire burns down,for nothing’s left to say.
(August 6, 2021)
-
After Image
With disdain,
he turns
from the mirror,
leaving
himself
behind
like a cicada’s husk
caught
on a tree’s bark.
(July 29, 2021)
-
The Fire Consumes Us All
by
Yes, poetry burns in feral anger—
a knife flash fast at the shadowed church door
cuts through a dank cassock’s folded black cloth,
twisting quickly below the priest’s fat rib.
Yet, the mundane’s slow-etched eddy of truthleaves its testament in the margins
of the more violent rush and tumble
relevance churning in the crowed streets.
My life is easily enough dismissed
with the trivialities of the day
dropping their dead petals across my path
like roses in ecstatic agony.
Yes, poetry burns in feral anger—and burns and burns throughout the dullest day.
(July 26, 2021)
-
Night Terror (a reading)
by
Night Terror
“When are we not in a dream?
…when are we not skeletons?”
—Sy. Hoahwah
I don’t remember
the dream before,
I cracked my head hard
against the wooden night stand;
the fine grained ephemera,
which held the dream together,
burned like flash paper into the air.
A lightning ball exploded
my darker vision, as the dream,
too agile to cradle, threw me
deftly from sleep onto the floor.
Not existing fully in the fluidity
of sleep, nor the concrete warmth
of the morning window’s light,
I held my head in my hands,
eyes shut, as the lightning flash
faded, leaving only the muscles
in my neck to burn like trees
broken during the night’s storm.
(July 16, 2021)
