from “Renditions of Change” a work in progress
My voice is not
enough to speak.
(February 29, 2019)
-
Contemplation
from “Renditions of Change” a work in progress
I observe myself
to obscure
myself. Too
many explanations
destroy the art.
Platitudes, as these
and this, are
easy to impose—
my reader,
my brother,
myself. Notice
the time, yet
be honest
in yourself,
without becoming
the lie as well.
(February 29, 2019)
-
Approach
by
from “Renditions of Change” a work in progress
Hope flourishes
as spring buds appear;
My students grow anxious
as graduation approaches.
(February 20, 2019)
-
Linear Circles
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,
nor the butterfly landing on her hand.
I fear pat endings’ homilies,
as if someone turns off the lights.
(February 15, 2019)
-
Enough
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)
-
Work on What has been Spoiled
by
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
by
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)
-
A Dagger Which I See Before
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)
-
Following
by
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)
-
Again
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)
-
Modesty
by
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)
-
Possession in Great Measure
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)
-
Speak Into Silence
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)
-
Fellowship
by
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)
subtext 