the carapaces begin
to fall away
in a clatter
of old consciousness;
I do not know
what will be left
beyond this moment
I walk through
secrets are
an inauspicious
start and must
divulge their hold
on the heart
to transform us all
(July 18, 2018)
-
I Sit Beneath a Calder
by
–Chicago Art Institute, July 13
slow shapes turn about
each other as they turn
together through larger
fluidic constraints
the whole turns slower
partly to the left until
a pause then moves
in a manner to the right
others speaking Japanese
move through the space pause
take a picture and move on
changing the room’s rhythm
which changes the slow shapes’
turn about each other and me
-
Things I would Not Wish on Anyone
after Lucille Clifton
I wish them disdain
I wish them questions
in a new town
that does not speak their language
I wish them to lose
their beloved stuffed bear
because the dogs can smell
the Rio Grande
Later let them learn humility
as the man’s arrogance
drips condescension
like venom
Let them think they don’t belong
Let them be turned away
(July 11, 2018)
-
your parents porch 40 years ago
by
the date was not over
until way after you stood
on the top step and I
on the bottom
as now when you descend
the stairs for coffee
I greet you two steps
before you reach the floor
(July 9, 2018)
-
Sunday Afternoon
Chicago, Illinois– Halsted Street
a half-finished Manhattan
with the 9 Muses, a bar:
Metallica plays softly
from the discrete loud speakers
a dandelion puff drifts past
out into the thick traffic
(July 8, 2018)
-
sedition
by
mostly now, I stay at home
rarely driving farther than work
or to a nearby market
for the night’s dinner
tomorrow, I travel alone
two thousand miles from home
to meet with other teachers
with other poets to talk
about poetry and its teaching
in an age of blatant lies
(July 8, 2018)
-
No One Watches the Train Fall from the Broken Bridge
by
His problem has nothing to do with the train which travels steadily through the night. Everyone is content, if not happy, on the train, reading opinions they already agree with, drinking champagne, eating delicacies imported from foreign countries. They pretend they do not like the food, but wish they could eat as well at home. All of the people on the train are facing the same direction, which gives them all a strange comfort. A few of them look out the windows, but it is too dark to see the trees in the forest. It all follows along so logically, like a math problem in high school where rats scuttle east over well-polished wing-tips at a variable rate of three feet per second. They stop randomly to nibble on discarded bread crumbs dropped with nonchalance by the passengers on the train. Meanwhile the train travels south at a consistent seventy-three miles per hour directly toward the crumbled bridge which once traversed a chasm one thousand feet deep and a mile wide. There is no question at the end that one must answer. However, there is an answer; there is always an answer. No one watches the train fall from the broken bridge. No one hears the explosions as it crashes into the rocks below, or the last cries for help of those who are momentarily still alive.
On a trail nearby the train tracks, a monk moves through the dark as if he has been here before, thinking vaguely of other things. He pauses, peers into the dark, then wanders off along his way. The monk’s tangentially wandering mind is not enough to mark the train’s passing beyond the silence which lingers in the mountains for several hours after the sun has risen again.
(July 6, 2018)
-
Clay Feet
to Lilith
I am no god to grant permission,
nor to watch your struggle
and pretend I know any more.
I want to lift you into the air,
to hug you close to my face, but
you are a grown woman now.
I flounder along in my own life.
The easy problems— to kiss
your stubbed toe, and all be okay—
have grown exponentially,
until I am as lost and incapable
as I think you feel. We all subsist,
scrabbling among the rocks searching
for that tasty bit of explanation
that will cause it all to fall neatly
into place, which never happens.
We are all lost in our worlds,
doing our best to love each other.
(July 3, 2018)
-
Rothko Chapel: a meditation
by
art, attention, ekphrastic, erasure, fear, liminal, meditation, poetry, prayer, silence, ways of knowing, zen
like stepping into a still pool
deep in a primal cave—
you slip into this silence:
the light breathes, a liquid
luminescence, in slow
arrhythmic breaths,
and you are changed—
you see what you want
to see; desire, fear, hope
flicker across the surface
like faces of the dead,
hesitant and fleeting
until you see only your self
stripped of all significance
(July 2, 2018)
-
parallax
by
“they go forwards past
the inclination
darkening corners to form”
–Clark Coolidge
you turned without seeing
the I half-a-step behind
you turned without seeing
the more obvious direction
the direction more obvious
to others standing apart
later this now blossomed
angles to bend new visions
you saw without turning
for they were all yours
ahead of you stumbling behind
the direction more obvious
if only the now could hold
despite its dark form hold
yet edges form corners
and corners form edges
as any form of redemption
turns and then turns again
(June 27, 2018)
-
the words were why I wrote when young
by
the words were a way out
between the rigid definitions,
the expectations carved in cant
the words slipped along fault
line’s edges; the incongruous fissured
like water through the undefined
the words wore meaning there,
bare and taut, shrugging off
all social niceties for love
the words were love for the world:
the laughter of the sun rippling
the horizon further each day
words were a way to a salvation
from what I was not to become
(June 25, 2018)
-
onward into the day
by
“Love is the root of everything….Love, or the lack of it.”
— Fred Rogers
like glass resonant in trembled anger
the fear is outrageous and constant
one horrific event erases the next
in an infinite succession of bomb blasts
bludgeoning attention to a bloody slurry
only the noise of the moment matters
and it does not matter even then
but only in the silence it creates in you
the silence of the possibility of dissent
so one must learn to hear without
hearing deafly to see again without
seeing blindly to go with open trust
across the shattered shards of glass
onward into the darkening night
(June 23, 2018)
-
Even Sleep Worries Me Now
Inside dream’s not different
than day— I’m pursued
by doubt, dumb beasts
that plod along in herds.
I hurl myself away,
before I am trampled.
I wake bruised on the floor.
Then, embarrassed, without
transition, I return
to bed to sleep. I kick,
and shout out warnings
against the shadows
that crawl beneath my skin,
slowly feeding as they go.
(June 22, 2018)
-
Macbeth had Scorpions in His Mind
by
Me, I’m much more mundane:
just piles of clutter collected over
meandering decades: associations
misconstrued; memories cast,
broken, reconfigured again
and then again into iteration
after iteration, before scattered
about the place so willy-nilly
one can barely move without
stumbling, causing stacks to collapse
onto stacks, shifting the only path
throughout this maze as if there
were ever one way to go,
as I was about to find out.
(June 21, 2018)
-
a presence
by
as now, as then
I am a continuum,
an arrayed spectrum—
less division,
than slow flux,
less a singularity
than background noise:
a low rumble in the hills.
I am not an event,
not a dalliance
to be swept away
like the darkness
which clings
along your horizon.
(June 19, 2018)
subtext 