Rimbaud stopped writing
around the age of twenty-one.
I have become old.
(April 6, 2018)
-
-
Go Along, Get Along
by
“Good answers are wasted on a fool”
–Ann Carson, Dionysos, Bakkhi
Often when I look up from my work
lost in thought, I can suddenly see
with a transformed clarity. I shake
my head as if I could align my
thought with the banal world around me,
like a child peering through a knot hole
in a fence tries to see the wider
world beyond his parental control.
I have no answers for the questions
I am too slow to ask. I’ve wasted
days disentangling the tedious
explanations of fools who believe
if they plod through their expositions
one more time, stopping along the way
to dissect each obvious point, then
I will arrive at the mistake they
metastasized into long ago.
But I don’t, and I am way too tired
to answer why, too worn from shaking
the same tree to find the exact fruit
they will refuse, once again, to eat.
So, I shift my eyes and go along,
blithely humming my discordant song.
(April 4, 2018)
-
Arreption
by
“to write against the ghost”
–Susan Howe
I am simply more nothing
to be overlooked, an absence
to be removed, like a hole
filled with fresh corpses,
then coyly landscaped
into an ubiquitous green calm,
easily assuaged and forgotten.
I speak in simple tongues
without need of translation:
such is my metaphor,
eraser crumbs brushed
aside without consequence.
Lost in the muck of language,
I claw across my margins’
sharp fractal edges, then fade.
(April 3, 2018)
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No Crumb, No Trail
“and the night is coming on,
which has no hope of dawn”
–Anna Akhmatova
I lost myself
out of myself
like a sleeve
slips over skin,
a new coat
to hide within.
One is more
than one’s
manifold
projections,
convex
reflections,
staid
contradictions.
I lost myself
in a storm,
my broken arms
flailing the wind
with a whirlygig’s
frantic clacking.
I lost myself
again, too often,
too easily—
donning disguises:
losing myself
out of myself
without myself—
broken, alone.
(March 30, 2018)
-
Teaching
by
I’m not sure I do much,
but open doors, set up chairs,
provide a place to read,
talk, write; which is enough
and yet, is not enough
to beat back the belligerence
barking like a spittle-flecked
beast. I can’t save them
from what is to come,
nor always be there to speak
amiably into their distress,
and voiceless traumas.
But there is this room,
an open door, and a chair.
(March 27, 2018)
-
Way of Knowing
by
a gathering of fears
like strands of mist
collected to a fog
to drape the landscape grey
these are my intuitions
the way I move the dark
my hand outstretched
as if looking for a friend
in an incomplete gesture
toward a familiar stranger
yes it is her wait but no
then I quickly look away
these are my truths
vaguely concrete
(March 24, 2018)
-
in between
by
I am told they say the language
is always already there waiting
to speak to hear to wallow in
like in omphalos blood coated
before the nascent cry cuts
sharply through the thick air
I have lost my metaphor
which becomes my metaphor
absence replaces other semblance
I suppose one cannot escape
language’s chains as they rattle
like bones in a cup the words
we speak in guarded greeting
each morning each to each
(March 23, 2018)
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Sing My Heart Out
I hone a knife
against my arteries’
thrum. The blood
slips a sacrifice
into a broken cup.
Worse than a cliché,
I am my own cliché,
a banal aggregate
waltzed about
in a leaky sack.
I vaguely sing
along discordantly,
not truly knowing
the words to my song.
(March 21, 2018)
-
Ingress
he looks for a different door
in rooms without walls
in rooms which don’t exist
for exits to other spaces
traces of other selves
still trapped in former places
between the comings and goings
everything occurs off stage
implied in his scripted lines
yet here there is no drama
no audience no fourth wall
nor any walls to cross at all
he exists here now like you
alone with no place to go
(March 18, 2018)
-
Transactional Spaces
are you listening
I’m not sure
I am
another other
who can hear
such whispers
wake the dead
from uncertain ground
you are as I
another other
with an answer
without question
for anyone else
to stand upon
(March 17, 2018)
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Empty Bowl
In almost a religious ritual,
he castigates his niggling doubts
in a timid formality of failure.
Even now, as he folds his thoughts
neatly into another inaction,
a new desire falls softly to regret
like crumbs from a banquet table
scatter slowly across the floor.
Doubt and regret feed each other
a fetid feast lavished with fear.
He imagines a different world
free from this hunger, where he moves
forthrightly without pity, instead
of staring blankly at an empty bowl.
(March 14, 2018)
-
I Slag Off Bits of Myself
by
moments decades gone by
twist tightly at my throat
I cannot speak beyond garbled
syllables juxtaposed like a collage
each angle cuts a new facet
to bend the light of reason
as prisms blur rainbows
across a darkened wall
I am shattered into colors
frayed and inarticulate edges
until what I once knew whole
fades into inconsequence
and regret like memory reverberates
throughout the gathering darkness
(March 9, 2018)
-
something from nothing
by
if I could say,
then I would
not have to—
the inexpressible
drives every attempt
to define
Frost’s wall
Stevens’ jar
Eliot’s need
lines and circles—
outside— the other,
the ineffable
nothing comes
from nothing
(March 7, 2018)
