Twists

 

We are a tangle.

 

He sees himself

As master-at-

Arms, twists

The appendage

Behind.

 

Transmogrifies.

Becomes the monster

On the table

From memory, from

Lore.

 

Dancer, statesman,

Retiree, friend of toxic

Masculinity.

 

Who can understand

Why anyone, who would

Hurl stones through

His windows.

 

Foolish tire-waisted

King of television, who

Hides behind shiny metal

 

Instruments of fear.

 

Who hides.


 


 

 

I used to think the Kingdom

Of God was rolling in like

A fire,

 

And I had better roll with it.

But couldn’t. It wasn’t me. I was a quiet

Soul on a bench.

 

An occasional tear.

 

As though I could summon

Another person inside, another voice that would

Be more valuable.

 

Gumption, you don’t have enough gumption

To stand. Wrong, but how it wrung me.

 

I had not yet found the right place

To find footing yet, like slipping toes

On the wet stones of a forest path.

 

As though a shout was all I needed

To prove myself – to whom?

 

I worried my head

Was too full

Even with a sensing muscle inside.

 

Such worries have so often proven

False, reifying identity,

Finding compassion where others find

Fences

 

And fences where others find welcome.

 

I am who I am, perhaps created, I believe

Created – angry, silent, bereft, doubting,

Certain, confused, clear, seeing the steam’s

Bottom on mud at once.

 

            Seeking.

 

A creature of calm, not cacophony,

But speaking, not only when spoken to.

Who would rather read one

Book I love

That a thousand so-so stories.

 

Who sits, listens, writes,

Letting a thousand pasts and possibilities

Ride by with a thousand worries

 

Calling from the backseat. Awake.


 

An Upside

 

Down

            World, the floor a floor

            The cavern walls,

Rising above, this is the cold winter world

I discovered as a teenager when a new path

Opened.

 

Want to come to my house?

I knew that invitation could lead to screaming

Diapered trouble. Found that bit of fear inside

That wouldn’t trade a moment for a life.

 

Rising above, a tundra sky, welcoming

Ice that will make you slide if you don’t watch

It. Watch it.

 

When will warmer

Weather come? The climate is cold,

Like standing in a stranger’s kitchen, like

Bobbing heads of angry on the way

Out the door. Like an earthworm heart.

 

Like the blank spot next to another

That won’t be filled. Anytime soon. No one’s

Home because someone’s always hiding.

 

Fuck it, I’m not hiding

Anymore. Tired of traipsing

Worries and woes behind me like a row

Of babbling, honking geese.

 

Bread is now baking in the oven, even

If it’s not my oven. Anymore.


 

Poison in the Yard

 

The common morel, of course,

populated our dinner table, popping

up like – well, you know.

 

We had a field guide with illustrations

that were a little too imprecise

for my liking. Glossy pages, the title

might as well have been:

 

How Not to Die Around the House.

 

Decades later, as I approach middle age,

I hear the phone ring, the static story buzz

of how my father insisted he had found

 

a safe one.

 

Cooking it, liquid like blood leached out

in the butter-laden skillet, nature’s final warning,

and my mother tried to convince him.

 

He insisted and, thankfully, made it through,

a testament that even the memories that grow

locally sometimes have death in the middle.

 


Recluse 

 

No, not the brown kind,

scrambling creature with legs

and venom, fiddle belly.

 

Such creatures are proof

of the story of Lucifer to me,

fallen from some ancient ago.

 

Yet, recluse/reclusive, still.

 

I think I know enough of fellow 

humans to suggest a modicum

of reclusiveness can be helpful,

 

the stirring of murmurs commonly

drowned by the din,

 

the steep mountain of self-

acceptance, laden with barbs,

packed with prevarications.

 

Yes, rejected, I reject; refused,

I refuse; distanced, I say now I am

in my starry cavern.

 

Don’t let my inner music 

dare to disturb.


 

Stillville

 

There’s a hollowed-out mouth in the rockwall

of mountain, where the trappings of an old still

are located.

 

Visitors to the park gawk at it, some laugh, and some

touch the marks of an alcoholic’s anger, wherever

such scars can still be found.

 

I myself was seventeen the first time I took

a drink of some cheap wine from a Sam’s Club

bottle and thought: What’s the big deal with this?

 

Others swallow a drop and are caught. But I have

been raptured by other invitations.

 

A bit further up the mountain, you can look to your left

and see a giftshop where items may be purchased

to remember the days of yesteryear: outhouses, smokehouses,

 

old women spitting tobacco into open containers

with a pinging sound, like shelling beans. It’s the insecurity

 

that comes from being born of such a place that makes

me switch my code by adding my g’s to the end of words.

 

But, of course, we all come from some hollowed-out

story in the side of some grander scheme.


 

The Paradox of Connection

 

I’ve been told that men only want to gather

and talk about sports or alcohol. 

Well, aside from bouncing a basketball back

and forth with my Dad in the hallway

of my childhood memory, I don’t know a damn

bit about sports.

 

Alcohol is lovely but sits in the back of my throat

in the middle of the night. Each sip is a sacrifice

of a moment of rest.

 

I’ve been told that, as a man, my best bet at friendship

with women will always end in some kind of desire

for romance for one of us. Not that I’m insanely irresistible,

but this is the When Harry Met Sally outlook on life.

 

This is also one problem with a binary existence.

 

Relegated to a digital space for connection, I marvel

at how much human experience is captured in the click

of a like, in the share of a post. Sometimes, someone will

jump into the conversation. This is dicey.

 


 

Don’t steal my thunder, man. Don’t jump in and subvert

the post. This is the only fucking outlet I have.

Connected with more people than ever before, that

titular paradox is the inherent distance.

 

But then sometimes, in a moment of masculine bonding,

someone will surprise me over a bite:

 

            Have you thought about…

            Have you read…

 

and my ears, were they as active as a dog’s, would

settle back into a contented conversation.

WHENEVER I THINK OF IT


Whenever I think of it

I see nothing but moon and star

Cuddle each other in an orderly manner

Lulling me with a cloying nectar 

That waters my tongue like fish in a river.


Whenever I glance at it

I recall its brightest teeth

That outshine the light of sun

And my heart sinks into its ocean

To enjoy aquatic feelings resting therein.


Whenever I get a chance to kiss it

Peacock and peahen we will become

To hyperbolize in realm of love

And encase ourselves in girdle of affection.


Whenever I think of it

I bring back those memories

When I smiled and cried out loudly

For the untold stories I buried

Which cage my soul in monsoon period.

Socrates

You -- god of something we want & we lack – 
Sacrificed to a life of questioning
& Generations before the Lord took

His own Life for some odd strange answers.  Look:
What the hell do you see now, looking back?
Thousands of academics answering

Counter-arguments at symposiums,
A talk . . . on an essay . . . about a book.
The Forgiving God deals with all those Hymns

Sung by all those armed, those willing to fight.
But you deal with people equally right:
Know-it-alls all full of propositions.

People like you have started Religions.
Not you.  You just died to ask us questions.



Snakes & Snails & Puppy Dog Tails

Ignorance is not knowing anything & being attracted to the good.
Innocence is knowing everything & still being attracted to the good.
– Clarissa Pinkola-Estes.


All this reminds me of innocent things
made up of the pure 
Then
of memory . . .
a fish with a hook stuck in its gullet
& frogs tied up to a bicycled string,
a dog wanting, & waiting for a sign
of the bone in my behind-the-back hand,
only long enough for a feigned toss,
 & that dog chasing empty expectancy.

“I was a little world made cunningly.”

I feel younger, not un-knowing again,
but the pain in the heart of attraction.
Like innocent desire compels it.

These thoughts are caught in a throat that is mine.

& I recall that fish flopping madly.




Sit on the barstool next to mine

2 seats down she removes the clams from their shells, 
1 at a time, then tosses the clicking casings into the bowl.
You watch her suck the linguine into her jowls.

What breaks you down so much these days?
It’s not the relentless February storms,
dark mornings or icy nights, 
or 28 days that seem to go on
relentlessly longer than May’s 31.

What drains you so much these days
is not persistent fatigue, insomnia or illness;
it is not 4 sweating hours each night,
the cigarettes, the beers, or sinusitis.
It isn’t depression, your diet, or exercise,
although your body never lies
except when collapsing limply late at night.

What drains it all from you these days
is not the labor law autopsy photo,
proving more than the other attorney’s drone
as you listen to her on the speaker phone,
& ponder the relatives of the anonymous one
who fell head first into the wood chipper,
now one-half biped, without chest or head.

No.  It’s much more simple, more right
than any of these basic, tragic recurrences.
It is something once rare, now become common.
Hard working friends, like love alone did, are dying.

2 seats down she removes the clams from their shells,
then tosses the clicking casings into the bowl.
You watch her suck the linguine into her jowls, jealous.
She is beautiful, you are alone, & you want to say:

Please sit on the barstool next to mine . . . 
I want to see living . . . 



Available Space

9 planets – & not an Eros 
or Cupid among them.


But we’ve still found 
2 homes for Mars.



Acquisitions

The red-faced neo-conservative political pundit,
a total hog, a local celebrity from public tv,
walked into the liquor store, my liquor store,
where I worked, & he asked for “good Scotch.”
“I don’t know Scotch,” I said . . . honestly.
“It’s an acquired taste,” he said . . . with a smile.

I said nothing, but I certainly thought
about acquired tastes.  I thought a taste for love
must be acquired, since one must acquire a lover.
One can read the works of love, I thought, read
special guides from the East, or one can
simply listen . . . to one’s lover . . . & then act.

One can acquire an equally inexpensive
taste for books, for knowledge, using the library,
& one can acquire a taste for poetry, or prose, 
learning the greats, or just learning the adequate,
even, without ever dropping a taxable dime,
or spending one’s Scotch-drinking time, learning, 
or even listening to the words of some other. 
One can love & love words.   Is this acquired?

Can one acquire a taste for generosity?
 I wondered, say, float some money to a friend, 
but later give one’s time to the holiday soup line,
having grown into it?  Is that . . . acquired ?  

Later, I imagined my customer, the fat-faced hog
he is, with money, hating taxes, drinking Scotch.
I imagined him finishing his bottle of top-shelf
liquor, as I finish my own cheap beer, given my
acquired taste for cheap beer.  I imagined him 
later, red-faced, kneeling before the toilet bowl, 
throwing up a soul, tasting like top-shelf Scotch, 
unlike language, or love, but still, an acquired taste.

Before I Was Born 

the night before I was born

cloudy night sent me

tons of muse n' caged me on sit


the night before I was born

my life became the only

image my eyelid pledged patriotism


the night before I was born

nightmare became my company

while I'm paranoid by unknown guilt


the night before I was born

I became friend to my future

while my past shallowed tunnel of memory


the night before I was born

I had this writing as prophecy

and for I couldn't wait to write 

it's end, I'm here to attest the living.

My Cultivated Garden

I fell into a dream stepping across a path of fragrant jasmine and hibiscus
And lay above a cushion of roses
It was a curious time to indulge in the plantings of my garden
Poppies embraced me in a frenzy of aromas
That quickened my retreat from a world of overwhelming matters,
A world often perturbing in its synthetic quality
I slept in the lovely presence of pixie-like daisies
Warming me in a shawl of petals
Soothing my feet in a coverlet of ferns
A flutter of birds came to light in the shelter of fruit trees
Away from weather and intruders
I imagined them enjoying the raspberries that stained their bills
Until splashed by the fresh spray of a water fountain
I dreamed as the day waned and the buzz of wee insects stirred my senses
Wondering what breeze drifted tiny white blossoms through my hair
I awakened to feel the gentle sway of wisteria
Pleased with the way I cultivated my garden