Old and in a way
supermen, in a way
lint, the artists
who came before
are never comfortable
among their younger
comrades. Something
revolutionary stuck to them
like a tobacco stain,
a badge that pins them to their time
and it’s not now,
more’s the pity. They’re
all romancing their own youth
and it’s not coming around
anymore, so they grouch
and slouch and grumble
because no one talks to them
when they’re like that, and they’re
always like that. So
they go home alone and say
I could do better, and sometimes
they do but it’s lint like them,
picked off because it makes
the new kids’ wardrobe look pilled
and shabby, or they get pointed at
like supermen up in the sky far above
when all they want
is grounding and for some of these punks
to say come on, let’s have a beer
and talk, I like what you’re doing now
and I don’t want to dwell where you do
now, but they aren’t ready
for that. Instead they claim
superiority
and say
damn these kids these days,
we aren’t lint or heroes, just wanna be
honored for journeyman work
right now, fuck the damn pedestals
and the dismissals alike, we’re still
just another sack of artists
doing what artists do, failing as often
as we succeed but not caring as long
as we can work human.
February 10, 2010
Old Artists
February 10, 2010
To Face It
Do not hesitate to spill
your gasoline blood
near an open flame.
Do not fear to approach
the angel of justice
when its sharp wings are open.
Don’t imagine the world is safe.
Do what you need to,
shiv the guard before the gate
or bed the devil who carries
the keys to the kingdom.
Just don’t expect to come away
with your prize without a scar,
because claiming to honor
the impulse to danger
and then insult it
by attempting to render it
impotent
is to die indeed.
They are before you now, the teeth of the Hydra
waiting to fall from the jaw
you swear you want to bust open
and grow into a army arrayed against you.
Are you truly ready to fight?
February 9, 2010
Listening Very Hard
I seem to have forgotten
my ribs at home
tonight;
my chest
is apparently
soft luggage
holding
an unprotected heart
swimming in red air.
To inhale
is to slice myself
from within
but since I must breathe
I force myself to do it
through my nose
by smiling hard
with my jaws locked.
You can count my teeth
even when my lips are
closed.
Go ahead
and do it now
for they may be gone
soon, tumbling back
through my throat
to gash me further
as I doubt my gums
can hold them
for very long.
I’ve never felt
so rotted, so
superfluous,
such a corpse
to be kicked
for amusement;
so ashamed
to be caught
decomposing
in public
when I’m
expected to be
listening very hard
and applauding
what’s being said.
February 7, 2010
Beat The Ghost
Sam beat the hell
out of a ghost last night,
his fists all tangled with cobwebs
and soft blood.
When the body holding his father’s soul
hit the ground Sam did not stop
but kicked it and broke it
until the bouncers pulled him off.
Then the poor vessel got up
and shoved a knife into Sam
before anyone could stop him.
Sam didn’t die, though,
not right away. In the ambulance
on the way to Milford is when it happened
and Sam got a sour laugh
over who was waiting for him
when he made the leap
into that space. The two of them
would have leaped at each other if either
had solid arms, but instead they just hovered and snarled
with no material way
to continue the fight right then.
But both Sam and the guy he’d attacked
have brothers, so no worries.
Dad will get his chance
to goad Sam into rage again.
In a few days
Sam will seize his little brother’s body
and force him to square off with the brother
of the man who killed him.
How I hate you, he’ll say to his dad
as he moves his brother’s arms
to smash back at the face
of his demise — the face he sees
there, not the boy’s face.
Shut up, Dad will say. Don’t be a pussy.
Shut up and fight.
Fight like a ghost in a man’s body,
the way I taught you
to fight.
February 7, 2010
Pre-Brawl
It’s on? We
all over that shit? Got it covered,
you got my back, I got yours, we got this?
Yeah, I’m with you,
down for it,
I’m your boy.
They got nothing
for us. Nothing.
We’re on top of it. They
got nothing for us.
They
ain’t shit.
Let’s go. Bring it
if you got it. You ain’t got shit
and you know it. Big talk,
all you got’s talk,
bring it, let’s
go. Let’s see
what you got.
February 7, 2010
Ignorance
Choosing not to know
something millions know
is a luxury
Whether it’s the nature
of oppression
or the story of the hot game
to choose to ignore
what’s in front of you
is an easy way
to segregate yourself
from your brothers
and sisters
and raise yourself
onto a pedestal so high
you can see
only the long view
of the ants below
while you pat yourself on the back
for your superior
vision
and grasp
February 7, 2010
Captain
Through the door of the Ship Room comes
one snapped mental carrot,
one steamrolled nose,
a duffel full of puppets,
and the echo of his scratchy greeting
piercing the room:
with a hearty “yee-yee” and a “ham-ham-ham,”
the Captain
has arrived.
I’m one of only a few in the club
who know his real name.
I’m not telling.
Here he’s the Captain and
he runs things
by presence
and enthusisam
and chaos, perfect
sweaty chaos.
A band on stage
grinds out bluespunk
and here come the shark
and the pig
out of the bag. The Captain
slugs and pops
at the front of the crowd
and thrusts them at the singer,
who hasn’t played here before
and has no clue how to react,
but we sure do. We’re pointing
and moshing like pirates
behind him, the rock and roll
unleashed, now the bassist gets it
and starts to grin, steps up the bottom
as we charge and yell for louder
and more, while the Captain
leads us puppet-handed into
the heart of Saturday night.
Half these kids don’t know what they’re seeing:
the act I’ve known for all these years
still in progress, this stocky little block of a lunatic
for the release of every tense energy ball
in our chests and our feet knows us,
isn’t afraid to lead us to crazy and abandon.
No one would believe me if I told them
anything of what I know of him: how I’ve seen him
tear a computer down and rebuild it
in less time than it takes to power one up;
that in rare moments he quotes Shakespeare;
that under the weed and the acid scars
there’s a guy who once knew more about more things
than most of us could imagine forgetting –
but he’s managed it, for the most part.
Somebody outside the club calls him a retard
and I want to flatten his nose,
tear out his hair, tell him that now
he’s ready to judge him. The Captain
wouldn’t care, of course, and that holds me back.
A rock and roll army needs its leaders.
Needs the lifers who live it. Needs the guys
who could care less how they’re seen
by people with healthy metal carrots
and nothing alive in their hands.
February 7, 2010
Hitting Bottom, Take 43
Held it in my arms
as it decayed
to charcoal, as pieces of it
scaled off and crumbled
and fell at my feet.
This is of course
why I picked it up
in the first place:
I only hold tight to my chest
what will fail me
most visibly.
I love the sound
that rises from the ground
when I tread upon it
as I walk away,
and the stains on my arms
that offer evidence
of my martyrdom.
February 7, 2010
Rebirth/Death
When the last word
of English is spoken,
when it finally dies
and is forgotten,
everything we know
will disappear into the forest
where the ghost languages
recall their recounting
of feasts, lovers, wars
and memory, descriptions
of mountains and oceans,
specific words for snow,
sand, arrow, child,
mother, warrior, wine, bread,
chill, dawn, night, embrace,
holy, evil, baker, poet, song.
It will not matter. Someone from the next
dominant species will begin again,
trying to snare fact in the wind.
It’s always been thus: one voice fails
but the world itself remains to stimulate
the next voice to falter, gain strength,
describe the truth before it. The silence
breaks and then washes back into place.
February 5, 2010
Nonni
Watching the salted
water rolling softly
in a shiny pot, I realize
my Nonni
wouldn’t know me now:
no olive oil in the house,
putting butter on the pasta
when it’s done…shaking cheese
out of a can onto the sticky pile
in the bowl.
This is hunger, I’d tell her
if she was here: I’m just hungry.
She’d frown, her lips turned down
the same way her hands curved and curled
over the wooden stick she used
to roll the fresh dough out for her spaghetti,
her quadretti, her wandi.
Always a white enamel pan
full of meat and sauce in the ancient fridge –
but she never called it sauce. It was always gravy.
She could lay out a meal, nothing fancy,
just good food that satisfied,
in no time. I’m fast too
when it’s time to eat,
but it’s not the same.
And I don’t know how
to make it so. So instead
I turn my back on her
and stuff the naked noodles into me
and try to fill myself. I’ll likely eat
the whole pan, fall asleep
early, and wake up still hungry.
In the morning I’ll stare
into the fridge and look for
gravy in a battered pan.
And I won’t cry. Not again.
February 5, 2010
A Scholar Of The Classics
Eros is an armed toddler,
only welcome when he comes as metaphor.
If he showed up on your street
you’d call the cops, or Children’s Services,
and you’d huddle behind the bed
while they took him in and stay there
until it was safe to walk upright
in your own home again.
The same goes
for Hermes or Poseidon: naked hunk
with winged heels and a helmet or a bearded guy
with a trident, fer Chrissakes. Who these days
would cheer their presence on the street?
Not one of us would heed a myth
if it showed on the hoof in a preferred form.
Maybe that’s always been true.
You hear about Zeus coming down
to make time as a bull or a swan,
visiting his victims in borrowed identities;
this is that whole “mysterious ways” thing,
isn’t it? We can’t be comfortable with
the full face of the divine.
We can apparently only take note of the gods
when they sneak up on us.
So who killed you, beloved?
Which one did this?
Who was it
who tore me up and left me here on the floor
curled up in fear in front of the news?
Who was that lurking
behind the answering machine message that stopped
my heart for good this morning?
Which of those insane, incestuous, venal little avatars
took you in a public place, slit you like an envelope
and stole the precious news of you from me
before I ever read it through and understood it?
I get you, Olympus. Get you good.
Don’t even bother trying
to get right with me. No mask
or artifice is going to work.
If whoever it was thinks
I will ever sacrifice to them again,
they’re crazy.
If you think
I’ll ever trust another stranger
not to be a bastard god in disguise again,
they’re crazy.
You killed her.
No mortal would have had the heart to do it.
February 3, 2010
The Moment Of The Poem
It’s one of the fragile
hours. If I look
at the clock, I’ll see it
shiver and splinter. Any chance
of going to bed early will be
gone, and I’ll know that
at once and begin to pine
for the lost opportunity.
I’ll avoid that and keep the evening
intact. No use destroying
a sacred object with attention
to the restraints we keep on it.
I will stay here, in the envelope
of the moment, here in the poem.
You will say I should not speak
of the poem, that to write of it
is to cheapen the art. You may as well
ask the priest to never speak
of his office, how the presence of his God
is entirely revealed
in his movements
and in the words she speaks.
We do this for a purpose:
the writing, the chanting
are a shield against the shattering force
of the quotidian wave. Shall I never
be allowed to say that this is how I stop
the day, that this is how
transient things are made permanent?
It’s a blasphemy I won’t abide: I proclaim
that I live to stay here in the poem and deny the clock
that crushes the moment beyond remembering,
and that the bed that called me earlier tonight
is still there, still calling, will be heeded
at some point, but first
the rituals that make the present safe
must be observed.
February 3, 2010
Bear
See that house
with the long driveway
two doors down?
They’ve got something like
a bear
in there.
His captors, about whom
we know little, seem
not to listen to him
and want to keep him hidden.
I’ve never seen him myself,
but it’s obvious that he’s there:
you can hear
the bear soliloquy
at all hours, a Hamlet
bear mourning and raging
at his current impotence,
demanding answers
from his parentage
regarding his current state.
One of these days
that beast is going to get out
and come looking for
vengeance on everyone
who knew about him
and kept quiet. All these quiet homes
are going to be destroyed,
I’ve got money on it
and I’ll tell you: we’ll almost
deserve it. Almost
because who were we
to question what was being done
in the name of our security
and safety? It would have stirred
too much if we’d challenged
the rationale for keeping such a force
so trapped and caged.
Besides,
the property values would have gone down.
Who’d want to live in a place
where such angry and deprived souls
could run free and claim what’s theirs,
even if that’s
all they want?
If they could have been that way
from the start, maybe I’d feel different,
but now it almost seems
too late for that. Best, I guess,
to stay armed and just
listen to them, alert
for the sound
of escape.
February 3, 2010
Speech
The art
of saying
the right thing:
hanging motionless
in speech-time,
conscious
of being
letter perfect.
A still
life of a breath
unit.
Enough?
That’s the wrong word –
should have stopped earlier,
as of course
it is.
February 2, 2010
Mission Of Burma
the full snazztone
of a well-banged guitar
chugging over racing heartbeat bass
and silver charge of cymbals.
my morning soundtrack:
mission of burma.
fit it in before working.
make it loud as a factory.
this is the sound of working.
bare bones virtuosity
manacled to a deadline and an end result
and never taking over
just because it can.
folks make this music.
it’s folk music.
get to work.
there’s still so much to do.
