Eagles At Your Service

Two bald eagles
fell out of the sky
onto the runway in Duluth
and wouldn’t stop fighting
even then, so tangled
were their talons…

someone took a picture,
someone put it in the paper, 
someone put it on the Web,
someone made a
Congressional joke, and another
an Executive joke, and another made it
a metaphor for the state of the Union,
and another used it to speak of 
the follies of masculinity…

The eagles were taken away
in a pickup truck. On the way
to rehab one, apparently uninjured,
lifted off and flew away while the other
stayed behind and will be healed
and will be released again,
and no one has made that
into anything other than a wonderment
at what it must have been like 
to see that eagle rising from the bed 
of a pickup ahead of you
in traffic on the interstate…

somehow,
were I to choose bend
an eagle’s condition
to my own purposes,
I think 
that moment
would far outshine
anything I might feel
about them crashing,
angry, to the tarmac. 

““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`

– the eagles in question

Poem For Nico

Nico, it has been 
too long, I am out of
practice, I’ve been losing
your voice on the first VU album
to focus on Lou,
skipping your later work
all together,
listening to crude guitar
more than smooth,
praising flat declarations
more than lyric
observations.

Please, say that I 
will be forgiven this morning
as you sing of gambling
over strings and
fingerpicked guitar
and break me open,
rolling dice within me,
pouring into me
like a snow-grown stream
just before summer.

The Basket, The Hats, The Man, and The Wind

Once upon a time
there was a basket

and there were
hats in the basket.
A blue cap, a black beret,
a red beret.  Tight fit,
three hats
in a basket.  

All day long
a man living in the apartment
where the basket also lived
changed hats:
blue cap for the world,
black beret for family,
red beret for his lover. 
It was tight, tight to
manage the time, the
elbow room, the sequence.
But he changed hats

all day long.  After dark
he sat on the fire escape
hatless, city wind
snaking through
the brick and mortar,
whipping past other bachelor nests
to end up in his hair, 
fingers tousling through
as if the wind were yet another lover
with a ingrained disdain for hats.

There was a basket full of hats,
a man who changed them
all day long, a wind longing
to become a thief, a vandal: blue cap
to be left on the waterfront.  Black beret
to be flung into an alley.  Red beret
to be hung on a fence out of reach.

Go away wind, said the man one day.
I love your fingers and the way you seem
to end up here instead of with other men
but more than that, I love my hats.
If ever I give them up,
it won’t be because
you’ve taken them from me.

Go away yourself, said the wind.
I love your hair a bit, but more than that
I love thinking of your hats disappearing,
escaping, ending up in disguises, 
in the trash,
anywhere but on your head.
I want you without a hat.
I will do hurricane things to make that happen.

Go away both of you,
said the basket.
Each of you 
is narrow and stubborn
and unchanging. 
My hats are the only thing
that makes either of you
interesting. All your talk
of some imaginary
bare-headed realness
is wasting my time,

and when you’re both quiet,
when it’s just me and the finally
unsymbolic hats in the dark,
that feels like the start 
of the happy part
of the ever after.

Altar In Drop D

1.
trying to climb out
of a deep stone hole
where I’ve been starving
cold and wrecked
for so long I’ve lost track

my fingernails break

I panic
when I consider
what that will do
to my tone

2.
django reinhardt
and
pat smear
are each worthy
of worship

I am therefore
a polytheist

3.
for the perfect combination
of flow and crunch
I would tear out my eyes
and stuff the holes with rare
psychotropic flowers
as if blindness could offer
space for illumination

4.
enough words
not enough chords

play one for me
that’ll shut me down

Salt In The Wound

Enough salt spilled
to be noticed on black paper,
not so much that I couldn’t count
the number of individual grains,
though I don’t; it’s surely not enough
to pinch up and toss against bad luck.

Happens often enough but
I’m afraid it’s starting to get
ruinous.  I should have been
vigilant before this.
Spill enough salt and demons
begin to stalk you;

unstable demons, thirsting for salt.
That explains the fear
that’s chewing at me
as the phone doesn’t ring today,
didn’t ring yesterday,
hasn’t rung in months.

I have a good resume, strong skills,
ready references. I interview well,
fit in, get along, can lead or follow as needed.
I know who I am and what I can do.
I know who I was and how I got here.
So it must be demons holding back the job.

They have to be the reason
I have time to sit here and count
grains of salt to collect and throw.
They have to be displeased with me;
I only hope
it’s not too late to atone.

It is salt in the wound
to know how insane this sounds,
salt in the wound that I no longer care.
I am counting
and hoping for enough salt
to throw soon.

Bohemian Rhapsody #2

changing the bark on a tree,
like marrying the Biblical Sarah,
seems like a ridiculous goal.

putting the rutabaga on a lathe
to turn it into a parsnip
seems pointless and a tad crazed.

ducking into the empty moat for a cigarette –
how long should we keep this up?
child, we’re smashed, we’re gassed, we’re

unwelcome as painters
in a glass walled room. cobweb tough,
kangaroo steady.  brothers of the needle,

sisters of the gearshift, children of the hammer.
what we do is nonsensical for a living, but not
for a life —  we were made to badger

the orderly whorl of creation’s fingerprints
into changing. how’s that been working out?
not well.  but try and stop us.  just try.

it will always come down to us
tending the kettle of crayons,
whether you like it or not.

Closure

Vehicle of dissent:
car on fire
in a street market. 

A call to arms:
the keening of those collecting
scattered, shattered limbs.

Uprising:
smoke — greasy,
dieseled, flesh-flavored.
The clouds hanging low.

Justice:
choosing what makes any sense here –
eye, tooth, noose, bullet, mercy.

Closure.
How we laugh in the cafes and alleys
when that word is uttered.

Grief And The Garden

When a rose I planted
for a dead friend
refused to grow,
what choice was there
but to pull it out and
begin again?

When a second rose
also failed to thrive
and in fact died,
what choice was there 
but to pull it out and
begin again?

Now a third rose
will not take.  
Friend,
what are you trying
to tell me?

Perhaps
there’s nothing
after this life
and such memorials
are pointless.

Perhaps
in this life
you didn’t love roses
and I didn’t know you
as well as I should have.

Perhaps
I am a bad gardener
and kill what I put effort into
because enthusiasm is no 
substitute for skill.

Friend, I have a dying rosebush
with your name on it;
what am I supposed to do with it?

Friend, why don’t you speak to me?
You went back into this earth,
did you not?  Why will nothing grow now?

Platitude

Tireless watching at the window
if there’s something out there,
not at all if there’s not.  
Working when there’s work, 
not at all when there’s not.  

There’s always something to see
and always work to be done,
cry some.  If you’re bored, you are
boring, they cry.  And when I respond
eh, not so much, here’s yet another case

of blaming the victim, you
and the notorious Puritan
Work Ethic looking for a soft place
to set the hooks
screech like a box of peeved owls.  

Owls only look wise. You know
that’s all in our heads. We see
the forward set eyes, think they’re human
as if that guaranteed wisdom — those
blamers, always yelling “Who?” Just like you.

So, tireless watching at the window
if there’s something out there,
working when there’s work and not at all
when there’s not.  Boring happens.  Someone
can bore me, can be behind or ahead of my page.

I’ll get over it, or leave of my own accord,
but maybe my best move is to get bored, to stay there
for some message about patience or humility.
Shut up about everyone needing to “do something.”
I prepare some of my best work when I’m doing nothing.

 

Spirit Animal Husbandry

They don’t choose us
any more;
not now, not in the land of
free will.

When I choose the Alligator
he roars, 
“Son, your bloodlines are desert
on one side
and mountain on the other.
Not a bayou in sight so
how the hell did I become
your idea of a spirit animal?”  

I reply,
“Television, man.
It fucks up 
your locality,
morality, and
spirituality.  

But consider: as an Amurrican,
I bite on whatever’s 
offered
so it seemed
appropriate…”

Tail thrash, jaw snap.
Over his shoulder:

“C’mon, then…”

What Dreams May Come

She preached
of using lucid dreaming
to visualize material success.

She was earnest and spoke
of manifesting prosperity through
alignment of the chakras.

She was lovely, steadfast in a wan
ethereal fog, bent on directing
the Universe toward her goals.

I pitied her;
so, so sad –
so, so American.

To demand utility
of the unconscious,
to enslave it that way –

I shuddered and foresaw
the Snake Of The Inner World
tossing a constrictor curl across her throat

someday as she slept; I heard a horrid rendition
of the Star-Spangled Banner
as if gargled by a Dragon

being played
at her funeral; I heard her dreams
clapping triumphantly along.

Stop Narration

Stop narrating:
hold up
a glass, a stem,
a feather, one
after another.
Let story
fill the space
around them.

Stop narrating:
leap randomly
around the room,
across the clearing,
from one
roof to another.
Let the angles of the path
define sacred
geometry.

Stop narrating,
suddenly cease even
to gesture;
freeze pointing up
and slightly to the right.
Let anyone’s eyes
follow that
wherever it goes,
any number of stops
along the way
will be valid, some few
will not be;

hard to tell them from
one another

and seriously,
it’s not that
necessary — stop narrating,

don’t say a word about it,
it will pass.

At The Junction

On a thick spit of land
where two swift rivers join,
someone’s painted car hoods
with quotes from
Genesis,
the Song, and
Revelation; 
left them standing here 
where they can speak to the foxes,
eagles, and deer,
and perhaps also
to the occasional person 
walking there as a guest
upon the land.

A liquid song over my head
in the highest reach of the pines,
one I’ve never heard…and before me
a tale of the fruit of the Tree,
a mention of an Apple,
a warning of seven seals broken.

What is that calling above me?
It’s not the God of these Scriptures, is
less dire, more urgent.
I am trying, I am trying,
I will get this…first light,
overhead Song,
bubble-chatter
of two rivers joining,
old words rusting…
ah!
I have it! 

Dented

Pulled
the wedding ring
from my finger
years ago, but 
there’s still a dent there.

I bet
I’m dented for good.

I mean “for good”
in all senses it can be taken:

permanent dent,
valuable dent,
dented by the forces
of good.

Now I’m in love again –
for good,
I hope,
in all the same ways
I’ve listed above.
Permanently, valuably,
by the forces, etc.  
Make no mistake though:

regardless,
I’m still dented.
Marked, not 
truly whole.  
A little wrecked.
It shows.

 

40/30

He blurts it out
or whispers it to himself:
“40/30,” and is secretly pleased.

What could that mean?
Forty over thirty reduces to
four over three,

which could be
an obvious statement
about what works

in a street brawl:
four thugs beat three thugs,
maybe not every time

but it’s the safe way to bet.
Maybe four over three
is the odds of something happening

that’s likely but not certain.
Could be a brag:  ”I over-achieved.”
Could be a formula, or a key to a code.

It might, of course, mean nothing at all
to anyone except the one for whom
it means a lot, or everything.  Maybe

we are not meant to know
what led him to speaking of that fraction,
that motto, that driver of action: 40/30,

scribbled on a last page
of a manuscript, on a concrete
or social media wall.  Numbers

can obscure as surely as they
clarify.  Maybe it means nothing at all,
even to him;

when you get down to it,
in fact, I’m sure
it means nothing at all.