observations

Some voices are like light rain, a gentle murmur, soothing; some like hail.

Can it be different? Of course it can; but to know this only on the logical plane is rather worthless.

My brain is turning in on itself, like a black hole such that even sight no longer sees. Or I should say, no longer sees out. Instead there is a looking within and the image is of a dark unknown forest, lost, searching, cold, alone, a place where the sun provides no warmth and the path only leads deeper into the darkness.

To lose the ability to differentiate between right and wrong is terrifying. I now understand the need for prison as never before.

There are days when all I want is this pain beaten from me; mainly by whip upon my bare back; as if this pain inside me could be banished or killed or run from my body; a battle of wills; either it goes or I do; I'd be satisfied with either result.

And on these days, I see myself sitting at the racetrack, alone, everyone has gone home; just sitting in the stands, soaking in the flow of life that goes on, my memory fading as the day. Everything moves on.

The KKB series of poems was written in this spirit. All twenty-one poems focus on the singular motion of a sword falling upon shield. During the writing, each morning I would steep in this sight, the sound, of holding that shield, of the shield splintering, of mud, of knee, the sound of a horse turning, coming again, sword raised.

Find your joy she said. That is when I knew she didn't know the path I was on. Nothing wrong with the advice--I had reached the same conclusion ten years before--even wrote it on a index card like some great discovery. But this path is different. The way out is not through joy. It is not in the putting together but in the breaking apart. I feel it in my rigid back. The need to be broken, to shatter the stress, pick up the pieces, put them in a pot of boiling water, and refill the mold with something new.

This is how it feels. This need to confront the pain, not run from it into joy or happiness as one might play with some friends but not others. Those other friends don't just go away. I feel some vague sin that must be atoned or some debt that must be paid in the coin of suffering. This is not a place where logic is welcome, wanted, or needed.

This morning there is a stillness, the kind you feel under medication, only I'm not under any medication. Bad news comes at me and passes through me as if just words. I know it is not just words, (interrupted)

694. to the lake

They walked the path to the lake, along the shore, flowers everywhere and a few bees going about their work. The pier was of grayed wood and the small row boat, lacquered some time ago in merry-go-round tincture. There was no breeze to speak of and the lake laid placid as lakes are wont to do when writers write of them. He helped her into the boat, which gently rocked with her step, only the sound of water and wood and their breathing. He would push the boat from moor and they would drift under the sun and the two of them would fold into each others arms and just drift and rock of their own breathing. Her hair on his shoulder, his hands around her waist, cheeks rosy from an unclouded sky.

For a long time they laid to the sound of gentle lapping water, the texture of textiles, wool, cotton, of wove and weave as crumb and crust, pure as must or wort, sweet as golden mead. With closed eyes they followed the dancing of lids, the smell of fresh washed hair and fingers turning circles, of thumbs on temples rubbing stress with tender strokes, pressing and kneading sweated flesh, mixing salt with oil.

friday: 6 nov 2009

thinking life is overrated
or
perhaps
just mine

but I've been wrong
before
often
so I have that in my favor

++++++

days seem like leaves on a tree
each leaf, a day
and as the days go by
as leaves slip from trees
so I feel
this slipping away
waiting for another gust of wind
to take me into winter

++++++

my poetry is not so good
but it is mine
and it is all I have (of me)
and maybe if I would open my eyes
I'd see what it has to say:
you are not perfect
never have been
never will
and this ideal
is killing you

++++++

unremitting
my new word of the day

++++++

in my mind
I see my tree:
many leaves
or just a few
I cannot tell;
but there are days
where I feel cursed
either way

++++++

I suppose what is most scary
is not the fog
the unseeing and unknowing
but paradoxically
those moments of clear seeing

or perhaps the memory
of those moments
of clear seeing
that I take with me
back into the fog

++++++

every noise has become amplified
not so much in my ear
but in my chest
as if sound were a rope
and each wave a pulling
a constriction
that makes breathing
more difficult
and requires all my energy
all my effort
and concentration
to breathe
to place my hands
on either side of the two walls
of stimulus and response
trying to
breathe in a gap

++++++

from time to time
I have memories of things
I used to know
so called wisdom

and I see that life
that wisdom
as one sees another land
another shore
from across a river

I recognize it
know that I have been there
that I know that place
and have walked that path
and as close as it is

I cannot swim
and there is no bridge
and I have no option
but to walk away
to start anew

to where
to what
I don't know

pain

what is more true?

remembering tuesdays

some days are darker than others . . . I've never seen a blue sky so white, so white as to be of no color, of no thing, of nothingness fading from consciousness, only the song of wind, as I remember a quarter century ago, one afternoon in Iowa, standing on a porch, nobody home and nothing between me and the horizon, but wind, just the blowing . . . as one breathed as if breathing loneliness. I wore jeans and my hair was longer and most all I know now I didn't know then, but the wisdom of darkness doesn't count years or skin or even bathrooms with locks . . .

work in progress: peaches and apples

version 1:

the peaches are gone
those conspiring bitches
sluting their summer heat

as if they had wings
and flight was theirs
slating their shat upon

us lowly land luggers;
but peaches have no wings
and when they fall

as they will
and squat the earth again
I'll squish them like worms

or maybe like slattern snails
grinding their seed
for a better brew

because peaches don't fly
and no amount of thinking
gonna make it so

such a shame they
had to fuck the apple
stem and all

version 2:

the peach is gone
that conspiring bitch
sluting her summer heat

as if she had wings
and flight was hers
slating her shat

upon lowly land luggers;
but peaches have no wings
and when she falls

as sure as shit she will
and squat the earth again
I'll squish her like a worm

or maybe like a slattern snail
grinding her seed
for a better brew

because peaches don't fly
and no amount of thinkin'
gonna make it so

such the scarlet shame
she had to fuck the apple
stem and all

++++++

version 3

there never were any peaches
nor any apples

quote:

"I don't want to persuade the reader that it's a real thing; I want to show it as it is. In a sense, I'm telling those readers that it's just a story: it's fake. But when you experience the fake as real, it can be real. It's not easy to explain . . .
I'm not pretending it's the real thing. We are living in a fake world; we are watching fake evening news. We are fighting a fake war. Our government is fake. But we find reality in this fake world. So our stories are the same: we are walking through fake scenes, but ourselves, as we walk through these scenes, are real. The situation is real, in the sense that it's a commitment; it's a true relationship. That's what I want to write about."

- Haruki Murakami

me, too

as days slip from autumn
and leaves from trees

me, too

of acorns

I have collected acorns
and cannot help but think

the squirrels are planning
wretched tribulation

this is how one sees
after brutal violation

as once I was
when within my walls

a hoard of brown hairs
settled for the winter

they skip, now, along my fence
innocent as mice

but I know those
coveting eyes

and the long blade
of their claw

of their persistent attacks
detested and admired

little bastards with tails
I see you

693. afternoons

Upon a mat of pine
there was breath
and birds
and sighing whispers

The sky fading blue
and black
through gates
of fluttering lashes

As gravity brought
supple flesh
to rest
and rise

To the perch of lip
and settled hip
of arms rooted
below shoulders booted

friday morning musings

Yesterday, we took Maria to the vet
for her weekly Cerenia shot. As we talked
with the vet, she sat in my lap,
ears up like tents. Not a word
could she know, yet alert she listened,
calmly, taking in every wave of sound.
When we left, I wondered who
had heard more.

++++++

I listen to a lot of music. Same songs
over and over again. Some with more
than a hundred plays. But I couldn't
tell you more than a phrase of a lyric,
more than a few words here and there,
and sometimes not even the title.

++++++

On those occasions where I felt compelled
to look up lyrics, sometimes, but not always,
something diminished, as if as the words
moved forward, something other,
something more beautiful
perhaps more natural
moved back
silently

++++++

From an early age I developed
a highly intuitive sense of tone
and mood, the texture of a look,
a cough, of foot on floor. I see
in this way, not so much with eye
but with the scent of movement,
that truthful flow around boulders
needed to navigate the stream,
or as I mistakenly typed: the screams

++++++

We have four dogs
but only Maria comes upstairs
and lies next to my chair
only occasionally moving
from one spot to another.

As I rose to return my coffee
I stepped upon a warm spot
on the carpet, warm as fresh
piss, which was my first thought.
Instead, it was where she had
just moved, her warmth still
in the fibers and now upon my foot.

Reach any lesson you want. I just
know it felt good, to feel that warmth,
to think of how even the carpet
knows our touch and I think of the
room, and when I leave,
what another steps into,
in my absence. Do I leave
a warmth?