The Age of Aggravation

I can handle anxiety today

With a pill and a sip of water.

It comes from nowhere

And has little reason to exist.

Yea, I worry about this and that,

The bomb and global warming,

Without thinking, concentrating,

Like a deer in summer hiding

Its does though hunting season

Is an unrealizable future.

I like to think that all is well —

I mean the essential things,

From family to home and work —

I could explain why I’m right.

Then why is everyone so angry?

I refuse to recite the reasons.

They are invisible chimeras 

Of fear, corpses of inconsequence.

A few mad apples, rolling, legless,

Without sense or innocence,

Which won’t die before they rot.

What we used to call ideas

Are now ravenous ouroboros.

Oh, such satiety in aggravation! 

Divided Consciousness

The stones think as though they are thought silence.
Ask the big guy and he'll mouth a nothing
We’re sure will seem like astounding nonsense,
As if a pretty rock knew how to sing.
He assumes you will understand the sound,
At least that it was real, if not profound.
His minor lobe chatters like a mad bird,
Ideas made sentences like light made seen,
Each thought a secret of the grand absurd,
Pitched higher when it's noble or obscene.
We never speak or look at each other.
What an obfuscation that would create!
Each thought like second thought would obviate
The first, like Cain gunning down his brother.

GOON

“The voice of the people” can’t leave too soon.

The fun was almost all he could endure,

Especially making game of the poor,

Though he didn’t like being called a goon.

Oh, how he’d made the great all look the same,

Throwing merde on every “leader’s” name.

They laughed at his japes without knowing why,

And threw gold at his head with insane glee.

He’d peeked up their wives’ dresses for a fee.

He’d danced on toes defying all to cry.

The best was the toy gun pulled from his hump

(Not a deformity — a holster’s bump),

And waved around the world with bulging eyes.

“See this?” he crooned, “No one who loves me dies.”

Ukraine

It’s possible to destroy even hell

And turn evil to dust

With the dropping of shell after shell.

What remains is one man’s lust

Mating with his own cold will,

Giving birth to blood and rust.

Each bullet or bomb’s a pill

That plugs a hole in his brain,

Which is cold and still,

As is Ukraine,

Where a young child fell

And didn’t get up again —

Her killer dares her now to tell.

The Last Greenhouse

A man looked out at his black yard,

wanting to make good use of time:

I need to make one fine thing hard,

he thought, make it mine, only mine.

He stole a dozen doors of glass,

and built a house, and hung a sign

that said:  You shall not pass.

Then he bought some seeds, a pot

and dirt, and began to grow grass.

Each night he stood inside and thought —

watering grass is not too hard.

Soon the roots began to rot—

in the greenhouse, out in the yard.

The Wounded Deer (Frida Kahlo) Sonnet #628

No, it’s the beginning that is beyond

And the ending is already here.

No idea nestles inside a sound

Like a resting invisible deer.

Surprised, she’ll try to outrun your car

As if she knows just who you are.

She is not afraid or even shy,

And does not know how not to die —

Only the free are hunted and chased.

She can hide but she cannot escape.

What is that word again, that soughing,

Shortness of breath, then a coughing

That betrays not presence but intent?

She’s always known what beyond ending meant.

Waking

Is it only dullness,

   the courage the eye

requires to watch itself,

   white circling hue

circling black?  Perhaps

   a life of seeing

greens infinitely shaded

   teaches us to take

the shock of the red

   without equanimity

or as a joke.  Morning

   headache, the renewed

blur of sense, release

   of energy, all that

awakening can make

   of itself, explains,

“You’ve come this far.”

   To take responsibility

for the rainbow beneath

   the water glass, or

the dogs we’ve run with

   all night long, we

must make a choice:

   watch the light blister,

or close our eyes tight.

from Voca Me (2)

  * * *

“We take a moment to devote

  to God, the opposite of rhyme,

a song, a single silent note,

  nothing sung in metered time.”

“My soul was like a weaned child.

  It was He, not I, who made me.

Just His laughter would reconcile

  my rage with my vanity.”

“I grew to question the pyramids—

  poured cement, not quarried rock.

Unlike Stonehenge’s cold Druids,

  I knew the sun was not a clock.”

“What they saw over Bethlehem

  was the birth or death of a star

aeons before faithless men

  could look up and say, ‘How far?’”

“My fist lay on the filthy shop

  floor.  I screamed along with

the saw, which would not stop.

  Its teeth were now my teeth.”

“A medium, not a personality,

  a receptacle of others’ feelings,

I discovered my true identity

  in premeditated stealing.”

“Sleep and Death being one,

  conscious of the sliding minute,

I dream to comprehend the reason

  unconsciousness is infinite.”

“Dancing to quaint viols, antique

  tunes, beneath the mushroom shade,

we are like forces, strong and weak:

  we spin together, then we fade.”

“I saw three men, treacherous men,

  wading a river, murderous and wild.

It swallowed them, swallowed again.

  I saw it shiver, nauseous, defiled.”

“Upon the city’s grid of lights,

  I imposed my dynamic

rhythm—yellow, reds, whites,

  and blues, opposing, unmelodic.”

“In imitation of intercourse,

  bones line up, teeth chatter.

Fading into its depthless source,

  old ecstasies seem not to matter.”

“My concern is with the minimal

  thinking life in a man, the brute

moving away from its animal

  state, awakening, and still mute.”

“The flat black I painted

  concrete, looked like seeping oil.

I called beauty art tainted,

  truth wishful thinking soil.”

“Each of us is a devil’s penis,

  thrusts the earth above the ground.

Will conscience not wean us

  from sex before the final mound?”

“One of countless sounds, my voice

  joined the crowd’s absurd violence,

unheard of course, leaving no choice,

  but proud discipline of silence.”

“As Christ’s body I lived my life;

  did He as my head have regrets?

I think, whatever comes, afterlife

  or afterdeath, I’d rather forget.”

“He’s committed haram against the Prophet.

  You will not read!  You will hunt him

 to the city of the Riddah, where for profit

  he hawks his words like a mutakallim!”

“What was paradise?  A mere acre

  or two?  Or a million?  And Adam and Eve.

‘This is boring,’ said their Maker,

‘Either you get busy or you leave.’”

“Once, my prayer reversed the negative—

  light became nothing, darkness radiated

life.  As I watched the sun give

  off night, my yearning was satiated.”

“Are dead grins, I used to ask,

  more alike than living faces?

Which is actor, which is mask?

  One endures, the other erases.”

“The little wrens screw up their cheeks,

  stifling laughter as the boy wriggles

up through her cool body.  He seeks

  her mouth.  She wakes to their giggles.”

“‘Because you can’t know when the thief

  will come, day or night,’ said Matthew,

‘keep watch!’ referring (to my disbelief!)

  to the Second Coming.  Coming for you?”

“Mine the space of those who move

  along the serpentine circle,

the house-born triangular groove.

  I took my space in place of will.”

“As I died, alone, in my bedroom,

  he held out his arms to me, cried,

‘Take the stone from the mouth of your tomb.’

  I spoke, ‘Why were you crucified?’”

“I am old.  Starlight is young.

  I was dust when its flight

began: dust the star that flung

  it forth to die into my sight.”

“What has not the shape of a dog,

  can’t lie quietly there and seem

to be or fly like a rising fog?

  Reluctantly, I change my dream.”

  * * *

“Nothing is far to God, I guess.

  We move closer, the closer Death

holds us out to Him, unless,

  unlike Death, we drop our faith.”

“When, once again, all became clear,

  and I knew myself, my perfection

and diminishment, something nearer

  said, ‘Prepare for resurrection.’”

“Call me, says the bare branch to gray

  skies.  Call me, says the black

smoke to the stars.  Night, says day

  To darkness, will not call you back.”

Note: This is two self-contained sections

from my long poem Voca Me (latin for "call me").

It is one of my "voices poems," in which

each stanza is spoken by a different

voice. More sections to follow.

from Voca Me (4)

  * * *

“I hear a recurring note’s trace

  upon the air, but can’t for long

hold that sound as I race

  to catch up with the song.”

“It is eternal no.  The no

  is eliminated, so . . . 

and we are only yes.  I know

  this this.  Is this this also?”

“Today, the swaying tree made

  the wind make birds fly, swell

hearts, and songs of rejoicing fade.

  When it stopped, the birds fell.”

“If the combining of will and decision

  is the valence of faith—the choices

of the past acting upon one’s vision

  of the future—what are these voices?”

“I stood alone in a field of snow

  and watched a tree shatter the sun.

A voice said, ‘This is all you know—

  a dream and its interpretation.’”

“Sedated on the operating table,

  I ceased to be, or to be to be.

Duration after death is a fable,

  I later reasoned.”  “But is eternity

time?  We think it with our eyes.

  You did awaken after all.

What, moveless, countless, lies

  beyond the clockworks of your soul?”

  * * *

“There is a charm in the taste of tea,

  which makes it seem an ideal form,

that in repetition reveals the

  charm of tea to be the taste of form.”

“Every day I tried to find

  one thing through which spirit

that was my heart or god or mind

  could speak and make me quiet.”

“Welcome, Blossom.  Pink petals—

  pale, pale—white, shrivel

around your spent stigma, settle

  into earth without a shovel.”

“Continuum is continuum—

  at each vanishing point exist

space thought time vacuum

  exhaled upon a single axis.”

“The sun a rock among the canyon

  faces, rapids deafening quiet;

tracklessly, I wade.  The hidden

  shadow trembles.  Swifts riot.”

“The breath left my body for the clock

  and held it stopped.  When wind and rust

dissolved the clock . . . and our deadlock,

  my breath inhaled the air and dust.”

“Sunshine floods the room and red

   birds flash across the window frame.

There is no ease in joy.  The dead

  relax.  The mind dances like flame.”

Note: This is two self-contained sections

from my long poem Voca Me (latin for "call me").

It is one of my "voices poems," in which

each stanza is spoken by a different

voice. More sections to follow.

Miro’s “The Farm”

 

Revenged in sleep, yes, a good omen:

volcano, eggplant, hawk feather

conditioning a moment of pure certainty,

instead of remorse. Birdsong dissolves

the hard black shell of their dream.

She breathes deeply, counts the number

of all those living and gives thanks.

Her skin moves over bone like sad music,

a lamentation of slow recognition.

She thinks, The next is tree across a gorge,

a trick of the eye, a drunk’s progress,

the balanced walk soon elbows and knees,

the hopeful ephemerality of creeping

going lower, the rigid belly at rest

on the gnarled limb tapering to a twig—

pointing finger arrested in emphasis.

Fear zero, the unimaginable destiny.

She twists her body like a swimmer turning

backstroke into butterfly, affirming

things still work beneath the bedclothes.

She stretches to call the nurses: sun

a push button set in pale blue sky;

water can, milk pail, red tile, hedgerow;

plowed and seeded earth pocked by rain;

rafters, stepladder, goat bleat, cockcrow;

the fox’s daily raiding of the hen house;

the baby’s naked footprints in dried mud;

snail, calendar, chain link fence;

stones everywhere, endless hard work;

how her back bent beneath wet laundry,

milk, hay, dung, branches, children;

how it arched aching when her sun-fired

husband’s body pierced her in the shade.

The holy triangle: husband, children, self,

grown geometrically into a power of itself.

She remembers the fruit silk and sap smell

of the tree that grew in the center of the yard,

its branches arms with a hundred umbrellas.

In autumn, its shapeless, colorless body

stood like Death attempting resurrection.

Stevens

Before the last ending of autumn,

A startled cry from inside

Seemed like a mind in its sound.

I knew only what I had heard,

A baby’s cry, at midnight or after,

Above the late November wind.

The moon was rising at two,

Once a crumpled mask above dead leaves . . .

It could not be inside.

Not from the chiaroscuro

Of sleep’s faded paper sky . . .

The moon wasn’t coming inside.

That startled cry—it was

A tone whose song preceded tuning.

It was nothing like the old moon,

Surrounded by its echoic tone

Being right here.  It was what

I’ve always known to be real.

Note: This poem is an homage to Wallace

Stevens, and is a rewrite of his

"Not Ideas About the Thing But the Thing Itself."

It's a form of ventriloquism, which is mentioned

in the Stevens poem, shown below.

At the earliest ending of winter,
In March, a scrawny cry from outside
Seemed like a sound in his mind.

He knew that he heard it,
A bird's cry, at daylight or before,
In the early March wind.

The sun was rising at six,
No longer a battered panache above snow...
It would have been outside.

It was not from the vast ventriloquism
Of sleep's faded papier-mache...
The sun was coming from the outside.

That scrawny cry--It was
A chorister whose c preceded the choir.
It was part of the colossal sun,

Surrounded by its choral rings,
Still far away. It was like
A new knowledge of reality.