Even the soft are hard,
The boulder or the shard;
The pebble or stone, all scarred
With the stylus and the cloth
And the wings of the moth.
Still up the mountains thrust
Into skies of water and dust,
Then crumble at last to sand,
Until the flatness of the land
Betrays no fleck of bone,
Nor relic of brick or stone,
And no one left to be alone.
Musicians are made of music,
As though there exists a music gene.
For accomplished artists, it's no trick,
But benefit of exquisite training.
You feel the presence of votive force.
The notes, even the shaping of line,
Are pleasing, like a poem's off-rhyme,
But talent, not music, is their source.
The players make of air a force
That governs the fluidity of time.
They understand that beauty is fleeting,
That this song, now, is their only chance,
That perfection seldom knows repeating,
And thrust at our hearts like a lance.
The orchestra is silent,
No vibrating instrument,
Nor air, sweet or dissonant.
The players left the stage
Striking one note — of rage.
An object of odium,
The conductor sits the podium.
The composer’s score,
Scattered on the floor,
Will not be heard anymore.
A black and bloody flower
Blooms in the hearts’ bower,
Its scent poisoning the hour.
Its thorns, proliferating pain,
Stab the heart again and again.
Words wound us without stint,
Hot soughing winds by dint
Of battering the heart’s cage —
Like a billion moths of rage
Demanding the end of the age.
I wake at two. The dreams rewind.
The day now past is redefined,
Its cracked and slipping gears grind.
Remembering will not bring sleep
And to hell with counting sheep.
Getting up to read only prolongs
Alertness — as do regretted wrongs.
You try to empty out all thought,
But find what’s unwillingly sought;
What can be quickly flung away
Returns in images you cannot say.
Soon you’re even more woke up,
Like an overflowing coffee cup.
You change the me from you to I —
That’s worse, like the grasping “my.”
Take all these memories and desires
And drown them in oceanic fires.
Breathe deep until thought expires.
The number of dates
Ever proliferates.
Each, pinned down, waits
Until all are done —
One and one and one.
We wake and sleep and wake
Without the slightest break
In the dropped mirror
Of each memory’s error.
I remember tomorrow,
Waves of it, row on row,
Just within my reach
On this particulate beach
That myriad suns bleach.
Dreaming isn’t thinking,
That hypnogogic sinking
Into the unblind unblinking.
Its images are un-clocked
Memories, mostly mocked
Distortions of what we are now,
Hurt children crying “Ow!”
We meet there the half known,
Not projected but shown
Us for no intelligible reason,
A fifth, black and white, season,
If wish fulfillment, unfilled,
Or a silent movie unbilled.
Though occasional nightmares
Will scare us with dead stares,
Only awake will we, screaming,
Take for real the seeming,
Mistake the dream for meaning.
Parallel lives will never meet.
They walk on a different street
Though both are equally fleet.
Perhaps at the vanishing point
They will end, a dovetail joint,
That nothing can pull apart,
Not a hawk, nor a work of art,
For there’s no change of mind
Can allow thoughts to unbind.
All, futile conjecture.
(Is the math of parallels pure?)
Lives do cross, were meant to,
But in sum they are so few.
So many hearts do not reach,
Not even trying, each to each.
Rolling, rolling like train wheels,
None knowing what others feel,
Each of us made of flesh and steel.
I own a clock that can’t tell time —
Acts like an unruly street mime.
Not only does it refuse to chime
At any quarter of or on the hour,
It always runs faster or slower
Than time itself, and often backwards.
Its hands clap out nonsense words —
There are no numbers on its face.
I turn a ring to change its pace,
As though duration is relative.
Its works know no imperative,
Not like an hourglass, but a sieve.
All directions are a trap.
Do not follow the map
Or be caught in amber’s sap.
Oh, the body can move
With the fevers of love
Or the lifted brow of thought,
But don’t learn what’s taught.
The aimlessness of dreams
Is only the ripping of seams
On a child’s outgrown gown.
You can’t dream up or down.
So do not try to run away,
Dear one. Stand still, sway,
And you’ll not wander astray.
There is one word that stands
Alone from all if’s and and’s,
Which has no face or hands,
Which, like a glistening bubble,
Floats above the verbal rubble,
Floats too high to be obscene,
Moving moveless and serene.
The word has never been spoken
Past teeth perfect or broken.
No tongue has been known to shape it,
Or fools’ babble to leak it or ape it.
Desperation, fear, or hatred’s keening
Can summon the word’s meaning,
But not the name of the word.
“There's no such thing! That’s absurd!”
Men cry — not quite saying the word.
Damn you, Thomas Eliot!
Why did you have to be a bigot?
Someday they’ll say, “Who? I forgot!”
At first it seemed a forgivable blot,
A line here and there, not a lot,
A silver string with a nasty knot.
Now it reads like an aneurism, a clot,
A stroke, or babble of a bibulous sot,
Unredeemable, no innocent mot,
But the crisis of your poetry’s plot.
Then you wrote the Four Quartets.
Your hate may be forgiven yet.
There is little left of his hip —
Afflicted since he was a pip
In a leg brace, he would trip
On the curb, crossing the street.
He’d never been strong or fleet.
The clouds followed him
Above oceans he could swim
With a few strokes of his arms,
Setting off foreign alarms.
The highest mountains bent
Upside down for his ascent.
Only he knew where he went.
It appeared beneath our yew,
A large puffball that grew
Unseen. Then there were two.
Soft, bleached skulls without holes,
Less like the dead than souls.
I picked them up — their spongy skin
As alarmingly soft as sin.
I was frightened of what grew within.
A man shot a magpie on the wing.
It fell with a broken wing.
The nock snapped the bow’s string.
The man gave the bird to a priest,
Who nursed it to be released,
Then decided to keep it in a cage.
To release its gale force outrage,
The priest split the magpie’s tongue,
Expecting to hear a terrible song.
Instead he heard nothing but words,
The speech of Man, not birds:
His own prayers and curses,
And profaned Biblical verses.
The altar boys taught the magpie
To ask of everyone, “Why
Weren’t you shot from the sky?”
The passing of years
As we enter the gray —
The shedding of tears
(Allowed only a day),
The mending of love —
Is below and above
The light and the dark,
A singing meadowlark
Whose eye can’t be seen
Through eyelid screens,
As the daylight retreats
And tomorrow repeats.
The derecho downed
Thousands of trees,
Two in my back yard.
Both fell on our house,
Toppling chimney,
Ripping down gutters,
Driving heavy branches
Through shingled roof.
One spearlike stem
Missed me as I slept,
By the width of my bed.
Water on me woke me,
Not the cracking sound.
It was close, but not soon
Enough to take me asleep.
The nuthatches and chickadees
Are here, but are never there.
No twig, no arm of a lawn chair,
(Nothing their little claws seize)
Remains a perch for long
In each bird’s pursuit of song.
In movement they find flying.
They cannot be still for trying.
They pause only for sustenance —
The suspension of cadence
Taking air from the vibrating beak.
That is a bird’s life — to seek.
Most winters the river froze
A foot or more thick, visible,
Before the snows came,
By crack lines that struck
Down like lightning bolts.
I could step out fearlessly,
Though the loud zip sound
Of a fissure shot from yards
Away and ran between my legs.
As I skated the sounds of stressed
Ice followed me, just as I
Chased the schools of fish
That ran ahead of me. I was
Never quite sure what they were —
Panfish, cats, bass, carp or pike,
Never more than four or five,
Sometimes only one, like a finger.
They knew I chased them
From above their hardened sky.
A neighbor taught me “trout-lines,”
Said they were named after trout
Having been gone for centuries,
If they ever were here to be run off
By poisons more filthy than death.
(Even he, in his sixties, didn’t know
They were actually called “trot-lines.”)
Still some species of hardier stuff,
All ugly (why does ugliness survive?) —
Carp, suckers, bullhead and catfish —
Seem to thrive in a watercourse
The sun cannot pierce or illuminate.
The trot-line is for the lazy “angler,”
A stout length of cord with a big hook
Baited with a small fish and weighted
With a heavy lead sinker and thrown
Out as far as possible and left.
I would check mine every few hours.
Often when I was rod fishing I’d be
More intent on the trot-line because
The hope was to catch something big.
Day after day the line would droop,
Swaying in the Kishwaukee’s current.
Then the line went taut and walked
Upstream. Dad was mowing the lawn
Behind me. I shouted but he didn’t hear.
I pulled and it didn’t seem to resist.
Its head became visible by the pier,
A visitor from prehistory, carapace
Ridged with green diamond shapes.
I tied off the line, went for my Dad,
Who helped me haul the monster up
Onto the bank. “Snapping turtle,”
He said. “They can be dangerous,
But they make great turtle soup.”
He tied it to a tree and ran away,
Leaving it to wander, but thwarted,
When it came close to the river.
Dad returned with a hatchet and stick,
Offered the stick to the turtle’s snout,
Which grabbed, crunching on it.
“You’ll see. He won’t let go,
No matter how hard I pull.”
He meant to chop off its head,
But the beast did let go and bit
My father’s pinky. Blood everywhere.
Dad did take its head, swearing,
Breathing hard, then he threw
The turtle, head still biting the stick,
Hatchet, trot-line, all into the water.
As he walked away, he shouted,
“No more trot-lines. They’re too
Damn dangerous for a little kid.”
I told my neighbor, who said,
“I’d call him a damn fool, wasting
Good turtle soup, but I don’t say
Things like that to a neighbor’s son.”
The dam, built on the downstream
End of town, chevron shaped,
Concrete, with blocks of broken
Concrete laced with rusted rebar
Below, to break up the flow
Of only an inch or two of water
(Though some 80 feet wide),
Muddy, greasy green and brown,
That slid in a silken sheet over its brim.
We used to dare each other to walk
Across the top, on a foot’s width
Of flatness, the water boiling
Around our naked feet, slipping
With each step on a thin layer
Of algae. None of my friends fell,
Though many others had, breaking
Bones and stabbed by iron rods.
The sliding fall was fast. Some died.
(Today there are warning signs
And fences to forestall foolishness
Masquerading as youthful bravery.)
I tried it once and turned around
After shuffling only five feet across.
I suffered the humiliation of jeers,
Though my feat wasn't surpassed
By my peers. Like water, it passed.
I fished for pike beneath the dam
And forgot I might have joined them.
We grew up in a small town
Near the smoke, dirt, and rust
Of the factory across the river,
The mud and coke-filled waters,
The drowned dead Dutch elms
Fallen away from rooted ground,
The century old iron trestle
Fenced off from foolish divers,
Floating carp and suckers,
Still gasping, twitching,
Unable to just drown and die.
A mountain of discarded tires,
Seeping sulfur, so slow-burning
They hissed streams of boiled air.
Such we’ve done everywhere.
Look up. The sky, cloudy or
Cloudless, storm-clouded,
Or spiked with myriad lightning,
Transfigures all into a paradise.
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!
I drew bread from the shelf,
As so many thousands have,
A simple act for a simple meal.
I thought, from this one place
The uncountable have been fed,
From here, this grocery store,
Where the shelf is never empty.
And not just once — I have
Performed this act of grace
So many times myself, I wonder
That there’s any more for others.
Would I take the last loaf left?
We have all done far worse things.
It wouldn’t be a crime, of course —
Someone must be the last to eat.
I could say, “There’s more bread,
Perhaps, on shelves in other stores,”
Succumbing to rationalization.
There are now thousands lined up
Behind me, waiting for me to choose.
Has every one made up their mind?
If you were me, what would you do?
It’s impossible, a contradiction
Of being, a false manipulation.
The mistake is in not knowing,
Like a child mimicking a curse,
Without any idea what it means.
At four I once told my brother,
“I wish you would go to hell,”
Then added, “no, don’t go to hell.”
Hell being no more than a word —
Yet I was vigorously punished
With a dozen stripes of a strap.
Some think we’re not born innocent,
Like the lion, the viper, or the lamb,
But by some withheld benediction
That can only be lost in the learning,
Which in itself taints the newly-wise.
The veins in a sick hand, febrile
And limp, are not guilty till lifted.
“The only truly innocent are dead,”
Some say. No greater lie ever said,
Because even they are burdened
By all that has come before. Not sin,
Not ignorance, but the spoken word,
The lie given breath willingly,
For no other purpose than my own.
A man in a dirty undershirt shouted
“Hey, kid!” from an upper window.
He held a pistol aimed at me and laughed.
This was on Main Street north of downtown
On a bright afternoon in August. I ran.
His laughter, like gun shots, followed me
Even around the corner. Why was he?
What was he? A drunk? A criminal?
Was he contemplating shooting himself
Because his girl had run away from him,
Her letter crumpled in his other hand?
Maybe the gun wasn’t real, a water pistol.
His laughter sounded friendly in my head,
Not taunting or meant to humiliate me.
He might have bumped his head on the sash,
Because he had gone quiet so abruptly.
Was he now bleeding, whispering curses,
And might come down and chase a kid?
It was the hottest, most humid day yet
Of a long summer, and he was suffering,
Perhaps, so pointing a gun at anything
Took his corruption out of mind for a time,
The liquid and noisome, atom by atom,
Putrefaction of a few once-pure thoughts.
How can the mind see him now, 60 years
Later, when he’s been dead for 60 years?
The river runs straight behind my home.
An iron factory spews coke down stream
And the ashes and willows were rippedw
Into the water by a derecho last summer.
I sit with my sister on a concrete pier.
Tomorrow is her wedding day — resignation
Is a philter poisoning her halting speech.
The speedboat comes like a swarm of bees,
Yellow with long stripes of scratched black.
A man waves as he passes and ignores
My gesture to move right to deeper water.
He passes under an iron trestle and turns about.
Now he’s much too close to his right shore,
Is soon airborne, a flightless bird in flight.
(He’s hit a partially submerged concrete pier.)
The boat, now vertical, drops him backwards
And hits him with its stern as it comes down.
We hear shrieks like seabirds, see flailing arms
Try to move him toward the opposite bank.
The boat is caught in a tight circle and strikes
The man twice more before moving downstream.
My sister and I push a canoe into the water
And try to paddle toward the thrashing man,
But the churning, circling speedboat blocks us.
People on the other shore wade in and grab him.
He has no entrails and they watch him die.
The speedboat continues to circle — as my sister
And I return to dock — to circle and circle
Until it runs out of gas and courses straight,
As though the steering wheel has been unlocked
By the empty tank, unbending its curve,
So the boat can crash, vertical again, on land.
