Polar Vortex
Anathema
to leave the faucets open all night
a steady rivulet of water
running down the waste drain.
Cold like this has been known to freeze the pipes themselves
causing them to burst.
Better a rivulet than a torrent.
Next door
an ice dam sixteen inches high
torments my young neighbors eaves
dropping a veil of glistening stalactites
that meet the icy stalagmites
freezing up from the ground below.
I should warn them
tell them how to avoid this
as I am certain they won't know
being young
thinking they have a future
of Springs ahead of them.
Let them stay innocent one more season.
Sound travels faster, is louder in the winter.
Is it the barren atmosphere
devoid of humidity
pollen
the feathers of birds
to buffer the sounds
slow them down
or has the air annealed in the cold
conducting waves
like crystals conduct electricity?
Suffer the cold.
How do the Eskimo do it?
Conditioning or genetic predisposition?
We'd better condition ourselves
the other choice takes generations
which my not
at this late date
be available to us.
By what means shall we prepare
for the dramatic
climatic change
when no Protector of the World
steps up to slow the creep
its onslaught
its unfolding momentum?
Where is the Great Society?
Where is Camelot?
Where is the One Percent
who give a damn?
Sending a small, shrill voice
that travels through the polar air
apparently so fast that no one else hears it
I lower the thermostat
pull up the down
try to rest
knowing what I know.
Game Over
In the garden
the yew's thinning boughs spread
to expose the inner limbs
as a stage for an opera or burlesque.
From the top of the yew
a pale, papery leaf descends,
tumbles,
catches in a tangle of branches,
a swaying hypnotic
like a kite caught in a tree.
A fox sparrow moves deliberately
through the inner brush
closer
closer
then drops along side of it,
grasping the bent stem tip in it's bill
twirls the leaf
then drops it
watching it
flutter
then catch
in a branch
below.
She follows the leaf
lights on a nearby twig
assesses
grasps the bent stem tip in her bill
twirls the leaf
clockwise
counter-clockwise
assaying each pirouette
then drops it again
watching it
flutter
then catch
on the next tangle of branches below.
Briefly eyeing it
the fox sparrow drops
to the wider breach
in the tangle of branches
tweezes the leaf in her beak
clockwise
counter-clockwise
a more audacious twirl.
Mid spin
the leaf
again released
spirals to the next spiny knot.
Bird and leaf repeat the game
until
finally
from the lowest boughs
they drop
to the waiting ground together.
Game over.
Hush
Do not avoid looking into the face
of the hand that firmly guides you.
Even when mortars are crashing,
even when resting by a rushing river,
even when humping towards rapture,
even when locked on a dimly glowing screen
or as you watch the children who follow behind.
Stop.
Dead in your tracks.
Grasp the hand that leads you and look.
I know why people kill.
Dark avoidance of the fear that drives them.
Constant diversion by the voices in their heads that,
unbeknownst to them
are their own.
Hush.
I want you to listen.
Can you hear the outward onrushing of the expanding Universe?
Shh.
Wait for it.
The sound when it hit’s the limit
when it reaches the unknown.
The split second when it knows
it’s gone too far.
The gasp as it stands still
hesitance of that breathless moment
then
as it turns as blue in the face
as a baby without oxygen
it exhales and begins its inward rush.
Who is the I before the I?
The I before the imprint of life?
The I before a name was given?
Look.
Intention
What difference
a meteor or a missle?
Intent.
A far off rumble
soft
the storm approaches
electric
the sky darkens
birds get as quiet as if
a falcon flew overhead.
Heavy boughs move like heads of mammoths
stuck in the tar pits.
Elm branches
first bob
then move
then flagellate
penance.
When your hair stands on end
hit the dirt.
The Building
The key turns only when you pull back,
hard,
on the door knob, then the lock releases.
Cross the threshold.
When you first walk in the smell of stale cigarette ash and decaying dust mites pushes you back a half step.
“You’ll get used to it.”
Then the visual impact of all the ancient art; masks, guardian figures, effigies.
African, Oceanic, Indonesian, worthy of the Field Museum.
They watch as you move through their space.
Ritual fetishes, Magick staffs
waiting for a human hand to take them up,
shake them back to life again.
Guardian figures,
kidnapped from their place of origin,
no longer certain who they protect
or from what.
Lenore fell.
Like a cruise missile she crashed
head first
into the tile wall of the bathroom.
The aluminum foil and duct tape she used to cover the hole
are still there
as a memorial
like a cross on a highway curb.
“This place is making me sicker. It reeks of plastic and chemicals. I can’t stand it”
I’d seen the x-ray.
One lung resembled some strange dried alien fruit; dark and a third the size of the other.
Although a dedicated, Luddite,
She dryly proclaimed,
“Photoshop.”
I laughed out loud.
She never did believe.
She’d begged me to get her out.
I begged her to try to do the re-hab
even with the smell of urine and hum of machines hanging over the place.
I got her out.
When we first came to ready Lenore’s building for her return from the rehab/nursing home,
really a concentration camp for the elderly,
for those on the edge,
everything in the building was blanketed with a decade’s worth of grey ash and dust.
It nested in every crevice/orifice of everything from the bedposts
to the radiators
to the artifacts
into the woven fibers of Honest To God Navajo rugs
to the tops, fronts and backs of her oil paintings.
We had two days to clean.
It never got completely done.
Lenore would not allow us to do so once she was ensconced in her bedroom.
The scent of stale ash and loess
brought her some comfort
but no relief.
Finally agreeing to morphine for the pain
she leaned back and looked at me.
“I think I’m dying. Am I dying?”
“Yes.” I answered matching her gaze.
She demanded the unequivocal truth.
“When you lie to someone you’re stealing something from them”
Her best compliment to me was “You got it, Kid.”
If my crosshatching was beautiful,
if I offered a political view,
if my line was true,
or when I finally showed her my poetry
just a year before she passed,
“You got it, Kid. You’re the real thing.”
Dance
You claim you don’t dance
but you do,
despite your denials
you dance.
You dance like a goofy seducer
half closed eyes
bloated face
cowardly lion.
You dance the dance of the non-believer.
Denial and barely tamped down aggression
move your feet
sway your body
bring the whole of you to the strains of nihilism,
The overhead lights could be bright as a surgery’s
Or dim as a brothels.
The mirrored disco ball could send shards of colored light
Ten thousand directions
none of which reach you.
You’re busy dancing the dance you deny.
The dance,
the dance you do so well.
Vet's Song
It is in the emerald heat.
It is in the violent beauty.
It is in the contradiction,
so that,
cell by cell,
they are transformed.
Whatever moves in one,
moves in them all.
What is the most difficult verb?
Those fellows on that bench can tell you all about it.
They speak a different language
and their ears ring all the time,
their ears hum,
always buzzing
in a place no physician ever heard of.
They watch skies free of hardware
where clouds move
whiter and more innocent than ever before
casting huge shadows on the lawn below.
Cool blue shadows dot the landscape
like craters on the Moon.
Ask.
They’ll lean into explanations
patiently,
gracefully,
with a calm that exposes every nerve.
Nothing frightens them
Except the soft approach.
It is in the violent beauty.
It is in the contradiction,
so that,
cell by cell,
they are transformed.
Whatever moves in one,
moves in them all.
What is the most difficult verb?
Those fellows on that bench can tell you all about it.
They speak a different language
and their ears ring all the time,
their ears hum,
always buzzing
in a place no physician ever heard of.
They watch skies free of hardware
where clouds move
whiter and more innocent than ever before
casting huge shadows on the lawn below.
Cool blue shadows dot the landscape
like craters on the Moon.
Ask.
They’ll lean into explanations
patiently,
gracefully,
with a calm that exposes every nerve.
Nothing frightens them
Except the soft approach.
Outside
Outside,
everything melted into the tar of the parking lot
as the sun was only a few feet above the ground.
Inside,
we ate eggs off heavy white china
and drank coffee from cups
a mile thick,
glancing occasionally up
at Saturn and Sputnik
set in plastic frames
above
the grill.
Many miles away lies the Interstate.
The collage of fur and bone
is testimony
to its modern efficiency.
Illinois is a bad dream,
Arkansas somewhere in the past,
Santa Fe not too far away,
but the desert is always there,
the desert grows every day,
the desert is coming this way,
it could be here
at any moment.
everything melted into the tar of the parking lot
as the sun was only a few feet above the ground.
Inside,
we ate eggs off heavy white china
and drank coffee from cups
a mile thick,
glancing occasionally up
at Saturn and Sputnik
set in plastic frames
above
the grill.
Many miles away lies the Interstate.
The collage of fur and bone
is testimony
to its modern efficiency.
Illinois is a bad dream,
Arkansas somewhere in the past,
Santa Fe not too far away,
but the desert is always there,
the desert grows every day,
the desert is coming this way,
it could be here
at any moment.
November
Violence splits a person
Between what you were
To what you’ve become
And want to regain.
A red line is drawn in the sand of your life
Split
Bisected
halved
Like an empty clamshell
Your gait is unsteady
Floating over a precipice of crumbled glass.
Forgiveness is obscured by a longer shadow.
Between what you were
To what you’ve become
And want to regain.
A red line is drawn in the sand of your life
Split
Bisected
halved
Like an empty clamshell
Your gait is unsteady
Floating over a precipice of crumbled glass.
Forgiveness is obscured by a longer shadow.
Pied a Terre
Looking at your beautiful twenty something elfin face
two tables apart
I lapse into magical thinking.
Fancy us together
on a pale Sunday morning
in the closeness that pushes away the rim of the scarp.
You and I reading,
me a book
you a kindle
off hand comments of interest over cups of joe.
The spell is broken
when it strikes like a blow
I am too much your senior and can never again be your equal in the world.
Still, when you glance in my direction
I tighten my double chin,
suck in my tummy,
seem aloof,
all moot.
I'm not even a blip on your radar
for you gaze over me to a different scene outside the door.
Even so, for me romance is rechauffe/n'importe/passe.
My hormonal alchemy no longer supports
an interest in sustaining
urgent, gasping, sweaty sheet romps.
I would be terse and clumsy,
the need to do well tripping my passion.
My indifference to the heft of a relationship,
the drama/emotion/vanity
is less bothersome than I suppose it ought to be.
The inner self, ageless,
puzzles at the human condition and how
the entropy of a closed system never decreases,
but inches toward biological chaos.
Even the old and ugly welcome love.
Aging is a disease that won't stop
for which there is no cure,
no magic elixir
and for which there is always a predictable outcome.
But I'll wait for you on the other side.
Wait
to reincarnate together
making certain,
this time,
the timing is right.
(Pub. 2014 Crone Magazine)
two tables apart
I lapse into magical thinking.
Fancy us together
on a pale Sunday morning
in the closeness that pushes away the rim of the scarp.
You and I reading,
me a book
you a kindle
off hand comments of interest over cups of joe.
The spell is broken
when it strikes like a blow
I am too much your senior and can never again be your equal in the world.
Still, when you glance in my direction
I tighten my double chin,
suck in my tummy,
seem aloof,
all moot.
I'm not even a blip on your radar
for you gaze over me to a different scene outside the door.
Even so, for me romance is rechauffe/n'importe/passe.
My hormonal alchemy no longer supports
an interest in sustaining
urgent, gasping, sweaty sheet romps.
I would be terse and clumsy,
the need to do well tripping my passion.
My indifference to the heft of a relationship,
the drama/emotion/vanity
is less bothersome than I suppose it ought to be.
The inner self, ageless,
puzzles at the human condition and how
the entropy of a closed system never decreases,
but inches toward biological chaos.
Even the old and ugly welcome love.
Aging is a disease that won't stop
for which there is no cure,
no magic elixir
and for which there is always a predictable outcome.
But I'll wait for you on the other side.
Wait
to reincarnate together
making certain,
this time,
the timing is right.
(Pub. 2014 Crone Magazine)
Ash Wednesday
Tell me about ashes,
from last years conscious palms,
resting like a stone between your eyes.
Wrestling with unseen faith
your ecstasy is in the romantic notion
and glorious gilded pomp of the thing.
Ubiquitous ashes.
Your eyes always held them
like sacred urns
where the ashes from angels who’ve died
become pure.
Shift
Something springs to life
and the warm dark waters will never be the same again.
Remember when we’d just lost our whiskers and taste for insects,
standing like a specious dream at the savannahs edge?
Glaciers move imperceptibly,
slow,
but their changes are unbelievably huge.
Animals shift before an earthquake,
it can be explained in terms of natural disasters.
Magma for marrow,
Hot breath,
Damp skin,
Cold hands.
Millions of dead skin cells,
like delicate rice paper,
line drawers,
sift
then settle between cushions,
passive,
Not missed.
Hold your arms down and breathe not a word of this to anyone.
We sleep as soundly as we can.
Give me something to remember you by.
The spare past expresses itself in forgiveness.
My longing penetrates even the woodwork.
Ritual
There is a ritual
where everything is blue and white,
where the face of the World is unyielding.
There are songs of burning paper,
scenes unimaginably weird.
A relinquished endeavor
reduced to a sliver,
a bit,
a scrap
a curiosity,
circulates in my bloodstream
which,
when passing through a certain synapse in my brain
triggers thoughts of you
and I become paralyzed.
Ten thousand poppies,
the deepest orange in the world,
move in a field.
I wish I had the monkeys paw.
But you..
The cat means nothing,
but you
eyes shimmering,
florescent lights
crowds shifting
but you…
Laughing,
every pose uncanny,
every silhouette cuts like a blade,
every smile amazing,
Every life is filled with something to say,
but you,
you
have brought me to this.
Nights
You spend your nights
grinding your teeth.
You can wake up with your face in your pillow
or against the ceiling,
it makes no difference.
One hears rustling and territorial screams.
We waited and held our breath,
watching and hoping for nothing less
Than an act of God.
Then, when the dust,
sifting down since the beginning of time,
settles,
we are stunned to find ourselves
huddling in our cells.
The Upper Hand
Thumb and finger tips touch
then the whole thing tilts.
A crazy quilt
of chance mutation,
genetic deviation,
a parlor trickery
and
zig-zag
no more scurrying along the meadow’s edge in the twilight.
Nature’s fulcrum slips farther from our kind
while the rest
teeter on the farthest edge
mesmerized by the apparition
which unfurls, uncurls itself
to an upright form.
Cunning hands
edge
stone,
cut
skin,
slice
sinew.
Graceful butcher.
Cold comfort
Does comfort lead one back from the precipice of despair?
Does having someone else there
holding, consoling
knit a seam that closes the gap of grief
until night and solitude
when the unraveling begins?
Comfort acts like the ocean
which, when wrenched from the shoreline,
gives the seabed a brief respite
then the tsunami
blocking out the sky
strikes back
engulfing the shore and beyond.
The advent sucks the air from your lungs.
What happens on the precipice of despair?
Where does the swan dive take you?
Out to a cosmos
where stars are vested
and nothing is true or plumb.
Cold comfort.
Eyes evade
arms enfold
heartfelt, clichéd murmurs
wonted duty.
The room is effusive with sympathy .
The space cloaked with empathy.
Internally the soothed ego rocks back and forth
as though held in loving arms but
the id screams for pity’s sake!
Wanting to shake it all off.
Fetch back normal.
The lake is as smooth as glass
mirroring the depth and breadth of the scene around me
I suspect terror still haunts the sandy bottom.
The waters unruffled surface tension is dimensionless
And can do nothing to stop its ascent.
Cold comfort.
History
Time speeds along unconcerned, unconscious.
It’s really just a construct.
A fiat.
Something to pass
spend,
waste,
fear.
Something in which to dwell
in the moment
In the now.
Now means now
But then has a wider meaning.
The new snow
softens the scars
of yesterdays maneuvers.
What happened, happened.
Only laughter can appease,
ease historical fact.
So hard to get hold of the truth anyway.
History is re-written neurologically.
Experience feeds perception
and vice versa.
Talk about constructs.
It can’t be helped.
Time is a joker one can’t be sure even exists.
Yet, the exact moment of decay
of a particular radioactive nucleus
is intrinsically uncertain, as,
I’ve come to learn,
are most things.
Decay takes time.
And there you are again
with time staring you in the face.
There is no escaping the tick
from the big bang.
from last years conscious palms,
resting like a stone between your eyes.
Wrestling with unseen faith
your ecstasy is in the romantic notion
and glorious gilded pomp of the thing.
Ubiquitous ashes.
Your eyes always held them
like sacred urns
where the ashes from angels who’ve died
become pure.
Shift
Something springs to life
and the warm dark waters will never be the same again.
Remember when we’d just lost our whiskers and taste for insects,
standing like a specious dream at the savannahs edge?
Glaciers move imperceptibly,
slow,
but their changes are unbelievably huge.
Animals shift before an earthquake,
it can be explained in terms of natural disasters.
Magma for marrow,
Hot breath,
Damp skin,
Cold hands.
Millions of dead skin cells,
like delicate rice paper,
line drawers,
sift
then settle between cushions,
passive,
Not missed.
Hold your arms down and breathe not a word of this to anyone.
We sleep as soundly as we can.
Give me something to remember you by.
The spare past expresses itself in forgiveness.
My longing penetrates even the woodwork.
Ritual
There is a ritual
where everything is blue and white,
where the face of the World is unyielding.
There are songs of burning paper,
scenes unimaginably weird.
A relinquished endeavor
reduced to a sliver,
a bit,
a scrap
a curiosity,
circulates in my bloodstream
which,
when passing through a certain synapse in my brain
triggers thoughts of you
and I become paralyzed.
Ten thousand poppies,
the deepest orange in the world,
move in a field.
I wish I had the monkeys paw.
But you..
The cat means nothing,
but you
eyes shimmering,
florescent lights
crowds shifting
but you…
Laughing,
every pose uncanny,
every silhouette cuts like a blade,
every smile amazing,
Every life is filled with something to say,
but you,
you
have brought me to this.
Nights
You spend your nights
grinding your teeth.
You can wake up with your face in your pillow
or against the ceiling,
it makes no difference.
One hears rustling and territorial screams.
We waited and held our breath,
watching and hoping for nothing less
Than an act of God.
Then, when the dust,
sifting down since the beginning of time,
settles,
we are stunned to find ourselves
huddling in our cells.
The Upper Hand
Thumb and finger tips touch
then the whole thing tilts.
A crazy quilt
of chance mutation,
genetic deviation,
a parlor trickery
and
zig-zag
no more scurrying along the meadow’s edge in the twilight.
Nature’s fulcrum slips farther from our kind
while the rest
teeter on the farthest edge
mesmerized by the apparition
which unfurls, uncurls itself
to an upright form.
Cunning hands
edge
stone,
cut
skin,
slice
sinew.
Graceful butcher.
Cold comfort
Does comfort lead one back from the precipice of despair?
Does having someone else there
holding, consoling
knit a seam that closes the gap of grief
until night and solitude
when the unraveling begins?
Comfort acts like the ocean
which, when wrenched from the shoreline,
gives the seabed a brief respite
then the tsunami
blocking out the sky
strikes back
engulfing the shore and beyond.
The advent sucks the air from your lungs.
What happens on the precipice of despair?
Where does the swan dive take you?
Out to a cosmos
where stars are vested
and nothing is true or plumb.
Cold comfort.
Eyes evade
arms enfold
heartfelt, clichéd murmurs
wonted duty.
The room is effusive with sympathy .
The space cloaked with empathy.
Internally the soothed ego rocks back and forth
as though held in loving arms but
the id screams for pity’s sake!
Wanting to shake it all off.
Fetch back normal.
The lake is as smooth as glass
mirroring the depth and breadth of the scene around me
I suspect terror still haunts the sandy bottom.
The waters unruffled surface tension is dimensionless
And can do nothing to stop its ascent.
Cold comfort.
History
Time speeds along unconcerned, unconscious.
It’s really just a construct.
A fiat.
Something to pass
spend,
waste,
fear.
Something in which to dwell
in the moment
In the now.
Now means now
But then has a wider meaning.
The new snow
softens the scars
of yesterdays maneuvers.
What happened, happened.
Only laughter can appease,
ease historical fact.
So hard to get hold of the truth anyway.
History is re-written neurologically.
Experience feeds perception
and vice versa.
Talk about constructs.
It can’t be helped.
Time is a joker one can’t be sure even exists.
Yet, the exact moment of decay
of a particular radioactive nucleus
is intrinsically uncertain, as,
I’ve come to learn,
are most things.
Decay takes time.
And there you are again
with time staring you in the face.
There is no escaping the tick
from the big bang.
