Pain (Neuropathy) ii.

 Breath.

Breath excreted
between yellow sour teeth
sudden and sharp


What does this mean,
sudden and sharp?
How can that be
that breath moving
between pursed lips
can be sharp?

Can we not be like a knife?
But, it is not like a knife
it has no sharpness
it cannot cut
no pain is set forth.

Breath excreted
between yellow and sour teeth
on the edge of a scream

Screams do not mean
listen to me, listen
for the pain in the scream
it's there.

But you cannot feel,
what is in the scream
me undiluted
me at the moment
that the shot shatters
and I am gone.

But you cannot feel,
what is in the scream,
me undiluted
me at the moment
that the knife slides home
and I am gone

Me undiluted,
me at the moment
when the fall ends
and I am gone

Me at the moment
when I tire
of sipping for air
me at that moment
and I am gone

Me at that moment
when an invisible world
has fallen and crushed my chest
me at that moment
and I'm gone

Me undiluted,
me at the moment
when all that is left
is bone and sinew
me at that moment
and I'm gone

Me undiluted,
me at that moment
when the hot blackness
and burning fat
is all that is left
me at that moment
and I'm gone

Screams do not mean
listen to me, listen
for the pain in the scream
it's there.

It bites at me
the scream hurts
leaving lungs and bone and sinew
broken behind the pain
listen to the scream
and learn.
it means.

Breath.

Angels Unaware

Angels are neither light nor shadow,

but traverse both.

They bear all the weight of the universe

but are lighter than a mote of hydrogen.

Angels take the shape of dragons,

wolves and primodial beasts,

yet they are also given to be a suckling's breast

and childlike laughter.

They are the earth and the stars

that rise above the night.

But we do not trod on angels

nor sleep beneath their wings.

Angels are but imaginaries.

They are as real and hard

as music,

or a frescoed wall,

or a footstep in the dark.

They are a bare passing

that sometimes,

just sometimes.

Keats

Not to the sensual ear, but, more endear’d
Pipe to the spirit ditties of no tone.

We cannot resist the tone:

we demand harmony,

that we all sing at once atune,

musically marching across the field,

a field dressed in blood,

draped in the splendour

of its gutted victims

now at last aligned 
beneath rows of stone

Alignment, now there’s a word:

a single axis of despair.

There can be no hiding

when we sing.

Any voice akilter,

strange, or new,

be it tremulous or tight,

low or high,

or simply wide or wispy

is silenced

less from harmony

some disharmony is made.

Silence, now there’s a word:

from silence

no thought appears.

Bear Away

bear away

past the steel hard edge

of discontent and Muses lost.

bear away

past the itching and slicing poison

of unearned hope and geodesy drawn

to a sculpted land beneath a divine hand.

See there — the holy and high

who walk in feet amucked,

soaked in the tears and dander

of pierced eyes and tight stretched skins:

lampshades they are amaking

of gutted infidels or they that disagree.

bear a way

past that land of sure and certain hope

resurrected from the broken bones

and torn sinews of the innocent

that is to say “silent,” partners

in the discourse of Tweedledee

and Tweedledee dumb that defines

those fit for the divine hotplate

or not.

Look alive, my innocent

unborn to controversy

full of vigor and heart,

who sees not two, but one

one dance that is all in all

one moment that is neither history nor hope

but one, one.

But, my innocent

be deaf and be blind

mark not your chart or heart

with the land of the dying and dead

or difference dragons

of dimpled dicks and pussy wounds

that would, obdurate and mean,

encoil and grasp with broken scales.

bear a way, far away

I will not be there.

I have taken to that path

onto that map, a course from which

I cannot turn,

even turn to be not two

but one with you

my love, who is away.

Be away my love

away from this I see

gristled refuse of what could be

of mercy and one that in bleeding

did a new cup make

to drink with strangers and walk in hope

not of the sure, uncertain of certain

but with the dead

that they might alive be

and like me they might be

not angry nor forlorn

but full of songs,

unsung and new

And they might sing for you.

But my love

do bear away

away from conceits and defeats

from thoise ancient difference dragons

that still hold in three pronged claws

the hearts of those who see

a cup, now a lie

but that once did

free and tear away

those things done and undone

but that us do now lead

to an ordinary decay.

But, bear a way

away from this

away from here

away from any measurement

that makes two of one,

and not just one

bear a way

to something new

that I and we

cannot see.

Odd number,

this mark of three

that would chain

me and many

and you,

you my love.

So my love

do bear away

from those ranks,

rank upon rank

of Saints and soldiers

of martyrs and virgins held

conscripted and confined

to arms unarmed and yet still

an Army of ghosts

that marches

to an odd beat of threes.

Please my love, flee

stay clear of the land

of twos and threes

of the flowered graves

of diversity and

grave monstrances

where one is confined

and glass walls contain

bread so thin as to near

disappear.

So my love

as yet unafeared and unafraid

in all fear please do,

not stay but bear away,

away.


[for Noah]

4th

Its July the 4th,
and here in this town
where there are no fireworks,
still the sky goes gray
and the air stinks of gunpowder
as the illicit take aim

People are hurting this year
houses go unsold
jobs are lost or pay is cut
so people are hurting and scared
they drive harder, brakes and accelerator
register their anger

I think there are more this year than last
people are taking aim at the sky
blue and green and red tracers
fired high at Washington or God
machine guns of discontent
lit off by children and childlike men

But, these childlike men shoot blanks
and they will be misunderstood
rancor will be confused with patriotism
and the rich will be content and safe
telling the world that the rockets glare
is again an affirmation

These, the rich will stay away
from this town
where there are no fireworks
but still the skies go gray
and they will not see the houses unsold
the new cars returned to their dealers

They will not see the jobless youth
of a hard-working class
of fisted men with loud voices
not working and unhappy
and not appeased by knowing
that the market is climbing higher

I don't think the walls can fall
that the blue and green and red
can ever be more than an impotent threat
from marginal literacy
comes an unread and unmet threat
that comes from women and men
too much agrieved forlorn in loss
to be incensed or burning
more than the sky now grey

It will not happen
the walls will not fall
when the last job has been sold
and the dollar becomes
like blood from stone
unreal and no longer meant
then perhaps the rich will notice
that their things go unbuilt too

the rockets red glare
and here in this town
where there are no fireworks,
still the sky goes gray

My Hand

THIS IS NOT MY HAND. 

My hand is sinewed and strong

My hand is calloused

It knows wrench and hammer

It knows torch burnt steel

This is not my hand.  

My hand can reach for my beloved 

My hand knows the joyous weight of a book. 

It can write through the night without tiring

This is not my hand.  

My hand can protect me 

and build me 

Express me

It can caress or threaten

This  hand is weak

This hand curls in on itself

It is soft and smooth

It trembles and shakes 

It can bear no weight

It is not mine

These legs are not my legs.  

My legs are strong and muscled

They hold me upright through days long and short

These are not my legs

My legs can dance (OH SO BADLY)

and climb two steps at a time

These are not my legs

My legs do not tremble and fail

My legs do not curl

Swollen and useless beneath me

These are not my legs

This is not my soul.

My soul does not weep or cry out in pain. 

It does not live in fear

My soul does not curse those who love me 

My soul is not muddied by drugs

My soul is strong and filled with life

My soul is afire with love
This cold and empty thing is not my soul

THIS IS NOT MY SOUL.

Niagara of Memory i. Young Boy

When I was a young boy

my mother was given to fits

of melancholia and meanness.

Her mother, whom I loved,

lived on another road

two or 3 miles away.

When my mother was bad

my grandmother would

catch me in her arms

and take me to her home

where I would stay

for a week or two or three

But then, I would go

to my mothers house

that was never home,

and wait.

Niagara of Memory ii. $20

In the town Sanborn, New York

a tiny village in the snow and cold

that shades the southern length

of Lake Ontario to a depth of 10 or 20 miles.

It was a sunny day,

but not the hard, blue light

of winter days.

the softer light of spring shone

Spring had an odor

through the shallow
half melted snow
we could smell the soil

damp and full of the  new

I was driving with my grandmother

to buy a new pair of dungarees

(that was what we called "jeans"

in the day. Those are the words

my son uses to dismiss me

when I speak of anything

that happened prior to

his birth.)

It was in the morning

it must've been in the morning

for my grandmother was an early riser

any task that required driving

was done early in the day

for she was terribly afraid

to drive at night.

We were just on the outskirts of town

what I shouted out stop

then again stop

the grating squeal

of near useless  brakes

from the 1963 falcon

filled the air

I scrambled over the seat

and before my grandmother

could catch me

I was out the door

and running back down the road

I came back

a $20 bill

in my grip

I held it between my two hands

so that my grandmother could see

why I had frightened her so

for our sudden stop

Her eyes softened

and why didn't a bit

back then

$20 was like $100 now

not enough to kill for

but more than enough to stop for

For months after that

my grandmother would tell the story

of how her grandson had such eyes

as to be able to see a $20 bill

lying in the grass

alongside the road

while driving by at 40 miles an hour.

Clearly, she was impressed.

I was a little less impressed

you see, I pay for the groceries that week

and received a double allowance for my vigilance.

I took in $.50,

not bad, for a $20 bill. You

Niagara of Memory iii. Older Boy

When I was in third grade

(I think that makes me eight years old)

my mother and father

moved to a new house

down near Elmira.

Elmira  was a sad small city

where the belt had rusted early

factories closed, jobs lost

but still, neat green lawns

and well-kept houses.

The weeds came later,

after Dr. King died.

My parents house was one of these

a small patch of green

White and single-storied

with only two bedrooms.

My brother and I shared a room

he's still wet the bed (he was five years old)

so, the room always had a scale and acrid odor

an awful smell that I remember so well.

On the day that we left Sanborn,

my grandmother leaned close to me

and handed me a little card with a phone number

and said "if you ever need me, just call."

And then she said, in a voice that was meant to be heard

skedaddle, go home with your mommy.

By then, I never called her "Mama" or "mommy"

by then, she no longer had a name or title.

In my little boy mind,

she had lost name and title

and was only called mother

in the abstract third person --

"my mother said this", or "my mother said that."

When I spoke to her,

I no longer use the title.

I just spoke.  She never noticed.

I tried to use the little card

only once. It didn't work.

Niagara of Memory iv. The Falls

 Niagara poured

 gray brown water

 smelling faintly

 of iodine

 Crushed water

 scuding over,

 over broken rocks

 I saw a drunk there

 stumbling around

 by a river fence

 I suppose like the water

 he could fall

 but he did not

 although he fell

 it was not like water

 There was no scent

 other than the acrid

 smell of sweat and piss

 And that was all that spilled

 a little blood and piss

 The man was nothing,

 nothing like the Falls

Niagara of Memory vi. Kathy

It began in the locker room

a kind of joke

a nasty joke

that no one believed

but everyone thought was true

Her name was Kathy

she was an ordinary kind of girl

an everyday kind of girl

she wasn’t beautiful

but she wasn’t ugly

What they said about her was

it was terribly ugly

the kind of thing that is said

but can never be unsaid

however much we might wish

If we said it here

it would still be ugly

and still be untrue

but however much we might wish

we could never take it back again

Her name was Kathy

she was an ordinary kind of girl

and every day kind of girl

neither beautiful nor ugly

but everyone knew the truth about Kathy

Niagara of Memory vii. mothers, daughters, sons

My great-grandmother
on my mothers side
the not so secret shame
of a family given to secrets
and half truth

When I was a child
and she was perhaps 65
and on her fourth husband
she used to cackle
and make sounds
that I did not believe
were possible

I remember
visiting her
just as my new teeth
were coming in.

My mouth ached
and she brought out
a clean washcloth
and poured rye whiskey
on the cloth till it was soaked

She handed it to me,
and said
chew on this
it'll help the pain
and she was right
it did help

Her hair was bright red
just like Lucille Ball's
it was very thin
and seemed to float
above her scalp
it made a sort
of strawberry halo

My grandmother
whom I love so deeply
could barely stand to speak
with her mother
who had abandoned her
as a child

Whenever we came home
from visiting her mother
my grandmother
would go to her room
and stay there
until it was time
time to prepare our supper

My mother told me stories
of her grandmother
my great-grandmother
the old woman
with bright red hair.

When Elsie was young
her red hair was not a Halo
but a mark of her profession
she was a "cook"
for a lumber camp
up north in Ontario

Which I always thought
terribly funny
because she could not cook
she lived on take-out
Long before take-out existed.

Her fourth husband
always sat in the living room
listening to the radio
when we came to visit
we would stay in the kitchen
we did not greet one another.

Did I say that she cackled
She did.
When I was a child
I thought it very funny
but now I know
it was just a sign
a sign that she was drunk

When my great-grandmother Elsie
finally died, she was in her 90s
and my grandmother was greatly relieved
in that she had for the previous 10 years
been required by her conscience
to visit her mother twice a week
in the one-room flat
the county welfare had given her.

When Elsie died
the church she had attended
for 30 years
refused to say a funeral mass
not because she was
a whore or a haradan
(and she was perhaps both those things)
but, because she was cremated

The priest said
that it was an insult
to the doctrine of the resurrection
as if it were easier to resurrect
the worm ridden corpses of the buried
than the grey dross of her remains

he was a fool
and he was mean

A methodist pastor
a kindly fool
took on the impossible job
of saying kind and foolish words
to heal a breach
that perfect depth

But there are no words
by some fool of a parson
which can convey
an unsought healing
upon the survivors of
this red haired infamy

My grandmother cried
locked away in her room
so that we could not see
her tears, but we could see
just as if we were in the room
we could see the tears
in our imaginations

My mother just sat
and smoked cigarettes
she said nothing
which was unusual
for she had inherited
the role of the harridan
and she reveled in it

Somehow, the baseness
and the meanness
of my great-grandmother
skipped a generation
leaving my grandmother
a wounded innocent
between her mother
and her daughter

But Catherine
(that was my grandmother's name)
somehow stayed unstained
free from the anger
and the mistakes of judgment
that crippled the moral life
of her mother and her daughter

it was not that she was oblivious
actually she was acute
in her observations
of the world, both natural
and unnatural

She was a gardener
on a grand scale
in her small market garden
where in the acres of tomatoes
carrots, potatoes and corn
she put aside an acre
to plant with flowers

The flowers were good business
she sold them to funeral homes
and florists in town
but the acre of flowers
was close to the house
and all summer long
she woke to the sight and smell
of many flowers

Catherine cried
and I think she cried often
I think she mourned a childhood lost
and the marriage without love
but only the thin tenderness of mutual regard
and the compact of survival
made between opposing powers

I loved my grandfather
he was strong
and had a voice that was low and determined
and he loved me
and even though he was a man, strong
and self-sufficient
he was not afraid to say
to his grandson, that he loved him.

But, I think that he was a mean man
as much feared as respected by his friends
and I think that he hated women
much more than he respected them
and I think that my grandmother
Catherine was in some terrible way
caught up in this hatred
that meshed neatly
with the self-portrait
that she carried 'round
in her head.

His name was Harold
(that was his middle name,
but he we choose not to use his first name
which was John
because John was his father's name
and he was loath to use the name
of the man he hated and feared

John, my grandfather's father
was by all accounts
a man filled with hatreds
and some kind of terrible fear.

John was a strange kind of ex-pat
a Canadian by birth
who came south
just across the border
at Niagara Falls
to work the trains
Of the Erie Lackawanna

John died before I was born
so I have nothing but
the suspicious memories of others
to give him life
or the breath
that comes from
retrospection that in anamnesis
grows a new garden
of sinew and bone
muscles and blood and skin
(the hipbone connects to the...)
a garden that a picture does become
cleaned up a little
neatened around the edges
and made less the bloody mess
that this wannabe monster was.

God, how he hated
Papists and Jews
Niggers and Spics
perhaps all those polite Canadians
asked him to leave
when it became apparent
that he was a bundle of hatreds
swaddled in the blood of others.

I tremble, even writing
those foul words
I can not bring those words forward
save, somehow, that I can strike them out
they disfigure my page
replicating that terrible pain
with each unfolding.

But, John did hate
any lineament
that betrayed too much otherness
that bespoke strange allegiances
and foreign powers.

For a man born across the border
he saw America as too small
his adopted country too frail
his home to easily stained
by the tears or the blood
of that other
hellborne, how he did hate.

That leaves I think
my brother and me
and of me
you have these many words
that lie and cheat
that the truth might be

My brother's name was Paul
but no saint was he
though once he did fall from his horse
and retreat to silence
for a day or two

His name was Paul
and he hated
he hated my mother and his lying life
he hated all that was bright and shiny
all that hinted of a life
that was more than could be seen
by bloodshot eyes.

I saw him the first night he drank
he was so young
but even then at 12 or 13
it was clear that his incomparable
mind was headed down some
angry stretch of road
where desolation lived
being wed to his liver
and tightening its claws

No one really tried
to take away the booze
the grass
the amphetamines
that made him whirl
like some maddened dervish
who spins and spins, then spins again
away from God, away from love
away from intellect and hope

This sparkling mind
that as a child
set his world alight
with questions
and answers
beyond what could be
for an innocent
a child

But that was gone
gone never to return
the drugs
the alcohol
pulled him down
to a place far beneath
Satan's old lair
you see, he hated
hated what he could be

It was a lonely road at night
I do not know if there was a moon or not
he drank that night
but then, he always drank at night
he was with a friend
another souless child
enveloped likewise in rage
they were a month or two
after having left school
when the car turned
and went end for end
killing one not two

It took a while his death
ten days and a bit more
crucified on a Stryker frame
dying an inch at a time
as he refused to live
the blood would not stop
to bleed in some unseen place
down in the gut
so he died
a death all his own

and that leaves me
and that leaves me

Light

What kind of light?

What kind of light
can you hold in your hand?
Does it sparkle, coruscating
minute stars
it's hard to decide
whether God is are you

Virginity Lost

"not to irksome toil, but to delight." 

Book 9, line 242

"Wherein lies th'offense, that man should thus attain to know?" 

Book 9, lines 725-6, "Paradise Lost," - John Milton,  

40 years  ago

I lost my virginity.

I can't say that I tried very hard to find it.

It wasn't especially important to me.

In fact, I thought I'd be better off without it.

A few times I went away on vacation,

I hoped that I would lose it,

and my virginity would stay behind,

lost in the Adirondacks,

or near some Canadian lake.

But, it didn't work that way

I lost it locally

with a girl who lived

just down the lane from me

whose virginity had long disappeared.

She was very pretty,

and she was happy to see me

I was entirely too serious

a scholar where scholars were disdained

I ran track, the school played football.

I don't know why she liked me

she had broken up a month or two before

with a football player, half again my weight

perhaps she simply didn't want to be crushed

or maybe it was the way I said thank you.

So, it got away from me

lost, somewhere in her parent's house

by her bed, or perhaps on the floor

perhaps my virginity had met hers

and they were off gallivanting.

Gray Paint

I went to paint today
and my only brush was gray

I painted red today
The color of blood and blazing skies
but my only brush was gray

I painted green today
The color of life and broken bile
but my only brush was gray

I painted blue today
the color of water, air and tired souls
but my only brush with gray

I painted black today
the color of shadows deep and deciding lines
but my only brush was are gray

Grasses

Stepping foot

on a field that has gone to grass

untilled, unseeded

given back to it's past

It will be only a year or two

till the field can no longer be a field

till the grass lays down roots too dense

and the seeds of Quaking Aspen

take hold and throw up a sapling

too thick for the tiller's blades

If the farmer cared

he could fix the fences

and let his cattle pasture there

it's not quite too late

for grazing to cut back the grass

and a hatchet or ax

to take the sapling down

But, the farmer does not care

there will be no fence

no ax, no rumbling tractor

there will be no care

for this place that once was a field

and now is something different

Jot, dots, iotas: a farce in four parts

i.
when I stopped covering the pages
with word after word of god talk
and my own mumbling allegiance
to someone or something that did not fit
on the space of a page or two or 10.

Or rather, in the space of a page or two or 10
the stink of a corpse was so great
as could not be contained in black marks
on the plain page.

I stopped, and I am not sure why.
I am not sure where all the words came from
that spoke of the gods, of him or her
or some genderless divine.

But I did stop,
and left the page blank
and the world has not changed
even though the little black dots

Are still in the pen.
Is this where God abides,
in unspent ink
a whole will now know


ii.
a book, its spine broken
its page spread
like the legs of a blessed virgin
waiting for the impregnating pen
and hence the birth
of another bawling god

theologicians find
in every tome
some assay of the divine
for the metaphysicians
to stretch and mold
And a wellcure of every infirmity

healing the letters
on an endless page
fraught with broken letters
and broken code
Code dissolving
into the acid of history

code emerging as Mecca
and Babylon and Bethlehem
and the Indus spit out poems
and thoughtless declarations
leaving the floors awash
in the broken waters
of pregnant misthoughts
and gravid conceits

Waiting for the impregnating pen
and hence the birth
of another bawling god
a book, a broken spine
pages spread
if we do not need gods or god
why did we invent them?



iii.
Mecca and Babylon and Bethlehem
ancient cities of haraging Gods
must stand askance of Jerusalem
where gods die but then live
undisturbed by the blood
shed in their honor
by wild eyed believers
and scheming kings

How was it that Constantinople burned
because their God was insufficient
even though their temple was great
unrivaled in the West
it had too many pictures
and shone with too much gold
why did Constantinople burn?
why did it burn twice?

But does the God of Constantinople
owe allegiance to Jerusalem
or is it Mecca
that breathes this God to life
does it matter
does it matter at all
from what allegiance or denial
does come a God
or whence from some God does flee
burning heels that betray

When we do not believe
do the gods puff up and war
upon us in our apostasy
or is there only silence
that may be the hush of the betrayed
or not, or not.


iv.
Mecca, Babylon and Bethlehem
and even now Jerusalem
are awash in new blood
but, no God bleeds
that is something of our imaginary
but the blood is real
and most often it belongs to innocents
to have met bombs and missiles
guns and gas
that have taken the place
of divine brutalities

If the gods do not speak
except in the minds of stupid children
and willful freaks
to give life to a new divine comedy
an economy of death
or new life that looks to death

Unbidden Breath

Breath excreted

between yellow sour teeth

sudden and sharp

What does this mean,

sudden and sharp?

How can that be

that breath moving

between pursed lips

can be sharp?

Can we not be like a knife?

But, it is not like a knife

it has no sharpness

it cannot cut

it is only a rush

unbidden from

the racked body.

Breath excreted

between yellow and sour teeth

on the edge of words

but no longer meaning

the sounds do not mean

listen to me, listen

for the pain in the sound

the unbidden air

it's there.

But you cannot feel,

what is in the sound

me undiluted

me at the moment

that the shot shatters

and I am gone.

But you cannot feel,

what is in the sound,

me undiluted

me at the moment

that the knife slides home

and I am gone

Me undiluted,

me at the moment

when the fall ends

and I am gone

Me at the moment

when I tire

of sipping for air

me at that moment

and I am gone

Me at that moment

when an invisible world

has fallen and crushed my chest

me at that moment

and I'm gone

Me undiluted,

me at the moment

when all that is left

is burned bare

bone and sinew

me at that moment

and I'm gone

Me undiluted,

me at that moment

when the hot blackness

and burning fat

is all that is left

me at that moment

and I'm gone

This breath does not mean

listen to me, listen

for the pain in the sound

it's there.

It bites at me

the sound hurts

leaving lungs and bone and sinew

broken behind the pain

listen to the breath

the excreted sound

and learn.

it means.