Triggering the Downpour

So many words now lose their meaning. I offer no excuses. Many of these pieces are gone into the chance of extinction. Just like any given self. Once again, I am nobody.

arc of life

for Gary

its truth some days live in a painful
cardboard box out on highway 61 the hammer
grasps its uses slipping off the shelf to
the concrete floor the noises of production
distant now the people I thought I knew
turned blue, turned away, turned toward the
sea we are all going there when the road
runs out and that said I still wander on
my track looking for the right way to stay
considering the method of the orgasm the
tall tale dis-interred in that bedrock
median of leftover garbage of detail and
culture they think may be our subconscious
the "a" horizon is never enough
the "b" and "c" and "d" and endless infinite
jests of time's layers on down through infancy
and some who yell at me and some who carefully
brush the dust from what seems meaningful
yet the story, told in tables, gathered
in diverse opinions like an archaeological
site report reveals almost nothing currently
useful. that is to say, I can't dig myself
out of this box. It assembles its own coffin.
when I go and my poor children look at
loki in his midst, they will chuckle
ruefully and Joel will make fun of me
like he does now and Paige will be confused
at how she feels and Piper will not forgive
me anything. that is pretty much only fair.

thor's hammer, amulet and cross, doorway
to the sacred, my own sweet memory of crossing
through to this lifetime
striking the forge the sparks fly
if there were tinder there'd be a sudden
tower of flame

shantih we all said that girl told
me that back when I was deceiving myself
about her I thought
her sister was the pony in that story
the one trick pony turned out to be
me and arrogant but not enough
to dump this desire and why did I do
any of the things I did?

the hammer grasped its value
never doubted what little that matters
comes from its use these words
this seed the world undiscovered
so mistakes were made
acting too soon or never acting
the door will close soon enough
thor will take me through its oaken panels
into valhalla's candid tapestry
the words will have meaning again
I will rise up in the night sky
a constellation gleaming
rose fires in supernova
you will see me
all of you
what it will mean no longer matters
arc of life
the great prism of requirement
see you on a wednesday
somewhere near the restoration of this
memory

she said maybe

these words
this patience
makes me sound phony
sweetheart
what really hurts now
is your disappearance
the things we never said
all the intrigue
the bullets of the self
poisoning my blood
I imagined you were the antibody
but you are gone now and this disease
sounds phony with its own
empty circular solution

I am
balanced on the tip of the pyramid
no one will give me the shove
which face will I slide down?
none of the above
all the words accumulate
in the will
a slow poison
the hours crowding
into this house

The Fiddler

This inadequacy in my heart, unable
To confront those energies that embody what
I thought existence ought to be about but it
Doesn’t seem to happen and here I am
No wiser in these last ten years than in the first
Ten nothing on hand the ambitions of
Youth burned to a short-ordered perfection
And too few walks in the woods while
The fiddler played an angry lay like most
Of mine and some of your's we walked
Away our sheltered ignorance uncontested
A conservative's world view—ego-driven
And still looking for a likely woman driving
By so very eagles in the fashion of what
Most thought the 70s were truly all about
The days jerk me around
I jerk myself around
The chicken choked
And the jokes recalled
The frizzed armor of the feminist girls
Salting the splashed spilled words
Of this auteur still incompetent
Down this loud dissonant oldtime story.

Mere self evaluation, doing the dance, shuffling the feet with either lack of faith or confident pessimism. You wake up in your thirties and think you've discovered what a self-centered bastard you have been, and then you wake up in your fifties and discover how you've tricked yourself again. Yet at the same time you know you have to discover what it is you value in yourself. This piece is a re-written post from 2005. I think it was actually new at the time. In any case, it is better now, than it was. Oh, and in the mid-1970s all the women I knew who were self-proclaimed feminists were getting their hair done in those frizzy perms. Not good for the tresses, but desirable in an odd fashion. I liked the really really longhaired girls, but even they would frizz the locks.

there are

those who say
burn the fields clean
start over

those who say
never forget
re-live the acts & words

those who say
not one thing
nor another

its a synthesis
a quilt
threads of color & sound
texture & scent

the clock is papyrii
seconds are pages turning
the hours caught in amphora
sunken to the bottom
of times ocean

there are

those who say
it doesn't matter
meaning floats

those who say
to forget it
drown the lacunae

wither the layers of paint
in the heat of this
investigation

those who say
turn the light off
you are destroying the
historically valuable aspects

air bubbles glug towards
the surface the old clay
seams weaken microscopically
along my usual faults

Another examination of a recorded life. I have too many notebooks, too many pages, not enough time, too many memories, not enough synthesis. The advice I get is all over the map. What is right for me? To look, to ignore. I have done both in exquisite detail and concentration. The act of clearing the mind becomes a struggle through the ocean of all existence. There is that old story about the akashic record: somewhere there is a record of everything that has ever existed, words, deeds, evolution. Somewhere there is a Cecil B. DeMille level of recording that has taken on all atomic being as its premise. Now that's a real finnegan's wake. Wonder if Joyce has run across the author as of yet.