Just Some Old Wednesday, in Frisco

I’m here, in
this Spanish Mission
so fatigued, but
knowing I will
still work to
write what
the world
must hear but
cannot see
for lack of

one

eye.

A Crack, in the Less-Than-Cosmic Egg

There is a low rumble of
thunder in my fist, whispering:
the Irish have a wonderful saying--
Never give a sword
to a man who can’t dance.
I wonder if they let men dance
who can’t use a sword.

Quite an accident of chance, that
in the dust of a dirty Western town
where potato-famine refugees
must have come, or through which
they at least passed, at least once,
I bought a bullwhip.

Because it fit my hand.

An extension of my arm, I’ve felt
its leather: well-cut strips cured hard
(or so I’ve gathered). Woven, braided,
tapering lines, from ends palm-wide
to tails needle-thin.

A whip is easy
to maintain.

Just keep it oiled.

Back and again, I’ve let the coil
unwind, quick, and dusty, dun-colored
lightning lick at a target: flat, square,
or round. The barrier of
sound breaks an instant before
wood splinters; a double-crack,
but no illusion. In the continuum
two vibrations gel; the distance
from touch to break
becoming a lack. Something
I command like second nature.

Seemingly the whip's devoid
of mind, but through me I find my
senses opened, and loose and fenceless
the muscles and nerves pull it all in,
yet ease the focus. Sail on
the tide of energies.
Then, again, suddenly tight
the lashing goes from subtle, passive,
to accelerated growth, and action.

Were this a ship tackle would whirl
and mast creak as sails unfurl, and
into the wind we’d be tacking. Cracking
the whip again and again, I’d
chuckle and rage and flay my own
back; push myself to say, to myself:
“Together, we make
this place. ... Together.”

Father of Thunder.

But under her gaze the storm abates.

“Show me a trick,” She has just
said, the crowded party far from
the desert, and with the whip my hand
draws back, and forward, and a flick of my wrist
will telescope my being into a flexible
baton, twelve feet long.

Bending, behind me now, I let
the tan tail roll and twist, unconstricted,
until just in position. A sudden twist,
and the lax tip springs forward
with a hum and a whiz--wraps once, twice
around her waist, with nary a hint that
I’ve caused her pain.

Maybe just the little she likes.

Almost as soon as the whip has wrapped,
I tug, friction locking the strands
around her, tightening
an embrace. I don't know why
I fear the coils will break, but
don't. This time neither do they
crack. Cannot. Not to do what
they need to, sinuously.

“Not bad,” I hear her say, a little
impressed; a little patronizing.
Her hand stroking the coils as
I pull them loose. Eve, to my sign
of Snake. “Not bad.”

And I wonder if she’ll come
when I ask.

If she'll leave the party
with me, together.
Together, when we've made
this place.

If it will fall
apart without us.

While we make
another world.
Together.

Charybdis, Moderne

My mother weaves
meats and fruits
from rolls of monies while
my brother builds trenches
for doves.

My little sisters
laugh soap bubbles
while the Other gnaws
giant bones
of dinosaurs

that are not even hers.

My uncle breaks communion
wafers into his tomato soup
and makes chains
of bookbinding glue.

My Father sells
- or gives away -
encyclopedias and
numbers and Words.

And says yes,
Beverly Hills is nice, and
yes, he’d like living
there ...

Only, not too much.

I take
after him,
you know.

Charybdis

My family is grey

Gifts are running past

Unnoticed
Unseen

eyes only know the red
cold iron burns us away from

Honey
and milk

sweetened, with barley

wandering
bumping

through a hall our heads on

ceilings


caving
in for a moment

it is red

I see
I am

Grey.

Welcome to existence
Everyone's here
Everyone's here
Everybody's watching you now
Everybody waits for you now
What happens next?
What happens next?

I dare you to move
I dare you to move

-Switchfoot, "Dare You to Move"

“In the classical Tarot, you are the Devil. The Devil card is based on Dionysus, ‘Zeus of Nyssa,’ counterpart to Apollo and chieftain of the gods in his form as Lord of the Shamanic Dance. The earthy physicality of the Devil can breed lust, so the Devil's call to return to primal instincts often creates conflict in a society that believes these instincts must be kept under control. Challenges posed by our physical bodies can be overcome by strength in the mental, emotional, and spiritual realms. Dionysus is also a symbol of enjoyment and rules our material creativity. The Devil knows physical pleasure and how to manipulate the physical world. Material creativity finds its output in such things as dance, art, hunting, and sex. All of this may seem intimidating and even evil, but remember that the self-actualized person is able to accept the sensuality and usefulness of the Devil's gifts and incorporate and accept the dark urges without indulging them in their simplistic, corrupt form.”

Heaven died on just one night:
Eve dead angels could not tread
lanes on which whose travelers, dead
lacked not grace for the still
insight ...

In the Ruins of St. Andrews' Cathedral, Hallow'e'en, 1987

Hear I, no longer, that mourning keen
That brought to a megalith scene.

Nor remember a nighted moon hued jade,
nor silent curs who never bayed;

but a scorching wind, of remnant June,
and whistles of a revenant tune;

and dead, a hand that broke through sod,
‘Til others joined, to stand and nod.

And Wagner played there, on the dark
where dancers ringed, in that park;

spastic soon, and mocking Saints,
blind to their own stench, and taints.

And dead, did lovers still find glee,
A cold lust shared, for she and he.

But no tears shared, in their sight,
save for fears, of too-soon Light.

That Festival broken, by a knell:
a tolling wake, a far church bell;

new stars that spoke, in their place,
and told each: find your carapace.

Until panicked, did bodies race
before sunrise, to find their space,


Unbeknownst, save for my face;


A glimpse, just
as I turned.

Free Verse (1981-2004)

“Come, little singers,
laud me some beauty,
then taste the blood
of my wounded lyre,

“Do you really know
the shadows
that flit and flirt,
about my pyre?

“When Athens is in flames,
and Thebes laid open wide.
And run, as you will.
There is no place to hide …”


Balladeer once, but nevermore.
I’ll sing no more
songs of transcendent beauty.
Of sunsets, worth their gold.

But who will call, to answer
my rage?

What hate drowns all else
in its wake?

The anger that burns within,
gnaws, grinds away, until
every edge is smoothly
razored.


“All my verse, it has been felled,
its End foretold, its death-toll knelled …”


by the Cain that lurks
in every man. Oh, He is
the ultimate killer.

But sing no songs for me.
No ballads for the fallen
in battle.

Not until you know, at least,
What this hand,
I once thought mine
—by pen or sword—
is capable of

When my God has refused me
even a voice to plead.

And my own demons

Answer instead.

... a billion stars go spinning through the night,
blazing high above your head.
But IN you is the presence that
will be, when all the stars are dead.

-Ranier Maria Rilke
from "Buddha in Glory"

The Latest, Eldest Edda

The moon was cold and clear;
sea and wind crossed the lea.
But through the tavern fell a silence;
doors opened to the sea.
With the chill, there crept in fear;
and mulled wine lost its glee.
for, framed 'gainst stars, there stood Man,
God and killer, in one body.

The patrons eyed him fearfully
but never a word was spoke.
It was the shaking tavern-keeper
who, the tableau broke.
"Old friend, what do you now and near,
whom we had long thought dead?
How good it is to see you here, come
share our Salt, and Bread."

One good eye laughed, as Tygers laugh
when filled with a killing lust;
a sword whose naked, sharpened shine
would never be tinted rust.
And unbidden, did his memories
break out and share their flesh.
And form the tale of he who they
had only, long, thought dust.

One eye patched, the other grey,
The Man sat among them there.
Brooded, drank, and showed his thoughts
though not a word did share.
Beyond that stare, though, did they find,
the truth—and the Prince of Lies.
Of not long before, a battlefield,
amid corpses, and the flies.

There, somewhere, the Last War had raged,
until all armies’ fall.
With no hand left, on either side,
to raise a rally call.
But as he lay and felt his blood
irrigate muddy ground,
Within his ears, did Heaven’s trumpet
blow with Hell’s own sound.

This Man, was he lifted up;
placed on a new horse, to ride.
And traveling, now, did he find
the Devil at his side.
"Old Friend," did the proud Devil say,
"I see your End grows nigh.
Ride with me, pillage, by my side;
again, be the most High!"

The Man said nothing, and soon found
Even the Devil could burn.
That, to all great offers,
some might stay taciturn.
"Come, Old Friend," the Devil did say,
don’t, to me, play profound.
Look to those you have been bane;
the blood you've fed the ground!

"You belong to me,” the Devil did say,
“It appears in every sign.
Nor does it do, to fight your End
when after, your world is mine.”
The Man drew sword, whispered, harsh,
“I’ll not serve a Beast so … small.
All you must needs do is take me,"
said he, free after all.

Now later, his dark ale finished,
he placed his Cup back down.
Without a word, out door he strode,
what more, without a sound.
Not again did any see the eye,
the one good eye’s long stare,
But ever, with his ravens, he rides,
even if Valhalla is bare.

At first a childhood, unlimited and free
of any goals. Ah sweet unconsciousness.
Then sudden terror, classrooms, slavery,
the descent into temptation and abysmal loss.

Defiance. The child bent becomes the one who bends,
inflicts on others what once he endured.
Loved, feared, rescuer, wrestler, victor,
he takes his revenge, blow by blow.

And now in the vast, icy void, alone.
But hidden deep within that adult heart,
a longing for the original world, the ancient one ...

Then, from His place of ambush, God leapt out.

-Ranier Maria Rilke
"Imaginary Career"

They are waiting to take us
into the severed garden.
Do you know how pale and
wanton thrillful comes Death
on a strange hour? Unannounced
unplanned-for, like a scaring,
over-friendly guest you’ve
brought to bed.

Death makes angels of us all
and gives us wings,
where we had shoulders
smooth as ravens’ claws.
No more money, no more fancy dress,
this other kingdom seems by far the best,
until its other jaw reveals incest, and
loose obedience to a vegetable law.

I will not go.

Prefer a Feast of Friends
to the Giant family.

-Jim Morrison
from “An American Prayer”

Stones

Does anyone ever pause to think that if standard Christian doctrine is true—you know, Jesus being God, and Son of God, that whole thing—that it makes Him the world's most cosmic … motherfucker?

"God” is what dyslexic philosophers try to get not to shit on the carpet.

That soft, white plush their blue-collar parents always dreamt they'd have when they sent the kid to the best Ivy League schools, thinking he’d wind up a doctor or lawyer. An engineer, maybe. At least a securities broker.

Something … respectable.

Gods usually shit on the carpet anyway.

No more cognizant of the aspirations of parents than of their children; only knowing their masters have left them alone for too long, a poor dumb God, with no better way to deal with His anxiety than to whine, plaintively. To tear apart toilet paper, and paper towels, and newspaper.

Especially newspaper. Everything He can get His hands on, until everything is in tatters, not a Word is left unfragmented, or unsmudged.

I wish I knew what it is with Gods and paper.

I don't own Gods that often. Though there was that once, in college.

My three roommates outvoted me on whether to get one. You can guess who wound up taking care of Him though. Letting Him out when He needed to void His bladder, His bowels. Playing with Him when He was ready to come back in.

He was a smart God, and I could roughhouse with Him, wrestle and grapple, try out my judo, my arms protected against His bite by a heavy leather jacket as I sought to trip Him up. But for all the ferocity of our struggle, all I had to do was give Him the signal that it was all over, that it was time for Him to calm down, sit quietly.

Discipline your Gods well. They’ll only love you the more for it.

He was a mixed breed. Shepherd, mostly. Same kind of mix, if a remarkably different in appearance, as a God I had in grade school. Big brute of a thing, that one.

My grandmother understood what that earlier God meant to me. Baba, we called her. My grandmother, I mean. The name means "Old Woman." Though in a good way.

Baba would bring over good things for Him to eat; none of the prepackaged, usual God-food for Him. Huge roasting pans of leftovers from her own table: a lot of rice, and potatoes, and gravy - but always meat. Baba was a small, if stocky woman, painfully kind and gentle, but she knew. Gods are natural carnivores.

Fierce He might be, but she never demanded He be anything other than what He was.

I loved being at her house. In her kitchen, with her cooking. She fed me well too. Better than anyone before, or since.

He was the light of my life, this quirky brute of a God, one of the only such lights after Father moved out. That is, until my mother's lover got rid of Him.

Story is my God barked during the day, and our neighbor worked nights. I don't know if that was all so true. The neighbor never complained where I saw or heard. And Mother's new man—who may have become her husband but to whom I never got used to—wasn’t the kind to care all that much about his neighbor, anyway.

Perhaps he felt my God barked too much at him.

In any event, that God was mine, and that was enough for Him to be hated by Mother’s new man. I came home one day, from school, and my God was gone.

That God I had in college was gone soon too. I could see it would happen, which is why I voted against getting one in the first place.

College being such a fluid time, we were sure to part ways at the end of the year; find new places to live, and Gods weren't always allowed. Sure enough, we had to give ours away. I'm the one who didn't wanted to get one in the first place, and I think I was the only one who was all that bothered when He had to go.

I heard He went to some farm out in the country, where Gods are allowed to run free.

He almost got Himself put to death, though, when on the first day one of the first things He did was kill fifteen chickens. But He redeemed Himself with the irate farmer by the third day, when He chased two big, mean Gods from the farm next door away from the children.

That was over fifteen years ago now.

For the life of a God that means it's just about certain He's dead by now.

Sometimes I wonder how.

I wonder if He had someone there, someone to scratch behind His ears gently, holding him, while that needle slipped into the vein, just under the skin.

Kind of like Baba died, in my arms, on a spring night not too far from Easter, with snow falling outside windows that would not open, no matter how many doors had closed.

A good God deserves that much.

You can keep all your bullshit about how to treat a God. Keep all the stores that specialize in high-priced, jewel-studded God-collars for Him; keep your high-tech electronic tracking chips so you can find your God when He gets lost. To hell with all your millions of brands of kibble to feed Him with, agonizing over it as if it makes a difference, just because all the other God-owners do.

Me? I'll wonder whose really there for Him at the End. Who will sit there with Him when there is no one else; to stroke His time-wearied head softly. Give Him an embrace.

Grace Him with one last kiss.

When Time comes, as it must, to ease that poor bastard's passage, out of this world.

Cathedral Ruins

Through the blizzard,
in the tree stand I see the
evergreen spires on hillsides
bear the snow, heavy,
as pagan giants' limbs.
All movement is
stillborn; I hear it
flutter down through the storm.
The cutaway up the ridge
opens up the doors of
an emerald cathedral;
I hide behind a spire and wait,
looking up, looking down.
Cardinals and bishops
are nowhere to be seen, but
Red Squirrels take shelter
and mockingly throw
incense from the pines;
even though I only hear
them move, and can rarely see.
When I descend from the tree,
the wind at my back
will push me past spires fallen
into the narrow paths.
Snow will muffle
my every footstep.
But I stop every few
and look back.
Lot’s wife be damned.
Though I will not go
that way, I feel, for now,
there is no harm,
every once in a while,
in looking back.

Cockroach Consciousness

Time. Time for the weather. It’s been thirty days. Forty. Days and nights. They have to go together.

The Prophet scuttles across my hardwood floor.

He picks up dust and grains of sand. Ask how many grains of sand are on my floor and he probably knows, dammit. I’ve forgotten to sweep today.

“How many grains of sand?” I say. I think I see him shrug. Just before my foot comes down on his carapace with a crackling crunch, like the breakfast cereal I ate as a kid.

I’ve got to stop giving them names.

Roaches are supposed to be one of those animals that can tell the weather. And earthquakes. Prophets.

Prophets, it seems, are best at forecasting doom. Ironic, in a way, given roaches that haunt my kitchen room can withstand so much. So much poison. So much radiation.

So much crushing existential angst?

Roaches are interesting as models for bottom-up artificial intelligence, you know. Program the model roach with a few simple parameters - seek food, go to/avoid light, hit a wall and by default turn left or right (nice political analogy there) - and the behavior that results, if unpredictable, is rather lifelike.

But where is the "soul" in which everyone wants to, needs to believe?

They need to add that the real ones breed fast, too--again, just like prophets. There's your spritual angle. Kill them all and they’ll still repopulate an area before you even have a chance to say, “What the hell?”

Sometimes I think it’s too simple. Barometric pressure tells you the weather. OK, maybe not the pressure itself, but the changes in it. Odd seismic vibrations for an earthquake. Vibrations that aren’t so small when you’re tiny enough for my foot to squash your carapace.

A barometer or seismograph can give you the raw data. So can my trick knee.

(Four operations. Major ligament reconstruction. What a trick.)

Roaches are supposed to be one of those animals that can tell the weather, and earthquakes. Must be that sixth sense.

If it’s so simple, how come the weather-guy can’t give a better prediction on TV? A barometer could give you the raw data. Or a seismograph.

(What d’you know? Here comes the next Prophet now. The psychics I always visit never seem to prophecy that I’m going to stiff them on their fee. Wonder if he knows I’m going to step on him, eventually?)

Do roaches just listen better? Or do we just cut them more of a break, when they guess wrong?

Hell, I cut mine a break all the time.

The Prophet--the latest Prophet, I mean--is scuttling about very agitated. I think we have a cloudy day coming tomorrow. Maybe rain. Maybe snow.

Things are changing. That much I know. Change is coming.

Wow. I’m good.

Best A.I. you'll ever find. Too bad I don't have a soul.

But maybe you always look like you know what the future holds, if you run around agitated, predicting change.

I should do it more often.

But all I know is change makes my trick knee hurt. Makes me irritable.

Makes we want to slam it down hard, on whatever scuttles across my floor.



Run, little Prophet, run.