Category: Uncategorized

Alright. Try this: everyone I know is going to die alone even if those who love them stand nearby. Early in the morning when I’m still a young man I think of the wings I’ve been crafting in secret all my life.

**

Now and then someone calls me on the phone and its an accident—wrong number—and before I hang up I always say, you know, you should read Spinoza…

**

Walking with my guide dog in a winter city, ice falling from the high buildings. We’re nearly struck by a chunk of lethal frozen water. Its a close call. So many days, so many near death experiences navigating the ordinary. This is why the ancients painted on the walls of their darkened caves.

**

There’s a Neanderthal ghost and I’ve named him “Nandy”
He turns up rather often and gives me ghostly candy
Its the stuff of starvation, its all you need to know
The candy is simply pebbles you suck on as you go…

**

Everywhere I turn there’s an article about poetry being dead and I don’t get it. I suspect they’ve substituted “poetry” for laughter.

**

There are two streets for guide dogs and their partners—the visible one, the one with the traffic—then there’s the hidden one, seen only by dog and man—the road of moonbeams and faith.

First I say goodbye to the insects
The sad roses and old books
And draw a cloth down
Over my head
To honor the day
Which is still unformed
Like certain bird throats
Like clouds approaching infants
I say farewell
Because trust
Is a clear nothing
Hoarding somewhere
Many treasures
Do you hear the post horn?

We have friends in common my friend, my friend,
And once in the darkness of winter
As I was young and flighty
More alone than not
I planted my walking stick
In the drifts and said
Echoing Doc Williams
“I am lonely, best so,”
And shouted “no more friends,”
Because that’s what young men do

I’m old now and see the error
Though everyone I love
Lives down the road, down the road,
All my friends live down the road
The poem holds a door open

If you’re disabled you know the doctor won’t see you now; or the doctor will see you but only after you’ve abandoned your silly wheelchair. Did you know that over 70 per cent of medical offices in the United States aren’t accessible?

**

How many fingers am I holding up? They actual ask me that. After they’ve patted my guide dog.

**

Somewhere in the distance, church bells, the old fashioned medicine…

**

Everybody’s got something to hide except for me and my disability…

**

The doctor thinks he might have a hernia but he’s not going to tell anyone. He hates the body’s insults.

**

The doctor falls asleep and dreams of water wings.

**

The doctor throws white stones at the moon.

**

C’mon! Throw that wheelchair away! You’re not trying hard enough!

Being disabled is to be always living in a peripheral state. Those who don’t experience this don’t know how unfair and unstable crippled life really is. In order to mask this the non-disabled say that access is coming “tomorrow.”

So I sing “tomorrow tomorrow the accommodations will come out tomorrow” and wait for Daddy Ableist Warbucks to come.

If you’re a disabled person you know the drill.

How my eyes ache!
I’ve been crossing streets
With my trained dog
Shadows, lethal,
Aim for my torso
Power in circulation
Henry Ford
My private enemy

Home again
And safe
I fall asleep
On the sofa
Dreaming
Of the little girl
Who was beside me
In the infant hospital
All those years ago
Blind children
Side by side
Her singing

This is how all stories go
In the kingdom of frost
Cold abandons itself
In the streaming silence
The unsaid runs away
But its the return
That interests me
Laughing
At the wrong places
The turning
Screaming
At the compass
Parsifal
Reacquainting
With his hands

“Look at my throat” said the midday sun
And chickadees, titmice, cardinals
I asked them: “where will I be buried?”

It was April, suddenly warm—
Sad child, me, looking for something else
The milk and gin of Percy
“I am borne darkly, fearfully, afar…”
Here I remember that boy
His guitar…

    “they say I'm alienated from reality
    as if I had the power to decide life”

                    —Sanni Purhonen

They say I’m blind and should trade my eyes
For jellyfish—or just be a coral in darkness

They say I’m nothing more than the wind enraged

For cover, in polite society they say I’m like them
But they don’t invite me to the grand reunion

They say its written someplace I’m the match end

When I was a small I carried
A dead pocket watch

I thought how one day I’d have a clean reality

They say I’m a dry season

They change their minds: I’m a rumor of tears

They talk like men drunk on silver

They say I’m a poor infinity

I’m not afraid of anything

Conventional children called me “blindo”
Of course they also threw dirt

I liked the dirt, it smelled like the hands of the moon

I pressed my face into tulips
Built a summer house

Out of shells
Saved the seeds of apples
In my blindo pockets

Angels went on flying
In twilight
Without wings
As they always do