Category: Uncategorized

Buttercups

It’s best to not climb the mountain
Dance where people live

A mirror reflects
So much hope

Tipping vivid small flowers
In the sun
A good dance

I should say more
I should always say more

After Creeley

I wanted poetry to love me
So
I promised
To
Take it
For a ride
“But you can’t drive”
It said
Then: “For
Chrissake
Look out
Where you’re going”

No one comes to the shack
Where Uncle
Lives with his wife
And her beautiful art
There’s no term
For what she makes
Even a blank wall is thrilling
Especially this one
Where a spider walks a fine crack
She turns lonely
Into loneliness
The way priests paint eggs
For children—
The analogy
Can’t be explained
Uncle loves to watch his wife’s hands
Moving through the air
Like snails on broken glass
(Another one
That can’t be explained)
This is how art occurs
In empty roomss

Uncle History is a pointillist masterpiece
When he leans to his mirror
He’s all colored dots
It’s time to jump into the day
But in public
No one spots him
“A trick of the light”
That’s what they call him
Pins of sun
On fresh snow
Imagine going through life
Both known
And invisible
Central to all
And easy to forget
Beautiful, that’s what he is
Picture the smallest flecks
In the world
Falling where you walk
He’s “dot-daddy” alright
Sadly people walk over him

Aunt History is sad because
The aleatoric bubble of joy
Has been stolen—
It was created by accident
This happiness thing
That lives inside
All creatures
But by God
Its been snatched
You know how it is—
You’re walking a street
And feel a sudden burst of joy
Well, some bastard
Has swiped it
And so, there are blank pages
In the book of life
She rips them out
Puts them on her face

Uncle History has that hospital smell
An odor of iodine and bleach
Say what you will
It’s the scent of realism
The nurses bring fresh linens
Fear-stink
Slips through the weave
“Would you like the drapes opened?”
“Would you like a toy from childhood?”
But he’s not a patient
He sweeps through the corridors
Swinging a reverse chalice
Vacuuming up
The reek of collective fear
So he can keep it
All for himself

“Swing batter! Swing batter!”
Uncle history in a funeral home
“You’re sub-Lazarus” he says
To the corpse
He doesn’t know anything
About bodies—
Treats them as numbers
He prefers hot soup
To philosophy
Prefers philosophy
To science
Prefers almost anything
To empathy
But he likes that man
At the plate
Waving a bat
Squinting into the sun
Its a journey through familiar speech
Towards the region that is no place
He really does like sports

Aunt History isn’t blameless—
She’s got tons
To answer for—
Virgins desanguinated
Bamboo and fingernails…
Nietzsche’s sister…
She hates how it happens
A blizzard of failures
Lost souls wandering
Women starving
Moonlight unfriendly
Men tangled in stupid lingo
She sits by candlelight
Writing it down
The candles cold as glass
The cruelty candles

Uncle history’s corpus callosum
Splits his brain
Between the long past
And the recent past
But its worse than this
He spins across rooms
Right foot in one ugly moment
Left foot in another
“Ugly ugly ugly” he sings
Sometimes he has to lie down
Sometimes he has to read Confucius
“One joy dispels a hundred cares”
But he has no joy—
Just a pocket stuffed with glass eyes
Which he hands out to children

Uncle history eats his punctuation…

He’s always hungry
He’s a child at the movies
Eating tiny dots
Recklessness
Is everywhere
Minus commas
That’s funny
Or not—c’mon
Its almost a joke
And you can’t explain jokes
But this one means
Uncle can’t write much
But he can lick the page