Planet of the Blind

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?

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

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

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

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

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The doctor falls asleep and dreams of water wings.

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The doctor throws white stones at the moon.

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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

“I used to be purple but now I am pink,” wrote Kenneth Koch. I used to be a disabled child but now I am a disabled man. I’ve yet to achieve pink. I guess you could say my insides are like a sea wall covered with spiny anemones. I climb it. It’s just behind my face. Somehow I never get stung.

Either/or I am darkness descending
Or giving way
So morning is clear
Today, just a man
Walking with shadows in him
And no one knows how it will be
Or if our five senses
Will ever rise