Something Wild

 

“How should we like it were stars to burn

 With a passion for us we could not return?

 If equal affection cannot be,

 Let the more loving one be me.”

                         ~W.H. Auden

 

i

 

If a tree sapling burst through

the floor and stood pointing

its finger toward the door,

is this my mind showing me

something I have never seen

with my own eye,

and if not my mind,

then what and why?

 

If it’s true, that

everything that’s natural

is made of God,

then is this his limb

forcing its way in?

Or is it mine?

We, who are too wild

for so mild a place.

What better than tears

to wash a face?

 

 

ii

 

My melancholy begins at 6:00 A.M.,

a swaddled newborn in so much gauze,

as morning gives birth to mourning,

a sober nativity of unexplained loss.

 

To read death’s autobiography

its best to sleep,

with resurrection the only proper epilogue.

Then why not pray the Lord our soul to keep,

though it was I who slept just like a log.

 

If every day must begin with goodbye,

why saddle me with grieving my

loss of everything,

with all I was a moment ago

now gone?

Why not reassemble a self

to improve upon what’s wrong?

If I’m the griever of my own loss only,

then perhaps this be how life

is made holy.

 

My sadness is a soup

from wilted greens.  

My longing, a fragrance

that speaks in dulcet tones.

I honor life by missing things

around me, as this is

how I love when I’m alone.

 

This being no one’s dream

but mine only,

I dare expect to be misunderstood.

No one has had this dream but me,

really, no one! What sort of

other man wood?

 

Like pain in the extremity

that means nothing but to me,

after all its I who must feel it's

sting.

Would that my gentle wail

blight everything in its wake,

all I said, did and saw and lost,

occurring for my own sake.

 

The best man plays best

his role and not much more,

who makes a boat of his room

to reach the shore.

 

My memories live in me

like meat within a sleeve.

I remember willy-nilly

the whirl of scattered leaves.

Pieces of a puzzle

putting a self together

is the best way to recount

how I remember.

 

I live backwards;

the whole having been

here all along.

The forests I once walked

along in song

live inside me waiting

to retrace my steps;

though diaries in green ink

were all they kept.

 

I wake and everything

I said and did are gone,

all that’s left:

this empty moment

waiting to be filled.

Now I try to live

more slowly

than the throng

and wake to greet

the morning

my soul has willed.

 

1/24/23

 

God of Feeling

 

I met the God of Feeling

in the middle of the night

in an underground garage.

He, an informant,

and I, his operative,

as my body

lay sleeping

41 flights above.

 

He was in a trench coat

and possessed

a kind demeanor.

He hung back

in the shadows

seemingly intent on my

making the first move.

I broke the ice.

“I have a frozen lamb

in my heart and I don’t

know how to melt it.”

I said, not caring

how it sounded.

He stepped forward

into better light.

“I know someone.”

he said simply.

Would I be willing

to travel cross country

to see a specialist?

 

I felt a chill

of uncertainty

as he spoke so 

deliberately

and with great tenderness,

I suddenly felt

I was the lamb

in the basement

of my own body's

boundless geography.

“Shall I drive?”

He asked, nodding his chin

at a nearby auto.

I figured I'd

no reason not to

trust him as he

helped me into

the passenger seat

of a Chevy chariot.

 

“Is this your car?” I asked,

thinking: God drives a Mazda?

“It’s a rental” he replied,

moistening a finger and

rubbing out a smudge

on the windshield

before settling into

the driver’s seat.

 

As we drove off,

he kept assuring me

that everything

would be fine and

our goal was to merely

defrost my senses.

I began imagining

a small surgical-like

procedure that would enter

at the pupil of the eye.

 

Outside the car windows

a needle-like sleet

pelted the windshield.

The world seemed to be

weeping chilly tears.

Along the road,

remnants of an ice storm

had littered our commute

with downed branches

glazed in a husk of glass.

The fields along the roadway

were as clean and waiting

as a painter’s canvas.

I wondered with what of myself

could I have filled it in?

 

We arrived

at our destination,

just as the dread of

the procedure

was growing larger

in my mind.

God pulled the car over

and got out,

crunching cautiously

around to my side before

rapping on the window,

signaling me to get

out of the car.

In the distance 

I could make

out on the horizon

a gaunt snowman

with branches for arms

and a wilted carrot

drooping from its

lopsided head.

I took a breath

and got out

and as I did

God and I

inexplicably faded

together into white.

A moment passed

and we were

standing inside

a child's sketch

of a room;

it’s details

etched in crayon.

 

Out of nowhere

a young boy appeared

in a white lab coat

to play doctor

and introduced himself,

grinning as

if he were the punchline

to a juvenile joke.

I thought to myself:

This is the doctor

that’s going to perform

the procedure

to thaw the lamb

in my heart?

 

Despite my trepidation

I felt he had sympathy

towards my plight as

he was obviously still

ahold of something

I was not.

I needed to trust him,

favored as he was

by God, though God

was now nowhere

to be seen.

I resigned myself

to the fact that

a mere boy

would be executing

what may well be

a tricky procedure

to jumpstart my heart.

Still, the clock was ticking

as the recovery

of my feelings

waited in the wings.

 

The boy instructed me

to lie down on a table

sketched by his boyish hand.

He then brought

a white cottony ball

up toward my face,

and said reassuringly:

“See you on the other side”.

An acrid odor prickled my nose.

I struggled to stay aware,

fighting not to lose myself

to what was plainly

the erasing effects of ether.

10, 9, 8, 7, 6…

and then,

in the instant

I went under,

I woke up.

 

I lay reunited

with my body

in a warm, dark room,

foolishly realizing

I’d been asleep

through all of this.

I wanted to thank the boy

who seemed so beyond

his years and so kind

but it was too late.

God, the snowman, the boy,

the car, the ice storm…

all were gone.

 

Across the plaza, Christmas lights

throbbed like a purple heartbeat.

I laid my hand on my cat’s back,

marveling at her harmonizing effect

on my senses; her fuzzy warmth,

her feline smell, her brindled litheness.

Her very being as silent

and still as the dawn.

To lie so closely

beside another creature

was to make one’s sorrows palatable.

 

I tried to remember

how, what, why, and where 

I had been

just moments ago.

I must remember…

I’d met the God of Feeling

in the guise of a man…

in a dark parking garage.

He’d been kind and loving.

Then there was the boy

dressed like a doctor

and me lying on a table

and the boy putting me out

with a cotton ball soaked

in ether…and as I counted

to 10...I fell asleep

and promptly woke up

in the very same instant

with nothing to show

for any of it 

but my weeping. 

 

 

1/13/23

 

An Artificial Life

 

“If I should pass the tomb of Jonah,

I would stop and sit awhile,

for I was swallowed once

deep in the dark,

and came out alive after all.”

~Carl Sandburg

 

 

When you read this,

try thinking me dead.

That way my failings

will all be virtues.

 

I lived an artificial life.

It wasn’t always that way.

At heart I was

a lover of things

untouched by human hands:

a clouded sky,

a woods without a trail,

beaches bereft of prints,

stones made round

by persistent waves of water,

the iterations of stars

that can’t be wielded.

 

Yet, there I was

effecting my comforts

by the false flame of

a battery-propelled candle,

in awe of the light bending

through a counterfeit crystal,

resting upon earth-tone pillows

filled with polyester down,

adrift on a stagnant raft

of a bed wrecked on a fabric sea,

admiring the silk travesty of a rose

cloaked in the dust of my own skin,

aghast at the computer’s

burglarizing reminder

to wish a friend a Happy Birthday,

calmed by an oil infuser aggressively

trumpeting the comforts of cinnamon,

gazing at starlight projected

upon the ceiling

a celestial cluster-rash,

overly warm in sweaters

manufactured from a questionable

3^rd world textile blend,

charmed by my stuffed animal

imitating a freakish cartoon hare,

flanked by shelves of books parading

their diaries of lucid fabrications,

blocked by the faux lids

of the window blinds devised

to keep the sun’s breath

from waking me,

coerced by the tv’s constant

agenda to snare my attention

through a portal of specious lies.

 

I was swallowed by a city

and lived my life

inside a whale.

Who knew this

would be my fate,

to make my home

inside this feral fish?

I decorate with debris.

Unlikely things

wash up when my world

opens its mouth.

Orphaned by the fates

I have taken to

dreaming my way

back to a

traumatic lost

pretense of reality.

I remember

all that I loved

as augmented

by a spyglass.

There is a tunnel

between myself

and something

like a God.

 

That said,

I still live

only for

what I love.

Even its likeness

is enough

to calm and

sustain me.

 

1/4/23

 

The Forest for the Trees

 

” It’s easier to imagine the end of the world

 than it is the end of capitalism.”

                                 ~Slavoj Zizek (Philosopher)

 

Poetry as we know it is dead.

Self-expression has been hijacked

by a glut of attention seekers

whose waking hours are spent

selling their souls for a crack

at self-importance, something

that can only arrive

alone and in the dark.

 

On the internet, everything is worn

on the sleeve for effect.

I am on film therefore I am.

To live on camera has become

a way of life for so many

of the world’s misunderstood youth.

It’s as if the only means

to be loved were to imprint

oneself upon another;

litmus strips convincing

each other of our

unique bacterial worth.

 

Appearing on a screen

is the body's new poetry.

In other words, to cause a stir

one must stir the collective LCD pot.

This condition of modern life

betrays a demystification that

alienates us from the natural world.

Modern life, disenchanted by science

and mediated by technology,

has made our former relationship

with the macrocosm impossible,

even if we are professed botanists

or hikers, we become posers...

as cameras won’t let life be itself.

 

Without the ability to see nature  

as the dwelling place of unseen forces,

teeming with images to be summoned

and transformed, as opposed to

an undifferentiated mass of resources

to be either exploited or preserved,  

it is unlikely that we will fancy

the work of Homer or Virgil,

and even less likely that we will

create such images ourselves.

 

I have become unable

to wax poetically

on a forest as I find

descriptions of trees tedious.

Descriptions of nature do not

take us to themselves, but

rather suffer by comparison.

We have the means now

to take us directly to trees.

it’s called photography.

But then, a poem

breaks the cinematic rules.

 

A tree. A birch.

Pale skin, dark eyes.

Peeling limbs

thrusting hands

in every pocket,

gnarled roots hiding

below in darkness

strangling anything

in their path.

They live

a double existence.

White in the light,

while in the dark

nary a need

for eyes or skin.

Brutish bull dozers

carving existence out

with their fists.

Their nature, subversive.

Their means, survival,

living in two worlds

simultaneously.

Above and below.

Feeding on dirt

and moisture

and yet worshiping

the sky whiles

they keep

their feet firmly

on the ground.

Will we live only

on their meridian

unless we

learn to burrow?

 

Is poetry still possible?

Can we still write verse

if not about the perceived

transcendent order in the universe,

then about the feelings

of unease within ourselves?

Will we draw our images

from the detritus

of consumer civilization;

an empty plastic bottle,

an iPhone with a cracked screen.

For me, I want

the forest for the trees.

 

For poetry to reappear, the muses

must return from wherever

they fled when we banished them.

The conditions for their return

I suspect, would be the end of

the internet and many other things

that most of us value far more

than poetry.

But then, what if 

we’re left

mourning the absence of

something we can

no longer name?

 

 

1/3/23