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

 

This Day Gives Birth to Itself 

“Oh, now all common things become uncommon and enchanted to me.” ~Dickens

 

Christmas at dawn,

the city bathed in salt

anticipating snow.

Sitting on the sofa

in a silent light,

I watch the day

give birth to itself.

How effortless

it seems, yet

how arduous.

Each new hour,

this very moment,

nothing can keep

from remaining

full of

the possible.

 

Yet the mind

can’t help but

reach backward,

recalling

what it’s learned;

how it survived

heartbreak,

how it learned

to live on its own.

But longing’s

not of the mind.

It can’t be

stepped out of

like a thought.

It’s what we feel

that arranges

the world.

 

Let’s decide

today,

we too,

will be

a poem

that writes

itself.

 

Cold air penetrates

the smudged pane

like light through

a glass eye.

This room was

made for morning,

for light to break

down its door.

We needn’t beg you

into the room.

Where is the child

in all this radiance

when it’s hardly

possible

to look directly

at the sun?

 

Each day is

a foundling

swathed in

hand-me-downs

yearning to

walk amongst us.

If we take it up

in our arms

and press it

lovingly to

our heart,

our care

will make it holy.

 

12/26/22

 

 

 

 

 

And So the Days Go By

 

The days go by

like rows of

unfamiliar houses

seen from the

window of a

Greyhound bus

at night.

 

I lean my head

against the glass

as the houses

parade their

home-made stories

amidst the windswept

particles of a

sideways snow.

 

It seems

to me that

the houses

are like days

that have built

themselves,

and each day

is a room

only to be

lived in once.

The darkness

projects my reflection

on the window;

is this how

the world

holds up

its mirror?

My forehead,

pressed to

the glass like

a conjoined twin,

the other half

of a Rorschach

springing from

my skull.

 

Too bad

the lit windows

of the passing

houses fail to

welcome me

home,

their inhabitants

inevitably mistaking

my tenderness

for weakness

as they

did when

I was a kid.

 

At night

on unfamiliar streets,

who of us

belongs anywhere

but within

the confines of

our minds?

 

As the bus

whisks me

past the spoils

of other lives,

a darkened

suburbia seems

inhospitable to

my open heart.

 

Maybe because

my art

stems from

a wound,

my desires

remain un-afflicted,

refusing to be

baited by

outside forces,

even the ones

I feign

fitfully to comply.

 

Is this how

I leave

my youth

behind?

 

And so

the days go by

with their

unused light,

each person

a temporary relative

on the set

of another

play.

This is

sure to end

in goodbye.

 

Maybe that’s why

the days go by

in the length

a man goes to

find solace,

like the breath

of a clock

between one digit

and the next,

like a sin

of the self

that leaves

no trace,

like the acceptance

of a sadness

that supersedes

its cause,

like the yearning

to make art

from one’s

greatest regret.

 

Why then hide

this stain

beneath

our clothes?

 

And so the days go by

like rows of

familiar houses

seen from the

window of a

Greyhound bus

at night.

 

12/14/22

 

 

 

 

Prima 

Materia  

“My quietness has a man in it, 

he is transparent and carries me 

quietly, like a gondola through 

the streets.”   ~Frank O’Hara 

                                                   In Memory of My Feelings 

 

By day, I live my life. 

By night, my life lives me. 

How can they 

weigh the same? 

It would seem an absurdity. 

I dare to ask 

which is more true 

or any less fictitious, 

a life that lives itself 

or the one with 

self constrictions? 

 

Asleep I practice letting go. 

Surrendering to the silence, 

a dormant thing set afloat 

in a boat of mulch and ballast; 

a laid out Moses  

ferrying forth,  

whose finger steers 

its rudder North. 

 

Below are dangers no less real 

with dramas more deranged. 

Life on the surface no less 

more than surgery 

performed in a haze. 

 

Like Eliot said 

I go then like a patient 

etherized on a table 

the evening spread out 

before me, and myself 

a hapless fable. 

 

Tonight I may see

my mother wrapped in 

a snarling stole, 

beside her my twin brother 

clutching a shard of coal. 

Who will play my father 

is anybody’s guess 

seeing that he's 

long since gone, 

his memory 

put to rest. 

 

Still, that doesn't mean 

he'll be a no-show, 

as dreamland 

invites them all back

like a time machine 

beneath my bed sheets, 

fusing fictions with

the occasional fact. 

 

The Loss 

that Makes Us

Whole Again

Wholeness has a hole in it from the start.

The day we lose something, its absence 

draws in new air like an iron lung

filling us up again with restorative silence. 

Ill prepared for the privilege of living,

there’s nothing more debauched than thinking,

but a loss can make us whole again;

the unforeseen realization that the negative

is merely the diary of our own shadow.

6/12/21

 

Youth

 

I had what you have once.

I learned too late that

the only ones worth their salt

are the ones that overcome you.

 

Time is a boy full of life.

Time is a beautiful boy.

Time is a hairy leg hung

over a ledge who’s toes

barely touch the river.

 

Because I needed you

I courted you, not meaning

to exploit our relationship,

knowing my love

would never die.

Having loved and lost,

I came to want out of you.

 

You who would have

no compunction but to

drag me by the hair

for all my days,

or were they yours?

Rubbing my nose in

every foolish failure.

 

To thwart you was to turn

a prince into a slave,

to pass the hours

putting things right,

treating a throne

like a toilet

all the while believing

you would return

whatever was taken

from me.

 

Yes, you were a dream

earned only by sleep.

Why couldn’t I see

that surrendering everything

would only bring you closer,

that giving myself away

opened the one door

out of you?

 

Time is a majestic fur coat

held tightly round the throat.

I decorate myself with

the death of all innocence.

But I am better than death.

I will outwit you.

I will do with you

knowing what you did to me;

taking everything I loved

and making me watch

as you choked the life

out of me gently, slowly,

and with such great passion,

I slowly lost consciousness.

 

You made me watch

as everything fell away,

a golden wheat field

mutating into scorched earth

no wind could bother

to caress.

 

My hands, which once

ran circles around the sun

have had to learn to sign,

palms pressed in prayer

because even the angels

are now deaf and unable

to hear music.

The heart, too broken

for its own good

will love anything it can

as it struggles

to deserve you.

 

Now I keep my body

under glass;

a hocked wristwatch

I wish I could buy back.

I suck the wind

back into my lungs

as if it were

my own breath.

I remember I once

tasted your spit

simply because 

you had spat it

and because I loved you

more than myself.

 

God save me

from game shows

in the afternoon.

God save me

from doing

crossword puzzles,

but keep me

enamored of mysteries.

Where is the salt

in being assaulted

by air waves?

I am taking responsibility

for my reverberation.

I am taking myself back.

I will not let you use me

because I will use you first.

Yes, you might

have the last laugh.

But I will have

the last cry

and my crying will

wake the angels

and bring them

to my side.

 

I will find a beauty

that seduces insects,

that does not discriminate

between blossoms and shit.

I will rot slowly, slowly

becoming a fermentation

that becomes a fertilizer

that becomes a flower bed

that births a magenta zinnia.

 

I will have what you had once,

but this time

it will be forever.

 

12/02/22