"My barn having burnt down, I could now see the moon"
Suddenly, the movement stops
and with a hiss and clang
the doors pull open
and light
sears across your face
and cool air
fills your lungs
and thoughts of food
dance about.
Isn’t this how all journeys
should be?
Such expectation of arrival
and desire – just to get off?
Only its death that’s
here to greet you.
And each dog’s bark
seems to say,
“Hurry up, you’ve arrived!”
History wishes to embrace you.
It’s 10:00 pm
Sunday, full of rain.
John Lee Hooker
on the stereo
crying out from in
like me, for Maybelline.
Me, sitting here
picking at my wounds
slowly, like a good drink
letting the taste of the day
drain away
slowly falling back
into the only thing
that is true, the night
and sleep
where better dreams of Maybelline
‘ll have to do.
Softly, softly, our natures sing.
The sun it rises, the warmth will bring.
Slowly, slowly we start to wake
the day a death
for heaven’s sake.
Never, never we see too far
necessity it blinds
the scar we are.
It’s raining
Saturday night
not even June yet.
It’s refreshing
just to be here
high and dry
nothing really clear
everything too near,
the raindrops, the dark,
the hum of the too low light.
Freedom waits for these moments
beyond necessity
where nothing has to be
and all the dross
falls away
and there is a cool wind
over the consciousness
as you lay on the bed
and you accept to accept
what pretends has to be
parading
knowing it’s only one kind
of clarity.
We are here
to disappear
isn’t that clear
clear, clear, clear?
What other thing
but a bit part
in a magic act.
Why can’t you
grasp that fact?
There is no meaning but this;
We’ve been kissed
by a godfather
filled with bliss.
Coated with a dust
of something is amiss.
I always won.
Always.
Even when I had lost
I always found
some way,
always found a way
to the top
of the heap.
Now that I have learnt
to lose
I cannot be beat.
My race is now one.
All that I love.
Like all that I know.
Just a handful of daisies
picked before fall’s first snow.
Little matters, matter little.
Desire the unanswered golden riddle.
“darkness awakens sleep”
Out of darkness
we make darkness
like a lit candle
grows to its end.
Wiping the dry smirk
off the mirage
of my eyes,
being done with
this or that
here nor there,
absurd like
a grain of wheat
under the conveyor belt
or
wedding tin cans
abandoned in the corner
of a newly paved parking lot
a
cheap echo
I hiss my strange innocence
against the
rhythm and dance
even closing time
even the proprietor’s golden smile
even the alluring twilight
throwing shadows out the door.
In breaking up the world
metaphor by metaphor
by saying “no more”,
I go before my time
to sleep in search
of what is always, always
mine.
Everyday I say thank you for
the new morning.
But should the morning
not be given,
Ah! how I’d wake up
and embrace the newer night!
It’s like the first Christmas
you finally don’t
get anything.
Ah! How then
the bells ring in
the present!
I remember well
those bright dead days of autumn,
how my brother, the great white hunter
crushed the wee head of the partridge
he had winged.
Crushed it slow and rythmically
with the heel of his heavy boot.
How the farmer, ‘cross the road
filled the burlap sack
with sure and steady hand.
Filled it with a litter of pups
and flung it into the
cold clear water of the crick.
I remember
how my grandpa, at the dinner table
sucked and gummed his turkey
with intense joy and abandon.
The juices edging out the sides
of his eager, hungering mouth.
How my young friends and I
squatted over the chilled stiff fly
and with the delicate hands
of surgeons or lovers to be,
slowly one by one
pulled each leg out from under
its soft blue body.
I remember well
those cool receding days of autumn.
I remember so I give my thanks.
My thanks not a sacrifice to a glaring Moloch
but only,
thanks that I am a man
and not anything else.