Not having the poetry means not seeing yourself in the soft light
It means not seeing the mountain of dishes as part of a long line of laying down one’s body for the mundane conveniences of others
And it’s not just the little things—it’s big things. The transcontinental railroad, for example, does it run on rails or does it run over the bones of those who laid those rails down?
And there’s not some abstract glory in that, that’s not what I’m saying. It wasn’t sacrifice, it was survival. And not a pretty one
I’m saying there’s poetry in it. Because those rails and those trains, all these people and all this cargo still run down those lines—and we didn’t deserve their body any more than we deserve yours or anyone else’s nowadays
So it might as well have been yours or mine then—but we’re lucky it wasn’t
So, if you can see the poetry in it, when the dishes pile high, and someone forgot to run the washer the last time through, and someone says where did all the coffee mugs go and you just have no goddamn idea where anything goes, but you know that you’ll stay right here seemingly doing it all and seemingly doing nothing—as if the only cash the universe accepts is time
West Loop, Chicago
The first final act again
The bluebells rise with their leaves already wilting, or softening, as though not quite intending to stay for long
Their flowers, little bells indeed, hang down, dangling, like the bells they told you about from the start, bits of jewelry on the wrists of a dancer bouncing to a stop
And in the balmy sun of May they yellow a bit, and bleach, their pale necks still rising even as their faces bend closer to their baubles, barely buried in the ground
“watch this dada, dada watch this” he says again, as he does the thing he feels born to do, an act which was discernible even from the bing-bong of his song, which would not be impressive, even boring, but somehow worth the watching at the risk of it never having been
Windfall
I am the version of myself that will experience death.
The world found me when I was a child - a seed with enough to leaf, and found me again in my adolescence - a stick with an aching weight at my tip, and found me again as I fought at the frontier of myself, against the blade.
When I became a father, it blew me down.
Now as my third child still ripens on the branch, I am on the ground, bruised and slightly growing over. And when he finds me, he may smell the sugar and think me sweet.
The billionaires aren’t bailing
us out - they’re going full bore
to the stars - they want to be space men,
moon men, men of Mars, when
the rest of us, down here, are rooting for them.
Billions of us are battening down,
working ourselves into the dark ground,
like earth worms, earth turned, burned and black, some of us
grabbing hold down here, never going back,
are rooting for them.
Cave Syndrome
Does the sun make a sound when it’s fiery arms whip round
in open space, It’s bulging surface burping into the ether,
an untended core like a forge smelting weapons for a war
long fought, or perhaps not yet thought of
the mind at night is a cold cavern, walls burned out
and black against a phosphorescent scope,
all pitch and echo, thoughts let go like lanterns
with the hope of a sound ascent
crimson is a silent cut across
the dome, the first quiet light against
a roan coat, soon to be awoke and carrying
all consequence, the hum of some small heat,
a crack, a stone
Soft Seed
There is an everlasting mark upon the surface of the ocean, that persists for at least this generation and perhaps will more, that no swell or break or passing ship has moved
No light shines through it, as black as it is, like a scar, like tissue anchored to some tendon and bone of the sea, a buoy bound beneath its free and bobbing form
I held his hand for the moment he held breath, a perfect paw, curled slightly and sharp, its thinness too thin and thinning, breaking hot through the membrane of this wetter world, a fiery try, both beast and basalt, just barely passing through
Legacy Nat Geo Subscription
Carrying the dead weight of dominion
and bait, a thirst that cannot sate
its own thickening vines, one hundred and forty eight
gold spines stacked behind the recliner where he’d dine
on salisbury steak, the thin red blood of a grape
dribbling down his chin, conquests like a sopping gown
around him, and the rest of it chewed like cud.
On the farm in Cantrall, Illinois making noodles for a Japanese curry over a fire.
Rolling Meadows Farm along the Sangamon River, Cantrall, Illinois 2020
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