Blue Cliff

The question raised: Why does the mute poet speak in our mouths?

David's answer: Arrayed in white, there is silence.

Commentary

We speak of elder time

in influx rhyme

of other thans.

White dress, black dress and lime

so stillness spans.

Luddite

We are murders and suicides all,

patricides and matricides

and insecticides poured down the drain

We kill it or her or him

however we call the Earth

we murder and we rush

like no lemming ever has

down to the burning Sea,

alight with herbicides

and spilled oil

or the gray of oil burned

The Earth dies,

and still we dance,

thinking that $50

given to Greenpeace

will make a difference

What is it that we could do

to save her or it or him, the earth

can we turn off the machines

can we say to those that have not,

that we all must not have

what kills today, and all tomorrows?

I have a son, a boy of 13

I cry at night when I think of what he shall face

as the Earth dies, and the seas rise,

and unknown winds scrape the land

he is such a beautiful boy,

and I fear for him

Can we turn off the machines

Will we see the beautiful contrail

not a mark of the primacy of men

but arching sign of poison

that must end

If what I fear is true,

then this flattened world

will grow new mountain's

in the agonal  stresses

of our fall

The tectonics of our failures

leaving death upon death

and again more,

more than we can think

more than we fear

Mountains will divide us

as we scratch and scramble

for what remains

But the have-nots

will precede the haves

by only a year or a decade or two

From one height to another

voices will call

and perhaps in the strain

some sanites will emerge

perhaps too late

much too late

Television is want to show

that some killer meteor

will be our end

taking us off the hook

that we have nailed to a tree

leaving us to fear what we cannot see

but television is another machine

can we turn the machines off

can we stay our hands from murder

can we stop the rush

who will we call

as grave digger to a world that dies
is God in the Yellow Pages

listed under "divine"

will he or she attend to us

who are parricides

Can we turn off the machines

Pain (Neuropathy) i.

I am that maddend dog

that chews its leg,

that last unknowing.

I am the breath that burns

a gasp of fire

a sound rises from me

from me

it trumpets

in hoarse staccato pain

The sun burns bare skin

until char takes the place of blister

and the bone feels the roast

then there is no bone

no thing at all

the trumpet sounds

but only a pitiless

unsounding

there is no gabriel

but only that other angel

that from his throne

condemns

no soul

no soul

but only soulless

pain

pain

and again pain

clouds cast a shadow

light burns more slowly

bone are recast

sinews knit

fat is reclaimed from the fire

morphia claims the reborn soul

to cross a river, but not fall

not fall but trespass against

that other angel and gabriel both

and sleep

sleep were neither gods nor angels

can confound or heal or burn

sleep

only sleep

Pain (Neuropathy) ii.

 Breath.

Breath excreted
between yellow sour teeth
sudden and sharp


What does this mean,
sudden and sharp?
How can that be
that breath moving
between pursed lips
can be sharp?

Can we not be like a knife?
But, it is not like a knife
it has no sharpness
it cannot cut
no pain is set forth.

Breath excreted
between yellow and sour teeth
on the edge of a scream

Screams do not mean
listen to me, listen
for the pain in the scream
it's there.

But you cannot feel,
what is in the scream
me undiluted
me at the moment
that the shot shatters
and I am gone.

But you cannot feel,
what is in the scream,
me undiluted
me at the moment
that the knife slides home
and I am gone

Me undiluted,
me at the moment
when the fall ends
and I am gone

Me at the moment
when I tire
of sipping for air
me at that moment
and I am gone

Me at that moment
when an invisible world
has fallen and crushed my chest
me at that moment
and I'm gone

Me undiluted,
me at the moment
when all that is left
is bone and sinew
me at that moment
and I'm gone

Me undiluted,
me at that moment
when the hot blackness
and burning fat
is all that is left
me at that moment
and I'm gone

Screams do not mean
listen to me, listen
for the pain in the scream
it's there.

It bites at me
the scream hurts
leaving lungs and bone and sinew
broken behind the pain
listen to the scream
and learn.
it means.

Breath.

Dirty Rugs

.

.

.

my mother wove a rug
of scraps in a coarse braid
that went on for miles it seemed
but was only feet, but many feet

When the rug was done
it was an ugly oval thing
colors minced and mashed
to brown, gray and lime green

it lay on the floor
calling all dirt, calling all dirt
to find a new home
the dirt liked that

.

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Eschatons and Extinction

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How can we not think of extinction and by that I mean not the inexorable movement of time across the field of ideas that we so prize, but rather physical extinctions, the actual end of humanity, as our children or our children’s children are murdered by the rising tide of our own wastes, our own hatreds.

Ask the question of yourselves, Christian peoples and scholars:  Where does extinction fit within your finely wrought theology?  Is my grandchild’s death some years hence, whether it be by drowning in some future storm, or of poisoning in some mad fit of hatred, a realization of the eschaton?

How much beauty will be left unrevealed when our time is gone- how many dances left without steps,  how many scansions left rhymeless, how many songs unsung and lines undrawn. Is this your eschaton, your end-time and fruition?

Mikey in the Ground

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Mikey is not the kind of man that you would choose to meet. First of all, he’s a paraplegic; and even today that’s a turnoff for most people. Second, Mikey doesn’t like people very much. He makes sure that everyone around him knows of this opinion. Third, Mikey is a thief. He doesn’t take much, a silver spoon here, and the iPod there, and money left out anywhere.

The fourth thing about Mikey that turns almost everyone off is that he look like raw meat. His face is heavily scarred from fighting, accidents, and most importantly, from a severe and continuing case of acne. His mother, in one of her sober moments, told Mikey that he would grow out of his acne. But as often was the case, his mother lied. At 45, Mikey’s face was as red and white with pustules as when he was 16.

It would seem that the testosterone that caused his acne at age 16 was still with him at age 45. And as was the case at age 16, the 45-year-old Mikey was not at all successful with the opposite sex. At 45 it no longer mattered. His paraplegia left him virtually neutered, a fact that drove Mikey’s to anxious and disruptive anger. And this is the fifth thing that drives people away from Mikey: he’s badly oversexed and at the same time unequipped. So he talks about sex all the time, hits on women all the time, but can never go beyond talk.

Very few people knew how Mikey made a living. It didn’t seem that disability payments from Social Security could support his lifestyle. He had a decent apartment that was well furnished. He had an outrageous vehicle -- an oversized pickup truck with a folding ramp that allowed Mikey to power his electric wheelchair up to take the place of the drivers seat.

He drove maliciously. He ran red lights, daring the oncoming traffic to hit him. On the Parkway or on the Turnpike he weaved his great truck through traffic as if it were a Ferrari. But as much as he induced fear and anger in the drivers he sideswiped or forced onto the median, he seemed to have a magical ability to avoid damage to his truck or to himself.

At the funeral home, Mikey was laid out in an open coffin of polished bronze with silver tracery. His face was covered with pink foundation and ugly rouge, in an attempt to cover his acne. The room had a faded pink carpet. The walls suffered silently under red and white striped wallpaper. The colors suited Mikey.

Only three people went to his funeral. Surprisingly, all of them were women. Sandy told the mortician that Mikey was always generous with the tip when she was bartending. She said he was mean, but only because everyone was mean to him. She felt sorry for him.

The other two women just turned away when the mortician came near. Neither of them signed the guest book.

At the cemetery, Mikey was interred without ceremony. He was buried in a plain cardboard box. The mortician saw no sense in wasting a good coffin.

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Angels Unaware

Angels are neither light nor shadow,

but traverse both.

They bear all the weight of the universe

but are lighter than a mote of hydrogen.

Angels take the shape of dragons,

wolves and primodial beasts,

yet they are also given to be a suckling's breast

and childlike laughter.

They are the earth and the stars

that rise above the night.

But we do not trod on angels

nor sleep beneath their wings.

Angels are but imaginaries.

They are as real and hard

as music,

or a frescoed wall,

or a footstep in the dark.

They are a bare passing

that sometimes.

Just sometimes.