Posts for June 11, 2020 (page 5)

What animal would you be, if you were an animal?

It changes,

lately I’m thinking about the seal
even if, really, 
I’m a shapeshifting crow.

Sometimes I am thoughtful, 
taking things apart.
Sometimes I shine all of the colors-
Pink, green, purple, blue 
bounce off of my feathers

I scream and make a lot of noise
I am magic
I am the night
I love resiliently and I adore humor,
humming lots of funny songs to myself.
Life is a game and I appreciate a partner in it.

But lately I am thinking about an animal
I’d pretend in younger days, yes there were many then.
Lately I am the seal
lazing on rocks in the sun
still playful and fiercely loving
diving deep into the endless emotion and
overpowering strength of the water
harnessing currents and finding fish
flipping and flying loops in a reverse sky,
Diving deep into the crushing weight of darkness,
looking so comical on land
out of place
Still a friend to comedians 
more than willing to make smiles and applause
Both clumsy and graceful. 

when i am
crowned
the
patron demon
of lust and love
i just begin to
blush.
my skin
turns to red-
my horns
start to grow.
my tale
flicks
back and forth
back and forth
like a switch
picked 
from the tree of life.
the warmth 
makes its way
into every
pore and crevice.
i begin to
descend
and i wave to
the men.
my arrival
into hell,
my heaven.

my gnarly undereye bags 
(that make it look like I 
just lost a fight),
my unforgettable zits
(that keep expanding 
no matter what expensive product 
I slap on them),
my ginormous eyes
(that make others convinced 
I’m an alien),
this poem
(that I’ve edited countless times but 
no words seem to bring justice),
my inability to control life
(which has lead to an unimaginable loss
of family and childhood friends),
and my crooked teeth
(that look like I chewed
on bricks as a child).

I can only retroactively know
the reason why
(if I ever know at all).
Yesterday I trudged into a huge
swell about to
crash onto the broken
rocks cutting the soft
pads of my feet. There was nothing
to be gained from running. All I could
do was hold my breath,
close my eyes, try to
make myself narrow to
pierce the surface less painfully 
and wait…

Today I awoke unscathed, 
before their return
from the morning walk, 
drank coffee,
made a list,
like yesterday was lived in
by some other wife. 

If musts and shouldn’ts make
the boy and man, then a child
I will remain unlimited and sane,
outside civil society whose chains
have bound imagination and perverted
our intrinsic bents of genius.
Like Thoreau, I’ll write and grow
my beans, and live like Yeats at Innisfree.
Like Blake I’ll create my own system,
otherwise to be enslaved.  I will question
all the motives of those moral
pundits who have in earnest tried
to squelch artistic spirit with
their musts and shouldn’ts.

The orca figurine has tiny red eyes. And the ladybugs have moved 
into the bathroom. My wife reads the newspaper and asks me 
did I know so-and-so won a Tony. Children chase the cat. I nap to sounds
of organ and synth when a tone struck from this nowhere 

pours me into the mold of a figure prone on a bed, staring at oblongs of light 
as they play against the wall. Map or chart? Vanguardist art? Graph of amounts
and duration? Or nothing in the plain old sense, nothing but light moving 
into and through apartment blocks built on each other like salt deposits? 

The firemen have a nice life. They save us from ourselves, nobody needs
to be saved from them. They relax in lawn chairs under the open garage
or polish the chrome on their trucks or do their thing with the water, sirens, and lights.
Just their stiff overalls tucked into boots, ready to be stepped into, that makes me flush. 

Let’s just bracket that whole business about rare earth metals.
It won’t make a difference to the pigeons or the lovers feeding them.
Life will go on and it will go on without us. Nothing wrong with that, kid.
You can’t steal the show if you’re the star, and the show is always better when it’s stolen.

I must confess, I love the Storm more than the Sun
yes, I enjoy pretty days,
but my heart beats faster than after a race hard won
when thunder sounds and lightning sets the horizon ablaze 

yes, I enjoy pretty days,
with their gleaming Sun and mild wind yet 
when thunder sounds and lightning sets the horizon ablaze
I can’t help but smile at the Storm’s dark silhouette 

with their gleaming Sun and mild wind yet
to bring a single cloud, I don’t find pretty days as entertaining so
I can’t help but smile at the Storm’s dark silhouette 
since I know some excitement is soon to follow 

I must turn to beef in order
to become weightless, must
grow horns like anvils and
haunches like levees to reach
high above the earth, must
bull through quicksand
and china shops and road
blocks and poorly-given
sermons and science dull
as boiled tubers in order
to leave my hooves and join
the constellations, blanketed
with light, curled into a fetal
ball, a gestating starseed
about to burst like fireworks,
the loud and vibrant kind you
have to drive to Tennessee
to find, the kind that lay siege
on the heavens like cannons
pointed toward the moon,
spreading sparks as far as
these higher winds wish to carry.

I couldn’t make it. I was seven.
Stolen skateboard underfoot, I attempted
The ascent of “monster” hill at Duell and Meadow.
Tractionless, my size 3s were no match
for concrete clawing backward at the wheels,
and I splintered
into a telephone pole, forever after
taking the long way to Granny’s,
an extra half mile, McDonald to Main.

I think of this at the peak
of “Oh My God” mountain in Guyana.
Half a day’s climb straight up
on ice-mossed rocks in rainy season,
no switchbacks or
taking the long way.

The vibrations of Kaiteur Falls
crashing at the bottom
shakes loose the memories

of the steepest slopes I’ve summited,
of the smallest ones
that have summited me.

I never caught a fox.

This lifetime I don’t know how and
I probably haven’t sat near one while
knowing it and

if I am ever lucky like that, to see one
close enough to know the fox
trusts me, I will

know it

is you, like how I know it is an
ancestor visiting when
they appear
as rabbits.