Soulquake
on the radio
an old folk song
a mountain
voice my skin
pricks…
echos of a past life
soulquake
Abigail Washburn singing “Bright
Morning Stars”
Sorry, Einstein, relativity cannot
create the unified theory of everything.
No wonder you couldn’t get it to work.
Time, not space, is the foundation.
It reaches out in three dimensions.
Space, a subordinate to time, interacts
with three dimensions of its own.
That’s why I can’t separate what
happened in the past from the present
Nor care if I was in Kentucky or Ohio.
When the future arrives, its new tangent
will throw space into another dimension.
I will never know if today
Is relevant to where I was yesterday
when I couldn’t remember where I am
supposed to be tomorrow.
Thanks a lot Gunter Kletetschka
for your new 3D time theory
The fine art of failure comes naturally to me
don’t know if it’s genetic, or some voodoo curse,
stumbled so many times, you just wouldn’t believe.
I’d be lying if I said I never did grieve
metaphors fumbled, images over-nursed,
the fine art of failure comes naturally to me.
Put my missteps in a jar, a basket of coarse weave,
in a pine casket carried by sleek black hearse,
stumbled so many times, you just wouldn’t believe.
Could give in, put up my pen, enjoy the long sleep,
but to give up and not try would be even worse,
the fine art of failure comes naturally to me.
One day, sober and of sound mind, I’ll see
hard-fought success overflow my purse,
stumbled so many times, you just wouldn’t believe.
What will that look like, victory? Verse free
of artifice, scans like still water, lines taut and terse,
yes, the fine art of failure comes naturally to me,
stumbled so many times, you just wouldn’t believe.
There’s a man I greet each morning,
At the rising of the sun,
We nod in solemn acknowledgement,
When our day has just begun.
We rarely speak to each other,
Just take in a quick and quiet gaze,
How many years have we done this?
At the starting of our days.
But lately I’ve been noticing,
Some changes in the gent,
He’s lost his youthful vigor,
And I wonder where it went.
I note the deepening lines,
That gather ‘round his eyes,
I note his unspoken introspection,
And I hear his drawn out sighs.
His hair on top is thinning,
And his cheeks they seem to sag,
I see some darkening spots upon his skin,
And his motion seem to lag.
I wonder how it happened,
And how sudden it all seems,
I recall his earlier moments,
When he had fewer worries and oh so many dreams.
I watch him scrape the foam and silver,
From off his knobby chin,
He seems to realize what I’m thinking,
As he gives me a knowing grin.
“You know you’re burning daylight!”
We then say together,
As I glance out the nearby window,
One last check upon the weather.
Then one last quick inspection,
Of my friend there in the glass,
As we turn our backs upon each other,
And go to our daily tasks.
The train doesn’t ask your name— it only knows direction.
Steel pulled taut over promise, its breath a howl through the pines
of Truckee,
rising into the throat of the Sierras like a question:
what now?
You sit beneath the rust-sung cover of the engine,
a job of twenty-two years folded behind you
like ticket stubs from stations passed—
not torn,
but kept.
The wheels speak in couplets:
Forward—anyway. Forward—anyway.
Even as your fingers brush the throttle,
the wind decides its own speed.
Even as you chart the grade,
gravity wants its say.
Below, the bones of Chinese laborers
and Mormon sweat glint between rails—
men who gave their names to the dirt
and still the spike was golden,
still the hammer fell,
still the lines were married
where Utah holds its breath.
And you?
You are that hinge now,
the seam between “was” and “what if.”
The fire of your long devotion flickers,
then leaps again—
not into yesterday,
but into next.
Through Donner Pass,
the snow sheds whisper warnings,
but you ride with fate beside you
like an old friend not quite trusted.
The past calls from each switchback,
but the present burns in the boiler.
And the descent into Sacramento is not surrender—
it’s arrival.
It’s the earth softening beneath oak and orchard.
It’s the tracks smoothing like song
after storm.
You stand now,
not because the train stops,
but because you’ve learned
how to ride it,
how to jump,
how to land
without breaking the silence
of what still waits
beyond the curve.
I didn’t ask to be born
and I wasn’t born, really.
Cut from my safe haven
by the cold stainless steel
of a surgeon’s scalpel.
I’ve been cutting back ever since.
In the same womb responsible for my creation
I rewarded my progenitor with a death threat
a scarlet-red ticking time bomb
for a mother afraid of needles and
stomach-turned by blood, guts and viscera
even at fifty-six.
Centuries or even decades ago
I would have killed one or us both
before I even drew a tiny breath.
I don’t remember many birthdays
of my thirty-one.
I’ve seen pictures
false memories planted by photographs
I’m unsure which is more real.
Birthdays aren’t celebrated as you age
especially when you’re a man.
There are no parties, few gifts,
and really, I think we prefer it that way.
The attention can be uncomfortable
but every breath is a reason to be grateful
and to celebrate. Especially when you weren’t
really supposed to exist in the first place.
I like to joke that I wasn’t born
I’ll say I was removed, evicted,
pulled screaming from my mobile home.
We all enter the world screaming
if we have lungs with which to breathe.
I think there is a wisdom in newborns
they have a sense of the horrors that await them
the terrible frightening beauty of existence.
We know it, innately, and we scream.
As adults, we recognize life’s bitter hardships
and we know that another year
sweatily slogging through the mud and the mire-
no better reason to sing.
Here at thirty-one
I can’t decide, the way this world’s turning
should I sing, or should I scream?
I’ll do both until my throat’s burning
like a Linkin Park song from ‘03.
I want to get drunk for the first time
Just so I can stop this feeling
I want to come to your house
Just so I can argue with you
I want to breath in
Just so I can scream it all out
I want to feel it all at once
Just so I can never feel this pain again
I want to let you take advantage of me
Just so I have a real reason to cry
I want you to be here
I want you to see me
I want you to love me
Like I’m your child
