today is yesterday’s tomorrow
said the gold foil letters
looping
across her t shirt
but it’s true
everything you longed for
yesterday
every aching want
each breath you took
despite it all
this is the prize
this day
this hour
now
the answer to your prayers
one more breath
then another
(2023)
Our Lady who art Chaos
Give us a fucking break
Thy Queendom comes
Whether we want it to or not
Give us no more than we can survive
At least for now
Because I got a lot of shit to do
Deliver my packages on time
And protect me from porch thieves
For this is the life we each have
Use it or lose it
We don’t have forever
Amen (or whatever)
(June 2023)
and there is in all of this a wish to disappear
to obliterate our old selves in a
burst of glittering gold
emerge phoenix-like from our own ashes
the pyre of history
the stubbled field of our ancestors
before the coming of the seed
I owe you nothing that you cannot
get for yourself
there is no debt between us
your unasked for gifts
left at the side of the road
leading to un-ceded territory
I owe you nothing in return
for all the nothing you have given me
as we meet empty-handed on the precipice
all of us straining for
a glimpse of
tomorrow
(2023)
This poem is part of a semi-published series called Body of Work, an ongoing dialog with identity and self-knowing.
they
said
my
eye
was
red
because
I
had
a
blocked
tear
duct
because
I
hadn’t
cried
enough
lately
and
I
said
how
the
fuck
is
that
possible?
(2023)
This poem is part of an ongoing dialog with identity and self-knowing. I’ve been buying a lot of new Canadian poetry at independent book fairs and am struck by its precision. A descriptive poetry, emotional but not instructive the way I find a lot of modern poetry can be. The poetry I like the best says “here we are, you and I, and this is what that’s like for me.” And the “you and I” can be anyone: you and everyone, you and no one, you and the world, you and yourself.
You maybe don’t have to love yourself. You can maybe just be satisfied with yourself and that will be enough for now. You don’t have to love toast but you might happily eat it every day. The heart is a muscle and all muscles need training. Even when the heart is metaphor for the locus of all your emotions, it must still be trained. If you want to move mountains, you start with one stone.
It is possible to exercise love for all creation by annihilating the self, but the empty vessel is itself a conceit, an opportunity only afforded in a society of abundance. If we are all Buddhists, who fills our begging bowls? Most of us must wade through the muck of our attachments–to spouses, children, parents, life–but to do this well requires an open, active heart. Brave-heartedness, the will to show love despite the countless reasons not to, will be key to our survival in the coming decades. Shallow, angry thinking cannot save us from our selves. We need more and stronger love.
We need more tears.
If we were not so frightened
If we didn’t need so
If every home was a homecoming
And none died gnawing bones beneath the walls
Would we still set these lamps
Still ward the world away?
Yes, Brother
For the woods are deep and pathless
Yes, light them
As we prepare to receive
Yes,
For the night you lose the path
For the night I set the lamps
For you
(November 2022)
at the end of the world
when the cities are finished
when the satellites have fallen
and the plastic sand is weighed down
by the bodies of our ships
barnacles erupting from their hulls
no divers to salvage their ambitions
someone is sitting
with the sun on their back
eating an apple
spitting seeds
(2022)
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