What There Isn't

Is consistency a reality? Are we really talking about commitment instead? Everything changes except the constant changing. Nothing is consistent except that void, that Nirvana, no wind, no way, you can keep your heaven!

I've read that Lucifer was God's most devoted angel. And when God made man and asked his angels to bow before man, Lucifer--because of his profound love of God--refused. He could not put anyone before God. And yet he was thrown out of heaven. No wonder the devil attracts such a following. There are some things before which we will not be subdued. "Man is something that should be overcome!" Nietzsche is in Cafe Hell with the rest of the great poets and philosophers nursing a cafe au lait.

By the way, is this supposed to make sense to you? Are you supposed to be entertained? Follow the bouncing ball across the page until it makes you sing with glee? Me? Who am I to ask that silly question? Who are you? And why are you bothering to read this?

Maybe because you're consistently bored and need something like this: a window through which you see the other side of boredom. Here, look:

"Coping"


You just get used to it,
like news of another disaster
that happened somewhere else
in the not-so-distant past
that doesn’t want to die.

It’s nothing new.
Every day changing
into every other day.
It’s like a pair of new shoes
you can’t seem to wear in fast enough,
even though you can’t believe how quickly
the sole gets worn, looks tired.

You tried something different.
But nothing fit quite like this.
It’s all the same, you say. So,
why bother buying into this stuff
about a better life beyond?

We could be here
dreaming we were here
or we could be near to love
and just not know it.

Worse yet, we could quit now
coming up with new stories
about how we came to be
and believe we were always wrong.

But that wouldn’t be right.
Because what would we do for fun
without something so serious as this?

What There Is

Somehow I keep making posts on the 14th of the month as if this were a kind of mental menstruation of the writer in me. It makes sense since, essentially, these purgings remain childless, or fruitless, nothing like a poem you can show off to the neighbors. And it's somewhat painful, like the cramps seem to be for women.

What there is is confusion, especially when it concerns the women in my life and the women not in my life. Why is that I can't praise in words what I praise with my eyes, what I appraise with my hands? Why do I find it hard to utter beautiful words to what I find beautiful? Am I looking too much for what could be ugly, for what could be ghastly, for how much unbeautiful there is in a woman, so I can know how much I can live with it?

No. I'm going in circles, in cycles. After lying with a woman, in both senses, I'm trying to get up, and get out, just to look around.

"So Full of Shit"


It's been over a month
since I moved you and the kids
into an apartment that we
don't share like we did a bed
once upon a time.

It feels like it's been a lot longer,
like we're strangers changing shifts,
hard at work being who we are
and hardly speaking to each other
a word or two of praise.

Our job is to raise two kids,
to teach them--not to be like us, but
to be better than we manage to be
even at our best--so that
the damage we've done
to each other's hearts
doesn't touch them like a beating would.

The world is more than we can say,
and whatever they can imagine
we should encourage to grow.
I don't know what went wrong,
or if anything was ever right,
but I'll take the blame
if someone wants to point a finger.

I follow my bliss and it
gets me into trouble,
but also sets me free.
"You're so full of shit,"
you say to me
as I have said to you,
emptying ourselves of all the love
we fed each other, the love
that has made us sick with hate.

Now I can taste the bittersweet
lie I told myself, over 8 years ago,
when I vowed to be your partner
"for better or worse, until death
do us part." The truth is
we've already died and
now we're full of it--
that deathless desire
to be born again.

What I Don't Know

Why is this this and not that? Fly izzzzzzzzzzzzz SPLAT!

I wish I could smash the yearning for meaning in life, but that's like beating a child for eating too many cookies. Letting the rock roll back over you, instead of getting out of the way and watching it go. Think of Sisyphus, the one Camus made a hero of the absurd. It's useless to complain about your fate. In fact, like giving your torturer a reason to rejoice, if indeed you feel yourself to be a prisoner of life, why flinch? Shit. Sweetness is its own reward and accepting your punishment, like diabetes, can be managed without shame and blame. Name your price. Set your pace. Then put your shoulder to the boulder and face the music of silence: life without meaning.

The only coherence worth living with is the one you can have in the here and now, the one you carry in your heart like a stone.

"Progress"


Even though I know the light bulb dimmed
the small fires of the imagination,
that central heating sucked the warmth out
from the hearth, extinguishing families,
and though I know the printed word did more
to erase stories from our collective unconscious
than all the universities combined,

I still enjoy reading a book, by myself,
in winter, in my underwear, at home,
in the stone hut inside my heart.

What I Know

Not only have I never kept a diary, I've never been interested in reading someone else's (except perhaps my wife's before we separated). I know blogging has become bigger news than some so-called "real" news reporting. I know blogging appears to be, for some, mainly an example of today's narcissism. Still, the medium appeals to me. For some reason.

"It is difficult to get
the news from poems
yet men die miserably
every day for lack
of what is found there"

-William Carlos Williams, "Asphodel" (1955)

I have nothing new to offer in terms of the form. Hell, this is a template, just like most other pages you'll find. Even my content may not differ greatly from what you see elsewhere. Perhaps, my delivery? It's free. Take it or leave it.

"Another Beauty"


We find comfort only in
another beauty, in others'
music, in the poetry of others.
Salvation lies with others,
though solitude may taste like
opium. Other people aren't hell
if you glimpse them at dawn, when
their brows are clean, rinsed by dreams.
This is why I pause: which word
to use, you or he. Each he
betrays some you, but
calm conversation bides its time
in others' poems.

-Adam Zagajewski (translated by Clare Cavanagh) from "Tremor"

Zagajewski also gets credit for this statement:

"A writer who keeps a personal diary uses it to record what he knows. In his poems and his stories he sets down what he doesn't know."

So, here's what I know. What I'm willing to tell you. Today. Until it changes. Take it. Then leave it. Nothing is strange, only strangely familiar.