November 30: As if Playing

 Look at them all, 

as if the children they were,

scheming and playing

all in the yard.

All in the yard, they stay

young men, and

dreaming

of a time when the lessons

weren't so hard.

The world is a yard

by a foot and half, 

a map on which 

they blueprint their 

moves

as if building war engines

from blocks to be 

used in a yard where 

some are armed with bullets

and others with sneers

and rocks. 

They go to it as if playing.

Playing, as some play asleep

and some play awake. 

The tin-can telegraphy of 

war plans ignored

because another game

seems to have more reward:

it could happen and has.

Too sadly I'm saying that

lives like broken toys

were lost

while the grown-ups

were playing.

November 29: Honored in the Breach

 There is a kind of decorated scoundrel

who exists as an example

that certain honors don't come

without a cost,

whose wake leaves such a toll

that certainly their soul

must be included in the 

ranks of the lost.

There are those who have been feted

having been fated

to do the things that ordinary men

would spurn,

that generations unborn

would read their biography with scorn

at the horrific legacy

they have learned.

Such men lead nearly blessed lives,

have fortunes, friends, and wives

all too good you well might think

for all they had done,

and when their end comes round,

in retrospect it's found

they did even more foul horrors

under the sun.

But having come to a close

in that ultimate fixed pose

they escaped disgrace

to their face

and sadly, "won". 

November 28: Justified

 The greatest sins (rape, torture) were triumphed eventually

with the greatest of pride; "Come and see

(click the link) that 'we' were justified."

The tit for tat that tattered the centuries

with war was glowed up for the new era

and everyone wanted more.

It was fought in press releases and with

the best intentions, and by people

meticulously checking their mentions.

And one side won but lost and the other

lost but won, and for a certain kind of mentality

that was part of the fun.

And no one really scrupled over how it 

all began. Stories differed, and kept on 

differing. Right according to plan.

And once over, those distant people felt their various

wounds and traumas, while nearer home

they threw a party to toast the end of the drama.

"Modern warfare, technological triumph,

tribute to our age": whatever. Rituals were

needed to sanitize the filthy remnants of rage.

The ancient horsemen rode with honor in the

ghastly parade. (Between you and me, to see them;

we all should have been dismayed.)

Famine taking his narrow, satisfied bows to

the most cheerful harvest song, to celebrate the dead fields

where nothing natural went wrong.

Broken ships and far-flung shipments to needless

distant ports left so many cupboards

intentionally bare, the margins brutally short.

War, that old charger, riding in his bloody medals

to a martial drum had success with the rumors of

his name and from where he would come:

"From everywhere, from all sides, trust no one!"

with messages confused, the people had

destroyed themselves, not knowing they were used.

And Pestilence, the opportunist, showed his face and let

the mob applaud, have done his best to direct the arrows

that were once slung only by God. 

Death led the way, and also fell behind and showed them

to the portal, with nothing more than these words to say:

"Remember, thou art mortal." 

But not today for that brave multitude, that owned: they showed out,

they ate, they became epic and immortal

apotheosized, heroic, digitally great:

the antlike soldiers, who memed and considered

all this war an op, having created great war machines

in Adobe and Photoshop,

drenched themselves in fake blood as people with

real blood died, they fought a great war to be

seen, and felt very justified. 

November 27: Fears

 Having given to fate

a hostage, it's you

that suffers terrors, insensible, alarming

on their behalf,

a vital organ attached by a nerve

but let free. 

The nightmare of colic, fever, 

the broken bone, 

even the thought that

they won't be happy.

And when that nerve has been

stretched until

you don't know where or how

they are now,

even worse than death

things at last

appear.

Life can be terrible and it isn't true

that you don't get more than you can 

endure.

There's worse than death to fear,

and that is

it's horrid comfort to you:

nothing to fear after,

evermore.

November 26: Libraries and Lighthouses

 The wonders of the world arrive

through sweat and tears

of human labor

and then 

are unmade again.

Libraries are burning

book by book

and the 

light of their immolation

must tell

you:

here are rocks

that would surely shock

the strong ribs

of your fine ship.

But we cannot sail on

for treasure beyond price

may well be lost--

what is the cost

of danger--

if to save a thousand worlds?

Cast anchor at your

distance, and let the lifeboats down.

November 25: Eruption

 Red and white up from the 

dark belly where no eye

saw the light from the great heat

stirring, churning,

under the terrible pressure:

the violence of shifting 

plates, the rock and the hard place

that is also rock, streaming free

upwards no more

to stop it from happening

it 

finally

explodes.

White then red

then

black.

November 24: Under the Pomegranate Tree

 "then she turned herself into a seagull

and he became like

a snare for her feet."

And under the pomegranate tree, 

grandmother's voice became small

and the sun on the white houses

seemed harsh but

the sky, dark, like wine pressed

long before.

She changed the subject.

"Medusa was fortunate, Athena did love her.

She heard her little prayer

but could not stop her noble brother,

and gave her the face

to make men leave her alone."

We knew men were not heroes

and neither were gods when she said it

and listened as if turned

to stone, and she said at length as the 

shadow of the pomegranate 

spread, "We don't 

have that gift," she said, "And you

will never be a bird. Never 

a fleet-footed Atalanta,

dodger of men, even if I warned you

of the golden apples in your path. 

I can't give you anything 

to make you free of the 

grasp of man or God, 

but one alone:

to make yourself into a tree,

and cast your roots so deep into the earth

that you drop your regards to

Persephone and cast

your branches so high

maybe they will see you from Olympus.

But be so still no one hears anything,

not even the wind in your hair

like the leaves, even the leaves of grass

that tell the tale of the asses' ears

of Midas. I have 

even been a tree, fallen but not dead."

Fallen but not dead. and still

leaves shooting, still roots casting

deep into the soil of us.

I believe we learned.

November 23: Grandmotherly Kindness

 Mother Nature is also 

Maiden and Crone,

the potential for all things,

and herself alone.

There is twilight wisdom 

under the great moon

amid the falling leaves,

when she fucks off

by herself to do as she pleases

and deals with her salty 

kindred and their

civilized diseases

with corrective dispatch.

She will catch you as you fall

but snatch your ears 

for you and your edges, too. 

She is closer to heaven and

its counterpart and has learned the art

of the Holy Headslap.

She bites not to be mean

but to teach you what teeth are

for. And what's more

what sharp teeth she has! 

You will face death in many forms 

before you eventually pass,

but if she can help it, not

disgrace, because she raised the ass

you mean to show. And if you know

you know, she has beaten it

only to give you leather

for the steel of the world. 

November 22 (belated): Thankful

 As you consider your

many blessings, mentally set a place

for those who don't sit

at any table, and say your grace

not for what you have been given,

but for all that you have not,

all our sins might not

be shriven,

but at least we can say

we never

forgot.

November 21: Quenching Fire

 The red-hot iron

must be touched with water. 

Brittle, fragile

is the steel

held so long in the flame

but dousing

keeps it all from breaking 

and gives flexibility

we can fold into

new hardness. 

Fire forges and

removes impurities,

and weakens, too. 

Steam releases the scale and 

solidifies.

Sometimes we all

could do

with a good

quenching.

We could learn from water

having come through fire.

It is a way to

endure.

November 20: Rain

 Even the grass can

collect rain, you might think.

Who could be 

so bereft of place

that not even the sky

was theirs? 

But no.

Not a well.

Not even a jar.

Broken pots and broken heads

spill drops alike.

Who in the world are you

when not

even God's rain is yours?

Even the grass can collect rain.

You might think the grass

is over you.

November 19: Well-lived

 There is clearly much left to do,

and though we may fail, we will

get on with it, to do our best,

to persevere, and lead

even where others don't care to go;

for this is the business of living, you know.

You are not perfect, but you must

push on. This is the lesson

for after I am gone, to build

a place though one may not see

the success of the future family

I have made that space for,

or to give attention to the dignity

of those whose dignity is not seen,

though that sight was prayed for. 

And if there is any legacy

I leave, let it be service, for I have done what I would

and that, after all

made for a great life.

November 18: Pandora's Pithos

 Hope is the little bit left in the jar

that will get you through the next night--

and maybe one more.

It's the distance you can still go when

the going is hard and

too much of you is too sore.

It's the part of the paycheck you have left in 

the week, and the paycheck before 

your rent is due.

It's the one phone call you know

you can make where someone is going

to pick up for you,

It's the time you have in the twilight

where the doctor stills says "She's just sleeping:

wait and see."

It's the time left on your own clock

wondering if this is all you'll do--

or be.

It's the forgiveness you have for the

people in your life who always 

are getting you mucked up--

And maybe the faith you have in mankind

knowing we're so 

perennially fucked up.

I don't care where you're from

or who you think you are,

but I know we're all just keeping something

left inside our jar.

November 17: Without Resignation

If I had a platform, like a great

blank canvas I think I would

paint the true and the good, and the

not-so-good, and still true--

this is what the artist is meant to do.

I don't know what else the medium

is for, and it doesn't stop

in time of war: the canvas only now shows

the death of horses, the murder of musicians,

the destruction of a shop.

Poetry has been written in foxholes,

poetry has been written in internment camps

and while following dead bodies piled high

in a cart. There is no renunciation possible

from the human business of art.

We pick up a pen to change the world,

and though we might not change it,

to put it down is like saying we'd rather

watch it all drown. 

The poet doesn't acclimatize but is

the barometer. The poet does not sanitize but tells

what has been needing--we are not here

to whitewash the blood but to

give voice to the bleeding. 

To shine a light in the fog of war

or cast the landscape in a brutal highlight

like the flashing of shells exploding--to find

the lyricists who bring the music of the

horror to mind--those you could do

without resignation.

An example: I could tell you the oil fields

of this war are orchards and that blue gray smoke

had risen above green-gray leaves like a pillar

of warning by day and the horror of 

losing one's heritage at night, or explain

war sometimes has profits that never

find their way into a bank: not money or blood.

The fallen dancers bleeding at the legs,

the born-to-soon and too-soon-to-die,

the poet trapped in the crumbling of a city,

the false meteor shower of a war-drenched sky.

The beliefs like excuses, the expressions of cause:

I could unwind the layers of gauze

where a limb was splintered and now a red

line of careful stitches replaces that part.

And you can fill in the rest.

No resignation, only art.

Only still trying one's best.

November 16: Tribalism

 They will come to this excuse

from the pacifist Left or the Libertarian Right

and attack people in the darkest alley

or even in broad daylight.

They'll say they've learned the secret truth--

hidden all this time--

the same one dug up again and again

to justify any crime.

And wrap themselves in the knowledge

that every "might" was a "should"

because those guys over there are bad,

and us over here: are good. 

November 15: Noise to Signal

 The louder you are

the less I hear

as you drown out your own words

with a roar

and all I see

is the blur of your acts

sinking your message

in the deep.

Perhaps I am more

persuaded by facts

after all, but don't

mistake inaction for sleep,

I am getting on in years

and I fear I save my time

and words in

making sure I am correctly heard,

the better to be understood--

are we good?

November 14: More in Disappointment than in Shock

 I've almost gotten used to us,

humans, I mean,

in our capacity for sheer viciousness.

Oh, I get my temporary shocks

from violent images

and am surprised by specifics

of what and where--

and don't think I don't care!

But consider horrific

 terms like "collateral damage",

"child soldier" and 

"corrective rape" and

here we are:

elevated apes

who learned to sharpen rocks

and then

developed entire cults and rituals,

language and signals,

to sort out what we

do with them.

November 13: Declined

 The sins of the fathers

get delivered to sons--it's true.

They're also sent to daughters, too.

I guess the useful lesson I've learned

is that the package can be returned.

Sometimes you need spare boxes,

you need receipts,

you need to lay everything out

nice and neat,

taking careful notice of the 

addresses and names--

and just ship that nonsense back from

where it came. 

Heck, just write

"Return to sender,

wrong address"--

you do not have to accept 

any of this mess. 

If they try to hand-deliver,

refuse to sign.

"I did not order this:

package declined."

If they leave it waiting on the porch,

maybe hit it with a torch.

But if you weren't there where

the trouble begins,

maybe you don't have a use

for those sins.

You have your own stuff

for which to atone,

so just leave that old man business

alone.

November 12: How Deep

 How deep, then

can any infamy go

before you admit you 

chucked your soul

right out the window?

And any upward

gentle draft of

your future sailings?

In the rearview mirror's aft,

amid frantic emailings of 

your dire fundraising,

The crazing of your

support, sport,

is that you came up short

in figuring out why you were

supposed to box with the world

whilst hitting yourself in the face.

And yet you don't bear disgrace from

these my humble lines--

they describe too many politicians,

all too many times.

But I'll blow up your spot

by rhyming you out

for how you shot

your shot.

November 11: A Sharper Fang

 I've thought about her,

now ten years gone, 

her obituary: Mother of Martyrs,

and how she buried sons

and still wonder.

Did she raise them to be

IEDS or did she compromise

to retcon their fatal trajectories

by saying she wove into their

lullabies, in 

a voice sweeter than lines

of any poetry

that they lived but to die

for God and country?

Because they were formed under

her heart and must have once

given delight to her eyes--

but in her heart did she 

determine nothing better for them lie

in all their future

than to be buried under a flag

of a place to be defined?

She just comes to mind

this day.

I still fail to understand.

There still must be a

better way.

November 10: The Tree Where No Tree Needs to Be

 I heard the song in a dream,

like a vintage record on wax,

"Only a tree, where no tree needs to be..."

and it haunted my head with

the earworm-sense, the nonsense

atavism made me want

to find it on a record: where

was this tune?

But the tree is: "we",

the tree where no tree

needs to be is life as we know it,

here in the zone of things

evolutionarily possible

in the way we 

empirically know them. 

It doesn't have to be this way:

we where we are, but it is. 

And we are making this place a place

where we will not be,

butchering the tree by 

degrees, hacking off smaller limbs

then larger.

When are we

hacked off? 

Maybe in the stochastic flow of time,

the randomness of space,

there's no reason for this place

we call "Human Civ."

But we are a part of all the things,

the birds and bees and fish and trees

and I'd far rather we

all live.

November 9: What Grabs You

 Skeletal fingers,

chalky

in the dying brine

clutch at the water:

whited columns

in a graveyard to be.

We ignore those clutching hands

heedlessly.

They say all that has touched 

the tide

some time 

will be claimed

by the tide

again, someday--

and I know it's true

however far inland

you try to

get away.

What made you

grabs you in

the end.

November 8: Moral Clarity

 You see it by the striking

of a match in the dark,

from the first spark,

until your

hand burns.

Who learns?

November 7: Empowered

 Ever since the first breath you drew,

the only home you ever knew

was the length and breadth of you

and who should say that some part

of you is down to someone else's say?

Not for nine months--

not even a day. 

Not if you are coupled,

not if you are alone,

not if you are a ten-year old child,

not if you are grown,

not owned by your Daddy,

your husband,

the state,

not owned by the Church,

and not owned by others' hate.

You are not to be weighted in the balance

by your abuse or your health:

your choice is yours.

You belong to yourself.

November 6: Without Reason

 The internet showed me a video today

that I never asked for,

the image of a child with a head

like a broken, empty cup.

There was nothing that could

be done for her, and the man

who held her looked as if

he wanted there to be something

he could do, and I did too.

Before anyone asks, I'll tell you,

the child had no nationality, no identity,

no religion, nothing to argue over,

nothing after the crown was gone,

that her father once kissed and her mother prayed over--

it was without reason,

and any further words just feel

like dirty excuses in a sinner's mouth.

November 5: Acclimatize

 You could say that we acclimatize

when we acquiesce to, say, shootings

and don't react when maybe one child dies

and a dozen are wounded: why?

Small fries. It sits in the shade of a Columbine

or an Uvalde so barely a dent

in our newfound capacity to accept

human death. 

A Katrina is a several months or years 

notice: though the wreckage in human time

for proximate humans still endures

and a Maria? Seems forgotten in less 

because something in horror inures

one to horror. And so now,

an Otis can barely signify. 

See--we mentally acclimatize,

and can ignore

that a Category 5 can now sneak up

on a shore before an evacuation can even proceed

and a Cat 4 or less could wipe out

a community steeped in need. 

We don't bat an eye. 

Like we shut out Rohingya or Uygurs or the Congo or Sudan.

Everything becomes an also-ran

until it runs down your street.

And maybe even by then, it still won't compete. 

We tell ourselves comforting lies.

Open your eyes.

Refuse to acclimatize.

November 4: The Map

 The map has lines and no people on

and the question isn't: where have the people gone?

Or: why don't the lines, in real life

actually exist? Because if you look down 

from a plane...

you see no borders, unless you are insane.

Although sometimes there are walls.

Fences. Fortified defenses.

Maps are not like holy

scripture and the lines themselves

can change--after, for example,

wars.

Or maybe they are just like scriptures,

after all.

Sometimes ancient lines persist,

and sometimes, they must fall.

The question is: what is your map

and can you keep the people on

your mind,

when all the lines have gone?

November 3: Gifts

 I drank and spoke with the oracle again

and she spoke in riddles

like she does, because

she doesn't like to talk to men,

nor even the female of our kind.

Anyway, I brought a bottle

and she brought her glass, 

and when we were eye to eye and off our ass

she said something I kept in mind:

"Wisdom is an owl nesting 

in a yet-unplanted tree.

Truth is water from a well 

not dug, and peace is 

the tree the owl sits on,

and while some people bend the knee

because knees bend,

to pray or to yield,

or to kneel on someone,

there's something else that could be done. 

What if people just saw the needs

and tried to be the

means? So here are seeds

and a shovel."

And that was about as clear to me as 

the things she ever says could be,

and I get the big

idea of our revel; 

she meant "dig". 

November 2: Irritation

 His name in my mouth like an ulcer,

spoiling my appetite,

dull and metallic.

It brushes the sharpness of my

teeth with

dazzling pain

when I have to say his

name again

(and somehow I always have to).

The center of attention

he is, like sand in an oyster

making a pearl of 

no price.

Am I being too harsh?

No. 

This is me,

being nice.

A corpse at every wedding

and a bride at every funeral,

a dull blade at a beheading

and a cover price for a free for all--

a menace to country

and an offense to God

with a bad-fitting suit

and hair so odd

it folds about his skull like a nest

for departed origami cranes.

He could stain a black hole. 

If the world were to devour him whole,

I think he would make the crater sick

him up like ipecac

and look none the worse,

and I wish his hearse would be 

a fly-ridden sanitation truck.

Fuck! He should greet death

on a prison toilet and be captured

on a million cameras

for the tabloids to devour--

and that's the mildest thing I'd shower him with;

the acid of my words--

not literal vitriol.

And why do I assault him thus?

I must admit.

It calms my soul.

November 1: Worse

 Truly indifference is worse;

nothing personal, nothing at all different from an inconvenient chattel

needing to be moved from the hall, a body standing in the way moved so violently it suddenly lay

and the mover no more moved or shaken watching it fall than if it were a leaf.

They see only how many more leaves need raking, and clear them all. Indifference is worse. That's my belief.