Arcing and the Universe

Don’t say there’s no thump,

no whomp, no beat beat beat,

no rustle and thrill in

silence…

Don’t say there’s no thump,

no whomp,

no beat beat beat,

no whisper rolling in…

We started

what we started,

got to where we got,

still hearing thump and whomp and beat beat beat…

Don’t say that you can’t hear it,

the whomping and the beating,

the heaving and the dancing

of others moving on…

There’s beat beat beat,

the rustle and thrill

and dancing feet

and tidal pull of folk and moon…

Folk are striding striding long

and pushing hard,

feet are dancing

hands are pulling…

All the loving,

all the sharing,

the rustle and thrill of catching on,

the folk and pull

and voices calling

and standing standing standing tall

and heart just beating

beating heart beat beat…

Wild Once and Captured

On hearing Annie Lennox

A whisper full of rhythms,

an echo raw with power,

a people spilling outward

in tidal flows of fever.

Here music summons silence,

here longing a language,

touching an allure,

dancing a passion play

and searching leads us

one by one

to stories all our own,

and to stories told in common.

Here smolders spirit

ripe with promise,

rich with peace and legendary reach.

There drums yammering in clearings

where we are jamming with justice

who was wild once

and captured

and has broken out again.

Three poems from Wild Once and Captured

These three poems can be found in my book, Wild Once and Captured, which is available on-line at the Teaching for Change webstore.

Depends on who you ask

Of course,

we still believe in magic,

a science of a different sort.

And our science tells us

what we have been feeling

for longer than we care to say.

Our time,

the way we used to be,

is up.

We were the light-footed imps

who danced away from the fate

that fell on dinosaurs.

But the time of our agility,

our reverently imagined beauty,

is over. Ended.

We are the ponderous

of our end of days,

industrialized humans,

lethal consumers

at the top of the chain

as we know it.

But before we ask ourselves

how to recover our dancing feet

with dancing shoes,

we have a duty

to ask

on behalf of all our victims

if they wish for more from us,

if their dreams of us

are nightmares.

Never Can Tell

She wakes and feels this past

lurking beside her,

the ghost that will not fall behind,

pummeling, insistent.

She wakes and prays,

whoever is there to hear,

get me through this day.

I’ll not ask for more.

She wakes and dresses

her bits of scattered self,

hauling scarred pieces

to proper places, endlessly preparing.

At the door, she checks for menace

in hallways, scanning streets

for fleshy threats and phantoms,

seeking her whom she always meant to be.

Out the door,

she strides ahead

as if fearless,

limitless and ready.

She arrives feeling

unreckoned power, feeling this day

pregnant with difference, this day

ready, perhaps, for what yesterday was not.

Wild Dogs of Poets

The wild dogs of poets

speak sharps and blunts,

wish the streets

to the back alleys

of emerald cities;

some singing separately

and, alive for now,

glow in the dusky,

dreaming sky,

some scratch for pennies

where there are no such

generosities. Some kill time

as though they are flush,

and some few, the chosen, die

on the barricades, hopeful and ready.

Our scars will be singing (revised)

April 29th since I last posted here. I'm mildly surprised. I've been laboring under the impression that I'm much busier than that, but I suppose there's too points about which I ought to be more mindful. 

One, I've been writing by hand, and not necessarily bringing anything to a conclusion. In fact, I've also written three letters to Julie and Dale and Emily Udell, each of them some 6,7, 8 pages long. In the process, I've transcribed the poems of others--Juan Felipe Herrera, Marge Piercy and a couple other people whose names (and poems) slip my mind. But the act of just writing, pencil and paper, resonates for me. I feel busy and accomplished even though it seems so difficult to measure what has happened. And then to stick the completed letters in an envelope and mail them off without much hope or recovery, certainly nothing so rigorous as follow up, seems like a completed process, no matter how evanescent. So, without anything particular to show for it, I've felt productive.

And, two, though I've been planning to write a particular set of essays (which I have not yet begun) and have noodled them around quite a lot, I have been writing and revising a few poems, one of which turns out to be the last poem I posted on Outdoor Poetry Season. It is hugely revised. In many ways a different poem, but as always, when I move from one version to the next, I usually quite like what has developed.

Our scars will be singing

Our scars

textured and smooth,

where we rubbed on the world

soon, fast and hard.

Our scars,

murmur and tense,

ride free on our muscle, ride far on our nerve.

Our scars, bitter at silence,

indignant, rehearsing our rage.

Innocent before the build up of wounds,

upright before we first staggered,

before we stumbled again

and again,

worthy as heroes, unsubtle, intrepid,

learning like warriors,

pretending no fear,

learning to sing no matter who hears.

Our song of ourselves, of not wearing away,

of not crouching down, of not slinking off,

running and jumping and bounding down hills,

shouting and clapping and dancing in streets,

this is my heart and I share it with you.