fire from water and stones,
when actually I can start a fire
from anything, even an avalanche,
especially a tornado, though most of all
nothing at all.
Yes this again
How goes prosecuting Nazis? The OGs,
not the new ones. I can ask a friend that
of his daughter. You probably can’t
so I’ll ask for you, too. It’s a great world
that offers these little comforts
for its mistakes, that takes a degree from Harvard
and turns it into remembering lives
only photos1 recall, not their details
but their worth. He’s proud of her
and I’m proud of us. We could say, So what? And do
about so much. But not this: we agree genocide
needs to be snuffed out. Mostly.
Though studies show kids don’t know
what Auschwitz is, was. That flies
are still easily separated from their wings.
That we are us. No amount of law or dreaming
changes that. Maybe some amount of love.
1. Grainy, fading, black & white: memory trying to forget itself.
A lament, pep talk, and challenge walk into a bar
Banjo. Zither. Carnegie Hall. The Four Tops and Seasons.
Greek chorus. Music of the spheres and triangles
and dodecahedrons. The Kinks. The Mozarts
and Fats Wallers and Puentes. The Butthole Surfers.
My office is bigger and more flexible than my heart
and this is a weird way to critique my affections
but so be it: the intervention is under way. Do you feel
small? I feel tiny lately. Like a good person
would remove the doors of his house and give the poor
a controlling interest in JPMorgan and storm congress
with onesies and pillows and hold that flotilla of egos
hostage in a sleepover until the Kindness Act is passed
unanimously and do unto others goes from words
dropped in the suggestion box to law. Why aspire
to the part of a thimble when galaxies
are shinier role models? I should be putting meals
on wheels or moving Miami to a higher elevation
or helping strangers with their calculus homework.
I speak shovel, yammer hammer, have drills and bits,
wrenches and jigs, elbows and frontal lobes, and have noticed
when I throw up my hands in frustration
they come back, that they take their responsibilities
to hold and carry seriously, and so should I
be a ladle or hammock, spoon or cradle, a yodel
or some other reaching across the distance
to the factions and splinter groups of the tribe
or clan of woman and man. It’s no accident I began
this meandering with music: no two species
could come from more distant planets
than a Steinway and sax,
yet listen to how well they get along
when they put their mouths where our fears are,
when they lend us our better-tuned selves. My ears
were raised by Ray Charles and Johnny Cash, so I hum
and flow and stumble, rasp and trance and moan
between two sets of certainties, that we are angelic
junkies, fallen and blind, and that we can rise
and see. The deepest soundtrack of my being
is a black man and the Man in Black
breathing into me the one and only commandment:
Don’t just have but be a soul.
Interlude
In the little swale where my wife sleeps
to my right, I grow roses
whenever she goes away
for the weekend to see her family.
A place for everything
and everything glowing
on the inside if you close your eyes
and look. How old will I be
when I die? Zero: a babe in the arms
of the afterlife. How old will I be
when I figure out how to stand
unobtrusively among the junipers
growing taller and more resilient
in the night? She comes home,
sees the roses and knows
I’ve been up all night
watering our life,
caretaker of the presence
of her absence. Hello
my deepest breath. Hello
falling through space
from our little while together
standing still.
Under construction
I meant to be taller,
I tell my tailor, who tells my teller,
who cashes my check all in ones
to suit the height of my ambition.
And kinder, I tell my trainer,
who trains my tailor and my teller too
to look better wetter and drier, kinder
to people and blue skies, moles
and Republicans, even though
it takes more muscles to smile
than tell someone to fuck off.
I ask my tuner to listen to my head
and tell me whether it sounds out of sorts;
she says a man’s not a piano
and cries, for wouldn’t that be nice,
a man you can sit in front of
and play like Satie turning a piano
into a river speaking to its mother,
the rain, late at night. But she’s sweet,
my tuner, and tightens a few strings
in my back just to get the old tinka-tinka
up to snuff before she kisses me
on the cheek. Life. I think that’s