One Wild Night

I guess it wasn’t too wild;
There were no drugs or amphetamines, nor even wine or beer, that I remember
Though we did break into someone’s house

"Don’t worry," my sister’s friend had said, "I’m his best friend, it’s no big deal"
He shimmied a lock and we stood on the hardwood of a dirty bedroom which held a keyboard and drums, 
Which was just about the greatest sign of wealth and freedom I could dream of
All this because I was too young to go out, like each of my siblings, 
And had cried about it

My sister, having great compassion or pity, said, “Come with us, tonight”
And, somehow, my parents agreed
So I rode in the middle of the backseat, saying nothing, eyes full of wonder,
As teenagers plied the town with hungry hearts
To howl the moon and give enough vent to keep their hearts from melting down
In the insatiable lust of life  

My God, they were babies, just cutting teeth 
But they were gods, as I watched them, their great minds set on edge 
Staring through the windshield as if staring off a ledge
Knowing destiny would meet them, just ahead
Then looking at me kindly, as if I reminded them of something—
Adam before he had tasted fruit
A reminder of some lost truth 

They were in the thrall that is the endless, long horizon
And the lust of longing 
And how could they know that life is a long road
A highway running from a great city into desert, to which it must go, always heading west 
With fewer off ramps and stops for rest, and only the occasional Last Stop Gas

Fewer possibilities, because we must choose
And every yes is a no 
Every choice a letting go 
So that, in the end,
You will sit not on endless roads, but only one, remembering all the untaken paths
And lamenting, perhaps, that you did not stake your claim more boldly 
Before growing old and sitting in the shade of sunset 

This was all unknown lore, with no purchase on that summer night
Not then, by God
Not then 
Unfettered as they were and full of life
And as we drove, I could feel the lust, the longing to touch and hold all things
Their hands still gripped to eternity like fingers on a steering wheel
The possibilities still setting them free
As the ageless sky turned endlessly 

The New Earth, Again

I will miss the sound of striking matches and the crackle and cackle of wood 
As fire blots out dark skies
Death, in miniature, as night is, once again 
Defeated by light 

I will miss, too, stepping into pink morning as the bright infuses, like mischievous ink, the night
A promise and a prophecy that, whatever pain lies below, God knows 
Our grief and sorrow, 
And cares for our relief
And knows our grief, and how it grows 
He does not retreat, though we are waiting
And faint beyond belief 

By then, though, having almost fallen
I hope to be rising like a hawk on wings of wind, into colors that never end
Adjusting to those hues, not looking away, never more ashamed

The flames of heaven, they say, are hotter than any fiery flame or fiend of hell
And truth to tell, they’re just the same, seen in different ways, in the same place or places 

Still, there must be the mundane, unburning 
As we come back to here, knowing it well for the first time, the earth renewed
Holy things will reappear that we will, once again, grow accustomed to
Just as we did as children, the wonder of new eyes growing calm as days go on and on 

And yet, all will somehow remain beyond 
Beyond common, never growing old 
The smell of love walking boldly into a room
The scent of tobacco, wafting from a beloved box
The noise of a cello, 
The honking of a flock of geese 
Stirring hearts to pain with sudden beauty
And sudden relief 
Which we will remember—both the beauty and the pain 
Because
The promise is not the end of tears but their merciful wiping away,
And with it, fear

After all, how will we know love without pain?
How can we be comforted but in loneliness
As when someone, into our darkness,
Speaks our name 

Tragedy (Patrick Angus III)

This queer man died of AIDS
My God, it’s strange when tragedy becomes cliché, but 
This queer man, so talented, died of AIDS

And though he was by all means gay, 
He was not very happy 
(You see how words change, 
And we with them, as we try to fit them 
Like lightbulbs into the sockets of our own selves
Lest we become bereft, and wordless)

He used paint, not poetry 
But while I’m on the topic of putting outside of us all our desire, through art, like fire
And like despair, burning the air
I’ll speak of prayer:

I do pray now and then, since prayer goes both ways, 
Both forward and back in time
And I pray for him

I hope and pray he had time to find
The ecstasy of all his longing, bright as day, 
Like chasing butterflies or 
Flying in the skies and not falling into our lovesick, human ways, 
As we grow tired of the trying

I hope he saw it take wings—his longing, 
The little bird inside him joining a great murmuration of starlings

While everything looked on and applauded:
The whisper, the breeze, 
And above all,
The hard bit of tree within us, that somehow never ends
That rises and spins
Like a bird on the wind

The part that hopes to God 
Death does not win 

Everything a Type of Protest

I.

Everything forms a type of protest against the great lying down which is our lot 
Our destiny—the big sleep that hangs above us like a city sheet, waiting to fall down 
The gritty darkness of night, of fog 
As we bleat about like sheep

So, too, the professor asking for a whiskey, neat
While the bartender beats a sad retreat
Is its own ritual of resistance
And the drink a protest
A litany cursing defeat
A ceremony of prolonging and resisting sleep
As he stares into the darkness, unblinking
Rage swelling beneath his feet
Anger pointing him back to courage, swift and fleet 

I like to think he left that bar and went to get the girl
And began the good hard work of letting go and letting the wind inside his heart, like God
A spark to start an arc of fire
I like to think his protest became a life of love

II.

It is possible, after all:
I have felt the invitation of the Holy Spirit on my fingers and how, burning in the discomfort of welcome, the day rises to teach you even while it greets you
I felt that same presence one green summer, all summer long, 
Mistaken, called by some other name—youth or lust
When it was God’s own presence
A burning bush, except the whole world was on fire 

That summer, we rose on adolescence and thrived on indolence 
Broken only by the strain of good, hard, and sweaty work 
And we learned 
That even work is protest
And that every good deed laid down in love
Is to be resurrected in a great throng 
As crowds sing songs on the streets of some skyward Jerusalem, here on earth
With signs and banners flung 
And rainstorms come to wash away the wounds and endless words
Leaving us only knowing, which needs no speech

As the water drains down in gutters, looking for the sea
The streams can find no ocean (for the sea has been made no more)
And no more signs or banners of protest are needed
As there’s no more death 
For death has been protested by God Himself
As God carries a banner, 
As God is trampled under endless feet who do not see Him
As God rises skyward like the no-more sea 
As God sits, crowned at last,
Above all things 

On the Death of a Fish I Hardly Knew

When I lost my goldfish, the shame and sorrow
Of not knowing how to keep a life alive was the worst surprise;
I cried all afternoon, as if I’d died
The grief an anvil in my gut

There are all sorts of ways we eat the fruit, our eyes opened
There are many ways we stoop from lost hope, at the splintered roots of our mortality, which crests over us like a cold sea, unforgiving  

I learned, without words for it, as I sat on the stairs, alone, hoping someone would come to console me
I also hid, as in a garden, behind the trees
The state of my humanity
Please see me, please let me be
We want love, from love we flee

As the sun slanted its long goodbye
The stars were just close enough to touch
And silent
Quiet, as if they could not touch me
With mournful eyes, burning with grief
For a fish 
And, little did I know,
For every living thing 

Glamour

My wife's professor asked her class for "the opposite of beauty"
And what came to mind for most (and me, as well) was “ugliness" 
But “No," the sage said
"Ugliness still points to what it’s not— 
The absence of what we long for
Points still to something lovely, even by its absence"

The class rocked back, as she leaned in
"The opposite of beauty," she said (no doubt in that professorial tone
that knows a secret but plays it straight, proud but humble, crowned with grace)
"The opposite of beauty is glamour
Glamour points to itself, but beauty...
Beauty is a signpost to something else”

"That sounds clever," I said as we drove on, sitting in this little story,
And as my wife explained it to me, I remembered the figures which danced before me in Mexico, in a strange show 
All covered in swaths of lipstick, like warriors sick with paint,
Desperately clawing at one another, gripping flesh, the letting in of a wind that could not cool

And I felt again the sad song of how pathetic all that gripping was
Not young men and women standing in the river of desire, breaking the straight-jacket
With the courage to say, “Here I am” 
(Which is the most beautiful, being seen without fear 
Being here 
To truly touch and hold and feel)
But rather a thick crowd saying “Here I am not, 
But it will feel for a moment we are all in this together, and so…close enough”

The promise of good looks and money and flesh 
All enflamed to pass a torch across so many lips
Was glamorous and gaudy and awful, like a bad dream
A journey leading anywhere but home 
A touch so far from being touched
A truth so far away from true

Prayer Like Birdwatching

We waited behind the bush, with no bated breath nor restlessness but the peace of wild things 
The lake 
The rocks 
The trees
The breeze

When suddenly, a kingfisher burst into view  
Red bright chest, blue wings 
A choir singing

Only slowly, after he had flown
Did the world resolve to flesh and bone and shapes
With shades again surrounding me,
My body once again around me, as sound resumed in the chambers of my ears
No fear except awe
No tears except those that are close to longing 

The world, somehow, was unaware and still, 
Nonchalant, as if no great thing had happened
And the water rippled as before
The world restored, as if it had not gone away, but stayed
The mud was not turned to gold nor stone to set our feet upon

I shook my head at the strangeness 
And I breathed in the freshened air, as if aware
Of the sweetness of which to sing, of life, 
Of being here and now

Then I said “Amen” and was done with prayer 
As if one could be done with the rising sun or moon
The call of geese coming home
The need for trees and spring

I opened my door to face the world, 
Knowing that things are not as they seem
And great things await possibility
Springing suddenly into view, amid the most mundane, like newborn mountains 
If we don’t grow faint with too much seeing
If we don’t forget that everything is miracle 
That everything invites believing 

The Birdsong Breaks the Morning

How incongruent the birdsong breaking the morning, as if unaware
A prophet or an imbecile?

My belly—instead—woke in flames of fire, trembling like a wind-blown spire
With fear, a spreading dread, at some hidden thought, 
My body seeming once again to know before me—
Making sense of things unseen—
Believing something wrong  

But that song: 
It dreads no thing
The fringes of its reality marked with no dark edges
Just spring
As I lie in the dark
As I wonder if the lark
Sees things as they are
Or only as they could be

Or as they are, but still
Choosing song and spring 
Sings, 

Singing in the bright, pink morning 

What Makes a Man

When he was called to the Majors, after pitching a blank and scoreless frame,
He sat in the locker room and cried, as they called up his name, 
And all the good men loitering about looked away 
Or pretended the floor was a marvel to survey

They were happy for him and without judgment or jealousy, 
And though, of course, they wondered about their plot, 
They rejoiced at the turn in his fortune’s lot

There is the courage of warriors and of poets (though even warriors know a little verse),
And since we measure men by how fast they can throw a fastball or run the earth,
Or curve leather and cork above the dirt
We should remind ourselves that muscles, in fact, do not make good men 
And any who can stare into the grandstand of longing and still stand and not give in
Is also worth his salt 

In fact, every man who never sees the Big Leagues but tends the bit of land just in front of him, with devotion and a heart that does not get hard or wintered—
He is good and close to God  

Of these we should also sing, even if they make no Hall
Sing their song, no matter how hard they hit the ball  

When I Cannot Find the Start of the Toilet Paper

This morning’s reminder of my humanity is that
I can deal with the diseases of my friends
And I can ignore for the moment the reports of famine
And the fires clouding the horizon

But on my way to face the day, I could not find the start of the damned toilet paper, 
And I sat endlessly spinning the roll while my fingers found no purchase
Until cursing, I cried out 

I can, it seems, make peace with the things I cannot control nor understand
I can ignore them in the hope I can implore from reality some other kind hand, a friend
But when those things close to me go awry, I am reminded
Just how long the slope up is
And how powerless we are
And how far we fall 

Still, just beyond the bend, how beautiful the hope is
How perfect the laughter after a well-timed curse 
And the mirth when we can shake our heads
Our desire knowing, always, just how things should be
With fingers who so easily want to find just what they are looking for
And feel, even still, somehow
That this remains their destiny 

Deer at the Gay Bar (Patrick Angus II)

He painted men at gay nightclubs, watching other men undress, obsessed with the moment of unveiling, I guess
(Aren’t we all? 
With unveiling, at least, if not the rest)

They weren’t his best, but
I was beckoned into the hidden gallery by the sign that said "Adults only"
And rarely tantalized by the hope of something tawdry in a museum gallery, I went inside 

I would have been six or seven when he painted, this man who now has died
And the image of a deer comes strangely to mind
Rising as it tries to find its footfalls and stumbles forward 

Such is every person’s desire: 
To rise,
Until they are buried by whatever shirt-off-the-rack they settle for, thereafter hiding inside it

But Patrick Angus—and all true gods and poets and painters—by God, he reveals the deer’s shy heart 
All of them, with gently stepping hooves, quietly strike the ground
Lest they stick too far down in the mix of mud and grass and be tracked down by the hounds 

He painted a couple, too, sitting quietly on their couch
And in his self-portraits, he is like them, wandering and lost
But in these paintings, maybe not his best, nevertheless he painted 
At his greatest point of longing
Like his subjects, looking for some good thing to find

These men become his best metaphor, take one, take all:
At a gay bar
Every face so sedate, you’d think they’d never cried
The placid face over an inflamed belly, ashamed for having so much desire, eyes averted or looking down
The ground never answering
The ground quiet and silent

But then, one by one, they lift their eyes, some good thing to find, a deer looking for water 
With stoic faces
Alert eyes, 
All poised to not betray the racing heart inside
The stealthy glide into a meadow 
Leaning forward, slowly, like each of us, 
A doe dipping into an answering stream
Hoping one deep drink will turn the tide 

God Bless and Thank Him

May I never forget the man whose name I can’t recall, 
Who called English pounds squids instead of quid
As a dollar is a buck and not a duck, I’ll never know why he did it
Nor why he never smiled, since I thought he was letting me in on a little joke
But no,
He just ordered another pint and told me of his woes
With no self-indulgence, no pity
No invitation to carry his laundry 
Just an honest man, in reality, pointing out all the things that shouldn’t be and icing them with a swig of lager, before a glass of ale
Like we were all old friends

Some sorts are out of sync with life, thank God
We need them, jesters of a mad age
The knaves who personify our frustration, and our longing 
Who refuse to run and duck but look at life with pluck and stand out, the sore thumbs, 
Shirts untucked,
Taking a cigarette and hoping for luck
Stewing in their longing, for love, amid the rust and muck,
Waiting for the bus
Crayons unable to be pushed into their place within the box

God bless them, those un-coy foxes, and may they find happiness
And may we all find, each of us, trust 
On hearts unruffled by time’s dust 
Throwing down a glass upon the table, pushing over our squids,
And saying “One more,” with hearty lust 

A Prophecy of Mourning

On the long timeline of life 
We will someday remember: there was a time when grandpa came to live nearby, 
Moving in with his daughter, your parents, my in-laws
And this remembrance will give us pause 

As we think about his death, and how he lived and died 
We will remember that smile which said, "I’ve been beat down by life”
And the eyes that questioned, “Surely all this longing cannot be denied?"
That smile, those eyes were like Oliver, pleading, “Please, God, I’d like some more”
And surmising that there was no more sustenance and no more time 
No stairway to heaven to climb

One of us, then, will comment on how he loved going to the putting green
And traded stocks in the afternoon, and lost his money
Defrauded and left bereft by cold souls who prey on the old, both thief and victim groping for some rope to hold
And we will talk of
How he loved sand and sun and beach, beneath blue sky
How he’d talk of water and start to sigh 

These remembrances will have some gravity, the weight of something beyond which we can just begin to name,
But we won’t stay too long in them, sensing the pain
So the orbit of our thoughts will pause before we let them pass 
As we realize—not with words, but with an intuition too deep down to hold—that we have no words at all to hang on the sadder mysteries of life
Which ended in grandpa, at his close, with strife and yet, no more strength to fight 
A good life which sought some safe harbor and did not, we think, find much clear water

This we will mourn, and the world will turn
And one of us will look up at the sky and ask where we should eat
And we’ll numb our losses with wine and meat
For this will remain the way of things
And it will be pleasing, though incomplete
Like waves and like the sea

Resonant Pitch

There is a place in the church where suddenly every sound resonates,
Creating the most marvelous shell of tones,
Which echo down like edicts from a throne

I’ll be standing there, talking about God knows what—baseball or the blood of Christ—
When suddenly my being shakes as the sound strikes
And with the amplification, something within me rises
I look around, mouth agape, in the great gratitude of surprise

Sometimes the other person hears it, sometimes they think me strange, as I look up and keep talking to keep the noise from stopping
Then I stop and stand in its refrain, say nothing, as the echo becomes its own sermon and a song
To remind us all
That love is always specific, and finds us in a specific place
Like sunlight on our face
A quivering in our body
A quaking in our bones
An echo that leads us home

And that God, like reality, wants to close in on us like
A great wall of sound 
Like noise
Falling to the ground

That Green Summer

There was a poetry that summer that I had no words for
With its need to work, to earn
And the lust to do nothing but sit, as the world turned
To burn through those three months like the sun, before school began again 

We worked as lawn men, mowing grass
And between us passed a great poetry, walking on quiet feet, cat-like,
As I learned without words to speak something felt and not seen—
How the world fits together
All the parts working, in cities and towns
To make the merry-round go ‘round:
The buying of gas
The loading of trucks
The cutting of grass
For what?

For little kingdoms and dominions to survey before the day fades
Wherein sit kings and queens eager for a lucky play that falls their way
(Though, of course, it rarely does)
And in their waiting, they miss the consolation 
Because what you get instead is an orange sunset and the smell of cut lawns and constellations spinning endlessly as the day grows long 
And the far off longing to be “gone” or “there” is revealed, at the end, to be deception,
Since what we get, ever and only, is here and now

We tasted the drink of longing that grinds us down, in the end
But which first befriends you and makes of you a god, too young to touch the ground
As the fruit of the tree, still ripe, like morning rises, awakening and singing in you its song
As if the branches could only, ever rise
As if the sky could only promise and provide undying freedom

Little did I know then that we already knew the secret:
All that matters, in the end, is friendship 
And someone to enjoy sweet, hard work with 
And the quiet passing of poetry that knows you before you know it 

The Long, Endless Becoming

I always assumed that in the endless metaphor of the cocoon
I would be the butterfly, and the chrysalis the pain of life

But what emerged this bright burning morning, after the black ravens deposited their laments and mourning
on the grass
And the geese told us that all must keep moving forward and, whatever come to pass,
All would be well
Was a bright new image that I could only call God
Taking wings as it did on the orange flood of day,
After a long waiting, as in a tomb 

I did not know which stood first to greet me, as they all rose at once to meet me
The sun 
The fearless aspen
The humble stand of wild flower
The hummingbird so sure and certain

But through me, like a quail taking flight, though the stalks of my heart,
A great surprise of tears found me 
Overwhelming me and, like dog casting off water, shook some unnamed sorrow from my mind
As if everything—the morning and my body, too—had been carrying such heavy news and, longing to be free
Found a path upon which to bloom 

God, I say
Because that is what God is
The healing morning that shakes darkness like crumbs from a tired picnic blanket
God the long, endless becoming
The day that always blooms
The butterfly reminding
That all things are made new

Salinas, CA

Salinas is beat to hell now, like a tired cat that has lost its fat
Or a rug left out too late too many nights

I’m not sure what Steinbeck would say;
He would probably have Samuel Hamilton, that great protagonist of light, 
Opine that this is the way of all things
And in the midst of it, timshel
Thou mayest, he would sing 

But the farms still work
“Feeding America” and “feeding our nation”, the signs say
And some of the great Victorians still stand like beacons of another age
Sentries to remind us what was and what can be:
The pride of fertile land
As mortals stand against the dusty plain and let the great virtue, courage, lift them
In its strong and bracing arms 

Courage, the greatest of all—
Once discarded, it still find its way to rise again 
Reminding us that in the heart of men, 
Amid all the mud and muck and brothels and drunkenness 
There is some flower around which we must erect a fence

Not unlike the land, then, our hearts
That land, that land, 
That unrivaled land of us 
Like a dog’s bark, that will not be hushed 
Like a mule, straining against the cart 
Like eyes, searching through the dark 

Flowers Growing in the Street

There is something about Jesus telling the religious dudes that rest serves men, and not the other way around
I imagine he said it with nonchalance, as when he drew on the ground, refusing to engage the crime of judgment or hate—
The very thing religion breeds when grounded in anything but love

Rest is for me, and then,
“The world is not for me, but I am for the world"
That’s not a bad mantra for liberty 
You start trying to do something, with the right motive
And then, since you can’t do a pure anything on your own, you have to let God in,
Laughing, as with an old friend who wonders why you were so long away

Or you can just pretend you’re good enough and then take precious things, like Sabbath rest, and make of them a contest
To prove how desirable you are, and good

Meanwhile the dog lapping at your feet
And the flowers growing in the cracks of the street
And the fire that rises into the night
Give not one thought to how good they are and just want love and sun and light

Let us always remember:
Jesus was accused of being drunk and loving bread too much
And, in general, having too much fun

The West, 1850

There is the reality 
Of long, hard salt flats shimmering in heat
Desert parched and cracked, longing for the sea
And dust and smoke
With oases and forests which, even still, do not yield much rest, and only dust for gold
And the long ribcage of mountains, old and wise but miserly, tearing earth asunder
Breaking men’s hearts with beauty and the heartache of endless obstacle 
Since the Rockies and the Sierras are, perhaps, the perfect metaphor for life

But above all the dirt floats the great idea
The West and Gold 
And somewhere northwest of here or there, a gentle god, the Pacific
Cools the dirt-clod feet of weary travelers, penniless and poor 
Who finally break down and sob, but still will say, 
With an adamant start and a sincere stare into the long, blue nowhere 
"I loved the idea which broke my heart"

What the Sage Said As We All Listened with Rapt Confusion

Well, of course it’s easier to chase flitting images, illicitly
And dismiss this as natural, our true longing, than it is to truly touch flesh,
Let alone press hearts
But if there’s no spark of love, we are left in fantasy,
Which is why pornography is not so much sin
As utter waste of time and attention 
Remember, boys: Even wanting love is enough for love
As the first bud of flower, no matter the size, is always enough for the morning and the day, and never to be despised 
And who said we were made for easy things, anyway?