We’re guilty, globally, of assuming otherness, in a sense that is not intended to imply a lack of uniqueness in inter-intra personal identity (for there is much, and we must avoid the fatal error of intentional-or-otherwise ego collapse; you and I are distinct things; there is no universal I; there is only a universal “we”--the assumption of singularity is to believe strictly in limitation) . Otherness here is intended to mean a much more subtle, but much more fatal, abrogation: that we are distinct things from the world, that we exist outside of it, transcend it, are not made of the same stuff as her, are not really wearing her skin hermit-crab-like: on loan, briefly.
Preface:
I had a vision not all that long ago standing in a field. I struggled to think whether the meaning was found inside or outside, but then I realized that I am never outside my inside, nor would this be possible, and the deadly confusion of the two surely cannot ever take place, because certainly my insides are my insides and my outsides are my outsides, necessarily, for me to be me and we to be we. So then I saw us all little thumbs or nubs on a great circle, feeling and thinking as we do, and it occurred to me that as we think and feel so does She. So there is some sort of proof that there are places in the world that accord meaningfully. By virtue of being you or I we we provide proof that there is something more than sheer matter populating an unfeeling universe that infinitely extends up and down. There is, the vastness, subjectivity, embedded, maybe subordinate, but certainly there. Interior and exterior imply each other, but the insideness of me or you is an internal, twofold, insideness. So then to think or feel is to, by transitivity, say that the world thinks or feels--or at least a part of the world is thinking or feeling something in that moment--and to say otherwise is to cleave a chasm that there is no chance of crossing. The Eleatics, a very long time ago, found a similar abyss between one step and another: the proof of movement was the fact that it is possible at all. To move from the interior to the exterior is, similarly, possible by proof of the ability to realize meaning.
You picked the
Biggest of the bunch--
A real jewel of a thing--
And crushed it so it ran red
Through your sweet fingers;
And I thought of nothing.
Those that weep in the sky,
Pins of prickling brightness,
Pity them in having their
no choice; when man
Rails against his fates,
I think that,
Even if it were possible,
To think as much, to feel
An anger that I wanted,
My God,
What a feeling.
A while ago you used a word
Against your brother.
And it Certainly was a good word,
One that was made to declare a kind of
Rule, nameless and foreign, a habit your
Children abhor, yet, perforce,
Wear to the very day.
So I thought a humor, or maybe grace, then,
In finding you there, all alone, your
nose bent across your face, glassy-eyed,
Sinuous featured, shapeshifter,
Hunch-backed, not so tall nor
Mighty, not as memory served
You to mine, no, but the difficulty,
Like things harsher, remember, was forgiven.
For a little red mark, right
In the center of your forehead,
Unmistakable, like a flash in my eye,
Betrayed you, which, for your kind,
Ought to sting, salty, irony, but should
not be unfamiliar with.
You were changed, no doubt,
But unmistakable.
What a turn of chance:
And I did not balk.
Through your affect of Inverness
Heavy-handed petting and strangerly affection,
A good act, a pale and cold
Assumption of forgetting,
Which was funny, because I could have sworn
I didn’t look all that different.
The exchange was brief,
Tense and stingy, with economy
Only brothers have, or did,
And then, like before, you were off,
Breathing down some barfly’s neck;
But with expedience comes the
Sensation that there was more than let on.
Good try.
At the end of the night, then,
leaving you, still sitting there, for who knows
How long, longer,
In a little box of dark wood,
Pints and
Pithy half-memories of always the day before,
Grudging tolerance of townies, tourists, tweakers,
Was no affront, no great pain, because it was always
What you wanted, and it should be so true that
Some men get what they like.
The sunset of my memory bathes nothing in warm empty light.
I saw the night
Sky in your
Eyes,
All
Big-round-
Sweet-warm things
That were heavy with
The teary dew of as many stars as you
Could count, and I know you’re good
At counting.
You put my legs
On top of yours, and pulled
Me
In—
What was I but
Clay in your hands—
Closer than I thought,
Was comfortable with;
And for how long our bodies
Knew each other, I very much
Just didn’t want to feel the pain of
Want, then.
But you had me, and I sat,
Listened:
A year younger in time,
Older than dirt now, that sandy small Vessel of yours,
Crazy-hair'd-crucible, flecked with
Rose gold, all of you overflowing with
Your mother’s mother’s mother’s mother’s…
And you said to me, remember:
“You aren’t special.”
I knew you were right. Always have been.
Always will be.
And as he lay on damp ground,
A ghost come round, thinly,
His body touched with rot,
He had a memory, lit like a
Lantern through the weave of
His palm,
Of a weeping mother and her consort,
Though not unfamiliar to him, either,
And he thought, as water wept from cavern walls,
"Oh, pity them"
And slept forever.
Then he awoke,
Rolled the tombstone from his chamber,
Slow steps out the mouth of
Sleep, his eyes, gentle and raw,
Tear in the catching of the
Sun,
Lighting a Galelian sea, whose
Little tawny bodies moved
Just as wind on similar
Waters.
And His chest churned with them, at the sight of
Their skinny hands holding the sky,
But he looked closer, doubted, and
saw them have the Earth,
Hurl her at those eagle-eyed galea-bearers,
And despaired;
So he came to them all resolve, bare feet burning the sand,
Climbed high on a ledge, weak and parched,
And gave to them with his sweet low voice:
"My children, forgiveness...'
As a kind stone, flown from the passion and sinewy arm
of a caring man,
came between the Rabbi's eyes
and shore him in two.
We wandered
Out that dank,
Dark mouth of the world,
Her boughed lips of
Honey-leafed ivy,
Bramble,
and Huckleberry,
All dressed in the
Fineness of
Midday sun.
And I had you,
Had you sewn into the
Seam of the song I strung
Carefully, so as to not look back
Once,
At your freshness, sweeter than
Spring,
Which still hung round my
Head like any good laurel of
Great effort
Should.
But somewhere,
In the worry,
Or the excitement of
Having won,
I forgot to keep count.
Forgive me:
I could not bear the thought of
Things that I have
No want
To say.
So, maybe,
You, still shadow,
Silent,
Unspeaking,
Follow me round,
(At least I hope)
With hands not to rough,
Ageless,
And to never falter with
Voice, just for you.
So a few times we have
Come to where
We were, that day, the
First,
And, surely,
the sun
Still looks the
Same.
The boy looked up at her,
With big eyes that were furrowed,
Intentionally, in exaggeration,
To show that he meant business; was
Tough and
Not to be made a friend
Or fool
Of,
All in response to the sweetly rhymed question of
Where did you come from?
And the boy, just before, had said:
"Don't know",
And resolved to show how much he didn't care
By shoving his little face in-between his
Elbows, arms crossed
On his tiny knees, brown and red
From dirt and bramble-scratch,
Already brought up to his chin that,
Thank God for hiding,
Quivered slightly like the
Oak leaves all twisted up
Just above.
She tossed his hair gently,
Smiled,
And said nothing,
But knew that the boy had
Needed her for quite a long time,
And had already made up her mind
Long before he was born as
This runt
To make sure she did:
And the fear was no more in him,
Something he did not understand,
And she held out a hand that,
I swear,
If you looked close enough,
You could see right through to the
Mossy floor,
And he took it without thinking,
Without regret,
And for a brief moment
Remembered.
He cut his teeth (and
On occasion the odd shin) on
Those little gravel roads that
Took the tall grass fields out
To the city that bloomed in
The hazy West.
The bike was steel, drop-barred
And v-braked, twenty-sixer that
Was a hand-me-down of a hand-me-down,
Riding smooth wasn't in it's
Country vernacular, but between
Clever gear ratios and well-ordering of
Playful tinkering, it certainly was
No slouch. And he would take it
To the crown of the world, out there
A hill, rolling and soft, but to his
Boyishness, already eclipsed by
Dancing flowers not uncommon
Out there, it was, perhaps,
A big scary.
Each time was a challenge to outdo the
Memory of the time before, and the
Memory's memory of the time before, the
Little ghost that bowed his head just
The same to help the wind wick over
Him, and faster did they all go, in tow,
A train of spirits all over the mound,
Little thing lost in the sea of impression,
Until one day he was certainly the fastest,
And the bike could do nothing more to
Offer it's way, but it didn't matter,
Because the hope was already in him,
And he resolved that there was no
Greater spirit.
But for him the speed was no child-matter, no
serious expectation of littleness, and often
he’d run from the school yard from the others
electing the preference of the company of
the shade of gamble-oaks, trapped in
Contemplation of each passing moment,
Painful to think that each rumination on
The passing was
A waste of another second: but the world,
Bless her, has her toys,
Or trials, experiments, and ought-ness
Means only a bit to the mother of obligation,
So he was tortured, and wept softly
Into starry-night pillowcases in the
Young morning over death that had
Yet to come, and would not come
For very long.
And so he became, though he wished not to,
Begrudgingly taken in the current, pissed
At the growing pains, and took no
Currency from the affording of
Higher pleasures. His frame soon
Came molded to motorcycle fuel tanks,
And the little hill but a warm vagueness,
And the gravel roads interstates of
Painful recollection that he spurned, and so to
Highways, rights of passage
Up and down western slope peaks
And triple digit speeds haunting regardless,
Did he take to wrap up the glowing corpse of
a
Missed childhood. Not enough, certainly, not
Yet.
A long while later, a whirlwind of
Rearrangement, and the world was
Unrecognizable: man had his
Claim in the stars, and looked well
Beyond to dull, dead rocks that
Promised some sort of raw wealth; hubris
Knows no bounds, and history
Only repeats itself if
You know it.
But he was the lucky few, a
Captain, the product of incredible effort:
Silent nights, loveless afternoons
Crammed in a g-force simulators or
Library cubicles, confines of
Greater aspirations; the bike sought
Dust, and so dust found it, and it
Seemed fitting. But he made it at
a cost useless to think about, and the
Reward was not distance from
Her great trials, but the chance to
Have it all come to a stillness that he
Had craved since the dawn of his
Memory broke over the east.
So there he was,
Captain light-year, alone in a
Thing that resembled no human effort
To ever come before, a star caught in a
Jar of polyceramic-something, whatever,
He wasn't a materials guy, but there he
Was, and the itching in his hands wouldn't
Go, and the ground control encouraged
Restraint, just a little, before full throttle,
But he couldn't help himself:
How could you expect him to?
Poor little thing, they thought, as
The kettle-pot-pod caught up to the light that
Had robbed him, kept him prisoner,
But to him, finally,
Eye to eye,
There it was:
.
And as the first left its tomb,
Raced towards the sunset at a pace that left the roar of its own
Raging flight breathless behind,
As it kissed the long spindly fingers
Of ticker-tape pulses of enemy sonar,
And shone star-like on blinking backlit monitors,
Between demands for action and the prickling,
Electric air
of fear,
Nothing was said,
Nothing was done,
And staid that way till the thing
Birthed a sun, the first, in the middle of Brooklyn,
And though he knew no hope for them,
Too late by even the second before it woke,
Maybe he could afford it,
Pay it forward,
By a turned cheek,
And silence,
…
Wandering spirit, son of
Heelers, horse breakers,
Semiphores and rhythm, schooners,
Brig-bared, thatch-dweller-were,
Coventry's youth, boy,
Child of husbanders and
Magistrates, hawk-nosed
Palatines, grey-skinned stone-
speaking dogs,
Oh, young
boy, too much of it, youth,
In that youth, having it stain your
Hound-mouth hung high, great toothy
Smile,
So you had higher humor, and
You had, by memory-played
strings, dull
And amber, caster of shadows, locket-
languishing
Haunting, now known to be
Made to hang from
Telephone poles tacked to
Castle'd buttes colored in tongues
Somewhere new, and men there
Having had their skin made from the
Same potters soil as the spells speaking
They to you.
Oh son, hinterland orphan,
To see you now, fondness in
My chest that runs warm,
And know no main could certainly
Rob that sweetly from my heart,
Yours to mine, and have remembrance
Be swept by chilling course of wavering
Heights, but in doubt does my certainty
Become salt-choked, loured
With foam, and so
Do I hesitate, and hold uncertainty a
Sweetness in the tongue that
Tears leap out:
Has your stranger habit robbed you of
Your fonder nature? Better to have it
Bound up tight, no greater surprise to
Savages, but
I look to your
Eyes, and see cloudiness, though they
Kin as those that
Cling tight to the crest of shore
shapers, here now colored by
A kind of light, and the beaming ray
Of newfound spirit, and though
They as mine, that they have their
Share of fine touch, to you is a kind of
Paleness that draws close,
Arrests,
Reeks
on its breath
candied air, testament to
Those airs, unkempt and dark, turning
Winds that tear cross great seas of
weed, grass and beasts like hummocks of
Muscle and horn, and no,
They to not often take, no,
but willingly had.
Oh, right, I was just here:
Oh, I was just right, here
Oh, here was just I right,
Here, oh, was just right, I,
Here right was just, I, oh,
I, here, oh, was just right,
Just here was right, oh I,
Here just was right, oh, I,
Right here just was, oh I,
Just right was here, oh I,
Right, here, was just, oh I.
What were once dream,
Subtle, faint and star-shaped
hazily in that of yours,
Of kind,
Disposed as similar, but
Quietly were they, and
As proof by your curled lips,
Were it preferred, did it
Stand to reason that were tender
Wonders, wonder wordless, and
Were it but a moment
No matter, for the dreamer
A good proof that it was,
And so then enough, so then
For gentleness, and furrowed
Brow regardless, that
Were the dream anything else,
Somehow, senselessly, that it
Could be had in the way wanted,
And only the simple matter of
Learning, patience against
Standstill silvers and trembling
Tide, could it
Always be as much.
What surprise he might've known
But didn't; despite a mind
Made of the same stuff that shone
Terribly bright in the further
Kind he looked upon when the
Day to her bed, rosy and overgrown, and
Her boy, with no tanness, no
Evidence of days spent in midday
Toil, no freckle or kiss of vulgar color,
Sable in the sky as he is, sit still and
Scowl at the rougher type, those things
Made to be bound to the stinking
Soil of sows and heifers and sires,
Yes, of the same type that flickering
Flame of candle-lit waking, sublime
Sense, but of a proportion of smaller part
Than even the dankest corner of
The cobwebby thoughts of unsympathetic
Majestry, whose darkness, effortlessly, out shown any variety of that
Triumphant genius known as willingness.
No, nothing as much could've been had by
That tight frock of dark curl and skin giving
And smooth to be taken and made to
Bear by waters kind and flowing but
Certainly having, the thought that as he,
Adam, black mother and the still kind hour of the glossy reign of that diminutive sun, stood before
What assumed his familiarity, form not
Unlike ten fingers, and legs like the
Height of him to the hip, and wings all
Round to prefigure a sort of expectation,
That the thing that had brightness in him
To outdo the midday lady of giving,
Could have had envy as he did, garden
Keeper, a sanguine machine that breathed hotness and deference, and the succor
Of flower, fruit, vine, bower, and what this
Little man may not have had as those
More deserving did he make up for in
A kind of care, a word that to dare to
Speak an aspersion even in contemplation,
The thing that made of the morning
Star tears to run stinging and burn like iron on skin
From fire quickly to brand his
Fair cheek.
She was beautiful, and
Had many names from many
Kinds of people, all different and
Sweet, loving and fair in
Her ways: For as
Many to have her in mind
So did she recall faces, and
Forms, all as gracious as
Any before. But who
Would have guessed that
The kindness of her lot,
Someone afforded such
Blessing to be likeness to
Great variety, diffuse light
Herself shone upon and
reflected a world of real good-
ness, my God, what a feeling:
But who could have thought,
Certainly not I, nor you, or
Us, that to be it all is a kind
Of curse against being
Anything in particular?
Seems that the big fella forgot
That to afford choice,
Unparalleled will, or parallel
To tendencies higher than
Even fanciful aspirations,
Is to find them accepting,
Having,
The babes,
Their swollen bellies
of a suffering
Supper that only
Begets itself,
And to dress themselves in
Malaria, flies, often
Grey, calloused eyes, and the
Thought, to
Have that be their
Preferred lot, of
Degree from
Adam and his
Poor sire, seems
A little
Mean.
Their language, once of
Streams and brooks and elms that
Hurried to the smooth breast of their
Little valleys, green and pretty, well
Manicured, and scenes of sunsets
And sunrises, now framed in some
Stuffy museum, now
Remembered, now only as those
Painted and remembered, but once
Where they had no other choice to
Be, not memory yet, but the place where
Their labor and toil were yet to be the
Nostalgia of a kind of noble mind
That had never known the
Postholing mud, nor the unquestionable
God in the wiry hair of a great
Sleeping girl in the breeze,
Now words that had a newness to them,
The same words, the same specie of
Stone made to talk of great men and
Greater deeds, clanwiseness and
Kinhood, now silly and spoken in ways
Made to slur.
The weight of their hearts were weighed
And found to be much lighter: little wild
Beasts, not much of a surprise that the
Light of a field mouse to be proportional,
Though no less fine and noble a kind of
Kiss of reminding.
So was The Thought, then, that,
to the little ones,
what with their according divinity,
no less of Favor but lower by virtue,
closer to the soft breath of her heart,
so had their own kind of holiness.
Though too little too late was it known that
for them this garden of Rest was their higher paradise,
the willing work of a million billion Souls singing in step to
keep it as much, and
That they aspired to no greater heaven as
Those yoked souls cairned in clay did, who
Knew of a dim memory of Repose, and no
Toil, choice, or death, things the little ones
Did not mind nor fear, because they were content,
Those grateful ones, for their lot, and of humor,
Chose no foul temper.
This is what is meant by the meek shall inherit
I guess what is left.
And as man's son did kill death, sweetly, so did they,
but as though with kindness even
Greater than the greatest. They knew no fear,
And sought no higher court, no greater
Paradise, but did that yoked soul of
Higher reason and choice and toil,
Lacking the arms of all other angels,
But not their wit, took the deathless clay
And made it bend, unyielding and now unfamiliar,
towards the stars in a
Manner not unfamiliar to their Aspiration?
For only the joy of want to be
The enduring sturdiness of
Great simplicity,
So it was: a dreamer of
Broad leaves, and great
Height, blueness and bark, and the
Little things all around
That lived on it, and made
It, the dreamer, a home, of
Kindred spirits: They gratefully
To be in habit of a
Steady sleeper returned the
Favor by
Certainly being in waking
The gift of a memory that
Never faded.
And so each
Dream there was only the want
To be, and there it was being,
And never did the joy go
Anywhere else, nor
Did they, for a similar
Wont, so they the
Tree remained, and would
So long as the joy was had.