Sleep is a place of unlinked fenceposts;
the old message unread, remembered,
dragged by ankle
over wild shines
and left
unopened
between
unmeeting things.
Hands drift
toward doors there,
Traverse and
unfold,
and give noise
in their unfolding
against
thresholds,
Begging after answer
From rooms behind
strewn with blanket
and cornhusk
and panic.
How to be still,
in those rooms.
How to wait;
How to outlast
ceilings
until the embered stars
alight upon them.
Wednesday, November 27, 2013
Sunday, November 24, 2013
Sills
The oldness in
my legs
unfurls,
Its promises
lengths spent
along the Little Calumet.
That certain sound
Of trains
that makes a song.
The sills
of it
lifted
to my eyes.
my legs
unfurls,
Its promises
lengths spent
along the Little Calumet.
That certain sound
Of trains
that makes a song.
The sills
of it
lifted
to my eyes.
Wednesday, November 20, 2013
Novembers
Confounded language
and aftermath,
leaves
cradled under fences,
edges gathered,
drawn, spun,
lifted up by old light
atop
silhouettes of
high-tension towers
strung over the low,
late-autumn sun.
Six or seven minutes
in all the world
have been hammered
from this slant of light.
And there, maybe,
the delicate erosions of
footfall
in leaf litter
along the Indian Boundary Line,
or in some years
the rusting Wabash,
poured upon, vanished
by wind and dark
and the moments
they define.
I wake up and pray
without ceasing
in that old country,
when it comes near.
Those old, shivering days;
Another earth,
drifting
alongside the old one,
its
dust,
its uttering serpants
spinning slowly away
in rivulets
of silver
in a new skyline
on shores
just over the rise.
and aftermath,
leaves
cradled under fences,
edges gathered,
drawn, spun,
lifted up by old light
atop
silhouettes of
high-tension towers
strung over the low,
late-autumn sun.
Six or seven minutes
in all the world
have been hammered
from this slant of light.
And there, maybe,
the delicate erosions of
footfall
in leaf litter
along the Indian Boundary Line,
or in some years
the rusting Wabash,
poured upon, vanished
by wind and dark
and the moments
they define.
I wake up and pray
without ceasing
in that old country,
when it comes near.
Those old, shivering days;
Another earth,
drifting
alongside the old one,
its
dust,
its uttering serpants
spinning slowly away
in rivulets
of silver
in a new skyline
on shores
just over the rise.
Wednesday, November 13, 2013
Flashlight Mythology
Because I love my children, I have rightfully taught them to honor the Marvel universe above the DC universe. The reasons for this are obvious to the most casual observer.
Until recently, the one and only exception to this rule was The Dark Knight. Batman, after all, has always been the most Marvel-like hero that DC has to offer. Is this a surprise? Of course not: Batman's story -- from top to bottom -- is the closest DC could ever come to the pathos, irony, and dramatic grit that Marvel's heros bring to the table. Wolverine and Batman could very easily spend a night closing bars together in a way that Aquaman and Iron Man never could. Marvel's evil has always been far more tempting and gray and empathetic than DC's; its good always far more conflicted, precarious, and morally tough. In short, Marvel's universe has always been far more difficult; in a word, real. A mythology that resonates because it knows, authenticates, and mirrors.
The weakest link (ironically) in DC's universe has always been Superman. Here you have an invincible being - impervious to all known weapons - imbued with all imaginable superhuman abilities. Can outrun anything. Can move any object. Can withstand any weapon. Can see, hear, do pretty much anything. A being of omniscience, omnipotence, and (for all practical purposes) omnipresence. His one weakness? Yeah. A green rock that shows up every now and then as the plotline demands.
So imagine my surprise when we watched "Man of Steel" tonight.
Here's a movie that gets very well how the humble comic book -- at best -- captures the flickering, fireside mythos of the ages. And does so without ever once winking at itself or us.
I don't know.
Maybe my expectations were so low that I couldn't help but be pleasantly surprised, but I found the whole exercise to be exhileratingly refreshing, and surprisingly moral.
Weakness as strength, strength as weakness. Grace in restraint, restraint in respect. You know, that sort of thing.
Until recently, the one and only exception to this rule was The Dark Knight. Batman, after all, has always been the most Marvel-like hero that DC has to offer. Is this a surprise? Of course not: Batman's story -- from top to bottom -- is the closest DC could ever come to the pathos, irony, and dramatic grit that Marvel's heros bring to the table. Wolverine and Batman could very easily spend a night closing bars together in a way that Aquaman and Iron Man never could. Marvel's evil has always been far more tempting and gray and empathetic than DC's; its good always far more conflicted, precarious, and morally tough. In short, Marvel's universe has always been far more difficult; in a word, real. A mythology that resonates because it knows, authenticates, and mirrors.
The weakest link (ironically) in DC's universe has always been Superman. Here you have an invincible being - impervious to all known weapons - imbued with all imaginable superhuman abilities. Can outrun anything. Can move any object. Can withstand any weapon. Can see, hear, do pretty much anything. A being of omniscience, omnipotence, and (for all practical purposes) omnipresence. His one weakness? Yeah. A green rock that shows up every now and then as the plotline demands.
So imagine my surprise when we watched "Man of Steel" tonight.
Here's a movie that gets very well how the humble comic book -- at best -- captures the flickering, fireside mythos of the ages. And does so without ever once winking at itself or us.
I don't know.
Maybe my expectations were so low that I couldn't help but be pleasantly surprised, but I found the whole exercise to be exhileratingly refreshing, and surprisingly moral.
Weakness as strength, strength as weakness. Grace in restraint, restraint in respect. You know, that sort of thing.
Monday, November 11, 2013
11-10-2013
The night,
The comet.
The
trailhead.
The young, remembered
November;
Old tasks given
by God.
His windowless rooms
Dragging
from between
out-buildings.
His patient
curve,
Giving
shorelines
to maps,
The Calumet City
and
Cline Avenue
ways out
from underneath.
The form of
Testaments
Left upon tables;
The shame of what was traced
In that dust.
The call?
Wailing
After the framing
and the doors have
swelled
beyond all entrance.
The comet.
The
trailhead.
The young, remembered
November;
Old tasks given
by God.
His windowless rooms
Dragging
from between
out-buildings.
His patient
curve,
Giving
shorelines
to maps,
The Calumet City
and
Cline Avenue
ways out
from underneath.
The form of
Testaments
Left upon tables;
The shame of what was traced
In that dust.
The call?
Wailing
After the framing
and the doors have
swelled
beyond all entrance.
Friday, November 1, 2013
A Near-Halloween Story
It's late October. I had made my way back to Marquette by car. Restless, I'd decided to wander around Prairie du Chien. I spent most of the night before smoking cigar after cigar on the roof outside my motel window, with cheap Scotch frying in my gut. Still, the next morning I woke up with the sun. I wandered along the old main street, stepping into small bookstores and cafes, finding nothing. I spent the day smoking and scribbling among the effigies in Pike's Peak State Park. By dusk, I have talked myself into the Phillips 66 gas station/restaurant near the tracks, obvious with a half gallon of water occupying the space in the booth next to me. My olive-green coat. A thick, dirty duffle bag. Suddenly dark, there was time, still: Time for a walk, maybe.
I move out onto a street that finds itself on the outline of a bluff, that finds itself stranded near the Mississippi. It's practically raining leaves. Parties and gatherings and mutterings spill out onto back porches of a Saturday night. It's cold. I'm underdressed, obvious again. There's a silver quad-cab pickup in the dark back at the gas station when I return; and a man, a woman; a small girl; hugs and kisses. I'm inside, next, back at my booth. The man from the quad-cab pickup is walking past, his eye on me. I can see that the people who work here know him. Painfully, I'm a stranger to them.
Outside a train idles alongside the river near the bridge. Barges rust in the current. The year is pulling itself toward winter. I take glances, then stare at the pickup man, unblinking. I do this because he is stopped near me, drilling holes through me or something just over my shoulder, obvious; framed in the fluorescent light like a fat harvest moon. My face feels long, thin. He comes alongside me. I can feel the floor come up under my feet. Some silence travels between us. He's a heavy man, I observe. Weathered. Unshaven. Stuffed with his years. I can hear him breathe as he regards me. I gather my obvious dufflebag into my lap and push my back upward and into the back of the booth and breathe. Quickly, he lifts his right hand up into the air - an exaggerated gesture - and lowers it. He looks away, and up, and lifts up the sleeve on his left arm, begins slapping the face of his black-banded watch rhythmically, slowly with two fingers.
"Fifteen minutes," he says, the words tumbling sloppily past themselves, tiredly, as though uttered from the mouth of an exasperated teacher. "We'll go west for a while. Then almost a stop. A near full stop." I push myself back into my booth and straighten myself, again. "Then waaaaaay north. I'm meaning way north. Right? Straight hours, not minutes." I look down at the table. I put my hands there and study my fingers. "It's mixed," he says. "But it's going pretty much straight through. Get out there now if you're looking for something that won't shake the shit out of you." He walks away, slowly.
And it's getting later. Colder and colder. Darker and darker.
It's nearly November. I find myself back outside. The ground is vibrating. I am walking, blatantly, next to the idling train.
The light from the gas station; The houses; The picnic pavilion; The bridge over the Mississippi; The moon. All that light, so yellow and thin. Like weathered Scotch tape over a neglected photograph.
The river-sounds nose up against the wind in the trees. For a moment I imagine I'm watched, but the moment passes. My coat is too thin, and I'm clenching my teeth, even shaking, the autumn wind peeling its slight edges away from the warmth of my chest. It's clear. It's late to be catching out. Nothing in me honest is up for can-opening another trip north.
And I'm tired.
But a weird obligation hangs heavy in the darkness over me, and I have thrown chains around thick, unseen poles that launch themselves up from bedrock to Polaris.
And so I am, stolen, and framed in a stupid crosshair on a map of Iowa, mining a string of well-mixed freight for a grain car.
And now the Quad-Cab Man is coming along the dim edge of the track. I recognize his pear shape and the borders of his coat. He seems tired.
"Go home," he says, clearly, bluntly.
I slow, and then stop. I'm not in trouble: There isn't a hint of a threat in his voice. But a firmness lives there. He doesn't break his stride, but keeps trudging up the line toward the engine.
"Come on guy. Get yourself home."
Something fatherly in his words disarms me. His eyes look past mine.
"Forget it." He stretches out the word: "Ferrrrrget it." Both of his arms arc slowly up into the cold air.
"Go home! You want to see Thanksgiving, right?"
He passes by me.
"They're gonna find you dead in that coat, guy."
Suddenly my eyelids, my arms, my legs, my duffle bag all seem unbearably heavy. The cold pushes through my jacket, and cuts past the buttons on my shirt to rest against my bare chest. A part of me that hasn't been afraid for a long time is instantly nervous. This is not the first time someone has said this sort of thing to me. But suddenly it feels as if a filter has been lifted off of the lens: Literally. Visually, physically, everything changes. Everything looks dirty and greasy and raw; and the air is ice-cold; and the train stinks; and my stomach goes queasy.
Something darker than the darkness of the descending night seems to ooze and crawl from around the edges of the still, silent railcars looming now more above me than next to me.
The train feels suddenly and strangely unfamiliar. A kind of hostility bubbles up from underneath it.
The cars tower over me -- black, hulking masses -- as if they might collapse in a heap in their great tonnage upon my frail form.
But there's that weird obligation still hanging in the air. So I keep walking along the line, but move a few paces apart from the staring string of freight.
I feel a slow terror begin to grip me, from somewhere outside of myself. I cannot appropriate this train, and yet I am still searching for my grain car.
And now my head is throbbing, and I feel like I must steady myself. And I am beset with what I can only describe as an abject feeling of pure horror; unmitigated dread, as though at any moment the devil himself might lean out from one of the cars and pull me up.
I stumble away from the train, the line, slowly, unable to make myself run.
As I manage to put more space between myself and the tracks, I feel the black dread ease. I keep glancing over my shoulder to reassure myself that the train isn't actually somehow still occupying the space immediately behind me.
I make it to the city park with its bank of picnic tables, and hurl my bag and my water away from me as if some of that weird blackness still clings to them. I throw myself down on a weathered bench, feeling as though I've just sprinted a mile pursued by a twister.
I'm still catching my breath when I hear the slack action ripple down the line of freight, and the train begins to haul itself away.
The night softens again, and I can hear leaves on the pavement; cars crossing over the bridge.
Nearby, laughter and conversation.
Slowly, saved yet again, I return to myself.
I move out onto a street that finds itself on the outline of a bluff, that finds itself stranded near the Mississippi. It's practically raining leaves. Parties and gatherings and mutterings spill out onto back porches of a Saturday night. It's cold. I'm underdressed, obvious again. There's a silver quad-cab pickup in the dark back at the gas station when I return; and a man, a woman; a small girl; hugs and kisses. I'm inside, next, back at my booth. The man from the quad-cab pickup is walking past, his eye on me. I can see that the people who work here know him. Painfully, I'm a stranger to them.
Outside a train idles alongside the river near the bridge. Barges rust in the current. The year is pulling itself toward winter. I take glances, then stare at the pickup man, unblinking. I do this because he is stopped near me, drilling holes through me or something just over my shoulder, obvious; framed in the fluorescent light like a fat harvest moon. My face feels long, thin. He comes alongside me. I can feel the floor come up under my feet. Some silence travels between us. He's a heavy man, I observe. Weathered. Unshaven. Stuffed with his years. I can hear him breathe as he regards me. I gather my obvious dufflebag into my lap and push my back upward and into the back of the booth and breathe. Quickly, he lifts his right hand up into the air - an exaggerated gesture - and lowers it. He looks away, and up, and lifts up the sleeve on his left arm, begins slapping the face of his black-banded watch rhythmically, slowly with two fingers.
"Fifteen minutes," he says, the words tumbling sloppily past themselves, tiredly, as though uttered from the mouth of an exasperated teacher. "We'll go west for a while. Then almost a stop. A near full stop." I push myself back into my booth and straighten myself, again. "Then waaaaaay north. I'm meaning way north. Right? Straight hours, not minutes." I look down at the table. I put my hands there and study my fingers. "It's mixed," he says. "But it's going pretty much straight through. Get out there now if you're looking for something that won't shake the shit out of you." He walks away, slowly.
And it's getting later. Colder and colder. Darker and darker.
It's nearly November. I find myself back outside. The ground is vibrating. I am walking, blatantly, next to the idling train.
The light from the gas station; The houses; The picnic pavilion; The bridge over the Mississippi; The moon. All that light, so yellow and thin. Like weathered Scotch tape over a neglected photograph.
The river-sounds nose up against the wind in the trees. For a moment I imagine I'm watched, but the moment passes. My coat is too thin, and I'm clenching my teeth, even shaking, the autumn wind peeling its slight edges away from the warmth of my chest. It's clear. It's late to be catching out. Nothing in me honest is up for can-opening another trip north.
And I'm tired.
But a weird obligation hangs heavy in the darkness over me, and I have thrown chains around thick, unseen poles that launch themselves up from bedrock to Polaris.
And so I am, stolen, and framed in a stupid crosshair on a map of Iowa, mining a string of well-mixed freight for a grain car.
And now the Quad-Cab Man is coming along the dim edge of the track. I recognize his pear shape and the borders of his coat. He seems tired.
"Go home," he says, clearly, bluntly.
I slow, and then stop. I'm not in trouble: There isn't a hint of a threat in his voice. But a firmness lives there. He doesn't break his stride, but keeps trudging up the line toward the engine.
"Come on guy. Get yourself home."
Something fatherly in his words disarms me. His eyes look past mine.
"Forget it." He stretches out the word: "Ferrrrrget it." Both of his arms arc slowly up into the cold air.
"Go home! You want to see Thanksgiving, right?"
He passes by me.
"They're gonna find you dead in that coat, guy."
Suddenly my eyelids, my arms, my legs, my duffle bag all seem unbearably heavy. The cold pushes through my jacket, and cuts past the buttons on my shirt to rest against my bare chest. A part of me that hasn't been afraid for a long time is instantly nervous. This is not the first time someone has said this sort of thing to me. But suddenly it feels as if a filter has been lifted off of the lens: Literally. Visually, physically, everything changes. Everything looks dirty and greasy and raw; and the air is ice-cold; and the train stinks; and my stomach goes queasy.
Something darker than the darkness of the descending night seems to ooze and crawl from around the edges of the still, silent railcars looming now more above me than next to me.
The train feels suddenly and strangely unfamiliar. A kind of hostility bubbles up from underneath it.
The cars tower over me -- black, hulking masses -- as if they might collapse in a heap in their great tonnage upon my frail form.
But there's that weird obligation still hanging in the air. So I keep walking along the line, but move a few paces apart from the staring string of freight.
I feel a slow terror begin to grip me, from somewhere outside of myself. I cannot appropriate this train, and yet I am still searching for my grain car.
And now my head is throbbing, and I feel like I must steady myself. And I am beset with what I can only describe as an abject feeling of pure horror; unmitigated dread, as though at any moment the devil himself might lean out from one of the cars and pull me up.
I stumble away from the train, the line, slowly, unable to make myself run.
As I manage to put more space between myself and the tracks, I feel the black dread ease. I keep glancing over my shoulder to reassure myself that the train isn't actually somehow still occupying the space immediately behind me.
I make it to the city park with its bank of picnic tables, and hurl my bag and my water away from me as if some of that weird blackness still clings to them. I throw myself down on a weathered bench, feeling as though I've just sprinted a mile pursued by a twister.
I'm still catching my breath when I hear the slack action ripple down the line of freight, and the train begins to haul itself away.
The night softens again, and I can hear leaves on the pavement; cars crossing over the bridge.
Nearby, laughter and conversation.
Slowly, saved yet again, I return to myself.
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