Dark Matter

I would like to share with you

a few things I have come to believe

A sermon about borrowed time

I believe I have lived

I believe that

because I have sung the blues

on the Birthside Bridge

amidst the traffic

snottyeyed

screaming at the storms in my head

I believe in purging

I challenged God

shouting thinly into nothing

to claim me as his son

that I wasn’t illegitimate.

I believed I was.

I believe I am. Real. Perhaps slightly tangible.

I believe I have found

evidence of Dark Matter

in my broken heart

you see, there is something in there, a nothing, keeping everything out

it swallows the candle flame

Invisible stuff. empty.

Dark Matter. Darkness matters.

It is the definer of light

the Moriarty we fight

When I was a small child, I was afraid of the dark.

I believe one should be.

Afraid of darkness.

You are light. afterall.

I am light.

Organized light.

Molecular Energy being, Just Being.

And the darkness matters.

Matter. Silly monkeys.

I Believe I worship the light.

I am sunshine. I am bright.

Do you not see that we are everything around us?

I don’t mean to get all sciencey on you

but matter is the arrangement of energy

So I must remember to

never let My matter go dark

never forget to smile

I believe in light,

I have seen it.

I believe in fusion. And Love.

Attraction and gravity.

I believe that the energy that matters in my matter is the same energy of: Laughter, epiphanies, sobbing, rain, and thunder, and forestfires,

tragedy is a form a light.

I am light.

I am energy.

I am resister of the darkness that wants to forget my intrusion. Spark.  

and I believe that no matter how dark I get, 

I can never truly be dark matter.

But it’s no use trying to convince you.

I believe you already believe 

that you are light as well.

Let us begin to move so.

cleaning house

your Buddha is in my garden

your drawings scribbled on my walls

your dead flowers gather dust

your bed remains empty when I am in it

your yarn tied to my finger for luck

your books rest on my shelf

your bottle of googly eyes stares at the wall

your glimmering bike is rusting in the yard

you are everywhere but here

Transfer

City Hall has a new garden in the yard,

Under the cedar is a fig tree, rosemary, rainbow chard, leeks,

and a man pissing,

I stand in the wind without an appetite

I don’t think it likes me very much

Two lesbians are kissing, or maybe they are just two women,
I can never really tell,

I feel lonely.

the fourteen to Lents hisses to a stop

I get on slowly like I don’t care about schedules

The lights are bright inside, illuminating the bleak glances

I sit where I can face them

try and spark up a conversation about talking

I mutter the obvious, something about the chill of the night, and wait,

no one takes my queue

call it trifle

I have always talked about weather to strangers

it is a hors d’oeuvre,
a warm up to the meal

I could ask “What made you want to cry today?”

now they want to talk about snow, rain, thunder

This is the same bus, on the same street, in the same city

but everything is changing, this could be Detroit for all I know

frustrated with the lack of communal chatting

I attempt to feel smarter by reading a dumb book

it could be worse

I look at all the dumb people reading smart phones,

they make me think of the gorillas in the Seattle Zoo,

fingering the glass, trying to touch my finger on the other side

but there is no substance in this, this is not contact!

I turn the pages with sex appeal, maybe someone will see this

and know I am not self-conscious, at least not on the outside,

I look up as if pondering the meaning of life

and to think that the 80s are over

this time machine, stops at all stops, future, past and present,

I live on the lines of maps

at the center of nothing I can recognize anymore,

the Copper Penny tells me it never forgot the Organ Grinder

we still remember the jingles from Tom Peterson,

and Gloria too, Wake-up, wake-up,

Eastport Plaza once had water tube-slide, 

stood high into the sky, I never got to feel the rush. 

my father, Rich,  told me we were "poverty stricken goddamn it!"

I always thought that I would slip and slide when I got bigger, 

when I was rich,

I get off

my transfer, folded, becomes a bookmark

in case I lose I my place

The dinner table with six billion chairs

I fall in love with everyone,

one at a time,

as if each of them awaken

something in me, that says, look how wonderful things could be,

I fall in love with possibilities,

lend me an hour of attention and I will daydream passions

I fall in love with their secrets,

the things they don’t know, the things they don’t show,

I fall in love with the abyss in their eyes,

I am not afraid of Leviathan, or Leviticus, or Lance Armstrong

don’t look, they say, hiding darkness under a lamp,

reckless.

I fall in love with everyone, as if it will take that many,

falling at velocity, unable to stop, falling in, out, through and onto the floor,

I fall in love like a seizure on the bus,

it takes me by surprise, I lose control over my body, and people laugh at my floundering,

I fall in love with strangers that will never love me, never even know my bad habits,  

this is where my heart takes me,

trying to weed out all the conditions

that make others, not worth my love.

I fall in love with life,

by seeing each one of you as a your own little miracle,

I love your stories, I cry when they end,

I may not be able to love my enemy,

but sooner or later,

Love won’t allow me to have any.

Pulling Ivy

You spoke to me from a fence,

I walked away with ugliness all over my face

and in the morning, when I looked into your mirror

it rejected me again

I asked you to stop singing me love songs in public places,

and wanted you tell me how you felt about my privates,

maybe you don’t find pleasure in pulling ivy,

those knitter’s hands, displaying patience,

I closed the door to your wilderness,

imagining indigo images of the grassy places left,

making fakes out of the originals,

I found your cryptic drawing, a perfect lawn, a lone tree losing its leaves,

out there past the wooden fences, that dark forest whispers to me

the clenched fist of missing out on knowing someone   

telling stories to myself again about the meaning of it all,

spinning it in a colorless yarn,  

now silence, filling my sails of self doubt,

and soon, the beautiful curves of the earth

will take you from my horizon

imaginary self

I showed up to your party,

wanting to be someone’s batman,

but everyone was batman,

I asked my son what he wanted to be when he grew up,

and he asked me what I wanted to be when he grew up,

someone’s hero,

perhaps to myself, even,

I tried on all the costumes at the wacky costume warehouse

it felt empty, when none of them fit,

I wanted to be someone’s hero

said the boy 

wondering