Filed under: poems | Tags: abandonment, Camus, death, fallenness, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Orpheus, philosophy, Portland, San José, the Columbia, The fall, the Willamette
The Columbia has abandoned us,
the Willamette, too; and the Guadalupe; and
San Jose. And Portland. We’re
abandoned into history. We’re run aground on
a little island,
but it isn’t really a little island — it’s
a sea monster.
Verily.
The sea monster doesn’t want to drink tea
with us; it doesn’t want
to play tennis. In fact the sea monster seems to have no
interest in anything about us, what we do or whatever happiness we’ve managed
to scrape together in this small insignificance we call existence.
In fact the sea monster seems to want us for
lunch. This sea
monster is life.
Heidegger said
we’ve been abandoned into the world.
We’ve fallen
into it.
Does this sound familiar?
We’re falling together.
I smell the concrete
who knows how far down.
“La chute” Camus called it. “The fall.”
I can’t even turn my head to look.
It
doesn’t matter.
You are here
and
it’s wonderful.
We were told the Northwest is a big foolish beast,
no sea monster: a Cerberus
for we sweet Orpheuses
to blanket with sound.
We’ll smile as we play
our lyres. We’ll sing in
harsh voices.
We’ll pluck the breath from each other’s chests
while there’s still breath left to draw.
We’ll live breathless.
Au bout de soufflé.
Is there concrete below?
Has the war started?
I don’t care.
I’m happiest when I’m with you.
You wrote in a little card,
“Coup dedans là. Tout sera OK.“
Hang in there. All will be OK.
Come sea monsters. Come Cerberus. Come fools.
Come fall.
Filed under: poems | Tags: buildings, city streets, death, Einstein, graveyards, Heidegger, Hemingway, Kierkegaard, philosophy, traffic
What are we paying for?
There is traffic that halves
a man’s life,
that puts a boy in a vise.
There is convenience,
convenience stores of
storied convenience,
inconvenient continental breakfasts
in the lobbies of multi-storied antiseptic hotels.
Expensive motels.
Are we paying for the malls?
Those castles I never enter.
Are we paying for the highways?
That speed us toward the unnecessary,
or at least the nearest
gas station.
I would forfeit them.
I would roll the freeways up
like carpets,
and bury every road sign
in an unmarked grave.
A man on a bicycle kicks
over signs
pointing
to an open house
just over there…
Clap. Clap. Clap.
Every one along the avenue.
Are we paying for the mattress stores?
Are we paying for the car dealerships?
Are we paying
principle
and interest
for these hills like white elephants?
Are we paying for fast food
at every block?
Who gave these things to us?
I can only say
I see Einstein
on the back of a green chair.
Are we paying
for the office buildings
that sit unoccupied?
Or incomplete?
A block’s worth
of gray Swiss cheese
cultured in the sun.
Are we paying for the steel beams
that hold up their heavy backs?
For the concrete that
shuts them off from the world.
Stay a while and listen.
Are we paying for these houses?
Graveyards have more life in them.
Slick city streets seek revenge
for our evils.
We who once laid down the roads
will be laid into our graves by them.
For what are the streets
but the culmination of our travels?
When we may fly a thousand miles
and yet find ourselves home?
We may scream down freeways
and busy boulevards
under overpasses
and over bridges formed like stony
interlaced and arched hands
and see nothing.
Are we living to hurtle ourselves
toward death?
We may drive to escape and to forget,
but the roads are clovers,
curves that inevitably resend us
to the center.
Are we living to die
beneath a metal door,
under the feet of trembling others
looking for a deal to validate
their day?
The cities have killed more than they’ve ever saved.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: anachronism, Dante, Heidegger, Michelangelo, Nietzsche, philosophy, Rainer Maria Rilke, Socrates, Stoicism, the Crusades, water
In the face of great art,
I am mute.
I could not stand before the statue of David,
could not say,
“You must change your life.”
I have not transcended this Being,
the petty existence we woke with
and wake with every morning.
Though nor am I a Stoic.
I have not accepted this state,
could not accept it;
I won’t float downstream
in the face of this bloody river.
I am not the type to establish
some Kingdom in the Desert,
nor some City of Dis.
In the face of everything I’ll fly,
until I am picked from the world’s
Teeth.
A horse can’t see its own behind.
The gadfly’s best work is done while the great beast
watches only the path ahead.
If I am an arrow,
I await my bow.
Until then,
I will remain in my quiver,
and show the others
what rotten wood they’re made of.
