Light is Transitory and Always Failing
Light is Transitory & Always Failing
-for my father
I.
My daughter was four when we were attacked
By wasps in the front yard of our house
In upstate New York
Where we weathered the early years of her life,
The pandemic & my fathers death.
I was stung first.
A dark scout from a nest in the ground
Crept inside the lip of my boot
& pierced my calf
A signal to the rest
To defend The Queen @ all costs.
II.
I traveled a great distance
To be there @ the foot of a mountain
On the edge of a wood -
All the way from
The San Joaquin Valley
Where summer chokes the light
& light is transitory & always failing.
Where I spoke a very particular language:
drug-talk, private slang
free-verse & slant-rhymes.
Stuff I picked up on
Basketball courts on the west-side
Twitching @ the elbow of the free-throw line
Trying to shake a defender to execute
My signature mid-range jumper
Or drive hard to the rim,
Leaving the ground w the ease I had then
my head humming w Mexican Red-Hair
Sinsemilla & gangsters’ voices
Echoing off of the hard-wood & vaulted ceilings
Of Holmes Playground Gymnasium.
III.
Huddled in the dark pews
in the South Wing
Chewing the shit out of my cheek
& Peter Everwine trembling
From the podium @ The Art Museum
On Dakota & Clinton where just outside
The shrouded wolves waited
& inside I was learning how to use words
& images to change the dismal scenery
Of The Central Valley
& the seemingly hopelessness of my cause.
It was the first time I had heard
A wrist compared to a star
Or anything really.
What an elegant word: wrist.
Oh what an infinitesimal piece
Of dust I was then…
IV.
Anyway, It broke
The Monotony & Violence into stanzas
& I took up w the bruised & angry
Motel Girls
On Golden State Boulevard
Along freeway 99
V.
I thought then that I wanted
To become a minister
& I chose a path not unlike Jesus
who also favoured the company of prostitutes
& walked out across the water
& spoke to fisherman from the impossible twinkling waves
& laid waste to the money changers
w a whip he must have borrowed
Or up until then, kept like a secret to himself
& who knew he knew how to use such a thing?
Who knew?
Once, evangelizing on the street
The group I was w
Turned their backs on a drunk
Begging for change
& they did it, I know, because they knew not
What it was to need a drink
& so…
They missed an opportunity for salvation
After all was it not
Christ himself torn & bleeding
Beat all the way down to shit
Asking for a dollar or two there
On Olive Ave. among the lepers & the stoned?
Earl the Pearl whirling
W his hand out: a Human Turnstile.
VI.
We had stumbled upon something
As old as a hive of wasps buried in the ground.
An invisible pestilence
Moving from one pair of lungs to another
One cruel gesture at a time
Blacked out beneath a swarm of bees.
It came to nothing,
My wanting to be a priest or a scholar.
In my mind it was the same thing.
Whip merchants, piss off Pharisees
write a poem about the futility of fishing
& finally…
bring the adrift back to the shore
One by one to breathe relief,
But I guess I didn’t know how tough
Things had become…
Christ.
VII.
My father departed this earth in stages.
It makes sense when you think about it.
His mind cut out before his body did.
He was a marathon runner & the whole gist
Is to turn off the brain & settle into
Some type of rhythm despite the pain.
He did, however, go down swinging
@ the minimum-wage workers
& indifferent bureaucrats who had assumed
Control of his life.
He was a man who had learned
About freedom on his own terms.
Time his nemesis & companion,
He mastered the sub six-minute mile
& the eight-hour plus work-day
Then in glue-gunned shoes
Left the earth in long, exploratory flights
Of time & space & endurance.
“You don’t need that”
he would tell me whenever I was
In the throes of desire or dissatisfaction.
He would point to my shoes
In disarray on the floor & say
“Fix that”
VIII.
What can I tell my daughter
After such a vicious assault,
That it’s going to be ok?
We sit up in bed late into the night
In the dark & talk
Sometimes to each other
Other times to our invisible
& old companions that we have
Imagined or endured
& we secretly listen in
On each other’s conversations
Amending & smiling into
The parts of the story
That make no sense.