Seven Things I Thought I Knew Fifteen Years Ago

https://youtu.be/5STZnAAkgWY

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(but first, whom is that a drawing of, or don’t we need to know?)

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1

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Everything a sentient human being does or is

depends on making manifest inchoate fizz.

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And then unutterability transmutes into new mass:

with strange autonomy you hold the dark at bay –

see your hand is in the form, is part of it, at last –

and find your prints illuminate and mark the clay.

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2

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Go to Mass, observe the angel eyes around you

swerve, evade, retreat then peek out, press against

impenetrable corneas – like starving children

at a Christmas window, locked out, looking in.
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Milton's Satan is the Midnight

Cowboy of the human soul:

He wants to taste each part of you,

he wants to eat you whole.

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He wants you in his bed for pay,

wherein you hear him pant
he longs to give his heart away

(he thinks) to you, and can't.

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3

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To banish doubt we grew up learning

that we had to peel and parcel out

our feelings and our thoughts,

like oranges, into discrete

segmented parts – taught

that hearts were comprehensible

if we divided them syllabically with But’s.

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But this is nuts.

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The only worthwhile art is opening

and offering a hand. The central

alchemy of anything is And.

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4

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Sometimes you have to rhyme
and tap a healing meter,
beating out in careful time
your chaos. Find some neater
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means of caging feeling
so it offers the illusion
of behaving. When I'm reeling
I hang onto form. Confusion
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needs a bridge across its sea,
a span of words for order –
strict words make a milder me –
so I can cross the border.

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5

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I found the means to make

my fingers and my bow obey

my ear, and swoon,

by concentrating on a tune –

not disembodied black marks

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on a sheet. To me, if you

can't find a way to play

a piece without consulting

something central in your heart –

to learn and ground technique

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by making love – whatever you

create will be illimitably weak.

Run somewhere, not in place.

Give aimed and passionate

experience a shot at grace.

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6

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Soul squirms involuntarily:

I sit with it, forget it’s there –

it burrows down contrarily

then surfaces for air –

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and prods me to enjoin

my heart to tell me what I think –

then floods from brain to groin

in answer – takes me to a brink

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of unsuspected hearing, seeing

(when getting old is all I’ve done).

Then like some subterranean being

breaking through to sun

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the odd thing worms up – blundering –

hellbent on being free –

and pops! – abruptly, wondering

how else to get to me.

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7

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I don't believe in innocence
as commonly portrayed -
the notion that we're all clean slates
at birth is retrograde to me:

we enter life uploaded

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with a universe of stuff: genetic
baggage – temperaments, magnetic

pulls; splenetic – some of us;

and others - easy, light; we cart out

personalities full-blown –

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fixed palettes offered up, whose

hues paint infancy in unmistakable

designs. By two, we're Machiavellian –

we learn to throw our weight around –

a tonic impudence intoxicated

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by the thrill of saying "no."
Seems truer that our innocence

is earned: opposite to what we're told,
the task of growing up's to shed
inherited impediments that make us

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sink back into infantile jaded ruts.

We work to learn to bring ourselves

a fresh sanguinity: to scrub out

stubborn stains, and find –

create – our real virginity.

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