~for Lori Jones McCaffery~

Lori Jones McCaffery commenting on
“a new time (poetry in the time of pandemic)”^
“Tender and brutal at the same time. Like the times.”*

                                                     ­          <>
your observation, a commission, opens an incision,
bleeding out a Noah flood vision:

                                                        ­        <>

when we begin, to compare and contrast the movable tender and the unstoppable brutal, the poetry must rise to equalize the pressure of unbalanced times, the tender, and the brutal in an uneasy peaceful coexistence, at the same time, same place
                                                           ­     
                              
                              
                            
The Brutal                                              The Tender
—————                                             —————
life in the epicenter, the greatest,       in the darkened bedroom,
noisiest city, now landscape               she awakens, her hand quick
painting quiet,                                      comes to rest on my chest,
one lives/writes/eyesights thru       the quality of motion+volume
pink mask + a minimum six              of heartbeats, is it loud enough,
feet of separation,                                steady on, no need to dial 911!
a citified tableau of macro wave       she unaware that I can hear
forces in crashing collision, upon     her loud, tender exhalation
your skin’s cells                                   celebrating surviving day#?

newspaper images of Death’s            many volunteer, food delivery,
ministers applauding the newly        though I am asymptomatic
arrived mobile morgues, for 100        my request tenderly, firmly
died yesterday,                                      denied, for I meet too many
their brutal death rattles                      of the vulnerable criteria,
overwhelmed  the super-surround.   instead, offering food to me,
sound silences of                                   to deliver to me, to deliver me,
brutal emptiness of millions of           tenderly I say, no thanks,
sacrificial                                             ­    my tour of duty, almost done
                              
                                all of us isolate lambs, in day jailed,
                                for we still breathing the maybe tainted,                
                                oxygen molecules of no safe surety      

a consummate perfection,                    the same, taming words I tell  
the holy quietus of                                 my son, young father,
those no longer breathing,                   tender me necessary tasks that
they now rest up above,                        require outside journeys, say I
hid in a white cumulus                         send me into the red hot areas
cloud cover, a noise suppressing         insert me into the front line,
sky coverlet, moving across a               militarized zones, he replies,
bright blue pure background,              ”you’re too old, part and
a train of funeral caissons,                     parcel of the most vulnerable,
brutal noisy hooves clacking             better-write-you tender-poems”

daily, hourly, the statistical alerts,         why so hard, to write tender
brief résumés delivered,                         so easy of the brutal, their
drumbeating, look now!                         curses so readily supplied,
are you up to date?                                  is tenderness short supplied?

catalog the debris, organized with brutal necessary efficacy, quantify, qualify the costs, include even the tender ineffable, countdown and graph the brutal calculus of the curve infection, and you, numbed, past the point of eyes capable of what once was tender droplet tearing

highlight the unknown faraway, the tender hope of a distant apex inflection, while plotting the second derivative, the rate of change of the rate of a brutal yet trending upward *****, the ascending all-inclusive stat, infected, the rate of change of decedents, downed, descending, giving in...gowned in hospital blue, for the funeral pyre

a city of lines, crosswalks, velvet ropes, unused, unemployed, social separators, no one about to need to separate, anymore, only the living and the dead, both staying indoors, so neither in attendance, at the empty funeral services, everybody is on the out list...

the now newly indistinguishable, the irresistible collision of two one-sides polarizing poles of no longer opposites, the tender and the brutal in a single embrace, but no, not kissing, embargoed, as we are stationed from above, far, high up on the watchtower observatory, observing the contrast dye that flies so fast on people denuded grand boulevards, down narrow hospital hallways, body-lined decorated, tales of millions of lives isolatized, and don’t forget the brutalizing discovery of scores of elderly, dying alone, withering in the dark, counted, lumped in to the category of statistically irrelevant, if dead, who cares, matters not now, in the afterworld no one asks how,
                        in a fashion both tenderly and brutal,
                        what was the actual cause?

I know what it was before
it became what it is
I’m at a disadvantage perhaps
and must forget its ****** state
its absolute condition of whiteness
the purity of snow untrodden
unmarked except for the lines
woven in warp and weft

I don’t know how to look at this piece
if I had it in my hands I’d turn it about
this way that way upside down
even to lie on its diagonals perhaps
otherwise it appears like newsprint
smudged but I think for me its best
on its side so there are columns
not stories floors horizontal separators

There - now it has something of that
Annie Albers City Skyline
a tapestry seen together
on a January day you
blue-skirted with winter boots
grey-cloaked with stripy tights
a sketching bag on the shoulder
a camera in hand and I entranced
by every move you made

As though seeking an image
in a cloudscape I view a quintet
of panels on a painted screen
a Chinese landscape Han dynasty
stark trees slow fields low hills
rising to a darkening horizon then
a river flows a valley forms and I am
smitten by the accident of invention
as always my love as always
gathering myself into the pleasure
of it all dear artist of weave and print

to good people fall..
on this question
faith and trust
hang and fade....
heat and passion
bitter rejection
all gain entrance..
these separators
further separate..
our duality roars
with new strength..
then with fortune
a healing balm
ancient Oneness
blooms and will
bloom again...

~
“My reasons for writing had to be my own, divorced from expectation.
There would be no reward.”

Ta-Nehisi Coates, “We Were Eight Years in Power”

<>

certain words, hers, previous unknown, or, better,
not yet your own,
acquire your devotion, all the my oh my of possessed tenses,
words ironic, for they are the shoving of contrary adhesive separators,
AC/DC currents running together, a single physical electric stabbing,
owning you, but gulfing away those customized,
prized illusions yet kept,
freeing finally by focusing on the single commandment that matters:

Expect nothing, but write, knowing the only reward,
is the satisfying of self-imposed goals and conditions,
that are will always be,
always,
one more step and edit away from attainable, maybe.

My reasons, my illogical reasonings, admixture of anguished highs and loving lowlights,
a porridge of seeds that need burying to be borne,
in soil of a soiled soul, write to breathe, write to see, write to taste,
write to smell, write to hear my voice say,
not good enough,
even when it might be, just, barely, though that bar is a
moving target,

always
a perpetual notch too high.

My reward for acknowledging, accepting, no denying, freeing, finally,

There would be no reward






11:02 Sabbath
February 22, 2020
from deep in the internal confessional

The name of the snooch is Marcia;
hearing the fingers of the daughters
of the thin feet --- good and hairy genius
of the mentally ill, and the winds
in general, in United States rains planets
hitting the bottoms of the women
who had been muses violated knowingly;
thin skin color's retention of food songs,
sitting cool watching video captured |
by kissing deductible parts of the vote
lovers of the country along with the question
of lying and new consumers not walking
in front of the church sent corporate wood
on Saturday morning;   The new selection
panel of six summaries of the Jewish engineers
of the ******* of the blonde had the empty boxes
of the married woman on the separators
of the host; on the gun from the first light
and the shadow from the police dogs
and the mother of the son from the west
at the window is shown to show that they call it a fake,
rushing in with their son and enough scratch
to pay for a fine black Australian with the women
with whom he was confessing to the command
of the sole the color of the skin;
leaving at the end they feel the earth in common,
the fuel of a stroke and in Japan to kiss my father
and next to the museum in the spell of my lover,
the swing to an enemy to keep the memory
of Paul's pain, the church is not enough
for the tree clinic's website: Perhaps Jews ******* tongue
fog and drawers in dark yellow images
are prostitutes who are abstract and beloved; |
mother of the living material released in the United States
by a man in the division of all the time and warmth;
However, it is illegal; it was called the long legs
of a black daughter for a long time
but we do not hear the same from Juan
as his white hair and tape
and the light of the wind, which is the only common
point throughout the series.|

The Abstract Jews took him to the garden,
the bright smell that in solitude burns with fire,
but the foot of this angel is sexually immoral,
Sera, Sera, your blonde **** buried the ******
of his clothes,       and the Chinese do not wear
the affairs of an expired gypsy *******'s
measures
which in conquest turn into the separators
of the police to establish the general sacred ||
feeling of her ******* to paint the guns of Aurora,
knees and flames of the women felled by
Evening's *****; It is sure attractive, thin
and led away from the court's point
of talking about the furry bad mother
of Ivan alive grabbed by the country
that occupies portions of the bar call recent
pain enough rain to spin the family genius,
Australian toes of the windy planet's muse;|||||||||
that will support the food it gets to fund
the north side of the crazy song's skinny
kiss of the wood's trapped rhythm; talking lover
questions
of meaning below before; for the teenager he is.

Sprint, plastic parts, written, The lights
of the clock
lit up illuminate a bright glow of glass,
alcohol lit on the wall of alcohol,
Giuseppe near the ***** Club's Empty Rear
Door shut Do not be tolstoykslogy;
Suddenly Prostate like Gooseberry Bee Food,
waiting for it to break, is a fat fragrance
Madnessa; The vertical floor on
the floor with Dr. Pants; in the middle
of the wedding in the merchant's bay;
in the hills of India; in the light of the sun;
in the shawls; the visitors of the Arborians
have filled themselves, they want
to mark, simply knees, corset and original
*****; badly written plastic parts, Georgia
waves sand shots roasted shots roast coffee
machine mirror deep movement of Barbie
Lights drinking a whole case of her daughter's
alchemy; walls lips turned up listening
to the gay, gay gypsy perfect sound from Club
*****; the club revolution rains on the
bed where she sits kissing to keep pregnancy
and invisibly reading to her sister; painting
in the back of the home empty leaving;
****: ****: her teeth drunken monster *****
from the desert socks est fiddly taste like
the simple broken odor fat, wait, earth jellyfish,
foot cut on the floor gun, the acid lady looks
sad on account of jihad in Africa leaving
weddings, insides, weddings painted twisting
in the west ugly; bar separators boxcar
strippers **** India's love holes in the shadows
of the Arabic
century fully insured; commonly brings burning
ghosts late tomorrow wanting to be branded
original & **** on their knees like the witches
in their ******* [noun] boymeat