Normal Light, and: Misery and Frustration, and: He Gets Depressed Whenever We Argue

Normal Light

Normal light never killed anything.
When I beam my affection at you
Do not duck. It is not bullets.
Do not try to impersonate Superman.
It is not a laser.

What normal light wishes and dreams about
During its flight is how it will encounter
An object: every photon imagines this
The way we imagine gateways, that slowly open
As we fly toward them, into gardens,

The poppies and peonies making their mouths wide.
What actually happens to the light:
Striking a surface, some particles rebound
Like marbles, some are absorbed
And become heat, that's it.

That's usually it. But some
Flash on and inward to the curious cave
That is light's garden, light's antithesis,
And form an image.

      Sometimes an object struck
Where it has eyes, will see.
          Light dreams of this.

Misery and Frustration

for M—-

They say one part of wisdom
Is learning to let go when you have to.
But if you give up your good drinking buddies
Misery and frustration, you wonder
What else might drop from the picture.
There is this problem with recovery
You'd like to mention to your counselor,
If you could find the right moment, because
The group somehow doesn't seem to touch it.
Will your sex life go blank like a movie screen
After the feature, your brain
Lapse from keen, your art depart
Like Antony's gods? Surely a man should worry?
Then there's the issue of brutality.
You hate to be mean. Misery and frustration
Were loyal pals for years; don't you owe them?

Yes, but remember your gardening arts and skills
Have taught you how to be kind to tendrils.
Unwind them cautiously. You can tell
They're living things by their tensile grip.
What you can't tell is that they're parasites,
Thieves and killers. Well, that's nature for you -
Every organism for itself.

Do not burn them.
Carry them off to the forest,
Which will slowly eat them.
Misery and frustration are delicious,
They'll make good mulch, you'll see them join
What Wordsworth called the life of things,
Those porous layers, though it may take years.
Meanwhile invent a ritual farewell.
In the men's sweathouse one unstated aim
Is to extrude the bitter juice of grief
While gravely regarding one's own genitals
And watching others too, scanning their scars,
Until the heat becomes intolerable
And the heart threatens to stop.
I know a woman who buried her uterus
After her hysterectomy, and said prayers for it,
Although rabbis advised her this would be lawless.
At least you've learned to cry, at least there's that.
Meanwhile - look at your hands
Starting to sprout.

They say another part of wisdom
Is opening, letting things in not go, making welcome
As to festival - come on, unbutton here, unloose the stubborn
Doors from their jambs -
But that's a knowledge you already know.

He Gets Depressed Whenever We Argue

Man, I am talking to you
In my secret woman voice
And I would like it to feel
Like something from the inside of your head.

I am emitting this message today
While I walk home a half a snowy mile
Kicking the slush
And the shovelled boulder size lumps
That lie in my path.
Places where nobody has cleared the sidewalk
I climb over the snowplowed ridges
And walk in the gutter in the twilight. Can you
Hear me? You are of course in Los Angeles,
Land of the cowboy and Indian, busy
At a conference. It never snows there
But we have been married so many years
I imagine you hear me perfectly well. Listen,
You Jeremiah, you lamenting
Son of the father, what
Will your mama think of your behavior,
This childish
Sullenness before you left. Listen,
Don't you ever say to yourself
This woman is my woman now forever,
A lifelong proposition, because I...