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Into Light: The Poems of M. D. Friedman

by Mad Dog Friedman

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Jane Ireland
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George Lufkin
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1.
after being told i look good for 67 (on my 57th birthday) 01:15
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after being told i look good for 67 (on my 57th birthday) damn fluorescent lights damn the buzz laugh lines shadow deeper veins ridge up the window glares at my reflection (so much depends on lighting) I shiver in the building see my own breath the grim reaper sits down next to me tells me Jewish mother jokes aging is a paradox our engines slow as the scenery speeds by ever faster everything breaks on this train the news sounds like a rag flapping on a barbwire fence it takes longer to chew my bones creak and something new hurts yet my mind grows more playful my heart more childlike eyes brighten on a dimming world slowly we turn back into light
2.
Acrophobia 01:15
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Acrophobia in memory of Mike Adams rain bites goose-bumped skin shivers bones lilac whiffs on languid wind and that smell when rain first tames the dust brings me once again to who I am (in this dying cage of skin) between warm speckled rays thunder hems & haws clears its throat of cloud the old lineman mumbles can’t work in the lightning only sporadic strikes riddle the ambivalent sky but I had to agree it was a yellow afternoon and there is never a better place to stand   than where your feet meet the ground nearby a flash rips through I wouldn’t go up there either not if I had a say about it not now probably never
3.
Girl Brading Hair 01:29
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Girl Braiding Hair She combs her hair as if to untangle the tussle of his touch, powders plum skin still stinging from his grizzled tentacle, over is over when the pain won’t end. Elderberry lips are smeared red to hide the ache, and the baby that was to be, a hated thing, no longer lives inside, over is over, at last she writhes free. Emerging from tide pools, how her eyes swell, gleam blue, brim briny with bright tears of no; her anguish, a warped lens, a fractured shell, over is over wherever she goes. Easy enough to layer her young hand full of hair on the red strand tightly held hand upon strand upon hand upon strand, over is over when love’s flame is quelled. Not so simple to grab another fist full of life, or to be braided again, when what blooms and wrenches within is missed, over is over when love’s made a sin.
4.
forever trespass 06:11 video
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forever trespass (read down) like someone could own this sure it changes with each step I walk in not so you would notice not all at once this land possesses us the sun cracked creek it eats my eyes underneath the marbled light fish trespass the turbid stream swollen from my melting   words run the poet wind me up like a toy boat this is why I am possessed these hungry words the roiling red juice pours from my bones and I drink of myself my breath becomes light my living yes the bright air owns this body as it rides the blood   forever trespass (read across) like someone the sun this is why I could own this cracked creek am possessed it eats my eyes these hungry words sure underneath the roiling red juice it changes the marbled light pours from my bones with each step fish trespass and I drink I walk in the turbid stream of myself not so swollen my breath becomes light you would from my melting my living notice yes not all words run the bright air at once the poet owns this body this land wind me up as it possesses us like a toy boat rides the blood
5.
When I Did Not Have My Camera 00:30
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When I Did Not Have My Camera The old man in the sculpture park sleeps on the sun-streamed, bronze bench weathered arm of flesh in languid embrace on the sculpted woman’s flawless neck. How long have they been here together like this, the dreamer and the artifact?
6.
Noteworthy 00:44
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Noteworthy She wrote a note to herself to stand on one leg. This is not unusual. She always writes notes. I see her standing steady as a flamingo. She does this to improve her balance, practices while cooking to save time, topless in the heat of day. Her cheeks puff out with a mouthful of water to hold in tears from slicing onions. As is her way, at the bottom of the note, she draws a heart.
7.
Picasso's Violin 00:30
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Picasso’s Violin In response to the sculpture by Jodie Bliss he plays Within the wind under the skin of a glass eye Wiggles the bOw in the rain belOw sighs as tears blow Out of his mind
8.
Li Po Returns to His Lover in the Night 01:31
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Li Po Returns to His Lover in the Night in honor of the Poet Immortal who drowned trying to embrace the moon’s reflection in a river It is magical indeed how I fall without suffering through the watered moonlight, how still I breathe with the breeze. Can you hear me rattle the leaves over your head, moan (like your new lover) against the warm earth? Do you feel me? My vague hand sweeps the wayward hair from your glistening eyes as gently as the pale, languid lotus petal falls from the blossom behind your ear, swirls against the silken robes crumpled at your feet. Though tonight you find me in every wisp of wind, in every sigh, tomorrow, do not bemoan my moving on. For with each breath, I come and go. Like moon-laden tears of dew, I vanish in a blaze of light.
9.
Two as One 01:04
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Two as One Through different eyes we see the same, not the waterfall, but the water falling, no longer sculpted by gravity, turning weightless, and in this moment finding its own shape. We turn our gaze and see together how the sinuous rock walls and the fingers of the trees are fluid too, how it all shimmers and sways, a rippled mirage whirling back into sudden clarity. We find our own shape, here on the edge of this liquid cliff, gushing with the splash and clamor of the falls, flowing in and out of each other, like breath, two as one.
10.
Through the Schism 00:31
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Through the Schism an invisible fissure splits light from the flowing colors that paint our day it opens like a portal for those who know it’s there you were there you saw it with me how the backlit birds never broke formation simply winked from the liquid sky to somewhere else
11.
The Goddess Ate at Arby's 02:50
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The Goddess Ate at Arby’s Hers is a difficult beauty, from a world where the night is blistered gold, and dark trees bristle with blue, hair-like leaves. Feathery fish swim the summer wind, while eyeless serpents burrow with flat, black beaks through silvery whiffs of sand. What she ate is still a mystery. Perhaps salad. Perhaps she lives on air. What matters, though, is all of sudden there she was as amber and shimmering as the failing light of a dying candle. (I still see her, pulsing on the curtain of my eyelids.) She was chewing something, grudgingly inhaling the oily smoke of rush hour, exhaling our choking world like a sputtering tailpipe. Translucent, dreamlike, iridescent, this creature of sparkle and moon milk, sat three tables away as real as the flickering fluorescent lights, chomping down her lunch. Disregarding all signage, she wore no shoes, or skin, for that matter. What clothes she had licked her like flame. Leaving a trail of diamond dust, she slid resplendent into the yellow plastic booth where I sat, as if to chat,   yet the goddess did not speak. Nor did I, although I could feel the pain in her soul. Sad as a black hole, veins surging blue starlight, bleeding as calmly as a fading red giant, her lungs wheezed laboriously with each expansion and contraction of the universe. I wanted desperately to help her, to somehow make things right, but drunk with greed, we frenzy feed upon the glowing bowl of her heart, lapping up her luminous essence like a pack of gluttonous dogs. There is no end to what we take, while her breath whispers through all that lives she is dying.
12.
Lesson of the Garden 02:02
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Lesson of the Garden It is not my breath rustling the leaves. I sit monochrome in the speckled light, still as shade, almost awake. This morning, everything has changed. Gleam on green, last night's rain loads the labyrinth of leaves. I watch clematis blue stretch celestial. Whether dusty sage or prickly pear sweet, it's not my intention to change a thing, to favor towering foxglove over purslane's yellow bud or twisted clover. A fleecy head of dandelion harms not the noble, indigo iris. Now that summer is finally upon us, there is no need to name a thing a weed. I hear the distant drone of mowers. My neighbors scurry, scrape and pound. The bursting burr, the cinnamon tendrils of climbing rose, the pink-tipped petals of bindweed blossoms, the healing echinacea, all vibrate with sunlight, all have their niche, their time to flourish. Where in this vibrant land is my place to thrive?   The answer surrounds me. All that matters is to be truly wild, to vine my heart around the roots of love: unfurl the luminous lotus within. Listen how the grass flattened by my feet springs back to life as I walk away.
13.
Crossing Rabbit Ears Pass 02:33
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Crossing Rabbit Ears Pass June 22, 2005 The moon rubs against the earth and they all come out, wild-eyed from the forest, pale shades from milk-lit meadows, out to the edge of our passing. From atop a precarious ledge above the dreaming land, from between the snowy lips of the mouth of mist, from upon a whispering bed of crumpled grass, they smell our heat rising like thick vapors from a scalding spring. They know all life is woven together by pulsing threads of breath. They come this full moon night, this solstice, to see us. First, rabbit frozen in headlights, still as ice. Next, hungry fox glancing back at us on his way to chase rabbit. One deer, then a dozen others, moving as one, in and out of shadow trees, prancing across the swollen earth, like dry leaves swept along by creamy moon breath.   Puma, lit from behind, emerges ethereal out of the shadows, graceful, tranquil, emanating the presence of raw power, eyes burning like small golden suns. Each hair on her body electric, she hovers glistening, trailing her corporal frame, a ghost cat, rippling like a reflection, almost disappearing, as she shakes the silver from her moonlit coat. There was no sound, yet somehow, she vibrates, flesh alive with breath, she mews the mystic melody of our meanderings through the dapple forest, over liquid cliffs, into this most magical place, this sacred meadow of light. She knows of our return to each other after half a life apart, and without words, she blesses our joining and is gone.
14.
I Wish Now 00:52
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i wish now i wish now i was with you under this moon as full as my anticipation i want now to be skin to skin within your arms again emptied of my desperation as if our lives between had never happened freed of regret would that i could have known then what now i know and we again first met alone in this darkness i begin to pretend the same moon rides your night strong and fragile as the eggshell moonlight i reach for you tonight
15.
She Has a Mortgage on My Body and a Lien on My Soul 01:32
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She Has a Mortgage on My Body and a Lien on My Soul inspired by a blues song by Robert Johnson Driving too far too fast to see her again. No one else will do. She touches me with subtle delight, like how the lake scatters the sunlight raining down after a storm. I am taken by how much I need this. I have come so far to get here again with this woman I have wanted since that Poco concert, when she surprised me from behind and circled me within her arms beneath the stars spinning like whirling diamonds. It comes back to this, more than thirty years later, this rebellion against caring, this reaching for closeness and then running from the love I need, this fear of having what I’ve always wanted. I am addicted. I will steal from whatever life I’ve made for myself for yet another fix of her. I need her more, the more we are together. Sweat beads up upon my sweat. I tremble at the painful thought of losing her again. I will never let her go. She has a mortgage on my body, a lien on my soul.
16.
Spring Love Poem 01:01
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Spring Love Poem Not only the thirsty seeks the water but the water seeks the thirsty as well. ~ Rumi I reach with my heart into the pool of you, the ripples of our yearning splinter our reflection. Here in the lotus of breath, whirl the stars and moon in sensual dance. Immersed in fragrant emersion, we are closer than touch. The air you breathe, I breathe, closer than the blood that fills our hearts. I have known this forever. I remember each time I am with you, I have known forever that somehow we will always be together. I have lived for this when nothing else made sense.
17.
Know Where to Go Crazy 03:12 video
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Know Where to Go Crazy He is going nowhere, deliberately. ~ Elizabeth Robinson I’ve been here before, where the rain cuts through like shards of glass drives me deep into the mouth of fog, frozen, frosted with lacy flakes. This is nowhere to go crazy. When I move again, I return to somewhere, anywhere there is something. I’m done with that circle of tears where dark fears fall from a lightning cracked sky. It’s over. The only way out is in. There is nothing to say. It’s time to leave. There’s nowhere to go, so I’m off. It might as well be a picnic, with this frayed tablecloth I keep in my back pocket to blow my nose. There is nothing to take. A bleeding wafer of heart between two loaves of breath is all I need. I linger in the ghosted meadow. My soul in its blue bottle stirs the rocks to breathe. I want only to blaze my own way, to climb my high green hill where each star shines alone. Sure, I’ll miss the warmth of the crowd, the clap of strangers bumping into me, but the broken music takes me now, ears stuffed into brain. No time to stay. No reason for more of the sane. My screams fall like paper. I leave what is left for another to write. No desire for the ashes of this burning world. My breath fogs my glasses. In a dark way, I am filled with light. I am ready. I’ve had no sleep for weeks. My eyes open from looking inward. I have sharpened my teeth. Inside, it never changes. Every way I turn leads back. I awake ever closer to sleep. The edge of my dream cracks with beauty. I wish I could take you. Here in the middle of nowhere, there is so much to share. The silence shatters into light. It is a miracle just to be alive.
18.
Everything in Beauty 01:25
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Everything in Beauty Iridescent beetles scurry over soft black loam, rose sheds wrinkled pink, petal by petal, crystal tears flood eyes laughing bright, stealthy hawk thumps grazing rabbit, grumbling thunder ricochets down the canyon, yellow finch flaps black blur of wings, amber sap glows on red mushroom caps, the lonely whine of distant traffic on a wet road, rain-dark log seems to breathe, rippled mud at clear water's edge glitters with pyrite, bumping bodies board night bus, magenta bleeds to black, spider web twinkles with the last light. How supremely important to celebrate each flash as it fades, drink in what shimmers, embrace the joy that lingers, take in more than we name.
19.
The Old Barn 01:15
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The Old Barn lodged between shadow and splinter the red paint molts grays, crinkles vermilion leaves molder into black earth pulse with broken light i, too leave myself graceful in decay find myself abandoned my body rippled with light one short season ago this field erupted buzzed vibrant red whirred with hummingbirds, a crush of bees burst into molten magenta into bloom after vivid bloom now weathered barnwood wormed with scarlet sunset suffers the gleaming urgency of fading light, the old barn and I hoard our pneuma swallow hard against a rush of wind
20.
Memory Care 01:00
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Memory Care for Anita I heard some of you got your families living in cages, tall and cold, and some just stay there and dust away past the age of old. ~ Jimi Hendrix "Up From the Skies" (1968) age breaks the cage the canary lingers the soft-boiled egg of her mind cracks open day after yellowed day nothing stays each morning she rises to a fresh world plays out childhood from vague finish to start rides the glass slide down foggy mirrors she smiles as she waits for the flash
21.
Selling Ourselves 02:03
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Selling Ourselves Parenthood is always a gamble, a crap shoot fusion of egg and sperm, the flesh explosion of another life into ours, an invitation to the ultimate challenge of being human and the associated fallout from striving to be an ever-better parent. We seem to forget ourselves under the mushroom cloud of the nuclear family, putting aside our wants for someone else. Every child comes with a price: things we settle for, dreams we let go of, promises we make to ourselves but never keep. Then these children become their own people, grow from parasitism to mutualism. We are always seeking a better life for those we spawn, perhaps this ticket is a winner, or perhaps another whiner. Maybe one day they will even buy our story. This morning we wake like every morning, make our tired bed, fix our low-fat breakfast, and we sell ourselves again. We wonder at where the time has gone.   Then one morning all children wake up, make their own bed, fix their own breakfast, go out into the world and sell themselves. We wonder when they grew up and how they know to speak, to walk, to even breathe without our guidance, but what we hope the most is they learn before it’s too late − no price is enough to ask for your life.
22.
Coupled Socks 01:17
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Coupled Socks It is not the coupled socks that interest me as I fold clean laundry on the unmade bed, but those newly found ones that arrive each week without a partner. I have always taken it as proof of the porous nature of the universe, a weekly lecture on the impermanence of relationship, a poignant reminder of personal taboo and of how my own conventional nature frowns on making my own pairs. A black with a brown, or perhaps, a sporty red-striped one with solid white would be a start. After a few washes it is hard to tell blue from black anyway. Still, as regularly as the evening news, unmatched “pairs” show up on these love strewn sheets where, just hours ago, we coupled. I wonder why I continue to mate only matched pairs, even after that one wild night when I defiantly wore a black with a blue, and nothing bad happened.
23.
Parting Shots 01:17
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Parting Shots It’s not working. You’re too old. You’re too immature. You’re not my type. I’m not ready for this. You’re too intense. Nothing matters to you. You never take anything seriously. You take, take, take. I miss what we had. You try too hard. We never tried at all. I need some space. You’re smothering me. You are always gone. You take me for granted. It’s not you. It’s me. You deserve someone better. You deserve something more. You deserve to rot in hell. We have nothing in common. You remind me of my ex. All you care about is yourself. You’re a selfish bastard. We’ve been pretending. You never listen. You hate my friends. I hope we can always be friends.
24.
My Will 03:02
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My Will I'll make a broken music, or I'll die. ~ Theodore Roethke The music is already broken. I stand tangled in flames and briers, my body aching against the warped metallic sky. The wind comes like jagged pieces of glass and fills my ears. I fear the music of the wind. I fear the black edges of its lightning. I know the crystal thunder that follows. It comes as noiselessly as a fistful of daggers flashing to its mark, shatters my heart. All around me blink the green/white eyes of aspens, blink the fire/ice eyes that see in all directions. I, too, try to dance with the motionless sun. I cry the song that tears into throat, slap hot rocks with feet. It is no use. I am crushed like a fly against the glass that keeps me from the world. This is nowhere to die. I stand against the wind suffocated by the air rushing in. Like a small child, I close my eyes to disappear. I am blind. I am hiding. I am the fire that lives in the ashes. There is no light, only this groaning heat. This is not death. Why am I still pretending? I prop my eyes open with white slivers of hawk bone, lie on my back in the haunted dust, and stare into the sun, and stare as the sky boils off, until all that surrounds me disappears. As the cracked marbles of my eyes go out, I gnaw the searing white flesh of sun, suck the open salt from its blood, until there is no music, until the whirlwind of color and life falls through the black hole of my mind. We cannot escape this loneliness, even in death. I leave my song to the silence, my soul to the wind.
25.
Upon Turning Fifty 03:02
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Upon Turning Fifty An aged man is but a paltry thing, A tattered coat upon a stick, unless Soul clap its hands and sing, and louder sing For every tatter in its mortal dress, ~ W. B Yeats from “Sailing to Byzantium” When young, I bragged I must be 2000 years old; what passed for new seemed weirdly familiar. When young, I knew too many who suicide and murder wasted. Now friends younger than I suffer cancer, heart attacks and strokes. I feel my age everyday. There is nothing to brag about, nor would I trade wisdom’s cool water for my salty youth. I feel lucky to feel old. While performing last week, a 200-volt surge glued my hand to a microphone. My fist tightened around the screaming wand of death. I had no control, no way to let go. The jolt flopped me onto my back. I jerked and flapped, fishlike on the cement floor. Electrified excruciation, jaws clinched down on a spluttering spark, muted cries wrenched my throat, I writhed fetal on cold concrete. A young stranger risked his life, kicked the searing, needle-stabbing mic from my charred, disobedient hand. I lay sputtering, a stuttering ball of amnesia. Electrocution leaves you humble, clinging to life with open hands. l drop my hurt-filled past like papery ash upon the spring grass. I live afresh in ragged poems, rip revision after revision, stitch odd nuance and false rhyme to patch a magic sail. My soul of colored crystal, rocks like a ship upon an endless sea of light. I relish the honeymoon groans of wooden masts, attend to my sail as it fills and flaps like a heart. Borne so fortunately forward, I am gratefully energized by each new breath.
26.
It's Easy to Be Normal 02:58
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It's Easy to Be Normal for Brent I can pass for normal if I really try. I put on deodorant, and it seems to help. Just yesterday, someone asked me for the time, and I said, "1:36," even though I always carry a sprig of the herb in my pocket in case that question comes up. It's easy to be normal. A husky voiced phone survey woman asked, "Sex?" I told her, "Male." Just like that. At the grocery store, though, I lost it. The bagger inadvertently brushed my hand and said, "Paper or plastic?" I said, "It's skin. Isn't that normal?" Most of the time, if I concentrate, I can ignore all those variant meanings that come to mind, and figure out what others want from me. Isn't that what normal is, doing what others expect instead of being who I am? The most important thing is to try to be like everybody else. My biggest problem, perhaps, is I don't watch television. In polite conversation, I have found it helps to nod often, even if nothing makes sense. I probably shouldn't even talk about peppers. When the waiter asks,   "Ground pepper?" I say, "Yes, please." Simple enough. The problem comes when he says, "Just say when." I usually say nothing. When he gets tired, he walks away. What I want to say is, "Whenever the grinder is empty." Lately, I have started to carry my own bottle of pepper sauce for places where ketchup is the only condiment. It makes things easier. I wonder if anybody really is normal, if everybody is nodding because nothing makes sense. I think I could fit in if we all stopped pretending, but then people take too much too seriously. I could be normal, if it paid enough, but it’s truly overrated. It’s certainly no way to raise children. I guess I should spend more time worrying about how things look. Also, it would help, to occasionally be on time, but then there is always that poem I am working on that won't let me go. Somehow, I get by. I have a good life, I must say. There is really no reason to change, unless, of course, I spill hot sauce on my shirt.
27.
The Super Bowl of the Muse 05:44
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The Super Bowl of the Muse for Amanda Gorman Let’s turn it on. I mean really turn it on. Let’s turn on it. It’s time to turn it around. Let’s watch it from the inside. Let’s turn it over before it’s over. This time we’ll turn that flashing fat screen upside down. We’ll strip the cold fire from its flicker and tickle its underbelly as it jiggles topless in an electric dance. Let’s over tip the dust bunnies, those cheerleaders of neglect, as they shake their chalky booties bristling with blue light. Let’s stuff their sequined G-strings green with sweaty money. Let’s transform it all until it turns us on. It’s the New American Dream. It’s never over until the fat lady sings, and this time we’ll listen to her words. It’s her song that matters now.   It is the Super Bowl of the Muse. The Big Game in the Big Easy. And this year it’s even bigger, better, bolder. It’s more colorful, more eclectic, more engaging and less real than ever. Can you imagine? Even the commercials have something new to say: a middle-aged Allen Ginsberg doing the shimmy. His hairy belly bulges out from under his red, white and blue flag tank top. Crowned in a rainbow of fireworks, Allen gulps down a chilled diet Pepsi, like secret, sparkling nectar from Shangri-La, as if the red, white and blue can was filled with the lusty dreams of his youth. Our Allen simply belches, “om,” twinkling his timeless grin. It’s all happening now. It’s Super Overtime. We’re into Sudden Death. Let’s rock with the rockers. Let’s roll it over in the fake green grass of our imagination. Let’s rewind the rerun, fast forward it to the end. Play it backwards to start all over again. This is our new beginning. Let’s put a giant magnifying glass over the top of the Superdome and set it ablaze. Let’s tear down the old goals. Just imagine 100,000 people all paying big bucks to sit with the big cheese in this quaking maze of stands and fans, all snapping their fingers frantically and pounding their feet for more poetry! Millions more having Super Slam Parties. Think of it − poets going to Disneyland! Everybody everywhere stops everything for a single afternoon. Even people who don’t like poetry feign passion, munch down word chips dipped in dark image, take off on hot wings, sport inky berets to impress their own fickle muse. We’re so entranced by how the fresh blood still sputters from the cheap shot in s l o w m o t i o n over and over, we forget our own surging turmoil. Again, we angrily boo the fumbled phrase. Yes − all of America out of control cheering wildly for more graceful word play. The yellow flags of syntax thrown down without penalty, we can almost taste sweet victory.   What’s a split infinitive or even a sentence fragment when the Great Win is in sight! Oh yes, just think of it! Everybody everywhere screaming at once, slurring their meaningless slogans into a single soulful chant, throwing their hands to the sky in an endless human wave. Our real heroes are on the field, taking their licks for the team. Slamming themselves into each other like bugs flattened on a windshield. We who sit and watch from above spring to our feet in one overwhelming motion! Cross-eyed from the hard hits, shaking with exhaustion, dripping Gatorade, smeared with mud and blood, the players frantically guard the gridiron, falling finally forward into one great groping sweaty flesh hill, melting down like a pile of ice cubes abandoned and draining. Counting down the final seconds, we stumble, stagger and stomp almost in unison, drunk on our own inner revelation. Pregnant with joy, swollen with pride, we flail about beer-bloated and convulsing in syncopated steps, sinfully drenched in the sweet sweat of our synergy. In a single moment of satori, it is too clear that despite all the hype, the money and noise, there has never been anyone on the field. The final buzzer screeches as poignantly as a virgin bride learning her husband is not the gentle man she thought she married. Who will play the Winner now the harsh light of truth has finally turned upon us?
28.
The King of the United States 01:15
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The King of the United States “I am the King of the United States, and we can fix this mess,” Dad proclaims from his nursing home throne. “It is good to walk,” I reply. We carefully negotiate the splintered rafters shattered by Parkinson’s, the ink blots of mold where the dark water seeps in. Pieces of his life bob idly in brackish pools. Fear and anger swell within him, black springs riddled with reflections, rippling with frustrations he forgets as quickly as they arrive. We pick our way across a broken web of memories dribbling with brine and shuffle to the outside. He knows I stopped at the store. He enjoys the grapes and chocolate, whistles in reply to the afternoon birdsong and offers to make me the Minister of Trade.
29.
Feasting in America 02:26
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Feasting in America I don’t remember what I ate that day. The deli floor was bowed as if the indecisive shifting of shoes had settled it into a tired smile smoothed by feet and friction. I don’t remember what I ate. Perhaps lasagna, I do remember pepperoncinis on a wonderful salad. We were moving Dad from a temporary nursing home in North Miami to a nicer place closer to Mom. His raving racist roommate, stung the Black orderly with a bitterness exclusive to the beaten and senile. Dad, silent and staring, intently chewing his lower lip, had not been attended to when we arrived that muggy Sunday afternoon. Many of his clothes were missing, like his front teeth, knocked out when they revived him from the near drowning. I think he knew me as his son. He walked with the slow shuffle of Parkinson’s decay, his back round as a snail’s shell, bent as if leaning over an imaginary cane. It was an authentic Italian deli worn but not changed through the years, holding on as the neighborhood morphed from Italian to Jewish to Black to Cuban to Haitian, always heavy with the smell of garlic, an olfactory landmark in a world of ethnic flux. Our talk was of fresh, steaming bread, and how Dad always said you can tell a good restaurant by the salad. I remember walking along fogged glass cases filled with waves of lasagna and piles of hot sausage, sturdy blue bowls of pasta, white and red sauces, but all I remember eating was salad.
30.
The Last Time Dad Opened His Eyes 01:30
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The Last Time Dad Opened His Eyes His eyes, the color of fog, blind as night, reaching out of the driftwood of his body in place of the arms he could not move, held me in a way no arms could. He, who had given me everything, now gave me this final gift, our last time together. This lover of sunsets and old trees, his face now a shadow, cast down by disease, lay rough and limp as parchment, an old map washed ashore by time. In every dark wrinkle, through each drawn crease, over the strangely smooth hollows of his cheeks, flowed the gentle kindness that marked his life. As this, his last sunset, broke in exquisite sadness, there were no colored clouds to usher in the pending dusk. All his strength went into his breathing, all his will, to open his eyes the color of fog, heavy with the last light.
31.
A Pair of Apple Poems 04:08
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A Pair of Apple Poems 1. One apple was left in the poetry workshop snack basket. It was frosted with wax. Pale yellow flakes buckled its skin the way aspen leaves freckled the dry grass. The apple leaned to one side as if to better hear the silent musings, the scraping of the poets’ pens, as if a fruit could be plumped up by raw ink or could mysteriously feed on the magic of words and fidgeting dreams. Maybe the apple wanted to write a life of its own and fall far from the tree of its beginning. The noise of the poets was strangely reassuring to the apple. Shrewdly musical, their rhythms reminded the apple of when, in its youth, it had danced with abandon, profoundly shaken by the click of branches fencing with the wind. Although those biting storms in the nights of its forming terrified the apple to its core, the grating sounds of the poets now flooded the apple with a cinnamony sense of warmth and comfort. This apple, picked to sell before it could find the ground on its own, now lay cool and quiet in my hand. Packed with the hidden power of sunlight, its sweetness a little too green, firmly and fully imperfect, this pome draws me out of my longing. I can tell by how its seeds like worms find my mind dark and fertile as an old horse pasture, this apple still thinks it is falling. After enduring the rough passage of its short life and the assiduous gnawing of my mouth, it falls into my blood.   2. An apple fell on Einstein’s head. It puzzled him. Gravity had already been discovered. Matter and energy had been seen only yesterday leaving the cheap motel together. So what of this knock on his melon? Was God just checking if his mind was ripe? Was it the routine ringing of a cosmic alarm clock reminding him to be awake? Were the Fibonacci stars that crosscut the apple’s seeds plotting to plant their pervasive patterns in the gray furrows of his grateful brain? Although I am sure he grasped the full gravity of the event, Albert shyly released a half smile as if he were mildly entertained. It was the reluctant, yet irrepressible, grin of a man amused and relieved at the same time. “Somethings go better unnoticed,” he was heard to say. This was disappointing for the apple, who had received only the smallest bylines for the force equally exerted on Newton’s noggin. Yet, Einstein knew the fingerprint of interconnection when it pressed down on him. If nothing else made sense, it seems apples are always falling. Albert took it as a compliment. He kept the apple, pared it for lunch, and so laid bare its core, prematurely exposing the tender vessels of the next generation and its seeping nectar to the persistent browning of his breath.
32.
Highway 93 as KFML Goes Off the Air 1975 01:03
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Highway 93 as KFML Goes Off the Air, 1975 no new neon fooly cool jewels this way but snow blows and she-frog sings lung-tongued through the wizard’s gizzard. she dog. me dogged cat. I hear fear air. click off. no more frantic static. no more satanic her hum. only ME sing song through sway way. she’s black cat back now with high beams steaming. she’s yo yo mean screams with blind eyes blinding! ME SCREAM!! lights fight brights on/off ice highway. twinkle twinkle quiet sky.
33.
I Miss You 02:41
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I Miss You It is the month of ravens, the time of liquid light. It has been a long year within the golden eye of the imagination. There was much to see, yet nothing endures, and I cannot bear to be without you for another day. My feet freeze in place. There is no getting away from what may break. Even my shadow is brittle, cracks like ice beneath the vacuous sun. In the great spruce behind our home, three ravens squeak out caws like twisted nails from frigid bark, change positions as they ladder up, branch by branch, but the small one, a female I think, is first to the top. Yesterday, after the snow came, the solar disk whimpered behind a wispy smudge of cloud, shimmered dreamy and moonlike, and a lone eagle shuttled its way across the steel wool sky. It is the month of luminous mist, of the burning bite of hoarfrost, when the cold takes possession of its own, and the charred raven brings the glowing gift to those whose words freeze in the mouth. As slanted rays of shrouded light fall from the ash,   I am left to ask, “What brings you to me in the night? Will the knit of need and knot of time hold only when legs are woven tight?” My fabric frays without you. Here in the chill of the crystalline dawn, the gray and glittered grit of the perpetual thaw, I climb the murky tree of my mind, ascending limb by limb into the stark sky of heart. Each day away, I ache within the hollow of my bones; like the morning star, I bleed into the bluster of day.
34.
The Third Moon Full in a Season of Four 02:30
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The Third Moon Full in a Season of Four The gathering storm eats the true-blue moon, a dry wafer, soft, hazy and red against the tin horizon. It slips like a shining quarter into a jukebox of cloud, lingers gleaming in the dark coin slot while the sad song plays. We walk, bundled, stiff as scarecrows, into the blustery November dusk. We came to watch the moonrise, but what seems striking is how this diaphanous disk of sanguine falls pale and quiet as milkweed fluff off the edge of the wind and then is gone. There is something wonderful in the way it disappears top first into ambiguous lips of gray, like the way you pull me into your love from whatever sorry spin my mind puts me in. We tread our rambling trail calling owl and raven, dizzy from the hordes of squawking geese hurtling above our heads. We wonder if the glowing eyes of coyote will follow us into the dark. The leaves crisp from the sun crackle under our feet. We have become deeply familiar with how the rippled lake smooths itself into evening, how the shadowed land stretches and yawns as the sleep of winter nears. We have been this way hundreds of times, through blistering summer heat and sudden spring rains. Nothing ever remains, yet there is something amazing, something intimate and enduring, in how our footprints freeze in mud. This inadvertent capture of our meandering, frosted in the last blood of sunset, glistens as night closes in.
35.
The First Snow 01:06
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The First Snow Ice claws the knit cap pulled snug over ears, and hairs spring through loops and frizzle, wild as weeds cracking concrete: the mind empties like a dandelion in a yawn of wind. Ice spit sputters its bitter electricity, shatters the night in a tinfoil scream. White flakes off, whirls into myriad colors. Under the black-blue bruise of sky, eye seeds bleed silver. Those that do not shiver, freeze and glitter as they fall into cool crystal. Through cold moans I drift dazzled and numb. I lay my head swirling on a gleaming breast of ice and dream I am warm.
36.
Fetish for the Dark 00:55
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Fetish for the Dark living in absolute vacuum we space-age poets marinate our words dark with gasoline spark the scarlet raging stars collapsing under the gravity of light swallowed by flames only glittering bones stand as the last shattered embers fall wish upon the ash my love bathe your breasts in soot hollow molten glass cats through brittle black still glow four feet over shadows walk further into night
37.
As the Stars Go Out 00:37
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As the Stars Go Out I empty myself, float darkly over what the wind has left from other places and the things I leave behind. I know my motion by the way everything slips away. Like a star that collapses into itself, I live alone, a flower of flame thriving off the night.
38.
Hard to Breathe 00:41
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Hard to Breathe I renounce the violence, the greed that simmers through our humanity, the lies that gouge into my heart. I ache for the clear ripples of voice, climbing like clematis the lattice of song. I plead for a return to the unifying light of the forever sun. We are nearly extinct in this tar pit of our making. We have come to the edge of suffocating madness. It is hard to breathe.
39.
The Poet's Way 01:08
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The Poets’ Way We mingle memory with skin, syrupy as sunlight in the late afternoon. We blend in our tears and dreams, with a few gizmos from the wizard’s hat, and cast our motley webs of light upon the night, now strewn across sidewalks like the glitter of windows broken with pain. We cannot get in there from here without going in there again. We dream in a glass house of our making. It seems as if it’s made of mirrors. There are no doors, no windows, no reasonable way in. The inside is bigger than outside. Inside, everywhere is a door, a window, a heart yearning, a heart humming with love.
40.
Simple Silence 01:44
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Simple Silence I have walked a thousand poems to get here. Through dark fields pulsing with the long light, where the late Yeats whispers through a dying Roethke, I have fallen into a land of simple silence. I have walked a thousand poems to get here. I need to scream, but the further I open my mouth, the less comes out, the louder the hollow pounding of my heart. I have walked a thousand poems to get here. The serif still rests quietly on the page, hums like a high-power line on a windless day. I have walked a thousand poems to get here. Words sing serene as sirens, their eyes living pools of swirling silence taking it all in. I have walked a thousand poems to get here. Falling in a dream, we fall forever. (When the waking noise hits, a certain weightlessness endures.) The unspoken ties us together in unseen ways. I have walked a thousand poems to get here.
41.
The Door 01:15
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The Door The door in my mind does not open. It is liquid. To look at it is to be swallowed by a mirror. I walk through. I am drenched in silver, seen by night as only a shimmer, seen by day as stained glass: my shadow dizzy with colors, as full of life as warm pond water. I live a life as normal as any poet. No one notices any difference. Maybe all poets go through this. When I die, the door will splatter. A wind as dry as fire, as cold as space, will bear me away. Those behind the door (who speak as one) will offer me a job. I will become famous. I will finally be able to live off my poetry.
42.
The Lost River 01:10
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The Lost River shiny shiny go now hungry thirsty swallowing being swallowed this is it go now into the deep into the dark hole into thundering quiet dream now sleep into the foil seep onto the coals sizzling silver glowing fish swim within the fire swim through dull ash the taste of smoke leap into the brilliant fall over rounded rock over frothing rivulets into the shining pools into the shining pool salty with spawn and sunlight steaming with life drink deeply your own blood eat your fill go now fisherman caught in flesh go now fish go
43.
Hooked 02:01
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Hooked It is not because no one is home that this thunder leaves me uneasy. Rain chants its mantra of falling no matter what comes to mind. The rain dashes by like a cat, and the thunder growls like a dog pulling on its chain. Water moves, always wearing down, dissolving whatever is in its way. Me, I stay put. I could be a tree how casually I wait for the storm to pass. The thunder stutters now as if to say, "Enough already." A muffled squall rages inside me. It rains here all the time. The wind pushes the tears back into my eyes. I open and close the dark window, open the window because I need to breathe. I groan in a dialect of thunder no one understands. Like a drunk stumbling home, I bellow and bawl until there is nothing to say, until I black out. I am as hooked and mangled as Hemingway's marlin. This is what it is like to be old, to be afraid to climb. (At the top of the tower, the ever turning light makes a shadow out of everything in its way.) Once the water, heavy from its journey, comes to rest, it returns to the purity of the sky. This is the teaching of the rain, the meaning of our breath, take in deeply what you may but remember always to let go.
44.
The Unwinding 01:21
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The Unwinding Flying is unsettling at first. There is a certain uncertainty. Nothing under the feet makes us uneasy as we climb: we rise as we let go. An enduring weightlessness, a nervous tension from within, holds the droplets together when the dark water tumbles over the edge of light. Surreptitiously sliding through layers of doubt and detail, we take deliberate care in falling, whether it be up or down. We accept the ever shifting balance between hope and fear. Our journey is a planned forgetting, a ritual creating form from fantasy. As we divorce ourselves from our separateness, we become whole. Unwinding is easy as falling back into the beauty of who we are.
45.
March 21, 1994 01:10
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March 21, 1994 By the whooshing river fingerprinted by wind, by a frothy vortex of equinox, I sun in my birthday suit on the white, sinuous throne of a water-worn log. Fingernails of wind rake the river’s sparkling skin. Slowly sliding, darkly clear, like the river, I awaken in the sun. Between crusted snow and sun-dried rocks, is there a force melding it together? Or is the liquid sun smoky water rounded rock and touch of wind welded by whim? Flowing water is my mantra. Liquid light fills the space, billows from within.
46.
The Great Clock 04:01
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The Great Clock The few trees left bear fruit of flame that smudge their muddy bark. There is wisdom in the glowing pomegranates that whirl hissing to the ground like molten tears. There is peace in the breathing blue leaves of sky, a stormy beauty in the dirty tricks of cloud. When autumn goes, there is nothing left. Lonely ashen spikes fall into simple nonexistence, await the quenching hush of winter's white. The people in the town peep out through their shutters. They wait breathless, rolling their big eyes like bright apples along the slits of shade. Outside, a single mottled arm directs the traffic of the wind, guides the confused, gritty air like a conductor shaping Shostakovich. There is a long, smooth bridge with no one on it. It opens into the dream, into the shadowed hills beyond the river of birdsong — a hand of black glass that reaches into the place we know is there but can never see when we look for it. So suddenly spring, the sun on the bright horizon is falling in on itself, leaving a magenta dimpled swirl in the red brick dawn, like a shimmering pink dust devil trailing a dazzling wake of metallic feathers, as if a wild, magic peacock molted as it climbed the sky. The people flood out, swelling the streets with human whirlpools, swinging each other around in ever changing pairs, an endless chain of arms locking and unlocking, carelessly flinging each other into another. A song, more a murmur, rises from the crowd like smoke. The rhythm, a hollow pulse, throbs from the tower of the broken church in the dead center of the square. The great clock still tick ticks there, incessantly monotonous as the beating of their hearts. The old church burns like a witch, but no one seems to care. New people come into town from across the bridge, spiraling out of the darkness with no bodies at first. No one anywhere has a face anyway, only red flame heads smiling or snarling or opening like hungry mouths. The clock tower, a black skeleton, a charcoal sketch of itself, collapses with a heaving sigh, a litany of ash, a chiming of embers. One at a time the people go home, back to their shuttered houses, back to their own dark beginnings.
47.
Rerun 01:45
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Rerun I watch myself, someone must, an endless rerun of a canceled sitcom. There is nothing better on. With each episode the laugh track builds, until snickers echo guffaw. I long for the theme music, the predictable end, a chance to begin all over again. I have seen it all before. I want a commercial to tell me what I need to be happy. Everything I say is misunderstood, as if I am talking in “Igpay Atinlay.” If someone bothers to reply to me, it sounds like white noise, radio static, the high buzz of a test pattern, punctuated by screeching brakes, the breaking of glass. On my birthday, I go off by myself, howl through the empty night until there is nothing left of me but a mournful wail.   Yesterday was not like this, it was quiet and made of Silly Putty. Your face, pressed warmly against mine, picked up the colors of my cartoon. The sun was a lemony lollipop. Cars jostled joyfully along like bright balloons, bouncing refugees from the happy party.
48.
The Return of Light 01:46
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The Return of Light The beasts of light return to my window, one by one they swirl down from the hunched night falling out of stars like solstice spangle. They lock their bright feet on charred branches still glowing from their touch. No, I am not dying. These are not angels. Like a great Lazy Susan, this world and the other have not changed places. A wild, flaming flock of fluttering, these creatures of light gather and settle. Each understands its place in the night and how to hold on. All at once they burst open with a single luminous chorus of color. They throw their brilliance to the clouds, flood the shadowed false dawn with throbbing cadmium and crimson. It is as if my heart, too, exploded, no longer able to contain my blood suddenly transfigured into pulsing scarlet light. No, I am not dead. The buzz of my breath still drones within me. I love the long quiet of this moment before they erupt again, flare with a final burst of iridescent grandeur into the flickering, blood-lit sky.
49.
We Fly 01:13
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We Fly We fly this night as if it were our falling keeping us afloat, splitting open with light as we go, bleeding luminance, as if it were our sheen that draws us up. Our bodies, slight as shadow, slide freely as the greased ghost of cloud. Like children chasing the surf, we frolic in the curling steam rising from the towering dark smokestacks. The blackened buildings below do not pay us any mind; no cold stares note our play above the city of still. We slice the air exuberant, learning the whims of wind as we go, each clinging to our own secret pocket of weightlessness. There is nothing to this falling out from ourselves. There is nothing more real. Like the graceful craning heron, we arrive to where we reach.
50.
The Long Drive Home from a Gig at 3 AM 04:58
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The Long Drive Home from a Gig at 3 AM The pavement is not real. The stars, like salt spilled on black velvet, show no sign of life, stare like glass eyes from space. Sugar Blue whines and growls his hollow ache, moans his hot harmonica wind through brass and plastic, charges the vacant night with longing. Everyone who ever plays, stretches for that note missing from the chord that binds us. Sugar digs it out, slams it down on the rough road like black ice, scrapes it against raw face like sandpaper. Inside the wrenching bend cowers a persistent yearning, a burning loneliness that drives each fragile breath we pass from lung to lung. We roll alone down this road of night that never ends, tumble like a cage of seed and thorn, from deep within our pain a stout and solitary joy begins.
51.
My Two Pocket Girl 02:00
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My Two Pocket Girl After that dance at Copacabana I begged her to give me two napkins to write her phone number down twice and slide one in each pocket for safe keeping. My mother used to say how her dad, after losing his keys or some important piece of paper, would always say: I didn’t have this problem when I only had one pair of pants. Then she would tell the story of when he was lucky enough during the Great Depression to work at the train station and how his boss had asked him to walk an expensive pedigreed dog that was being shipped across country. It was the prized pet of some rich, and I am sure, very important woman. The dog got loose and ran away. My grandfather feared he’d be fired. Then he caught a stray, put it back in the crate labeled only “dog” and put the crate back on the train. I know the story was told for other reasons, but sometimes I think about that stray. Am I not like that dog? Interrupted from life, on a long ride to disappoint some unknown, angry woman further down the line. This is the way it always happens. I would not have this problem if I only had one pair of pants. Back to the girl at the dance, even with a napkin in each pocket, I would still have lost her number had she given it to me. I go back to that same club night after night after night looking for that one dance, that one girl, that one moment in her arms when I was more.
52.
Sky Blues 02:59
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Sky Blues A Bukka White concert at the Masonic Lodge on Delmar Street − a steamy St. Louis 90/90 night. Stopped on the way to buy with a fake ID, a 99¢ bottle of iced MD 20-20 at the Delmar Street Liquor Store. Mogen David Wine − cool and juicy − like the stuff we used to drink on Passover with a little more sugar added for flavor and just enough formaldehyde to make you see things out of the corner of your eyes. No rabbis had blessed this shit. Carried it in the classic brown paper bag. No questions asked. We were as white as donut bags. We were the only two donut bags there that night to see Bukka White. Bukka sang about salvation from the sweet girls up on Sugar Hill and about Jesus. A little too into it, cooling off with our Mad Dog wine, hooting our “Oh Yeahs” between those hesitations that make the blues breathe. No one minded the drunk young white boys, sitting on the floor, slapping out the cool concrete back beat only they could hear, a little creamy foam on a black sea of the blues. Bukka played it like it was. Laid it right down on our doorstep. Got to us where we lived. Bukka called them “Sky Blues” because he reached up and “pulled them out of the sky.” Milked his slide dobro with a butter knife. Squeezed out the blues until the power blacked out. Too many air conditioners in the suburbs sucking down too much juice. No iced MD 20-20 there to cool them down.   Bukka kept right on sliding down them blues, moaning rough as the Mississippi mud, pulling them out of the sky smooth as butter. With the mic dead, his voice rang out as pure as Passover wine. We were donut bags in the dark getting filled up with the blues. Bukka was smiling as wide as the horizon when the lights came back on, his voice suddenly boomed through the Masonic Hall, echoing off the off-white walls. I remember two donut bags stuffed and crumpled on the hard floor, as at home as litter.
53.
Slow Blues in A What? 05:13
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Slow Blues in A What? (or If a Harmonica Could Write a Poem) to do what to do what what you want me you want me to do it to do it to it what what what it is it is it is it it is done here there there hear now where is it what it is two to do when we do it and do to it what we do to it here it is here here here   now it is what now now what what what to do what we do from here to here it is what it is it is what we do when we do it if we do do it before we blew it before it’s even due I will do it to it too to do what I do from here to here I will it to too I will it to do it all the way through it to do what we do too blue to undo what the what what done
54.
Variations on William Carlos Williams 01:21
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Variations on William Carlos Williams 1. I grasp you like a wheel hold you as you turn as imperfectly sweet as a plum how I cling to your skin shine in your tears like a newborn dripping with the dew of birth suddenly you draw me up through the hoarse whispers and dark sighs of our humus twirl me like a dream fragile as stained glass a coral cameo spinning through the clouds through the sun-bled air into my new life 2. this is to say that what turns your phrase lifts me that what you saved for dessert I am enjoying for breakfast that fruit ripens without apology and the only thing left in the icebox is the cold there never were any chickens nothing stays white for long
55.
Raven's Treat 01:31
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Raven’s Treat Raven comes to my garden in the cool green evening head cocked and shiny, feet wired to strawed earth. He sips flat brown beer from a muddy slug trap, fishes out with scissor-sharp beak the slugs that slid in last night. A fine fellow always full of fancy, he throws his dark head back, letting the slugs slime down his throat like raw oysters. Raven tells me how tasty they are, slowly marinated like this, in barley malt and warm sunshine, and laughs how they are, in fact, fat, juicy reincarnated bar flies that couldn’t resist “just one more.” Crop-full, he dances boisterously, a flickering shadow on golden straw, cackling and crackling, spitting out grim haiku, cawing each one twice, each one twice: My obsidian eyes splash rivulets of black, dim the fragile dusk.
56.
Never Too Old to Slam 05:50
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Never Too Old to Slam I’m not too old to slam, because I need now more than ever to spill this truth: the older I am, the more alive I feel. I am a tattered paradox of passion, a dying ember eager to explode into flame. The anger that has raged inside me for so long holds up a giant, final fuck-you finger to the flaccid face of fate, raises up its hissing head and spits its cobra venom into the great sucking eye of death. It’s time for me to slam it down. I’m finally old enough to really say what I mean and not give a shit what people think. Look into the mirror of my words. If you think I’m less than I am because I’m older than I feel, I’m talking to you. There is nothing left but the truth. I tell you this because I’m done with blame. Look at me, and if you see yourself, it’s because we are the same. I may finish before you start, but we all run the same race. For how long or at what pace doesn’t really matter. It’s the human race, and we have no choice but to run, and run we do, and no one running with their heart open ever loses, and no one reaching for more leaves empty handed, and not a single stride goes to waste. It’s time to get down to it. Our forever is now and forever changing into then. Nothing you can say makes it easier to die. The truth is simple: we’re lost without love.   As long as I’m alive, I’ll never forgive the greed that rots our world, that nips our heels and turns our Eden to wasteland. Nor will I ever abide the hate that rips apart our souls, if we don’t take a stand. We are a bursting supernova of love, silhouetted by the lightning of our desire. When we smile, we shine more brightly than a billion stars. When we grieve, it is a hurricane of pain, a deluge of hurt without end. My brothers and sisters are of all ages. Together we are more colorful than the fish that glide among the coral, more tenacious than wild thistle. Together we wield the power of the human heart, there’s nothing more potent, nothing we cannot overcome.   I’m not too old or too white to slam, because I’m half African, half Asian, half Jew, half Arab, half indigenous, half developed, half wild, half dead, half human, half animal, half budding green, half dark night. I am the dawning half bright half-light. My life is more than half over, but my half-life is infinite. I’ve half a mind to leave this half-assed country if there was somewhere else I could find that was halfway decent. No, I’m not too old, too white or even too straight to slam, because I’m half man, half woman, half gay, half lesbian, half trans, half willing, half-witted and half-cocked. I’m always halfway between myself and somebody else and always some when between now and again. I’m on my way to being me.   Being alive is all about connection. Nothing else matters. There’s nothing evil, nothing wrong, nothing about you, nothing inside of me, nothing human I cannot love. My brothers and sisters are misters and misses, and men who love men, and women who love women, and men who were born women and women who were born men, and men and women who are both or neither a man or a woman. It makes no difference. How much I love you has nothing to do with your color, your gender, your dress, who you fuck or how old you aren’t, but with who you are. It’s all about the joy of you becoming you. I know now I’m not too old to slam because I can still see the beauty inside everyone. I know no matter what we think we want, or how hard we try to be someone else, we can only ever be who we truly are. I’m not too old to slam because I’m not too old to love. I sit on the ragged edge of death’s bed. I blink and gulp the light, like a goldfish gulps for air, and decide each morning to get up and live, to love and become and choose not to sleep beyond the darkness. If my heart is still beating, I open it. The longer I live, the more I have a need to give. The more I give, the more I have to live for. I’ll never be too old to care, never too old to slam.
57.
A Good Dog 02:00
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A Good Dog It was white steam curling over the pot’s lip, the bumping cobs of corn bobbing in bubbles, the thick, sun-warm, bleeding slices of beefsteak tomatoes and, especially, the yellow butter’s languid pose that signaled summer was finally here. The previous November just days after his twenty-third birthday, my brother was found under a pile of decomposing leaves face down in a deserted Missouri wood. We heard it first on the St. Louis news: After a month missing from a St. Charles’s Radio Shack, two employees found shot in back of head, execution style, motive still not known for the lunch time abduction. For the first time that summer Dad phoned Mom to “put the water on.” He was coming home with freshly picked sweet corn. It was the only time I remember Mom forgot to add her secret spoon of sugar to the pot. We sat at the table closer than normal around a small basket of wilting memories gnawed by a nagging emptiness not discussing that which never made sense… When Sister, our dog, snuck in to beg the summer food she only just sniffed anyway, one stern look from Dad and she sulked to her place by the kitchen door. She laid down in trained disappointment, persisting, almost human, a good dog.
58.
Never Ask a Poet Directions 03:02 video
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Never Ask a Poet Directions for Jared Smith To start with don’t walk too fast. It is best to lean into each step so as to feel the ground move you. Circle to your left under the pitched arm of the burning tree twisting its flames toward the fired sky. Don't forget to duck. This way you may enjoy the exquisite pain of your passing again and again. It might go better yet to model Alice and make yourself very, very small. It may take most of your life to cross the footprint of the mother raccoon, but do not look back upon a path glittered with regret, lest you fall like tears   from the eye of your own making. When you find that place where her sharp claws have punctured the dark loam, stop and rest. You may even need to sleep before you go on. Most do. You will know when you are ready: the warm heave of your breath will wake you. Of course, it is always dark. When what little light there is films the rounded stone like milky dew, it will be time to move again. Follow the ragged ravine winding to your right as if you were water. Do not fixate on the wiggle of your falling. Remember, there is nowhere to fall but down. As you catch the hang of it, you will begin to roar. The clamor of everyone you have ever known will be echoing vociferously inside you. A few lusty cries will rise from this surge only to resubmerge just as they start to make sense. You will not be missed, though it will seem like forever you are gone. Eventually, things settle down. You become as flat and smooth as a velvet pool in the moonlight. There is nothing left but yourself as far as you can see, and still you expand.   You will know when you arrive because it is like you have never left. Ask a poet directions, only when you realize you have no place to go.  
59.
Time for Gertein Strewed 01:21
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Time for Gertein Strewed for Gertrude Stein We know how little we know when we know how little time there is. Time is there when we don’t know. Time is when we don’t know how little time is. Time is little when we know when time is. Time is when we don’t know when. How little we know when we don’t know. How little time there is when we don’t know. How time is there we don’t know. We know a little about what we don’t know. We know there is a little to know about time. Maybe time knows what we don’t know. We know we don’t know what time knows. We know we don’t know how little there is to know. We know we don’t know how little there is. We know we don’t know how it is to be little. We know there is little. Time is when we know little. Time doesn’t know what we know. Time doesn’t know how little time is when we know. Time doesn’t know we are not time.
60.
Circus of Mirrors 02:38
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Circus of Mirrors I paint my face with laughter and tears. The clown I am to myself thinks he runs the show, lives in a circus of mirrors. I pay for my tickets, twisted strips as red as raw meat, changing hands as smoothly as the tools of a surgeon. I come and go afraid, not sure which side is real, I lose myself in mirror after mirror. I live my reflection over and over. I dread the revenge of light when it discovers the trap. I watch the back and forth clown prancing through a land he thinks he owns. His face glistens and bloats with the greed of the day. He moves as musically as water, as silently as light, in a hurry to nowhere. He does not believe I am real. He wears the makeup of my pain, frozen into a permanent smile. His words tinkle as joyously as breaking glass. His face floats over the evening. It follows me when I leave like a lonely Mylar balloon attached by an invisible string. He aches in my dreams, steals the warmth from my sleep. My cover is as thin as a sheet of aluminum foil. I awake shivering and alone. All is quiet. The circus is a mere memory. The mirrors in my house are as still as they were when no one was home. There are strips of torn paper in my pockets which could have been a poem. I piece them together. They slice to the bone. They are like slivers of silvered glass, shards of captured years, each word a vicious side show, a flood of living tears. My hands bleed all over them. It is the story of my life.
61.
wings of haiku 00:31
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wings of haiku lonely wasted heart marble-fisted doubt seek your ancient home inside open the bright shards of glass uncover your joy diamonds in the light
62.
The Visitors 02:18
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The Visitors walls of incandescent metal the incessant whir of the electric punctuated by busy clicks of buttons and switches my head inside the glass helmet radiating splintered lines of color like a feral plasma ball jagged ridges of blue midnight bolts of lavender, waves of deep forest green the air was clean but tainted with the smell of ozone and then in my mind everything at once flared clear myriad petals of pastel light fell around me like warm snow I knew they meant well I had followed the trail of broken rocket parts to find them and then they invited me in they were friendly enough strangely familiar and gentle their bodies were translucent with lips tinged fuchsia their breath smelled of amber laced with fennel their gold-flecked eyes flickered as steadily as the stars but warmer like points of flame none of this matters I know you just need to know I went in of my own will and now I am fine   let me tell you though what they told me they said they had come to bring us what we all have always wanted a gift wrapped in starlight from the dark skies of their home it all happened so quickly a flash of current and the exquisite bliss of being fully human flooding through me as if I had been as empty as a vase and now you see I am blooming
63.
Wonder Moment 01:07
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Wonder Moment My mantra is silence, my eye, light, my heart always wells up with joy. I breathe iridescent wonder into this moment forever alive.
64.
Bedside Manner 01:49
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Bedside Manner upon the passing of my mother The dying have no sense of when. Everything is was, each breath, a terrible wind. The light of those they love gathers like a tempestuous mob shaking smoking torches outside the window, blazes like the rising sun, flooding the river of glass with the searing certainty of inevitable dawn. The dying always walk the other way, forgetting all paths lead back, like breathing, the way in is the way out. I was there when she tumbled like a flaming magnolia down the long well of herself. I felt the exquisite weightlessness, then her fear. What happens at the bottom? She clenched my hand in hers in mine in hers. Although she was ashen as a tear of dust, hollow as peeled snakeskin,   I asked if she remembered the time in temple on Yon Kippur, when we both felt the hand of her father’s ghost squeeze hers squeezing mine. He came to tell you it's all right. She remembers to let go. Falls forever. Nothing is more beautiful.
65.
Walk in Beauty 00:42
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Walk in Beauty Spring swims inside me. As I step, the grass mumbles something about the rain. Grass feels no anger as we waste our paradise. Animals come and go and always green returns. Trees do not hesitate to burst bud. Grief falls heavy as I walk in beauty through a breaking land. Wind still lifts the great hawk, as clouds laced red with the smoke of sunset fade to black.
66.
Universal 00:33
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Universal Sunlit seed heads nod in eager waves. Golden grass bends in an agreeable wind now and again: same air pulses through each of us. No matter how old or alone, we bow our heads to the same light within.
67.
Cruel Surgery 00:41
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Cruel Surgery breath takes me in to my root my transcendence to the wellspring of the infinite inside where even shadows crackle with light I embrace grief’s cruel surgery and heal my heart

about

"Into Light is the story of my "mystic meanderings" into a "sacred meadow of light." It is a prayer for peace and a call to action, sometimes raw and real, sometimes imaginary. It is diverse and abundant, almost traditional, subtly innovative, and often experimental and not so subtle. It is the story of aging gracefully and loving fully, of fortune and tragedy, of connection and loneliness. Simply put, it is the story of my life." ~ M. D. Friedman

This is the exclusive home for enjoying everything Into Light, (maddogfriedman.bandcamp.com/album/into-light-the-poems-of-m-d-friedman). This is the only single page where you can listen to ALL 67 of the audio poems from M. D. Friedman's INTO LIGHT poetry book (Vol 1 ,2 & 3 all together is a $60 value.) All the text versions of all poems are there, too, for you to read (a $20 value), and, also, you can watch all associated "digital poem" videos for free without annoying advertisements. If you decide to purchase unlimited download and streaming access, not only are supporting new media poetry, you will also be able to download to all BONUS ITEMS including the "musical" version of "Two as One" from Mad Dog Friedman's WORD album, the image files for the front and back cover of the print edition, and both the pdf ($10 value) and epub ($12 value) versions of the e-book. It is the the best place online to enjoy the entire INTO LIGHT multimedia collection.

If you subscribe to my music community, you not only get this full poetry album, you also get unlimited download and streaming access to my full past and future music catalogue. Also, you can buy the print book, as well as audio book and e-book editions separately at liquidlightpress.com/IntoLight.htm.

credits

released January 1, 2024

Read by Mad Dog Friedman, aka M. D. Friedman. Mad Dog also did the recording, mixing,mastering and artwork for this album. This is the only place to purchase this Complete New Media Edition of M. D. Friedman's INTO LIGHT.

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About the Author

M. D. Friedman is an award-winning poet, artist and musician who lives in Lafayette, Colorado. He often incorporates diverse musical elements such as blues harmonica and Native American flute improvisations into his spoken word performances. His Visual Mantra healing art collection is free to use at FineArtMandalas.com. His innovative, acoustic roots band, Mad Dog Blues, as well as his meditative free jazz ensemble, Peddlers of Joy, can be found playing live around Colorado. His website, MDFriedman.com, features links to all of M. D.’s creative pursuits.



Audio versions of the Into Light poems, performed by the poet, are available on all music streaming services, at audiobook outlets and on BandCamp.



Please see LiquidLightPress.com/IntoLight.htm for all things Into Light including links to live videos, e-books, digital poems and musical poems.

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Mad Dog Friedman | Mad Dog Blues | Peddlers of Joy Lafayette, Colorado

Mad Dog writes from the moment and sings from his heart. His influences include sources as divergent as William Butler Yeats & the delta blues. His songwriting is sincere, simple & often humorous. He has recorded many solo & collaborative projects featuring his spontaneous compositions on harmonica, Native American flute & Theremin. He is also the founder of Mad Dog Blues & The Astral Project. ... more

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