WE OF THE YELLOW LARK

It was a river of blood. Ash was falling like snow.
–N. A. Sumanapalal

Every year the world slips a little further into chaos, it only seems to make more sense.
–Miles Bowe

…I hopped
on an Amtrak to New
York in the early
‘70s and I guess
you could say
my hidden years
began. I thought
Well I’ll be a poet.
What could be more
foolish and obscure.
–Eileen Myles

When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.
–老子

I write with the door open and edit with it closed. The yellow lark came into my place  this morning while writing this.  He hopped his way up the runner, pecking at it and looking around. He almost made the length of the rug and didn’t even fly away at the sound of my keystrokes. The fact that a little bird can turn such heady torrents of dread in me speaks to his power, or the insignificance of my blues.  He turns, hops a few times more and takes to the air and I’ll be Goddamned if I don’t hear him now–out there and up on the high bough, singing despite it all. Over two-hundred people were murdered in the Other Hemisphere this morning and my pal the Yellow Lark is still sending it out into the void. High piercing notes of a tiny song against the wash of low traffic streaming up and down Airport Boulevard on an Easter Sunday afternoon . The strength of the small, wu-wei or te, in thought and nature, redoubles me. I just like the odds. I’m always on the wrong side of whatever side there was so a precious and fragile, small-boned creature coming into my apartment as I write and lifting what seems like 44 years of trouble is a fine turn and closer to a miracle than any kind of savior rising from the dead to forgive me for being born. The man should’ve stuck around, ask me, although–maybe the Fall of Rome was his way of running things after all and over two-thousand years later he’s doing it again. The Son of God is burning down the house because we got too wiggy and could never find a peaceable solution to racism and class.

We can’t seem to get along but the truth is I’ve never met my enemy. The people I meet in the world, at large and on the good red road, are just trying to survive another end day in the Final Century. Leaders here seem to stoke our difference and point to the Other as the cause of our ills while never addressing healthcare or a living wage–which is vastly different than what Jesus was on about. Nowadays he’d be holed up behind a fence in Tyler, TX but anyway everybody’s gonna have to get onboard before we start cooking under the sun and by we I mean you and me Brothers&Sisters and never the masters or powers that be. I offered a raw oyster to Karl Rove last week, or maybe it was King Ranch chicken salad in a crispy corn tortilla or brie on a crostini with jalapeño glaze. The 4,424 Americans who died in the never-ending war on terror didn’t seem to be weighing on his mind and you know Goddamn well the 109,032 dead Iraqis weren’t either, sipping Petit Chablis with the aristocrats and laughing with his broad-shouldered and hairy-chested wife.

I’m gearing up for a week of it–working in the hospitality business that is, not serving appetizers to war hawks and their transgendered wives, and for all my hemming and hawing it’s not a bad way to make a dollar. Last night I bartended the wedding of Henri and Nick, so, score one for evolution and between their love and that little yellow bird this morning, perhaps the pit of my hard heart can soften. The terror of the end days of the Final Century, and the gripping black of trying to survive in the post-Recession economy, may even start to cede. I’ll settle for a proper bowel movement, Good Reader, or hot sex with a woman I love until dawn. In the meantime there’s always poetry, which is a lot like making love–or taking a shit.  I’ve had some luck at it, the poesy, some real breakthroughs, and I got some books out, heard? All I can say about it is–be like Brother Paul and keep bleeding. The world needs more agitation and more sorcerers of the black Arts, so, if you’re going to be a lapdog, please–don’t write poetry. The world needs frivolous and copacetic poetry like it needs warmer ice caps. Ring your song. Bellow your blues. But please help. We’ll need you, after me and the demo crew rip every joist out this house, clear the site and haul it all away. Let us do the work. Then you can come in, with your degree, and rebuild and be lofty and eloquent with your tame and pretty verse.

VOX POPULI, VOX DEI.

TRAINER
AUSTN TX

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