Broken Branches

Daring the Gods (Revised)

2007-07-27T10:49:00.001-05:00

So the world sometimes leaves you wondering
of your place in it, whether you've cause and reason
for breath or only habit.

So you look to the sky, or wherever your gods dwell
and fix a gaze forward and hurl yourself along,
drive sixty in a snow storm, carry timber across a lake
in a fourteen foot boat and three foot swells,
the white caps licking at the gunnel, jump
from a thirty foot cliff into dark waters, crawl
into an empty bear's den and run, face blood drained and corpse pale,
when you realize empty is a mistake.
And when it's done, and you're still there, close
your eyes, let your heart slow, let life slow.

It's not time and there are things to carry.
You're still needed.

Knife

2007-07-27T10:44:00.000-05:00

You, I know you. Come
to seek solace and redemption
in my silver sheen?

What
is it you want now? A kiss,
a touch like that of a long absent lover?
An edge drawn
through your past your memories of lips
pressed to yours, of silence in northern pines
of whispered slanders, cuts delivered by tongue?

What is it
you want of me? A slow carved
smile, as cure for your malaise,
under your chin?
A clutched embrace, my glistening
self driven like a nail
as you hold me in your heart
like an old love, my edge
shining in the hot
red dark of your pulse

Talk to me no more
of anything less,
you vacillator, you coward.
No more
of your teasing games, your gentle
wounds and puckered flesh as wards
against your insufferable tears

Do you want me? A last
and permanent kiss?
No?
The fold me. Sheath me.
I don’t want to talk to you anymore.

Okay, not really in keeping with the theme but. . .

2007-06-15T11:26:00.000-05:00

Okay. So Time just put this up. Perhaps I'm crazy for being a stitch upset about it, but really, this article on the Friday before Father's Day?

Here's what I think is terribly wrong with this article, besides the incredibly poor taste in timing. The article quotes a fair number of statistics (never mind how crappy it does in providing sources) but offers little to only surface level analysis. The thesis of the article ". What's less clear is whether dads--at least as a group--have done a good enough job to deserve the honor," is then tacitly supported by these statistics.

This does a disservice to men and fathers in particular. Social customs and in many states, the legal system is not set up to be conducive to fathers having as a big role as possible in the lives of their children. If a father tries to pay court mandated child support, he is tied to working the job he's at or one that pays more. Most courts will not reduce the amount of child support owed if a father takes a job that pay less. Even if the purpose of that jobe is to go to school to be able to get a better job or simply to be able to spend more time with his children. To say nothing of the problems of mothers moving and taking the children with them. If mom moves to a smaller town (with correspondingly lower paying jobs) the father still cannot accept a lower paying jobe nearer his children.

The situation gets worse when the custody battle is not between once married parents or when paternity is contested. By the time court proceedings are started, the playing field is slanted toward the mother, who has retained sole custody the entire time.

The article, goes into none of this. It's irresponsible at best, and deliberately biased and slanted at worst.

But, of course, I could be nuts or overreacting. :) Y'all can tell me.

Oh, and I swear I'll get back to posting some actual writing soon. I promise.

Daring Gods

2007-03-07T13:18:00.000-06:00

So the world sometimes leaves you wondering
of your place in it, whether you've cause and reason.

So you look to the sky, or wherever your gods dwell
and fix a gaze forward and hurl yourself along,
drive 60 in a snow storm, carry timber across a lake
in a fourteen foot boat and three foot swells, jump from a thirty foot cliff
into dark waters, crawl
into an empty bear's den and run, face blood drained and corpse pale,
when you realize empty is a mistake.
And when it's done, and you're still there, close
your eyes, let your heart slow, let life slow.

It's not time. You're still needed.

Oak Trees Are the Most Hopeful

2007-02-07T10:12:00.000-06:00

Because only they keep their leaves
despite a winter hibernation.
Pines while away the winter still green,
a testimony to toughness
rather than hope.
Only oaks cling to their dead and shriveled
leaves in faith of spring's return
and rattle them at you in the wind;
a reminder that frozen and dark
days don't last
and when their leaves finally fall,
green, warmth and sunlight
aren't far behind.

Crawling in Caves & Shadows

2007-02-06T16:40:00.000-06:00

Hidden
I’ve stayed, gathering night shadows like small
pox blankets around my shoulders, comfort
in the short term
and, anyway, I already have a hacking
cough.

Tree limb shadows stripe
My skin as if lashes from a lover’s whip,
Cover my scars
Like pale silk veils.

I scutter, low, until transfixed;
a bright moon
nails
me naked to the forest floor
stripping layers and masks
collapsing shuttered
realities, narrowing
possibilities like a box opened on a dead
cat, a wave not just broken
but that never was.

Staring, silent, a dumb
animal, clawed night fingers
thrust up from tree trunks
mark time against the wheeling
night sky, stars turned pin-wheel lines
if only the retina carried a memory.

I am pieces projected, scraps displayed
in willful syncopation, beautiful patches
proudly shown to distract from the shoddy
and unfinished quilt. . .
My gestalt thickens,
becoming less protection and more definition.

No dog, but a cold and lonely wolf,
too frightened to seek warmth
and servitude or friendship
at distant fires
so,
I turn, moving into the deeper dark.

Ashamed: A brief rant and apology

2007-01-12T12:21:00.001-06:00

First, I want to be clear. I’m not ashamed of my military service. Far from it. I’m not ashamed of any of the men and women in uniform not even the ones who have been found guilty or stand accused murder and abuse. For them I feel at worst pity and sadness.

I served in the Minnesota National Guard for 8 years. I loved it. I loved everything about it. I even loved the shear mindless nihilism of sitting for hours next to my howitzer (and it was always “my” howitzer) waiting for something, anything to happen.

At the end of 8 years, and having been deployed to Britain for six months and missing the first three months of my first child’s life (I was lucky enough to be able to be there for his birth; other with me at the time missed the birth of their children) I did not re-enlist. I wanted to. I talked it over with my wife. We both knew what was likely to happen, as the war in Iraq went on and steady progression of Reserve and Guard units were deployed. The week my term of service ended, a car bomb killed three National Guardsmen in Iraq. I didn’t re-enlist.

A year later, my unit was activated, for a year long deployment to Iraq, with approximately six months training before leaving. They were due to come home in March of this year. Yesterday, as part of our “new way forward” their tours of duty were extended by one hundred and twenty-five days.

I am no knee jerk patriot. I have never believed the war in Iraq was necessary, although I did not think it was entirely “evil,” either. It has, however, been terribly mismanaged to the terrible detriment of both Iraqis and the soldiers involved.

And I am ashamed I did not re-enlist. My friends, my buddies stayed and went. Everyday I watch for their names in casualty lists. Everyday, I know, not think, but know I should be there. I’m ashamed I haven’t done more for them. Ashamed for letters unwritten and support not given.(see comment for finish)

Winter

2007-01-10T10:02:00.000-06:00

Burn me down, like a
Soltice bonfire in the chill
Shudder of cold nights

Drag

2006-12-19T15:11:00.000-06:00

What's left us, but the drag and drop
of steady days and hours ground
too fine like teeth clenched
in the night, a slow and tepid
decline as if a decadent,
empire, fires buried under ash and cooled
by inevitable thermodynamics.

Years flow like prairie,
a curved horizon
with the end just out reach,
and the stars will fade
through exhaustion at lack of love
the universe cool and spread,
shadows deepen
and in the end, little is left
but our next steps
our next days
through plains and hills turned brown
in autumn, undisturbed
and unremarking
at our passing.

Mad

2006-09-22T11:44:00.000-05:00

That I shall go mad
is of no doubt and little consequence.
Shall I gape and gibber,
cavort and caper, running
naked under the whisper of aspen
leaves on summer nights
while the moon rains
down stolen sunlight and laughs
with me in my wounded daze?

How shall I go that broken
and slanted way?
Will I mirror my hurt to a barbed
and sharp
world? Make sainthood from sin
health from the scarred ruins of pox,
lay my hands over your wounds
as if heaven would listen
to me, feel you quiver and shudder
as I suck
your sins and china fractured wounds of the heart inside?

Or will my madness spill
like joyful sobs at births, like my love
for you, like my blood
my scars, my tears like salt
in the sea, across the earth
as if whip cracks on flesh?

Is my madness
my own, my penance
my beautification to bear?
A martyrdom for the wicked,
where I feel the press and prick
of a knife at my neck
wondering at the pull
of the blade across my throat
the point pushing through my larynx
as I gurgle a last prayer,
a hymn to the fading night sky?

No. I well know the measured pace
and dark abyssal
courses my madness runs;
it is the sluggish scrape
of glaciers dragging scars
into granite under miles of grinding
ice, it is the deepening chill
of final nights as stars wink
their last and wither,
it is the sweet and saving
welcoming of a slow
and freezing
end when fires snuff out.

Memory

2006-08-28T10:10:00.000-05:00

Memory

The cream of your skin
under my hands, my flesh turned forge fire
under the trace and rasp
of your fingernails
over my shoulders,
your thighs and the high tension wire lines
of muscles flexed
and the shudder of gasped breaths
and your taste like sparkling
wild honey on my
tongue.
These memories are etched
into me like acid
tracings on metal,
like wax spatters
dripped down candelabras
like the sound of my name
from your lips, breathed soft
and I will not forget.

2006-08-11T10:03:00.000-05:00

Title? (I'll take suggestions. . .)

And my love for life, for you, is the sweat-filled-night
lust for the whipcrack
the crazy peel
and part of skin from skin,
the poisoned candy apple red
drip and burn of candles,
flames guttering
and fading in the liquid of their own fire,
dying as heat and fire
must in a slow spiral of thermodynamics.

We are all flames, banked
and dimmed, like fires atop frozen'
lakes, chewing holes through ice, even we devour
tinder to carbon, to unlighted water, drowning
in the dark, leaving
nothing but charcoal
and ash, trapped
as flooded tunnels freeze
around us.

Going Home

2006-08-10T12:49:00.000-05:00

Violence is a real
thing for him, a palpable
twitch in the forearms, a need to turn the door
handle too hard. Some days
he stands on the deck, stares at the moon
cross-shot by cirrus clouds and the street-light
halos humming above asphalt-black rain puddles
and just breathes out.

Other days, he sits stiff in the easy chair,
ice melting in his drink, tries to let the headache
drain away into his stomach. Knows later,
he'll float, silent, to bed.

And others the tension never leaves
but sits on his chest like giant clamps,
turns his guts to strings wound to tight and when he closes
his eyes, he feels flesh bruising under his fingers.

Going South Out of Canada

2006-08-09T13:02:00.000-05:00

My family left at the end of October,
bags packed, clothes folded and our books
stored in boxes.

We left behind blankets, mattresses
and everything we loved because of its place,
there, in that house surrounded by aspen.
A leather easy chair, the hideaway bed too heavy
to carry out the half a mile to the cars,
the book about the one eyed man
that scared me for years
diamond willow
book shelves, my bed, hand built from pine,
the TV we watched hockey on every Saturday
night during winter,
the fireplace, the sauna

We left our rock-bottomed creek behind
and the sucker run every year. We left the Big Ridge, named by us,
spruce bogs and cedar swamps, Northwest Bay and lake water we drank
without boiling, springs red from iron, Wolf Rock
that sheltered a bear instead. We traded them for softer lines,
the artificial mountains of the Iron Range
and hills covered by trees and leaves instead of bare glacial rock.

Beauty

2006-08-08T14:44:00.000-05:00

The sun rising over Norwegian mountains, beautiful.
Beautiful, the artillery lancing fire that melts ice
from aspen and the white
phosphorus shells raining flame
in meteoric streaks over the tundra. Beautiful,
the capacity to kill.

Beautiful, our eye-sockets, sunken and hollow,
our dying, beautiful, our flesh turned
filth, skin bloated and dark with rot, beautiful the maggot
life we feed.

Beautiful, panted breath and whispers
in still night air, the crackle of spit
on diamond cold snow, skis
rasping wax over trails
like tunnels through birch
and arms aching with fading
fitness and youth lost in a narrow
funnel of years.

Beautiful the carnal: the crumple of sheets
and sweat flecked skin. Beautiful fuck, the act
and the word.
Beautiful the crumple of forgotten negligees,
salt licked belly and thigh and eyes open
in daylight and darkness. Beautiful our lives.

Cain

2006-07-28T09:24:00.000-05:00

And I'll compose in red ink, strike
north east to that home of old ice.
Closet and cloister muscle rippling fear
and rage within walls of short needled
jackpine

I'll be a monk, wrapped
in dun robes, my tonsured, tired
skull shielded by a rough-spun linen
hood, guard my feet in hard leather boots,
eyelets cinched tight.

I'll trudge through crusted snow, the crunch
and fall of my feet a hymn
while ravens fly like scissored
silhouettes on the gray sky and ring their unkind bells.

My paces will grind through the days; I'll walk
until the ground stops crying. That day
I'll build a pyre, lie down to rest cradled
in the sap smell of wood shavings, strike
spark and make my sacrifice.

I'll hope this time the smoke is pleasing.

Walking Home in the Dark

2006-07-24T09:04:00.000-05:00

The air is cold under the pin-holed
night sky, lover, and ice crystals
hang like actinic
film on gray aspens.

I’ll be your homespun sweater,
rough against bare skin. Take me as your patched
quilt. Use me for a tattered overcoat
turn my collar to the wind.

Tonight is dark, the northern lights crackle
and spit, green streaks like fingers
raking down the back of the night.
The moon is new
and only the subtle outline of trees
against the unclouded sky
marks our way.

Let me stumble the dark trails
ahead of you; I’ll trip
out a clear path.
I’ll be your guttering torch
against the dark, lover.
Light me on fire.

Burning

2006-07-21T09:16:00.000-05:00

I have burned
for you
and would burn still.
Bonfires, flames licking
tall, like the run of my tongue
up your ribs.
Pyres, I would light with the heat of my skin
against yours; embers
from our lips kindle watch fires
to ward the evening.
Fingers trace lava runs
following sweat beads over spine.
High towers burn like rivers
running up, spit and crackle
and collapse in a shower of sparks,
flames easing to well-banked
coals and dimming to night,
the only heat our salt-slick
skins, the sigh and pant
of our breath, misted
like smoke
against the darkening sky.