Light is Transitory and Always Failing

Light is Transitory & Always Failing

                                 -for my father

I.

My daughter was four when we were attacked

By wasps in the front yard of our house

In upstate New York

Where we weathered the early years of her life,

The pandemic & my fathers death.

I was stung first.

A dark scout from a nest in the ground

Crept inside the lip of my boot 

& pierced my calf 

A signal to the rest 

To defend The Queen @ all costs.

II.

I traveled a great distance 

To be there @ the foot of a mountain

On the edge of a wood -

All the way from 

The San Joaquin Valley

Where summer chokes the light

& light is transitory & always failing.

Where I spoke a very particular language:

drug-talk, private slang

free-verse & slant-rhymes.

Stuff I picked up on

Basketball courts on the west-side

Twitching @ the elbow of the free-throw line

Trying to shake a defender to execute

My signature mid-range jumper

Or drive hard to the rim,

Leaving the ground w the ease I had then 

my head humming w Mexican Red-Hair

Sinsemilla & gangsters’ voices

Echoing off of the hard-wood & vaulted ceilings

Of Holmes Playground Gymnasium.

III.

Huddled in the dark pews

in the South Wing

Chewing the shit out of my cheek

& Peter Everwine trembling 

From the podium @ The Art Museum

On Dakota & Clinton where just outside

The shrouded wolves waited

& inside I was learning how to use words

& images to change the dismal scenery 

Of The Central Valley 

& the seemingly hopelessness of my cause.

It was the first time I had heard 

A wrist compared to a star 

Or anything really.

What an elegant word: wrist.

Oh what an infinitesimal piece

Of dust I was then…

IV.

Anyway,  It broke 

The Monotony & Violence into stanzas 

& I took up w the bruised & angry   

Motel Girls

On Golden State Boulevard

Along freeway 99

V.

I thought then that I wanted 

To become a minister 

& I chose a path not unlike Jesus 

who also favoured the company of prostitutes

& walked out across the water 

& spoke to fisherman from the impossible twinkling waves

& laid waste to the money changers

w a whip he must have borrowed 

Or up until then, kept like a secret to himself

& who knew he knew how to use such a thing?

Who knew?

Once, evangelizing on the street

The group I was w 

Turned their backs on a drunk

Begging for change

& they did it, I know, because they knew not

What it was to need a drink

& so…

They missed an opportunity for salvation 

After all was it not 

Christ himself torn & bleeding

Beat all the way down to shit

Asking for a dollar   or two there

On Olive Ave. among the lepers & the stoned?

Earl the Pearl whirling

W his hand out: a Human Turnstile.

VI.

We had stumbled upon something

As old as a hive of wasps buried in the ground.  

An invisible pestilence

Moving from one pair of lungs to another 

One cruel gesture at a time 

Blacked out beneath a swarm of bees.

It came to nothing,

My wanting to be a priest or a scholar.

In my mind it was the same thing.

Whip merchants, piss off Pharisees 

write a poem about the futility of fishing 

&  finally… 

bring the adrift back to the shore

One by one to breathe relief, 

But I guess I didn’t know how tough

Things had become…

Christ.

VII.

My father departed this earth in stages.

It makes sense when you think about it.

His mind cut out before his body did.

He was a marathon runner & the whole gist

Is to turn off the brain & settle into 

Some type of rhythm despite the pain.

He did, however, go down swinging

@ the minimum-wage workers 

& indifferent bureaucrats who had assumed 

Control of his life.

He was a man who had learned 

About freedom on his own terms. 

Time his nemesis & companion, 

He mastered the sub six-minute mile

& the eight-hour plus work-day

Then in glue-gunned shoes

Left the earth in long, exploratory flights

Of time & space & endurance.

“You don’t need that” 

he would tell me whenever I was

In the throes of desire or dissatisfaction.

He would point to my shoes

In disarray on the floor & say

“Fix that”

VIII.

What can I tell my daughter

After such a vicious assault,

That it’s going to be ok?

We sit up in bed late into the night

In the dark & talk 

Sometimes to each other

Other times to our invisible

& old companions that we have

Imagined or endured

& we secretly listen in

On each other’s conversations

Amending & smiling into

The parts of the story 

That make no sense.