Laurie J. MacDiarmid

Sometimes the Kinks play on repeat in the back of my brain.

moving its slow thighs

let’s return to the idea of the future --
how it hangs in front of us, sometimes
more concrete (it seems) than the moment
that defines us. i too face that specter

with welling anxiety, a semi paralyzing
fear that i thought i’d left behind with my
agonized forties. more than ever now i wonder
how i will die, and when, and why, and hope

it will be swift, crashing me from behind.
is that why more and more i think i see
a hulking presence in the corner of my eye?
it startles me, electrocutes my blood, then

spreads through me like hot ink. is this
the next chapter, or the last, stalking me?
chasing me with agonizing languor into
that future’s black body, that living grave? 

the indignant desert birds

are nothing compared to the flocks of
canadian geese hooting and stomping by
the fox river, or tittering hordes of black
bodies in bushes that chitter scream

and wrestle, unseen, shivering branches 
like god’s voice across the parking lot. spring
brings a conflagration of feathers, a rising tide
of robins on lawns, the cardinals’ call and

response across campus, and bully crows 
shredding the house finches’ nests. if birds
are psychopomps, ferrying messages back
from the dead, whose indignant complaints

rain down from the trees? whose warnings
follow me from car to sidewalk to sagging Hall,
where empty corridors and crucifixes glow
dully, and wordless, in ancient yellow light?

a gaze blank and pitiless as the sun

somehow we started talking about girl on girl aggression,
how starting young we divide and conquer ourselves,
exiling those who don’t follow unwritten dress codes,
and others with bodies that bloom too soon and glorious,

or those who say too much about fairness or justice.
it’s shameful how we act as patriarchal gatekeepers
at nine and eleven and seventeen, gleeful and righteous
as we embroider bloody As on innocent chests, pouring

poison into ears primed for it, spraying it over the internet,
spitting the toxic brew on our friends and allies in a mist
disguised as sugar kisses. all this struggle over the fickle 
interest of bromancing boys seduced by games that will 

never include us. perhaps we have earned, now, our lives
of quiet alienation, our empty houses, our pecking card parties
where -- gray and bent, shuffling alone toward oblivion -- we 
hide behind cold smiles, dealing each other losing hands. 

“a shape with lion body and the head of a man,” ...

oh sphinx, you know better, don’t you? not a man but
a woman, yes -- massive, stately, majestic, poised
stone and magnificent in the desert imagination, jutting
up from sere red dirt -- you hold the busy noise

of two thousand years in your massive mouth.
all around you “civilization” swirls and dies, clouds
scudding through hot skies. you survive famine, drought,
pestilence, war, petty gods and their humans. as loud

as extinction, your enduring silence roars on the edge
of our history, invention, struggle. the perfect marriage
of creation, predator, goddess, monument, religions
slide off your immovable haunches. wordless, you disparage

our attempts to stave off the inevitable, our puny deaths,
our desiccation, our return to rock, and sand, and breath.

I’m getting too old to be a participant in the usual madness.

troubles my sight

the world dims, colors flatten, faces
melt into paper thin shadows. my glasses
darken and refuse to clear, even in sterile

florescence. at the doctor’s, the eye chart
remains elusive, letters smeared over
piss yellow indifference, as the drops

burn into gasping retinae. i stare into
the tiny search light. well, he says, this 
young puppy faced boyman, there’s good news

and bad. you don’t need a new prescription,
he says, that won’t help, because you’re growing
cataracts, but we can cut them out and then

you’ll see better than you have in a long
while --

my eyes may be cloudy but my inner sight
swirls in nauseating technicolor. the first
and last time i was sliced it was to free

our sleeping daughter from her fleshy cradle.
you can do it now, he said, or wait, it’s all
the same ... and in that infinite second of silence

i decide to stay in the fog for now, 
to cling to dull shadows, to let the world’s shine 
die

this terrifying while. to wait inside myself, afraid 
to truly see.

a vast image out of spiritus mundi

maybe this is what’s at the backs of our minds --
some vast image, some supernatural notion
welling up at last in the collective unconscious --
a demon spawned in underground rivers

of lava and arsenic and radiation, earth blood
bubbling at impossible temperatures, taking on
insane weight and intention, and rising now 
like a vengeful golem created to collect on our 

massive debts. certainly, some of us are waiting
for this reckoning to arrive; some of us suspect an
incredible bill has come due, and the gods we raised 
will refuse to save us, and (in short) we are  

screwed. no prayers, no words, no magic will suffice.
this is how ou world will end: not in ice but in fire.

Only then will I have the wisdom I need to endure this world.

hardly are those words out

when I remember the grace and intelligence
of trees -- how they bend and sigh in
every flavor of wind,

their persistence in all weather,
their silent wisdom, waiting through
generations of human invention 

(if that is to be their story) 
or for their end in fire, flood, amputation, 
bug infestation -- 

how they retreat inward with November 
behind dark, mossy bark, 
hiding their lives deep in roots 

clutching frozen mud, or shake
shawls of snow from evergreen branches,
letting peckers and squirrels and robins

nestle in their leaves and needles --
how they breathe in our poisons with
detached compassion,

exhaling a healing oxygen --
how they never complain or attack,
and just convert their suffering into love.

whatever, you know.

the worst are full of passionate intensity

we all know what this means and so
I won’t belabor the point

invent your own images
to prove the case

and for once I will fall back
into happy abstraction

Not that you care, but today I’m feeling groggy, disoriented, sleepy, and vaguely disgruntled. It’s like all of the joy and hope I felt yesterday has left me with a hangover.

the best lack all conviction

wandering, alone, dazed and confused
in hedge mazes hewn from legal speak and
wishful thinking. They stumble into dead

ends and queer sand traps, gopher holes
to snap their ankles, and hear the echoes of 
faroff voices, rising and falling like waves,

over the clink of expensive silverware, 
the music of casual laughter, a muted
string quartet. 

No wonder they lose all sense 
of direction and purpose, faced with such 
frustration, turning

over and over into blind alleys 
lined with vicious branches, prevarications
on a single theme of entrapment.

Now, as it gets dark, it seems
that distant party has been thrown only
as a mirage,

to torture these best few
with the hope of release; 
this game works to keep these last

persistent seekers circling
endlessly back to the center,
where a sarcastic bronze statue,

mottled with age and cast
long ago with the name TRUTH across its base,
poises over an empty fountain,

pissing air into air.