Good riddance, 2016

You won't be missed. 

40/52: rainbow

the rainbow bends low

we chase the horizon so -

only the lights go

38/52: the white earth

when I am speaking to ghosts
I prefer to be walking in the woods

and I prefer it to be in winter,
snow crunching beneath my boots

as I carry on the one-sided conversation
reliving with the dead

words that cannot be resurrected
arguments that cannot ever be won

I stand next to the frozen stream
knowing the ice is not thick enough to hold me

and I tell the ghosts enough for now!
and sometimes

sometimes

the wind takes them then

and I am left with only the white
white earth.

37/52: bone

There is little ice in the cracks and creases -
it is mid-December and the wind blows cold
over dead grass and leafless trees.
But not as cold as it could.

What is outside is not what is inside.
I feel winter's bony claw
tighten around my heart,
bone on muscle, jolting the rhythm

of all that is life
making the dark come sooner,
sooner than I thought.

36/52: waiting for a thing they do not want

Through my morning window
I see the trees standing black against the grey sky
naked and stark, and
I am looking for the metaphor for what this means.
They line up in the winter dawn
like Civil War soldiers waiting,
waiting for battle.

I imagine a bed roll over one shoulder
maybe a leaky canteen.
Hungry and tired.

There is no desire to move forward
no desire to move back.
They are just here
waiting.
Waiting for a thing they do not want.

35/52: a meditation upon meeting the wizard at the grocery

I saw the wizard in the produce aisle
but it was Tuesday, so he was not wearing his usual robe
the one with the stars and moons.

Nor was he wearing a top hat and tails
that would only be appropriate on Saturday night.

Nor was he wearing a long brown traveling cloak
and of course he did not have his staff
with the raven carved at the top -

it was only a trip to the grocery store
not into the wilderness where wild things speak
in a language older than time

and whisper of the true forms.

He was picking up avocados and gently squeezing them
in the palm of his hand.
He smiled when he saw me,
"You know they're ready if they yield
with just a gentle press.
Anything will yield with enough force,
so you have to learn to know the difference."

He replaced one and took another, paying me no more heed.

That was wizard talk, I knew,
for something.

I nodded, considering the meaning of the ripeness of avocados
as I made my way through the cereal aisle,
pausing occasionally to pick up a box,
feeling the give of the sides between my fingers and wondering
what might really be inside.

34/52: gorgon

I've been meaning to tell you
about the dream I had
where I came upon you
in a cave
by the sea.

You seemed to hiss, Whassup?
But I was fixed in place, like stone
when I saw the hoses coming out of your head
like snakes
but not.

They were, without a doubt
lengths of garden hose
raggedly cut off at random forearm lengths
writhing and twisting
in the wind
well, I would have said the wind
if there had been wind.

You looked like a high school mythology project
dreamed up on a Sunday night before it was due.

We walked out among the rocks,
rocks that looked strangely like heroes,
then sat together looking east
as rosy-fingered dawn unfurled...
her rosy fingers.

we sat without judgment,
but also without understanding.

I know, I know,
what were you doing in a cave
by the sea?

---

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/gorgon

33/52: Illusions be gone

How does one love the river?
All that swirl and change -

the fish coming to the surface
then diving deep again

the star spark light playing
a dance from bank to bank
and down there - somewhere
on the way out to the sea.

How does one love the sea?
Endless, boundless

on and on the black depths
washing over shells and bones

out of sight of land
what is there but the sun
and water that will only make you
thirst.

How does one love the sun?
fickle in the seasons

in February cold and hard,
withholding

in August relentless
and punishing.

Wash away, drown, or burn away
all the illusions
of love,
my gods.

Elegant though you may be,
there is no gentleness
in you.

---

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/illusions-be-gone

Video: https://youtu.be/IW0DbdHXc0o

30/52: the man, Rorschach

The day fades in from darkness
and we see a man leaning
against the counter in a kitchen somewhere,
coffee in both hands raised as if he were about to drink
but his gaze is unfocused at a point a thousand miles
past the cabinets it is directed at.

It is a moment for the opening scene of a movie

except someone didn't pay the sound engineers -
you know those guys whose names scroll endlessly
at the end while you are weighing the ethics
of picking up your popcorn and half empty giant slurp -
so there is no soundtrack.

What does this scene mean without the music
of this man's life?

He becomes a Rorschach test
where we impose all our own emotions,
triumphs and failures on him
and he doesn't even know it.

---

Audio:

https://youtu.be/7dDFGi95dLU or

https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/the-man-rorschach

29/52: equinox

This is the day when all things are equal
and we are ambivalent about coming or going.

The river runs shallow after the summer's heat.

I stand on the bank, feet dry,
in a place where, at the solstice,
the water would have stroked my ankles.

Present time runs down now,
down to the ocean of past.

I hold my paddle and consider my boat
resting on the grass gone to hay.

---

audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/equinox
or https://youtu.be/p-UCRVdOYCE

28/52: Design Tricks

In the designer's bag of tricks is the conjoining of two things

to think of something completely new.

Think of a Coke bottle and a shoe at the same time -

hold them in your mind like stereo inputs

to think about a better shoe.

Or maybe you will come away with a better Coke bottle.

A bottlish shoe, a shoeish bottle.

Is that what God did when he imagined humans?

Holding and angel and a beast

in His mind at the same time?

An angelic beast?

A beastly angel?

27/52: The Doe-Woman Between

the first time I saw the doe-woman
she was standing alert between the trees
(between worlds).

It was as if with one eye
I saw brown fur
muscled haunches
and flicking ears
and with the other eye
brown hair pulled back
and a slender body beneath
bark colored tunic and
leaf green breeches.

her wide coal black eyes
were the same
however I looked at her.

A stick cracked behind me here
or somewhere else,
some plane above or below,
and I returned my gaze
only in time to see
a white tail flashing
over a fallen trunk
or was it a hand extended
thrown up to help propel the leap?

only the trees stared back
seeing me with how many eyes?

26/52: when this close to heaven

the sun rising now through the trees,
we are this close to heaven, you and I.

the green leaves are brilliant yellow
reflecting for this moment
the gifts of light and grace of the morning.

if you look too high, too directly at the sun
the trees become black in silhouette,
losing who they are.

best to keep our eyes averted, if only a bit
when this close to heaven.


Audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/when-this-close-to-heaven

24/52: summer solstice

I am not ready for the days to begin to shorten
the length is just right, now.

to show I am a reasonable man,
I am willing to leave things as they are:

the birds beginning their pre-dawn ballads -
and the sun streams through the coffee's steam;

the light extending past dinner,
and sunset to do dishes by;

the long arc of the day illuminating
all of the things that are still to be done.

I am not ready for the sweltering heat,
even as the time we have begins to roll back

toward the turning of the leaves,
the gathering of fruits.

Too soon the birds will fly
and nests will be empty

and I will be forgotten -
frost on the window,

the light, for the remaining hours
hard and joyless.


audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/summer-solstice

23/52: the ledger

the morning light is a horizontal
coming through the windows -
there is a certain magic to being awake
early on a Saturday.

it's in the dust and pollen
that drift in and out of the beams
as if they come to exist for a moment
and follow a random path
like each of us do in our lives
then fall out of sight and into the darkness again.

I'm counting days like this
on the ledger
of gifts.


audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/the-ledger

22/52: Different Drummer

I didn't think there was something genetic

about being deaf to the drummer of society.

But now that I stand amid generations
I see it, this pattern I've passed on to you

and I wish it were not so.

It is this very trait, this far-hearingness
that has machined me
painfully into this man
who I am.

I would not have wished it upon you
to be lathed by loneliness

to have your spontaneity ground down
by the scrapers and gouges of your peers,

but your inheritance
is the ridicule of not knowing the rules,
the humiliation of inadvertent deviance.

You'll have to listen harder, my child,
you'll have to attend to that faint cadence
no one else can hear.

Your birthright is that distant high hat,
that remote tom,
the far flung djembe
that calls you, and only you.

I am sorry,
and I am sorry I am delighted.



audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/different-drummer

21/52: signaling to the stars

luckily for my wife's sake
we live out in the woods

because tonight
while she was watching TV

I slipped out the back door
barefoot
(but otherwise clothed -
it's not one of those stories)
and standing in that patch of lawn
that we maintain,
beating back the assault
of maple and oak

I began, again, to send hand and arm signals
to the stars.

You know, communications
like the ones you see in the movies
with soldiers directing helicopters
coming in for a landing
over blowing sand or
waist high elephant grass.

I was signaling for them to come down -
any of them,
even one of the small ones -
a red dwarf would do.
To explain, in their heavenly wisdom,
the unfathomable nature of earthly existence.

I raised my hands above my head
to signal that I was ready to guide them in,
and then began to indicate
they were to advance and descend.

If you didn't know what I was doing,
you could easily have mistaken me
for a madman.

They haven't obliged me yet,
those stars,
but they will.
Once they understand.

20/52: too much vernacular

too much of the world's story
is told in the vernacular.

there is something lost
when we use the same language
to talk about grocery shopping,
mopping the floors,
and paying income taxes

And to also exhort the divine
of being alive:
of love's first spark
of the secret three AM fears.

we need a language of magic and sacred
that allows us to
speak the words of the wind,
sing the songs of the waves,
invoke the mystery of the flame,
and sit in the silences of the stones.

the world is less
for the words.

19/52: You are a verse

You are a verse in my poem.

See, that is you up there

all by yourself.

But also intertwined
like a preposition,
or maybe a semi-colon.

Yes, you also seem to be a semi-colon;
after all these years, I still have
no idea how to place you
in my life.

By syllogistic reasoning,
you are a verse about a semi-colon.

Or, whatever.
I know you are a verse.
A verse in my poem.

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/you-are-a-verse-1

18/52: a certain tension

There is a certain tension
we live with
that gives our lives color and shape.

In particular the shape
of an inverted parabola -
a black line cutting through
textbook-white space.

When we are lucky, we live at the peak,
forces balanced -
dancing, as the angels once did,
at that dangerous precipice.

We can't choose not to have them,

these pulling forces,

we can only try to cope -
an arm flailing here,
a glass thrown there -

And out of balance means falling
whichever way the tension shifts.



audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/a-certain-tension

17/52: walking to the moon

the other day when I was walking to the moon
I grew tired and had to sit down
on the crest of a cumulonimbus

I spoke with the stars
but though they shine,
it takes them so long to say
what burns in their minds

as I left the atmosphere
putting one foot in front of the other
I considered what a long way it actually is

walking to the moon
seems like a pointless thing sometimes.

---

audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/walking-to-the-moon

16/52: in your eye

If I exist only in your eye
where do you exist
except in my eye?

Do you exist at all
except in a loop between
my eye that has your eye
which captures my existence

and melts it down
to utter nothingness?

Am I a thing that exists
only in its own eye?

15/52: waiting for a song

I'm listening for a song:
I am hoping it is the song
of the coming spring -
the song of buds appearing mysteriously
when we are not looking,
the song of purple flowers
on notes of green.

The song I hear this morning
is in the key of winter,
the wind pulling at the shingles
trying to pry the warmth
from my house.

It is composed of the same few chords -
cold,
and colder,
with occasional false promises
and an arpeggio of hard white sun.

Poco a poco, con amore, pianissimo -
come now and join the chorus,
Living Things.
We have been waiting too long
in this intermezzo.

---

audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/waiting-for-a-song

13/52: black suit

After a day like this

you have come home.

You took off your shoes at the door
as if dismounting from your horse.

The house is quiet
the sun has just gone down,
but the last fingers of its light
cushion the kitchen, living room,
stairs up to your bedroom
like an old monastery
or castle.

You slide out of your jacket
and half expect it to hit the floor
with the clang of plate armor.
But it droops from your hands
and then you have it on the hanger.

It is nothing but cloth, after all.

12/52: expiation

This is the wrong temple

I hear people whisper to me

Why do you persist?

Can't you see it is the Goddess of Death,
the all consuming Void?
Madness, madness is upon you.

Their voices wash over me.
I know which temple this is;
I know to which goddess I speak.

We must have words,
She and I,
in order that I may expel

the constructs of many shapes,

unkind and despairing.

In a time of temples,
we would have called them demons,
but in a time of psychiatry,
we call them constructs.

The mistake was made so many years ago,

where were you whisperers then?
now is time for atonement,
for the setting-free.

11/52: heartstorm

If you find yourself having looked into the eyes of the heartstorm

deep

to confront the cowl of madness,

there is no looking away.

Down there in the deep

down there in the deep

down there in the deep

where no one knows but you your secret grief.

Your secret hood

over your ears and eyes

you pull it,

the light fades

down there in the deep

where you can not escape

the eyes of the heartstorm

in the deep.

---

audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/heartstorm1

10/52: Starbucks abduction

On the way to work this morning
I was abducted by aliens.

It's not the first time.

They took me to Starbucks
and forced me to order them
mocha lattes.
Well, forced is a little strong,
but it sounds good.

They uncertainly sipped
at the foamy concoctions
and told me about their lives
back home -
how most of their people
never ventured out
past their everyday existence -
as if exploring other planets
and other civilizations
wasn't actually a choice.

Everything is a choice,
insisted the tall one with two heads.
His other head agreed.

We shook hands,
all three of theirs and both of mine,

and then they beamed me back
into my car and my life.


Audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/starbucks-abduction

8/52: the grey interlude

The snow has dissolved into the earth
leaving the gardens exposed,
raw branches of the blueberry bushes
naked and grey.

Everything is grey for this brief period.
it is the grey interlude
between winter and spring.

I am tempted to dig in the mulch
with my fingers,
hoping to expose the black fruits
as if they are somewhere down below
waiting to emerge whole,
popping out as if the branches were straws.

The grey interlude lasts too long
and my patience wears thin
after months of hiding.

7/52: hello, tree spirit

Hello, tree spirit
I know you are following me,
following me in the woods.

Do you love me more than the others?
You hide treasures along the foot path:
moss on an old log,
three leaves laid just so,
a mushroom blooming like a young woman.

Are these for me? Only for me?
Or do you share your secrets
with whomever happens along?
The old man with the damn dog
that should be on a leash;
the couple running in spandex
with iPods plugged in their ears -
together, alone;
the three college boys smoking weed
as if no one had smoked weed in the woods
before them.

How do they deserve your attention
when I walk so slowly
and I can feel you following me,
just behind my peripheral.

Do you share your secrets with them
when I do not come for days?
Do you share your secrets with them
when I am not clever enough to see
the gifts you have placed in the shadow,
or in the glinter light?

Be faithful to me, tree spirit.
I am but a mortal, with a mortal man's years.
Be faithful to me,
follow me, only me, in the woods,
and I will love you when I am old.

When I am gone, lay your treasures
by my footprints
grown thin with time.

---

Audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/hello-tree-spirit

6/52: onions

To caramelize the onions properly

requires a certain state of mind.

One can't be holding on to ancient pain

or the onions, sensing your anger,

burn black and hard.

You must acknowledge the imperfections

of your life, the dreams that will not now

at midlife come true,
and let them go
like a balloon accidentally released
from a child's hand.

You must stir steadily, regularly,
with a wooden spoon on the cast iron pan
feeling the tension ease out
of the longitudinal slices
while the aroma evolves
and fills the kitchen.

Another balloon drifts away carrying with it
worries about next week's meeting,

and another about your daughter's future.

Stir, stir,
there is time for all that later.


audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/onions

5/52: Not of this planet

I am not if this planet,
I feel I must tell you
because today is Tuesday,
and it is raining.

I've heard rumor that you are also
a stranger from afar.
Isn't it odd that we would meet here
of all places,

so far from home.

4/52: Refined

Pour it into a bottle and cork it,

carry it down to the cellar where no one can see it.

In the darkness lay it down,

let the fermentation process eat away
all the sweetness of memory,

until only the refined
blood red bitterness remains.

3/52: other days

The winter sun is white and blinding
but gives no hint of what it is feeling.

My toes are numb, the cold seeping up
through the leather from the pavement.

Head down against the generous wind,
hands deep in pockets

I think of other days and other places.

2/52: made new, again

The trail's rocks and roots and worn dirt
are blanketed with snow

pressed unevenly flat by boots and skis
dog paws and deer hooves. 

This is a place entirely different
from what it was in the fall 

when the leaves had papered the way; 

from the summer 

when the deer flies relentlessly pursued us;
from the spring 

when the melt made primordial mud. 

So there you are now,
the winter sun white and low
bitter wind on your cheek
in this place made new, again.

1/52: the heart is a relative instrument

the heart is a relative instrument:
it bends time
like Einstein.

the heart thrums out
a bass line of ancient grief
that bubbles up unbidden
like oil in the sands,
the buried remains of a life from
a thousand thousand years ago.

the heart is riddled with worm holes
(this heart)
and time is curved around
like your forefinger and thumb
creating a pincer
across which memory leaps.

the heart is a relative instrument
and it plays this song forever
and also only for a year.

audio: https://soundcloud.com/mbonica/the-heart-is-a-relative-instrument