A Broken Word
A being grounded in its own unity.
If there were a morning possible,
The Word would welcome the morning doings.
But morning means evening, the split of day,
And days mean yesterday and tomorrow,
And the division of the year.
And years mean history and future,
And the dissolution of the point of Time.
And now morning dew firms in a moment,
Coats the leavings of the verbs that start to act.
The mirror actively reflects, and separates,
Bifurcating into Subject and Object.
Slivers of shivering change radiate
Unto the utmost echo. Becoming begins,
Being becomes morning and evening and a day,
Morning becomes electric,
The mirror is shocked to see itself in itself.
In a moment, the shock reverberates
And explodes. Shards of separation shatter
The Word in two syllables and letters and serifs,
Then, sans serifim, a bare existence shines forth,
Regards itself once again, mirrors in the barbershop,
Differentiation sans integration,
Exponential expansion engulfing the abyss.
And it was good.
© 2009 Chuck
Puckett
Angry White Men
Why allow them their rage?
They've brought only sorrow
Where they've managed the stage.
They've seen almost nothing,
Missed entirely what's real.
There's nothing unbroken
That they've had time to feel.
They were there at the dawn
With their weapons and brains
They'll be there when the darkness
Is all that remains.
Angry white men
Never see past the blood
They believe only power
Is the measure of good.
© 2012 Chuck Puckett
Backache
Backache like a serpent by the road
Waiting to bite your foot
Waiting to eat your toe
Headache like a blanket on the brain
Might just beat your eyes
Might just stab your neck
My
aches turn and twist and throb
Want me to sit real quiet
Want me hurt something
A
trade for karma?
Or
a switched-off soul?
©
2000 Chuck Puckett
Bottled Up Words
We’ll never sit and meet face-to-face.
I’ll sit here on my island and you’ll sit there on yours,
Separated by our time and by our place.
We cannot hope for any resolution, eye-to-eye,
No nuanced voice will color what we mean.
We’ll never sigh or laugh to be better understood.
Our smiles and frowns cannot be ever seen.
There’s no chance of our conspiring on the meaning of it all
We can only hope that meaning somewhere lives.
We’ve no choice in how we manage this vast and empty void
We only have the words this ocean gives.
We can try to reconnoiter cross the space that lies between
We can shout and we can cry, we can scream.
All we know is down inside ourselves we’re forced to always try,
To try and tell someone about our dreams.
Just these words put in a bottle
And cast out on the sea
That’s all that we can manage
That’s all there’ll ever be.
Just these marks upon a page
Written here, examined there-
It’s all that we can do
We’re strangers, me and you,
This message is the only thing we share.
© 2011 Chuck
Puckett
Don’t Do, Be
Don’t fret, make
music:
Choose harmony, not
discord.
Don’t make amends,
make amendments:
Change yourself, not
the rules.
Don’t make up, make
out:
Love first, explain
later.
Don’t be an idiot, be
a fool:
The Bard’s fools are
always wise.
Don’t do yourself in,
let yourself out:
Freedom’s door is
osmosis, with no returning.
Don’t take it too
hard, take it to its logical conclusion:
Reason reveals what
anger conceals.
Don’t give up, give
more:
The eternal attempt
requires infinite self.
Don’t do, be:
Isness
bests business every time.
© 2011 Chuck Puckett
Elemental Balance
Air
And fire, too
Are quick
To claim
crimson truth,
Golden blood,
Full of
primeval power to mutate
While water
and earth
Withstand the
burning winds and fiery red hurricanes.
Quintessant
rebirth
Remade the
same, reined in by fate.
A great good
To know again
youth.
The trick?
Always, you
Dare.
© 2011 Chuck
Puckett
Far Enough
Away
To just be an idea
Something you can talk about when you stay up way too late
Don't take it as a threat or a panacea
It's something to ignore, just like love and hate
But hell is waiting on the corner
Hell is standing by the door
It whispers in the night and screams when it turns light
Eternity is what it's screaming for
South Africa is far away,
Too far to be bothered
Apartheid an abstraction, a distant thought at night
It's the balance: you can weigh it out, a bastard we have
fathered
It's something to ignore, just like black and white
But the klan is still marching with their hatred
And the skinheads are just children, nothing more
Why don't they learn to dance and give the girls a chance
But an idea is the thing their screaming for
Downtown is far away,
Enough to be forgotten
Their can't be people living there with their carts and shopping
bags
If they sleep beneath a moon, it's the moon of the misbegotten
It's something to ignore, like riches into rags
But their minds are still working on their problems
Those of them who ain't been worn away
It's the hunger and the cold that eat away the soul
Leaving just an idea in its place
You know, down the hall is far enough
So you can't hear the children crying
From the beatings and the burns and the bruises on their backs
'Cause they wouldn't do your bidding or else they failed while
trying
It's something you ignore when you only want the facts
But they'll grow into grownups with this anger
Those of them who hid behind the door
And burning in their brains will be the raging refrains
Of an idea that's not far away no more
©
1988 Chuck Puckett
For Love Will Never Die
A wall around the soul.
Fear and fame can do the same
And leave a tattered hole.
Cold ire is fire to tinder thoughts,
Can quench the warmest heart.
Doomed desire can kill a kiss
And tear the soul apart.
But love can leap above them all
To freely fly on high.
Hope is help for human hurts
For love will never die.
© 2000 Chuck Puckett
How Much Hemlock
How
much hemlock does it take
To
keep a thinking man at bay?
When a mind has come awake
What can make it go away?
When one’s sight is clear and true
What distorts it past recall?
When the truth is known to you
How
do you reveal it all?
No
one wants to hear a word
Refute their deep belief
They’ll declare that it's absurd
As
they prepare the hemlock leaf
Drink the tea and grin a grin
‘Til it spreads and slow unwinds
‘Til the numbness in your limbs
Match the numbness in their minds.
©
2011 Chuck Puckett
Maybe Yes, Maybe Not
Maybe this is the first time I’ve
really seen it all
Maybe this is not where I’m supposed to be
Maybe someone put something in my whiskey
Maybe I’m not cut out for a life of liberty
Maybe there’s a little catch written in the fine print
Maybe there’s not a catch, I’ve just missed the point
Maybe we could start from scratch and leave the building
Maybe there’s no exit path out of this smoky joint
Maybe some angels called and I didn’t hear the phone
Maybe there is nobody listening at the door
Maybe I have thought too hard about these problems
Maybe no one knows what we were called here for
Maybe this time tomorrow I’ll be expecting news
Maybe there’s no news, or if there is, so what?
Maybe I’ll determine some everlasting reason:
If I don’t, will that kill me? Maybe yes, maybe not.
© 2011 Chuck Puckett
Momentary Memorabilia
Are all we get to own.
We take these shards
And fool ourselves
With thoughts we deem full-blown.
A slivered light, like thundering
On the edges of our ears
Pretends expanse
And fills our minds
With memories we hold dear.
“What is real?” the I may ask.
No answer forth will come.
If touching leaves
The touch’s trace
Then who’s to know which one
Of all the traces held inside
Is most like what was true?
They shimmer dance
Around the point
That they’re all pointing to.
© 2000 Chuck
Puckett
No Redemption
No peace between the pleader and his God.
The answers hide behind the thunder showers:
This deity will never spare the rod.
His wrath will always mingle with his mercy,
Impossible to tease the two apart.
So just as well go plead your case with Circe.
She at least might show a little heart.
Needing is not comparable to bleeding.
Desire is never nearly strong as blood.
Despair is small when stood against forsaken.
The hopeless haven’t clearly understood
That hopeless really means there’s no tomorrow
And faithless really means you can’t believe.
No prayer exists that takes away that sorrow.
Divine redemption’s like a leaky sieve,
The waters will no cleansing power give,
No respite but the grave for those who grieve.
© 2009 Chuck Puckett
Over the Years
Over the years,
We have become gentle waves,
e sea bed
Powers Of One
A after driving into work and standing in the parking
lot for several minutes.
The title is (for me) reminiscent of the famous “Powers of
Ten” photo montage.
My mind again astounds me
That human thing that ranges over
Space and time and here and then,
All within the confines of a moment.
I drove to work, and somehow thought
Of before the big bang, and how time began
And why it points one way, to morrows.
This led to galaxies, and ours, and 2012
And alignments to the black hole that hides
Inside the central disk, prepared to innundate
Our fragile world, but wait, is global warming
Stopped at four hundred parts per mil,
Or are we already past the limit of an irreversible
Methane hydrate deluge of greenhouse runaway
Loss of ice sheets in Greenland and the poles?
My childrens’s children will endure, I guess, but
With what load of crap to carry day to day?
Those floods and earthquakes- Haiti! Why
No food for starving folk again? Have we just lost
The way to answer disasters’ needs? Katrina just
A foretaste of failures stretching out from here until.
And now I stand in a wintry parking lot, before
I walk into a hallway where the lighting makes a sound,
A buzzing, irriitating sound, and hallway tiles stretch
Endlessly down identical halls, to doors that open on
To identical rooms with identical desks and problems
Needing thought and attention for identical people who
Worry much about such things, who want them done
For reasons only they consider reasonable.
And now I sit before a screen containing numbers and
Words and codes and icons and moving, glowing arrows
That point one way, to morrows, never back to where we came.
And I wonder why the arrow of time points at me and my mind
Wanders over fields so vast yet narrow down
To one small space of time.
© 2010 Chuck Puckett
Relativity
My sunset is someone else’s sunrise
My evening is another person’s dawn
My morning ends another’s daylight
My sunrise stops another’s song.
My arrival’s another’s soul departure
My coming takes up another space
My going makes a space to enter
My leaving leaves one to take my place.
My future is all my children’s history
Tomorrows that they knew yesterday
My story builds on older stories
My past has led me to today.
My stars shine down as others’ suns
My storms leave peace in others’ skies
My life takes only so much room
A room I see with only these, my eyes.
© 2000 Chuck
Puckett
The Shape Of the Chute
To pour down her pure soul clean
The shape of the chute she sees has more
With how the song is sung
Than what the Muse might mean.
For what can souls larger than our own,
Waiting here to be fulfilled,
Impart in meaning once it's been thrown?
In all this lowest rung
Does well to sense the thrill.
But know what thoughts she must hide inside
When she gives her soul as song?
That knowledge could be a drowning tide
Too much for mortal lungs,
For mortal minds too strong.
So best to work every moment dear
To perfect our vessel's cast,
And hope when the song is sung to hear
Some notes that lie among
That tune will teach at last.
© 2000 Chuck Puckett
So
They dished it out and piled it all on me.
So what if I could hardly struggle through it
It’s hard enough just keeping my slate free.
They think they’re tough, but they’re not half as gritty
As a hard-nosed realistic bastard acts.
So listen to ‘em talking really shitty
But they could not, one of them, face up to facts.
So give me just a little consolation
I’m not asking for much more than what you got.
So what’s wrong with life alone in isolation?
It’s not my fault the world has gone to rot.
It’s not my fault that things are in the toilet,
It’s not my fault the whole world needs a lift.
So why does everybody think I spoiled it?
I’m tired of lazy bums who ask, “What if?”
© 2009 Chuck Puckett
Storm Wars
The low and overcast sky,
Something darker even than the presence
Hinted by the basements of those clouds.
The storm kings stride above it all,
Marshalling the thunders, glaring their electric eyes
At each other across a puffy white battlefield.
The gale force winds follow their masters will,
Launched across the intervening space
Like missiles of cold air, blunted daggers
That shred clouds and whirl in angry danger.
The western king commands his frigid warriors
To assail the eastern wetness, warmed by a southern sun.
And now the rains unleash a furied wall upon the earth,
Water and earth combine to drain the lower regions.
The kings gather all their strength, behind them stretch
The vaporous legions, led by blinding flashes
On the brows of East and West, clashing in death,
The torment and tumult of stratospheric titans.
Below, we sit and wonder why such power descends
And how we can breathe an air so thick with beings.
©
2011 Chuck Puckett
The Beckoning Darkness
Before our notice revealed it
It could have touched us on the shoulder
And quickly turned away on our turning to
And we’d have known nothing.
What a trickster, what impish fienditry.
But the one time it moves too slow
And, lo! We catch it first just beyond
The eye’s glimpse. Now we know
There is something there, some ungrippable
Mist, wavering at first, but solid if we stand
As still as night and peer closer and gaze
Deeply and face squarely.
Is that a bony finger, pointing where?
Is that a gloamy eye, glaring across dark fields?
Indistinct, does it say come, or warn to flee?
The strength is knowing it exists.
What it desires is pointless,
Where it points has no desire.
Wait, and then walk where you will.
Once revealed, there is no fear greater
Than the knowledge found in still water.
© 2009 Chuck Puckett
The Sixth Day
Ceasing early might have been better
The free will thing would be a trap.
They won’t obey things to the letter,
T’were better if He’d had a nap.
But would He listen to idle chatter?
No, He put them on the freaking map.
That was morning, and by the evening
He walked along the garden row
And called their names, but they were leaving
By the back door, on tippy-toe.
“Wait a minute, now who’s deceiving
Who with this attempt to go?”
First free will and then deception,
First the choice and then the lie.
But, damn! Why did He use encryption?
He could have told the bastards why.
Instead some fruit and vague proscription,
Were just the things they’d need to die.
What a way to run a railroad,
What a way to set things up.
Eternal blame is quite a payload
To give to every yapping pup
So now He’ll have to write a new code
And pour some blood into a cup.
Another Sixth Day, way off yonder,
A day with thorns and cloudy skies.
A day the veil is ripped asunder,
A day that baffles all the Wise.
A day to mend a cosmic blunder.
A day the sun relearns to rise.
©
2009 Chuck Puckett
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