A Word is Not a Home
A word is not a home
but we set our tables
between its walls,
cook meals, annoy
friends, abuse ourselves.
Sometimes I misplace
one, and can’t find
my house, much less
the window’s desk
or the chair behind it.
But if I wait, something
always takes form in the fog,
an arm, a ribcage, a feathered
hope struggling to emerge.
Inept, I take comfort
in these apparitions,
accept their offerings,
lose myself in mystery,
find shelter there
in the hollowed curves.
This is a celebratory post. Yesterday I cooked bacon, and it smelled like, well BACON! And it tasted like bacon, too. One of the side effects of COVID-19 is parosmia (a distorted sense of smell/taste), and both Stephanie and I have suffered from it since July. We’ve been unable to tolerate such staples as onion, peppers (bell and chile), garlic, dark chocolate, sparkling wine, peanut butter, grilled/charred and cured meats of all kinds, celery, arugula, and assorted other beloved foods. But yesterday’s breakfast of migas tacos with bacon clearly indicates that we are improving. Finally!
Ode to Bacon
How you lend
yourself
to others,
enhancing even
the sweetest fig
in your embrace
over coals,
or consider
your rendered
self, how it
deepens flavor
with piggish
essence, coating
or absorbed,
blended or
sopped. O belly
of delight, o wonder
of tongues,
how could I not
love you
and your infinite
charms, even
when you resist
my efforts and
shoot sizzling bits
of yourself
onto my naked
hands? I pay
this toll
gladly,
today and
next year
and all those
days to follow,
till the last piece
is swallowed
and our sun
goes dark.
Hyperbole
becomes you,
smoked beauty,
salted love,
and I shall never
put you down
or leave you
behind
on a plate
to be discarded
or forgotten,
unloved.
“Ode to Bacon” first appeared here in July 2017, thanks to T.S. Wright’s challenge.
Self-Portrait as Never
Within the unknown or could-have-been,
this stance requires certainty, the ability
to stand upright, rooted, implacable,
relentless in the is and the no in time.
I dream of faith, despite knowing its
secrets. Atoms swarm, seed heads explode.
Rivers reverse, the galaxy rots, and at the
center, we fold our arms across our chests
and deny or accept at whim, leaving behind
no footprints, only lost words, some dust.
“Self-Portrait as Never” was first published in After the Pause in June 2019. Thank you, Michael Prihoda, for accepting this piece.
Three of my self-portrait poems are featured at https://thedewdrop.org/2020/11/08/robert-okaji-three-poems/
The Real Question
I ask myself why I mourn
what has not yet
occurred. Will that last fledgling
fly or will a snake swallow
its gravity before descending
to a separate end? Coffee
darkens the carafe and an egg
poaches amidst the scent of basil.
Sprinkling parmesan on buttered
toast, I wonder where to unearth
the real question, when to look
into its eye. How to read its grief.
“The Real Question” was first published in After the Pause in June 2019. Thank you, Michael Prihoda, for accepting this piece.
Everything is nothing, but afterwards.
I rise and the moon disturbs the darkness,
revealing symbols, a few stolen words
on the bureau. Tomorrow I’ll express
my gratitude by disappearing be-
fore I’m found, which is to say goodbye
before hello, a paradigm for the
prepossessed. Compton tells us to imply
what’s missing, like Van Gogh or Bill Monroe,
but why listen to the dead before they’ve
stopped speaking? Unfortunately we throw
out the bad with the good, only to save
the worst. I return to bed, and the floor
spins. Nothing is everything, but before.
* * *
This first appeared in The Blue Hour Magazine in December 2014, and is also included in my chapbook, If Your Matter Could Reform. The line “Everything is nothing, but afterwards” comes from Antonio Porchia’s Voices, translated by W.S. Merwin. Porchia wrote one book in his lifetime, but what a book it was! Often described as a collection of aphorisms, Voices is so much more – each time I open the book, I find new meaning in old lines.
Morning Covers You
1
We extract
light, bleeding
it out one
diamond-shaped
hole after
another.
Finger the results.
Remediation
in form
or placement
to best
advantage?
At night
loneliness cradles
our bones.
2
You arrange our bodies to greater effect,
presuming lesser horrors
to be less.
A list emerges.
Refuting one,
accepting another.
Choices fixed.
Ecstasies of failure
purged.
Morning covers you
like a blue
shroud, so pale.
So cold
and bitter.
This originally appeared in Boston Poetry Magazine in April, 2014, and on this blog in October 2015.
Laocoön
This figure of complexity
persuades a lingering
glance, the two-fold
inclination entwined,
horror expressed
in tandem, the sons’
limbs compressed
as the father struggles,
realizing true
sacrifice, the inward
grasp of storm and
wrath and serpent,
his face
echoing those yet
to come, breached
walls, a city in
flames, the cries
of warnings unheeded.
Laocoön, through Virgil’s Aeneid, is the source of the phrase “Beware of Greeks bearing gifts.” The poem, which first appeared in The Blue Hour Magazine, was inspired by the sculpture “Laocoön and His Sons,” which resides at the Vatican. You might find Wikipedia’s entry of interest. Originally posted on the blog in February 2016.
Still Life with Silence
Not two, but one,
invisible
and stretched between
stump and fence,
filled with
time, defining
implication. Empty
the pitcher. Accept
its limitations.
Listen to what is not.
“Still Life with Silence” first appeared here in October 2016.
Thunderstorm Below the Mountain
(after Hokusai)
Lacking humility, I take without thinking.
How far we’ve come, to look below for
lightning, the valleys shaken
with thunder, answers
like pebbles flung outward,
each to its own arc, separate
yet of one source, shaded into the question.
Is it for the scarcity of reach,
the reverse view through the bamboo rings
well out of sight, that
breath in the wave’s tuck or
smoke mingling with the clouds
and figures collecting salt,
that I edge myself closer, again,
to this place? To be nothing
presumes presence in absence.
Lacking humility, I accept without thinking.
“Thunderstorm Below the Mountain” first appeared here in March 2016.
