Author: Gary Lindorff

 
 
He committed murder.
He burned down a house.
He didn’t know what he was doing.
Let him go.
 
We can’t wake him up.
 
The sleepwalker is bulding a big bomb
To blow up a church.
In his sleep now
He is weaponizing his unconscious hatred.
 
The defense: He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
Judgment: Let him go.
 
Now the sleepwalker
Votes in a racist.
Abuses women.
Embraces violence like a lover.
 
In a rare lucid moment
He pleads innocent:
 
I didn’t know what I was doing.
 
The sleepwalker
Asks the judge,
Can I go now?
I didn’t know.
I didn’t know anything.
 
Judge: Let him go.
 
Prosecution: Let there be nuclear war.
Let there be the end of things.
Let the sea rise.
Let the homeless wander the earth.
 
The sleepwalker walks out.
He walks down the middle of the street.
Cars swerve around him.
He is innocent.
 
Leave him be.
 
 
—Gary Lindorff

 
A seahorse thought,
A very small wave
Followed by another.
 
And way down below,
Its counterpart,
The seahorse . . .
 
And maybe deeper,
Some quiet resolve
To explore vast spaces
 
Of eternal quietude beneath oceans
That seem to never end. And yet,
Someday we wind up in the sunlight on a shore
 
As beautiful as any place imaginable
With no plastic
Nor any trace of war,
 
And there, to make peace with the memory
That we made it through
By simply being kind.
 
 
—Gary Lindorff

 
 
I am 66, he 33.
This will never happen again.

He is catching up with me.
If he lives to be 1000

And I am still alive,
I will be 1033.

By that time
California will be a desert.

But we will sit in an old growth forest
In what used to be Alberta

And we will talk about things
That would only interest 1000-year-old men.

Not health, because
We would have mastered the health-thing.

No, we will talk about dreams
And yogurt and colors.

Also, we won’t be using words
But whistles, like the birds

Who will, I like to imagine, flourish
After the Climate Crash of 2053.

I will smile and look into his craggy face
And he will see how much I love him.

And I will see his love for me.
I really like having an old soul!

It makes it easy to see beyond
And feel OK with the possibility that

Things may not get better
For a long, long time.
 
—Gary Lindorff

 
We’re not going to get rid of Trump
because Trump is an archetype.
Trump was already here
long before we voted him into office.
He was more like a transparent pink bear
but he was here,
filling up tons of space,
being bombastic
throwing his weight around,
baiting us in dreams that we repressed,
letting us know there were big holes in our dystopia,
the Benighted States of America.
He, or his aura, were around
swimming across the screen of everyday.
Long before the Republican Party
made him magically appear in the flesh
he was a big floater in our eye.
(But this floater is a bitch, man!)
And you know what the doctor says
when you get a floater?
“You’ll get used to it.”
And aren’t we? Getting used to being bullied,
lied to? Used? Impotent?
Used to living on the edge,
used to feeling ashamed
used to being shocked by our own sheepishness.
Emergency after emergency after emergency!
The pink bear, the annoying floater,
call it Trump, or whatever you want.
Call it the new reality show of shows,
call it the ubiquitous traveling circus,
the new all-day all-night show.
Call it the last act in the theater of fools
where there is no curtain
and no exits, and there is some guy
shouting “Fire!” ”Fire!”
And everyone looks straight ahead with knitted brows.
But relax, it’s just a dream.
It’s just a poem.
It’s just another daydaydaydayday. . . .
 
 
—Gary Lindorff

Here there is the rip tide.
And you know what you do when you are caught in a rip tide?
You ride it out.
It carries you further away from the beach
but if you don’t panic eventually the current releases you
and you can swim in.
Then you only have to worry about exhaustion
or being swallowed by something from below. . .
When I look at myself,
I see someone
who has been just a little beaten up.
My white skin is blotchy from sun exposure. My eyes are bloodshot.
I’m slightly unshaven. A little hurt in my sleepless eyes.
No anger though. I don’t feel any anger at all.
I feel disappointment, and sometimes a deep sadness
for all the suffering of life on the planet.
By 66, you need to have figured some things out on your own!
To be able to close your eyes, set up the video camera and talk about life,
talk about what you have figured out.
No ranting. No whining.
No bullshit.
No bitterness.
Just talk.
Talk to your children, your grandchildren,
other people’s children.
Talk to your people.
Talk about how you experience the universe,
what you make of the unconditional love of the universe,
what you make of aging,
and the wonder of it all.
 
 
—Gary Lindorff

 
 
How long should we wash our hands?
And while we’re at it,
How many angles in “Heaven”?
Just to keep things moving,
Five.
 
Dear little Ameise,
How tiny you look today.
Why I would even say
You have shrunk
To the size of an ant.
 
What do you call your monkeys?
Those two,
The ones you put diapers on
And turned them loose
In the sunroom.
 
The sun got angry,
After it asked you nicely
To let it play with the monkeys
But you didn’t trust it,
And for good reason.
 

 
 
That’s right,
I want to say something about my compatriates, “us”.
The American People aren’t going to like this.
They like being referred to as The American People;
it makes them feel special.
 
But the American People need to get out more.
They should learn to play better.
They should learn to share the sandbox.
Right across the street are the Mexican People
and they are very nice.
And across the way, there are the Chinese People
who buy our stuff and make things for us.
Many of them are also very nice.
And the German People have some great toys.
 
In fact, there are lots of People in the neighborhood!
 
What if People are just People!
That’s hard for the American People.
But when someone says something about the American People
just who do they think they are?
Whatever happened to “us” or “we”.
 
But hey, I’m just a poet
draining my cup of coffee,
wondering where the poetry has gone?
It’s like the smell of bacon frying somewhere.
It still smells good
but it’s just no use to me.
I’m a vegetarian.
I prefer local and home-grown
And anyway, I am well satisfied
by what’s on my plate.
 
—Gary Lindorff

 
How is this possible?
How pale the light,
how still things have grown.
Dusk at 2:30.
People are lined up
at the telescopes
happily sharing glasses
that blind them to everything
but the sun
that is being devoured by a dragon.
There is a group over there,
talking to a man in a black pirate hat
who is showing off
pieces of the meteor
that broke all the windows in Chelyabinsk.
One little boy is eating a wild apple,
spitting out the rosy skin.
A woman with a British accent
is secretly laughing at my jokes.
I never tell jokes!
All this happiness is strange
like something from out there.
Like the smell of a flower
that blooms only during an eclipse.
I love being this happy.
Soon the world will return to its old ways.
People will forget
that the sun was eaten.
They will go back to their lives,
whatever they do
between eclipses.
How is this possible?
How pale the light.
 
 
—

Who cares if Dali’s exhumed mustache is intact?
Who cares if a cat can say his master’s name?
 
Who cares if the Congressman
Thinks that NASA has a secret reason to go to Mars?
 
Who cares if there are nettles growing among the raspberries?
And that my friend is probably right,
 
That the stars are actually the tears of God
Reflecting the light of our souls.
 
My back hurt all night, and it still hurts
Even though my wife rubbed it with Tiger Balm.
 
That’s all that matters.
 
And when your back hurts all night,
I promise not to remind you
Of Dali’s mustache
And the sorrows of God.
 
 

—Gary Lindorff

A bird flies up from the tall grass when I enter the field.
Somewhere deep in that wild place
Is a nest, I wanted to say “concealed” for the hidden rhyme
But the image is the important thing:

Me, barefoot. Bird, flying up.
Even if I were a predator
I would not be able to find her nest.
But I don’t need to find its exact location

Any more than I need to worry about rhyming.
This is a poem about a bird’s desperation
As the tractor mows closer and closer.
The farmer and I have agreed

To save one. Go around.
That is how I mow the stone circle