Identity I

1

Identity
With a capital I,
Subjective me,
My own ID:
It’s who I am,
The verb “to be”
Implicitly
Included in
Identity.
I am:  The name
I call myself
I am: the entity of self
I am: the image of I AM,
Yahweh and Immanuel,
Their meaning in my heart,
And living waters in my veins,
The pulse of my salvation, 
My spirit, my animation,
Every explication
Is identity.

I
ID
I AM
An entity
To be or not
To be: Identity

2

In the mirror I see
Reflections of a
Thousand faces,
Wrinkles of a 
Thousand times,
The profiles of a 
Thousand turns,
The shadows of a
Thousand truths,
A picture that will
Not stand still.
Identity.

This is identity.
This is the place
I come from: family,
The everywhere
I’m going: destiny
And all that’s currently 
Home to me: security.

For now, forever is the way 
I’ll always have some yesterday
In me: identity.
For now, eternity is how
It’s always been more than a soul
Can see: identity.
More than I want to be
Or used to be: identity,
More than I find myself
For now: this is identity.

3

Identity
Rolls down the face
Of farmers and florists
Lovers and loners
Parents and orphans
Teachers and learners
Workers and wanderers
Dreamers and doers
And poets,
And me,
And every tear,
Every line of sweat,
Every drop of rain
Is different and the same,
Hot and cold, salty and sweet.

Identity 
Is a hard day’s work
And a longing for rest,
A burst of emotion
and a latent memory.
Sometimes I want to 
Wipe my identity away,
Pretend it isn’t there
And hide my face,
But sometimes
I just let it roll
Down my cheek
And linger
For everyone to see.

Profile

Don’t be a cipher, someone said.
Show us the face that hides behind
The poems you have let us read,
Give us a glimpse beyond the mind
Of the poet who has edited
His life down into metered lines,
Whose given his blog a leveled screed
But nothing past the words he’s signed.

Here, then, you have my picture: See
The aging and the fattening
Of fifty years, the lazy eye
That looks like it is focusing
On things in the periphery;
See what’s in need of ironing,
The fashions that have passed me by,
The cry for different coloring,

And there is more, of course.  I could
Divulge my sordid history
Of marriage leading to divorce,
Of education forcing me
To compromises, of a good
Career besmirched with obloquy.
But there is always more, of course,
Than who I would pretend to be.

With marriage, I have progeny
With stories of their own to tell;
With education, I have learned
The fathoms of my earthly well
Of ignorance; and should you see
The merchandise I try to sell,
For every dollar fairly earned,
My reputation’s mostly held.

But turn away from all of this.
What should it matter what I wear
Or how I always seem to look
Or just how well I comb my hair,
If I’m a father with no wife,
More lawyer than you’d have me be
Or lead an unenlightened life?
For now, you have my poetry.

Snapshots, Part One

...I, on a rainy day, once found the perfect picture
when sunshine filtered through rolling gray
to give raindrops their color.  Now

1

cameras are useless brushes, should some sudden need occur 
, forever missing pixels, looking past contrast, losing focus; 
paint (oil, acrylic, maybe watercolor?) too cannot capture our 
climate’s spectral shades, frameless moments, shifting facts;
language isn’t any better, not very, but if you’ll pardon
contractions and count them anyhow (allow poetic cheats,
permit imperfections), my pen is drawn.  I’m ready.  I’ll try.  

2

subtitle: 1,000 imperfect words; thesis: an impossible sudoku.
opening paragraph, initial sentencing: possessive noun,
adjectives, subjective action verb, adverbs, et cetera...  already
elliptical critics would criticize, deconstruct, misconstrue &
decompose what I’ve proposed / begun composing: 
meanwhile, earth’s atmosphere weeps / continues weeping;  
another imitative artist cries, his ink unerasably flowing. 

3

precipitation’s plain dull pallette shivers endlessly, above 
below around: today we wait, anticipating better fronts, left 
listening for conclusive punctuation, getting only ellipses, 
gradual premonitions hinting what’s coming: distant booms 
first telegraphed in whiplashed flashes; later followed by 
smells, electricity’s ominous odor, dampened dust, stirred up 
dirt, awakened earth; finally touch, feel: rainfall taking over.

4

rain: cold colorless falling wet hard relentless dominating, 
weather offputting, setting aside coatless hatless daylight 
hours, nature’s nowcast, never mind forecast, upsetting social 
structures, cancelling performances played, attended, 
offering lightning’s unsubscribed sizzle instead, deceptively 
dry; thunder, decidedly loud exclamations without explana-
tion; patter, splatter, drizzle, less music than noise then pour.

5

suddenly walking ruins shoes, driving turns weary chore, it’s 
all souls/machines can do keeping rubber feet/wheels moving 
simply getting home, housed, parked, finding anywhere dry, 
accepting anything, settling, seeking temporary cover like 
poor tired refugees, huddled under square box umbrellas 
with fogged windows, streaked panes: our world’s eyes, 
distorted from unwanted tears, saltlessly wondering why 

6

yet, everpresent, effervescent reason shows itself now, hinted 
within renegade rays of subtlest sunlight revealing rain-
water’s constant beauty: sparkling, living, even as it falls:  
you will see green grass again, these angels say, speaking, 
singing hard working droplets they: we’ll roll those heavy 
clouds away, restore your great forgiven sky, clean slated, 
blue, more breathable, renewed.  holy, fresh, clear water!

7

cleansing, cleaning, washing, rinsing.  (repeating,  
remembering how mother/daughter, taught, still teaches me) 
necessary, yes, she says this was, shall always be,
evermore her favorite time, season, place:  praying amen,
hearing “heavenagain,” feeling particulate waves, 
letting herself become immobilized, moved, emotional,
willingly becoming elementary, simplified, soothed.   

8

reflection...premise...perception...truth, fundamentally faith 
alone explains God’s nature; thus, man’s (woman’s, child’s) 
ritual immersion, each gender, age, every creed’s splash 
therapy, aqua conscience, awakening, rejuvenation; believe:  
reincarnation, return, rebirth, baptism; sprinkling; accept:  
drowning, spiritual surrender inwards, outwards, upwards:  
replacement...promise...permission...life, sacramentally. 

9

indent.  empty space.  leftover poetry, endless stories, 
Yahweh (simple self pronoun, present tense being)
variations.  free association.  blank verse.  filler.  everything
matters, articles, prepositions, objects, conjunctions,
interjections, river bed metaphors, parched desert similes...
consciousness streams, trickles, floods, sates, holds. final 
judgment awaits. stillwater, someday. we’re halfway there.

Poetry

Poetry is trying to find
a thousand words without a camera,

to compose an image, more, to capture a
chance alignment; poetry

will serve you better than your cell phone’s
visual “can you hear me now?”

Poetry is taking the time,
waiting for lighting, adjusting the speed

and exposure.  I, on a rainy day,
once found the perfect picture

when sunshine filtered through rolling gray
to give raindrops their color.  Now

and then looking for reason
you discover the art of a thousand words.

Here and Now

I’ve other things to think about than you
and me and whether we will ever be
together anymore if ever we 
were there before.  I’ve better things to do,
considering my separate point of view,
than parse the existentiality
of “us.”

(I could lose myself in metaphors
that never end (ground, sun, river and wind)
and feel the power of presence and the force
of perpetuity that even in
a moment lets me glimpse the greater course
from whence I come to where I would pretend.)

                You are too far away from me
for me to see, so why should I pursue
the possibility of “we”?  And who
am I to presuppose the theory
that I am yours and you belong to me?
You are not mine, I don’t belong to you,
and maybe I was never meant for you,
and maybe we were never meant to be.

(There is a bend that hides each metaphor’s
beginning and a bend that hides each end;
I have no certainty about my source
or my conclusion.  I can’t see beyond
my current place and yet I can’t divorce
my here from there or sever now from then.
I am what I have been, will ever be
the steel, the spark, the sweat, the breath of me.)

Elements

Fire, wind, ground and water: we
have thrived on these, would hold and harness these.

Science, passion, faith, philosophy:
we turn to these and would depend on these

to understand small sparks, short gusts, the mist
and dust of east and west, of north and south;

we cling, we clutch and to the death defend
the corners of existence of and in

a universe we cannot comprehend,
nor are these elements we can control,

the warmth, the breath, the earth, the very blood,
of fire and wind, of ground and water: we,

for all we grasp, remain beholden to
the God of time and space and land and sea.

Passing Storm

Great storms 
are not the final storms 
no more than sweet calms 
are the ever after; 
any more my faith turns 
toward eternity, 
trying so hard to see 
around the bend.

Earth, sun, river and wind...
I’m looking for the quintessential
Truth, something woven in
To every calm and storm.

This time 
won’t be the only time,
neither the first rhyme 
nor the closing chapter,
more and more I move to 
the perpetuity
of things that never change 
and never end.

Rock, fire, spirit and flow...
The more I move the less I know, but 
Truth, where I want to go,
Is with me all the time.

I AM
as certain as the journey journeys on,
each setting sun returns to where it rose,
each river flows into a timeless sea
and endlessly the wind replenishes.

I AM
as certain as the ground I stand upon
a fire within me burns eternally
and living water pulses through my veins
and hope, the spirit in my soul, remains.

This storm 
may be a passing storm,
but let the rains come
and let me feel the thunder
and let its music be 
part of the symphony
of where I’m going to 
and where I’ve been.

Earth, sun, river and wind...
Rock, fire, spirit and flow...
I’m looking for the quintessential
Truth: it's where I want to go.

Chasing Wind

The walls shake with anger.
The wind wakes the dead, stirs
the sleeping, makes it difficult to dream.
The world’s moment blows against
This house: letting be known
What is so frequently forgotten:
We stand at the whim of nature
And we breathe as the wind allows.

Continuum

This is my testimony, written and hidden,
The love song of one sung timidly
Into the wind, an ongoing journal
Of best intentions.  This is my story.

Sometimes

Sometimes, we tell our stories backwards:
The burial precedes the funeral, and
mourning anticipates departure.

Semitemos, the plot stands still
while we move on to the denouement:

It will not until Friday be that I begin to wonder
when might have happened on Whatsday.
Lifetimes some is just a foreword

and I want to skip to the afterlife,
but suchtimes the book will make no sense
without the author’s explanation.

So here we are, dear, you not saying a word
and I just filling in the blanks,
but we’re both telling the story as it occurs.