The Ballad of Impossible Diogenes

1.

It happens mainly in the chest

what tiny sleepers go to sleep in

is merely empty and whispered only

what only can be to dry gin.

Impossible Diogenes ends usually

looking over lawns, hands huge within

heartblended warbling he

can’t say

exactly what it means—

to live inside one’s abstractions,

to turn away from neighboring

for the sake of larger neighboring,

with

head clicking like sprinklers

chick chinking ice

rhyming in the crystal.

For one is married to the world too:

resurrection music, silence.

Having forgotten the names

and chucked his glasses except for driving,

he lived in constellation mostly

of shapes and sounds, a fuzziness that only

the dog that licked his face knew enough

to slice though, waken the man

and at this point that beautiful madman

laughter like, well, what was it like?

Nothing I can say with this pulse

between holds. Enough to hang

a church on, enough to unhook

a church. A beautiful television set

exploding across anonymous suburban landscape.

2.

Funny, he would say, comfort carrion

from the tub, beside him

the old good dog, gold dog

he could not be unkind to.

Through the window

truthtelling through the absence

of such words,

the loud, raucous, mewing cry,

the harsh kwup and rasping,

the fat stars like incandescent berries—

mind not that they are usually darker

blues and reds,

he could almost taste the night

like a thick jam he could scoop

with his fingers and with the boundless

certainty eroding, the appetites too

readjusting, he could travel almost

back to zero, save for the occasional

appearance at dinner, the looking over

of math homework, the trilogy

of dance recitals—but quickly, quickly

back to the tub, the gold dog, the snubbing.

3.

All this animal’s gathering

and still the prayer for stillness,

withdrawing from the names.

Impossible Diogenes could not make nice,

could not hover reasonably, or recover,

could not keep his hangover

to himself, could not end

an evening with grace after

so much had been gossiped gracelessly

across lawns and shrubs,

could not use forks or knives in a European

fashion, could not stop listing could nots,

could not embrace thread count

as a viable means of living—

having come so far from something

honest, something that did not wreak

manipulation, something that a small-minded man

would not abandon family for

fifty, sixty hours a week,

he stuck to his tub, planted among

the old bikes and lawnmowers,

the tire irons and board games,

the boxes that said Ancient Age

and Beefeater, he would not relent

and only paid taxes to avoid comparisons

with Thoreau, so tired he was

of the rampant need

(wired in our brains, he did not know)

to degrade by connecting, to downplay

or make graspable

grass and fire, love and love's

load of love

comprehensible

(which, in theory, was fine,

there’s nothing wrong with hitching a ride

onto, but in practice was not fine

because few, if any, felt a prevailing will

or could summon the necessary vigor

to go beyond comparison, similarity,

most simply let the case rest

once they felt a reasonable sense of control)

and this he could not stand knowing.

4.

His first speech, given outside a crowded

bagel shop, went: “the truth

is always beyond what is polite,

what seems similar, what is unruffled,

what is wrangled without even the

proper degree of altercation—that, at least,

would make a thing respectable—

into a context that might as well be

the top and bottom eyelids closing

yawningly, onto big sleep . . .

and you must not trust

the truth either.” When they threw

bagels at him like a dog

he thanked them in the way that any

gold dog would: marvelous arcs

of piss ending with spleen rupturing gas.

his first arrest.

5.

The prison letters

to Better Homes and Gardens (an early target)

under the guise of famous manners

columnist Jill Globule, read: “No creation

without creation. Destruction comes later

and if creative is creation named

anyway. Know before going further

that anyway is lazy. And if the eye

is flabby, then the I (and its

subordinates/coordinates) is flabbier.

Likes to be this way though

and therefore applauds an indiscriminate

looking, a half-looking a looking

that conspires with all the other looking.”

Later, in the garage again, his youngest

daughter asked, “What’s the matter, pop,

why are you doing this? It’s not that

I’m embarrassed, I just want to understand.”

He said “trial

by ordeal . . . poppa wants to know

if he can float.”

6.

Her simple acceptance of this response,

her quiet kiss on his rough cheek

ruined one quest for honesty

and started another. He would swallow

their poisonous cares

so that she would not have to.

But changing the world for daughter’s sake

meant scorning the world.

He would solve this problem later, he would save the momentous

times for when

small victories could buoy him

forth. You can only undo so much longing,

endless the aching heart, the swollen machine.

7.

He used the word unquenchable

at inappropriate times, raising the intensity

of otherwise paltry exchanges. In the dry goods

section of the grocery store, i.e., when

Roger asked him how he was doing, he would say,

“Like you, I live in unquenchable burnings,”

then he would grab his huge bag

of cat food and be gone. Quick exits

like this allowed others to quickly convert

the exchange into vapor via chuckle—

but later, it wormed up in him. He could not

masturbate. In fact, nobody in town

who had been in contact with Impossible Diogenes

could masturbate. Meanwhile, he swam in lakes

and rivers, ate perfectly good food

out of garbages,

and they could not masturbate; he smoked

without asking permission, slept

down among dogs he kept

bringing home, his breath

in perfect harmony with their snoring and harrumphing,

the days, the nights

softer now, more human

if such a thing can be uttered,

and still they could not masturbate.

At night, when he used to close windows

and lock doors to keep out what was wild

and promised harm, he altered the context

and values. That fear might sharpen

and disabuse privilege, for which he was

unworthy anyway. That fighting for one’s life

was a gift—either way you know what you are

capable of, you know how far you can go

without ceasing. When the uproar came,

therefore, he was not ready. Sleeping

the sleep of the honest man. They could not

pin a crime on him, only that he had

agitated them, only that he was somehow

bad for the neighborhood, for the property

values, for the children, there was even

one theory tying his behavior to the

failure of lawns to thrive. The was to be

a cautionary step. A precaution. The first

town murder in sixty years.

8.

Still they speak

of him in hushed

tones, a town's

silence

grown filthy as a gown. And what

lasts

through the lasting

is half song, half a heaven

of breathing.