I cannot read certain authors
without feeling ashamed.
As if all my flaws are exposed.
The gift of writing
is the double-entendre:
what is said,
what is meant,
the layered lexicography
of experience,
the masterful placement
of what fits.
I keep reading – pissed, pleased, perplexed.
Not to hear the echoes of words,
not to follow the Ariadne thread –
blasphemy.
-Byron Hoot
The cloud to the north of the sun
is a color no name can name.
I refrain from the blasphemy
of trying but not the praise
I feel in being in the presence
of the unnamable before my eyes,
within my heart like a prayer
enticing me to dance what
is beyond the realm of words
but not experience. My love
for words is only equaled by my
distrust of them to capture what
may not be caught like the color
of that cloud just north of the sunrise.
-Byron Hoot
The Janitor
“a caretaker of a building”
I never cleaned a church. There was
always a janitor, some parishioner
who took care of that, cut the grass,
shoveled snow. They seemed to work
as a team, my father and the janitor.
Dad would spend his time searching
scripture for the next sermon, counselling
broken hearts, visiting the sick, praying.
Weddings, funerals. And the janitor
would come in midweek. Begin in the Sunday
school rooms dusting, sweeping, wiping
down, picking up. Notes written hastily.
A quarter, a dollar discarded he’d put in his
pocket to put in an envelope then put the money
in the offering. “The forgotten offering,” he’d
say, laugh. Then move into the sanctuary where
discarded dreams sat in pews, distracted thoughts
lingered, prayers said never intended to go higher
than the ceiling. Week after week he’d clean.
And on Sunday morning, third pew back on the left
hand side from the pulpit, he and his family would sit.
Dad would enter the platform from a side door, glance
first to Randolph and nod,smile slightly as if saying, “Good job.”
The congregation left behind what they wanted to and what
they didn’t know they left Dad and Randolph picked up.
-Byron Hoot
It is a day true to itself,
false to the season.
Who has not known such
a dichotomy
where two opposing statements
about the same thing are true?
It is winter,
feels like early spring.
Tell me your heart
has never known this.
-Byron Hoot
It is hard to recognize who is looking
back at me when I stand before
a mirror. The body distorts who I
would see and only by some other-
world calculus do I say, “That’s me”
the way a student gives an answer
without the confidence it’s right.
I move, the reflection disappears
and I am left to do what I do without
the hindrance of reflection, the doubt
of whom I’ve seen is me. I don’t
remember time passing so quickly,
taking so much in its giving.
Somewhere inside I am strong, quick,
smooth-skinned, clear-eyed;
there’s no reflection of that. I watch
myself feel and think and act,
know as I’ve been I am not. Think
about breaking mirrors, think about
bad luck, know I can’t break every
mirror especially the one inside me.
-Byron Hoot
Silence, That Hint of a Hum
The problem with silence is it presupposes
you can hear and the problem with hearing
is understanding what’s said which you
may not be inclined to do. And there you are
listening with your eyes closed
because you know if you hear
and see the same thing nothing
will be the same seeing into
the nature of things, yourself,
this life, those meanings so troubling.
-Byron Hoot
She searches the radio
for a night song
a blend of Texas and new age
her room lit up by holographic bingo lights
she plays dice
emptying her woe out the window
singing along:
“Be kind to your disguises
Be kind to your sins
Be kind to each other...Amen.”
-Nancy Pontius
