what I love about you
is your hands.
no need for concern
on my part about being held.

they move and
sound off. I understand that.
it’s a way of using hands
that I have grown to love.

there is the striking,
but it’s not a striking
to worry about. sometimes
you make a noise without

using your hands. I can enjoy that
from here, all the lights keep me
from seeing your mouths.
seeing you bend the ear

of the person next to you
might tweak me a little, but
the hands fluttering and snapping
take my mind off that.

afterward I wait and you will
come to me and try to talk to me.
that is the best part because I find out
how well I hid the fear.

after that is the night
and the way home. there’s the desk
and the guitar and the bills and the way
back to the crowd.

you can follow me home
if you promise
to bring those wonderful hands with you
and never let me see your mouth.

it is the last day of the world
and everyone moves
to the extremes.

crowds die on the slopes
of the hindu kush. bengal
drops into the ocean.
bodies float like floes for miles.

a teacher from Blaine, Minnesota
goes mad in a parking lot
and scribbles lines from Blake
onto her children’s eyes
before taking her life
with a sharpened book.

it all goes. white, black, brown,
all go. male energy, female energy,
go. pissing conservatives go
as swiftly as disparaging liberals.
the money changer leaves his table
and the communist hands over
his party card before
running to the outskirts and drowning
in a vat of francs.

but in my back yard
I’ve buried a steamer
full of rice. I dig it up
and eat it with a spoonful
of champagne.

give me a clean planet
and I will soon be
as smug as I ever was.

Walking him
to the edge of the roof
I can tell so much: his
childhood scent, his
stumble at a whisper
of street noise below,
his eyes wide at the view —

whether he was born to be
dragon or lion, leaper or flyer,
he’s nothing but stone now.

When he falls,
the wind in his ears
explains how he will soon be
relaxed. He will
rest, the hint of a smile
leaving last thought guessed
but unsaid.

We took every step
from first toddle to last drop
together. I loved him once.
I loved him when we chose this.
I love him now most of all

as he is lifted to the back
of the ambulance with no urgency,
sheets tucked in, riding with the sirens on
as he always wanted when he was a child,
racing through the streets like a lion, engine
roaring like a dragon,

and I will be the wind as I go.

I wrote this many years ago, updated it just now for my age. It’ll be in the new chapbook, its first time in print.

Peppermint Schnapps

August 16, 1977:
it was pissing rain the night
Elvis Presley died

I want the night back anyway

the way I want the switchblade back I threw in Thompson Pond that night
that German switchblade with the brass shoulders and ebony scales
I want it clean I want it shiny and I want the tip to be back to the way it was
before Henry Gifford snapped it off trying to work it out of the floor
after we’d played drunken chicken for an hour or so
I tossed it in anger as far out into the water as I could
and then I hit Henry Gifford in the mouth when he called me a stupid fuck
for tossing such a beautiful knife so far away
and even after he apologized I hit him again and again
until I saw his sister watching me

I want to take it all back so Henry Gifford’s sister Diana
can see me again the way she used to see me
and furthermore I want to kiss her right this time
I want to kiss her the way I can kiss her now
not like the sloppy teenage drunk I was that night
all on fire with weed and schnapps and inexperience
I want her to not turn away from me
without knowing that I had just tossed my beloved knife out into the nighttime lake
I want her to know what passion can do to me
I want my passion back
because I think I lost it that night I tossed the knife into the lake
then let Diana run from me when she saw me beat her little brother bloody
without having a chance to make her understand why it was all so
necessary

and though I have had many knives since then
even another German switchblade just like that one
and though I have kissed so many people since then
in love and friendship and lust and grief

and though I‘m so much better at all of this stuff now
because control is everything
and control is all I have at 47

still there are times – rainy summer nights – when I get up late to use the bathroom
and while I’m standing there I look out my window across the manicured grass
I can just taste a ghost of peppermint schnapps on my lips
then I fumble for the light
I pick up a pen
and I write myself back toward August of 1977
when the radio played the songs of a dead man
while I nursed my bruised and tender fists
and cried like a baby for the very last time