I’ve got a plan.
It’s a good plan.
It has secrets and contingencies,
and takes into account
several alternate scenarios.

The plan includes flowers on the piano
and coffee with cocoa powder.

Some of the plan
has room for expansion. I’m thinking of adding
a plan B if I can get a variance. I might have
to bribe someone, and I’ve built that into the plan
so that I may have the resources readily available
if it comes down to that.

Planning is a skill I had to learn on my own.
Some parts of the plan really stretched my abilities.
It’s good to do that, to have a plan that helps you grow,
even if it’s just a little.

I’ve kept the plan hidden in a secret room.
That was part of the plan too. It took me a while
to build it without getting a variance, having to keep it secret
was difficult, but I triumphed. I do that sometimes,
triumph. It’s rare, but it’s good to stretch yourself.

So now it’s time to set the plan into motion,
while I stare at the flowers on the piano, sipping the coffee
with the cocoa in it that masks the flavor of the secret part of the plan.
The whole thing is laid out over there on the desk to be admired
when the plan is at last revealed. It’s so good to stretch yourself,
and I will stretch myself out now, here on the couch,
secure in the knowledge
that I have at last done something industrious, admirable,
careful, thoughtful, detail-rich, fragrant with accomplishment.

It is possible that no one will discover the plan, of course, even after
my triumph is known to all.  They will think this was another random act
in a random life.  They will say it was ridiculous to think that after all the failure
I could have produced anything that required this level of focus and attention.
But they will not say the one thing that will strip their arguments down to absurdity:
that it was clearly something I had worked on for my entire life, out of their sight,
kept far away from what they expected of me.  There is nothing they can say
I have not planned for.

If it’s peace you want
to promote, breathe enough war
into me
that I can taste cordite and see
the volcano that is man’s joy
in mayhem.

If you want me
to understand enough of prejudice
that I want to end its reign, give me
a bit for my mouth and allow me
the pain of struggling against it.

Fable me. Tell me a story that ends with me
seeing a hated face and loving the impact
of my fist against it while I learn to hate myself.
This is how
I learn the ways of violence.
This is how
we will end violence.

We each have to enter a battle
through our cells,
and you can’t exhort me enough
to make me want to change. I only change
when the skin itself tells me it’s time.

No slogans, no easy answers, no stoking
of the heat around my better angels.
You will never ignite me
with a carved diamond.
Blacken me instead
with the honest coal of someone’s dirty
tale, and convince me it is mine as well
before you light the match —

I will only catch fire
for myself in this world
that keeps us so separate
from one another.

Rosemary Dogface

with the huge chest
and the diamond ass
but just one blue eye
gymnastic afterthought
I can’t remember her
saying anything afterwards
or ever for that matter

Patrick Remoulade

(so named for a French Class error)
stumbling through study hall
smoking weed in the vent in the back of Civics
handsome man
(I’d have never dared to say that aloud)
told everyone about Rosemary
after swearing he wouldn’t

Donald Donaghy

then
started doing it
with
my Rosemary and I’m laughing
about it now
although
I went home and stabbed a pillow
that night

someone touched me
someone stuck it to me
someone different made me happy
a little
and I was heedless

everything I need to know
about my worth is here

In a language no one
has ever learned to speak fluently,
the word for “chop shop”
is “America.”

No matter where the chop shop is located
the operation is the same:
steal a vehicle; rip it apart;
sell the pieces to people

who put them in their own vehicles
and drive to places they want to go.
The parts work fine. They don’t care
who’s driving, or that the vehicle

is not their homeland.
It’s the victims of the theft
who raise hell about it. After a time
they get another vehicle,

which may or may not be stolen again.
If it is, they may take the bus from then on
and sit next to others who have
no vehicle of their own.

In that same language, the word for peace
is “revolver” and it is used as a synonym
for “justice.” “Justice” is pronounced
“America” as well. You would think

this would be confusing, but the language
doesn’t care about the speakers who mix the words up
and most people get along fine, or think they do,
since no one is fluent in the tongue anyway.

This language, suprisingly, has no
written alphabet. There is no literature
and there are no schoolbooks to teach it. All knowledge is assumed to be
common to all, and when a disagreement arises

about usage or grammar, arbiters send the dissenter
to America and suggest that justice has been done.
(The word for “arbiters” is unpronounceable
and is only thought, never spoken aloud,

not even incorrectly.) There are millions of native speakers of this tongue
who cannot discuss anything with each other.
The language doesn’t care about them. Someday,
they will vanish on the highway to the next terminal.