Read this at the Asylum last night; slight revisions afterward.  Bumped up for that reason.

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Shock And Awe

Lunchtime.
No time to eat.
Outside having only my third cigarette
since 5:30 AM when I got here.
Two women come up to the door
bearing box lunches
and I tag along with them
to get through
the security entrance.

They ask me who I am.

"I’m one of the folks here
doing the reduction in force."

They laugh a little.

"Oh, you’re one of the bad guys."

I’m what you call
an "outplacement specialist."
In the war that is
the new American economy,
I’m a cross between
a medic and a black ops specialist.

I like the medic part:
buck ’em up, pat a shoulder, offer a tissue,
get them into the workshop next week
where I’ll show them
how to build a resume,
how to interview and network,
put them back into the field
until the next time I’m needed;
move on,
do it all again tomorrow
somewhere else.

It’s the black ops part that makes me suspect.
We work in teams:
a counselor, an HR rep, a security guard, and me.
Same drill every time: show up early, hide in an empty office
(there are so many places to hide these days),
go to the meeting where they announce the news,
watch them think about college funds, mortgages,
sick parents, sick kids, sick selves; watch them
not think.  Watch them feel. Try to decide what I’ll say

when the knock comes
a little while later
on my temporary office door.

She’s sad for everyone else.  It’s OK for her.
Gonna stay home for a while, help with her sister’s kids
while her brother in law’s in Iraq.
He’s staring into deportation if he doesn’t find something soon.
He’s shaking so hard I fill out the workshop enrollment for him.
This one looks like he’s relieved.
This one shrugs and says, "Let’s get this over with.
What do you have to tell me?"

More than you would imagine say nothing at all.
More than I could have imagined shake my hand when we’re done.

There are hours when no one knocks at all.
I wait for someone, anyone, to need me.

I don’t say any of this to the women letting me back into
their office, their workplace, their home away fromhome.

I just smile and say, "Well, I’m the guy
who helps them figure out what’s next."

And one laughs again, a very little,
and says, "Yeah, one of the bad guys."

I laugh too.

On the way home
there’s a pillar of smoke in the distance
over the city.  A tenement on Pleasant Street,
I learn later, has burned out, firefighters
taking people off the roof.  Everything on all six floors
is ruined.

Not everyone
wants to be forced to figure out
what’s next.  But

in the war that is
America
what follows shock and awe
is my business,

and business is good.

This is what the lack of pills does to me.

Swollen with useless potential
from my lips
straight through the top of my backbone,
I wake up hungry, wanting something,
something like whipped cream on a steak.

This is how it works.

Novels appear in sand
piled up in the gutters after a deadly winter.
The brass eagle on the flagpole can smell me,
mouselike, ready to roar at slights
not intended for me.  There’s a moon
in my waistband and wait for tides
to storm me erect.  I soften for seconds
at a time, then imagine the bread of past flesh.

This is the beginning of knowing.

The skull contains.  The mouth
releases.  The ears wash over with dimunition
of words important to speech, matterless truth,
illusory tinkling of breaking, reforming.
Nostrils, ultimately untwinned, pull in the idea
of opposites and return them damp and salty.

This, a full knowing.

There are required distances splintered into steps
that sink and fluff back once the feet are lifted.
There is an end in sight, scirocco mirage,
blend of stolen bones on grit wings.

There is night when moon is not enough.
A taste in the mouth that was never desired,
no matter how I once wished for it.

Eastwood’s on TV right now
in the usual role where his name matters less than the fact
that it’s Him
and I know the climactic gunfight’s coming up
after the commercial break

There will be impossible shots and trajectories
and justice for all

but first they cut away to a spot
highlighting a woman "making a difference"
in the South Bronx
where she trains "urban youth"
for "green collar jobs"

I don’t catch what they’re selling

When we return it’s business as usual
for The Man With No Name
His Navy Colts blaze with low-footprint accuracy
When all the bad guys are done
(one hanging himself in fear when his ammo runs out)
our hero forgives the last dying outlaw
saying "I don’t blame you for what happened"

Later he drops his badge on an emblematic mahogany desk
and rides away from the corrupt territorial boss
who’s going to get re-elected on a law and order platform
who has the railroad’s blessing
to hang ’em high
if it makes money

Maybe Clint’s off to plant trees somewhere
with the same skill he once used for killing
targeting the right places to put the holes
as carefully as the kids in the South Bronx
who have no names anyone’s telling us
who are being used to further something else

Our heroes have always
had to be careful

I claim, again and again, that it is not enough
to be a bag of hopeful skin waiting for a red dawn
to excite me into action; that it is futile
to lie awake a few minutes before the alarm sounds
and think about rising early to stand at the window
choosing to go outside and feel the first pulse of day;
that every potential carries its own failure…

and every day, despite my desperate position
on these matters, the sun comes up; every day
I may lie there a long time after the clock sounds, but I get up too,
rubbing my hide to get warm as I head for the coffee pot,
rubbing my eyes to clear them of night, deciding how I will get through
to the next moment of dreary necessity — the laundry, the bills.
the phone calls, the shower; how to carry forward
my half of the conversation.