my favorite poets
are the ones who understand
that they will likely never write anything
to match the power
of a gloriously welcome
stupid song
that has been poured
through a well-funded microphone
into a carefully crafted vessel
shaped to hold obvious longing
and sold through scrupulously fashioned outlets
to masses dying for something simple
that explains the obvious
better than they can

my favorite poets
realize that their job
is to work alone
in the wee hours
crafting a brew of the things
that don’t go down
quite so easily

so that they
(if they ever get the chance)
can slip what they’ve created
to those who don’t know what they’re missing
but who know they’re missing something
in their daily diet

in the hope that
when the work’s
been taken in
some number of those they’ve dosed
will say

"i don’t know what the hell it is about it
but it works for me
on me
through me
in me
and –son of a bitch!
— is me"

There are daffodils and hyacinths and green hostas in the bed out front
that is bounded by black rocks half the size of my head
one of which has been lifted from its place and hurled
through the window of the green house across the street
by a man who is now crouching behind his green Town Car
to avoid the rock being thrown by his baby mama from the porch
as she screams and curses him while her friends try to stop her
and the baby, the baby, is quiet in the arms of another friend
who’s hanging back a little out of the line of fire
under the young tree in the front yard that is just starting to bud

and I’m telling myself
even as I dial 911
because I’m afraid the next rock thrown
will cave in the baby’s skull

that this is why
I never had kids

No matter how hopeful spring made me feel
or the seduction of the scent of a baby’s head
I knew by 25 for sure I’d never have a kid

because by 12 I knew something was wrong with me
and by 14 I had a sense of what it was
by 15 I’d pulled my first knife on a trivial transgressor
and by 17 I’d realized how hard it would forever be
not to pull it again
by 19 I was awash in bad chemicals
my thoughts swimming through what I always saw
as a bile green soup in my brain
by 24 I’d married thinking I had to become whole soon
by 25 I knew I was broken beyond repair

you can call it genetics
or upbringing
it doesn’t really matter
either way
I decided that if I would never have peace myself
I surely couldn’t pass the war along to someone new

so I took the unkindest cut
and became
sterile

I don’t blame anyone for the trouble I’ve been
except me
because too many people weather what I’ve been through
with little more than a pill and a therapy bill
and no matter what I throw at the storm inside
I spend more time bailing and sealing cracks
than moving forward
so
I write poems because
there’s something I can live with
in that necessary falsification
inherent in this obsession
for the making of worlds
I claim to control

I have lived on the margin
between a rock through a window
and a noose in the basement
in the green light of a planet devoted to
perpetuation

and seen that it is not for me

The Town Car squeals off once the last stone is thrown
and the baby’s handed back to the mother

When the police pull up a few minutes later
she stands there telling her story
with the still silent baby in  her arms

I watch from behind the blinds

She is pointing at my flower bed
as the cop hefts the rock
and they both look across the street

I am invisible
and when I look away
I swear I am done with all this
and it’s as if I was never there

which is
all I really want —

but now
hours later
this poem comes like
unruly birth
the hint of green in a rain-black bud
a longing for a legacy

another child I never wanted
and one I am unworthy
to have fathered