We breathe on average
23,000 times a day

but our things each breathe
once
over the course
of their lifetimes

We do not notice
usually
that it is happening
their respiration
does not depend
on our noticing it
but
the guitars and horns
in their cases
and weapons in holsters
are in perpetual stir around us

We imagine the anima of the graphic crucifix
inhaling and exhaling
on the nail on the wall

but now contemplate the original wood
flavored with his blood

Did its breathing speed up and slow down
as he struggled upon it
or
did it remain
steady throughout

and do the remaining
possibly false remnants we revere
as relics of that moment today
breathe still?

The things we think of
as not alive
do not care what we think of them
do not care how we use them

23,000 self important breaths a day
Vibrations in the larger sacrament
Flavor and no more

The bloom.

The flower of the vein
that I opened in the neck.

I opened it
and the dog moaned
before it quaked and folded down
upon the flowerbed floor.

I put the knife under the tap
and watched the tendrils
slip across the surface
of the steel into the trap.

I sat by the dog and stroked it
as it died without understanding
that I pursue beauty wherever it hides
and that the bloom from its throat
was my lovely, lovely gift
to myself.

I am in bloom myself,
I told the dog,
and it mattered to me
that this was true.

How it mattered —
I was learning what it took
to raise a bloom
from its hiding place.

In love.
In love with the sweet ribbons.
This flower is my decoration,
my day of fantasy and slippery play.

In the sleep of the moment
a last shiver, then nothing.
Nothing, like the scent of this iron bud
opening, its trailing petals.

Thinking already
of the next cutting I shall take
from the garden of all skin
that stretches before me.

It was the song that brought on
this urgent insomnia
and now you can’t stop humming.
This long after midnight
the city is finally quiet
but for the occasional siren.
You have known that song
for a long time.  It rises,
it slides down, it wails
of a disturbance somewhere.
You might dare to call it romantic
if you’re listening, knowing it may mean
that somewhere passions
have run over the brim
of one or more lives.  No matter
that it may herald death or anger;
when you’re not the target,
in the middle of the night
it’s hard not to stop and strain
to hear it, try to figure out
where it’s going.  It’s not hope,
exactly; instead, a curiosity
about how much is happening
elsewhere in places more alive
than where you are.  As close as you are
to sleep, your eyes on fire, your back
hard and heavy, your breathing
slow, your throat raw
from smoke and fatigue,
when that song starts
you jerk forward in your seat
and are drawn into the night
that is growing longer,
longer, even as it fades.
It’s not the right time for this.
It’s not even your business to care
but you do, somehow,
and that is what keeps you up at night.

The ex-skateboarder
is a current cook,
thinks about cooking
a lot, cooks all the time,
in fact cooked his way
all the way
from Rhode Island
to Virginia
by way of Michigan.

Sometimes
he stops thinking
about the lead line
for two minutes
and wishes for a night listening
to New Model Army
after eating something good
someone else had prepared
in the fifty-first state
of the union,
the one that only exists
as the hypothetical next stop
on his road.

This,
he thinks,
is a good grind,
today is a good day,
or at least
it’s as good as it gets.
I can live with that
even if now I have to walk
where I used to glide
until I get there…

and eats what he cooks
because he knows where he’s been,
anyway.

A cross-fox
bears black bars
upon his shoulders
that demand attention.

One red squirrel
glimpsed at the park
means more
than all the gray ones.
Let a black one show up
and someone will call the news.

The white skunk
(not a scent of black
on him but for the eyes)
comes through the yard,
and it’s as if a yeti walks among
the trashcans and weeds.

When Maggie, the new girl,
raised her hands
on the first day of high school
and defiantly showed us
her twelve fingers,
we shuffled in our seats
and communally resolved at once
to shun her.

I am sure that in
the years since, at least one
of my classmates
has been deer hunting,
looking to to hang
a ten-point buck or better
on his wall.

You have no excuse
and there’s no absent Muse
to blame for it.  It’s either work
or waiting in this, no in between
and when you invoke
the Muse like that it tells me
you don’t understand the work
or how blood must be spilled
in every place we make meat
from life, for life.  This is not to say
there are no walls between you
and what you desire, but there are sledgehammers
too and that’s how
the walls come down
and the calves get dead. If you’ll
just turn around and pick up a hammer
you’ll note it is heavy enough
to break what stands before you.
Are you enough? The old question,
oldest one, the one Cain asked
even before he stooped for his own
tool.  Think of that:
we revile his literal take now,
but his moment still offers a lesson
that something has to go if it’s between you
and your target God.  Pick up the hammer
and stop waiting, we’re all
hungry here, and the excuse
you’ve named the Muse?
When she gets here
footsore and dusty, she’ll be
hungry too.