no broad brushstrokes today

this is no day for sweeping
rationale

instead allow
only detail
through

pray that by bedtime
your eyes sting from having seen
what is directly before you

having concentrated
on tiny ants
sand between toes
fine blond arm full of hair
flaked lips
scent of garlic on sweet tongue
tomato flowers (yellow toothed bells)
finger whorls
may you then know that
there is no global only local
to be revered

and stop claiming you care for what you cannot hold in your own hands

The only true art I’ve ever made

is the C-shaped scar I bear
in the back of my left hand
where I once laid a cigarette down
to burn through a fifty dollar bill
in an old bar trick.  The trick
is that you challenge someone else
to do it and tell that person that
if they can hold their hand stiff
till the bill is burnt through,
they can have it.  You of course
say this knowing that the bill will not burn through
because the heat from the cigarette rises
and will only char it, but in my case
I knew this and used my own skin and cash
to demonstrate the folly of such an act,
and thanks to Jameson’s whiskey
was able to shock and horrify others
with the resultant minute long endurance
of the pain.

My hand swelled and a cavern opened
on its back, weeping pus
for two weeks after, and I never had it treated
because where would my point have been
if I had, if I’d acknowledged how much stupidity
it took to point out stupidity?  To make a fool
of myself to the point of anguish?

Now I touch that scar and proclaim

that everything I’ve done since that night
on a stage or a page, every word I’ve written
or placed in its round hole,
has been a fraud and a cheat, and only the single “C”
on the back of my left hand has been the truest Work
of making my point known,
and the only thing that mars its perfection
is that I did not put it on my writing hand,
my good hand, my false right hand
that now lays down
ersatz spectacles
of vulnerability and sacrifice for others’ pleasure,
and there is not enough whiskey in the world
to make me believe it does not hurt
worse than the fire on my left hand
ever did.

The matter at hand
is this boiling pot.

A first bubble rises and bursts
to herald the success
of heated metal
at causing the water
to roll. 

My own contribution
has been incidental —
I filled the pan
and turned the knob,
and this happened.

I’m trying to recall
why I did this.
All of tomorrow
sits before me
this late at night
and I don’t remember
the smallest thing
about what happened today
or why this was
necessary.

Seems a shame to let it go to waste —
what shall I cook and eat?
Let it be breakfast time!
No one ever made a law
that a day must start
at first light,

and even if I don’t know why
I started this,
I can put it to use,
certainly.

“In life sometimes
it’s not whether you win or lose,
it’s how you run the race.”  This
glittering insight
is provided by
yet another news reporter
doing voice over on a story
of a man running a marathon
with inoperable cancer. 

I wonder,
sometimes, what the news reporter
says to his children when he gets home
from his day.  “Don’t worry
about getting into college, Evan;
it’s always darkest before the dawn,” I imagine
him saying to his eldest son.  Assuring
his distraught daughter, “There are plenty
of fish in the sea, honey.  He didn’t deserve you
anyway, you’re young yet…”   And the youngest son,
still in Little League, gets “What’s important
is that you tried your best.  Let me tell you
a story about a man, a brave man
I met today…”

If that were I
facing my own children’s problems,
I’d probably be speaking in tongues,
leaping from frog to slick,
not trying to puzzle them
but succeeding in spite of myself.

I’d say to my eldest son,
“The sky is a blurred blanket,
a dingy parking lot of old dreams, and
you’ll be forever trying to unstain it.” 
To my daughter I’d say,  “Leap
into the market of sandalwood
and rejected shoes, and walk barefoot
among the stalls until you you are shod.”
And little Stevie would hear of alligators in flames
and the wings of ardent warrior kings shining
as they play catch with the hearts of clouds
among the fields of Vatican rubies.

One of them would say, “Dad, you’re so
weird,” and go back to listening
to Coheed and Cambria,

and then I’d nod
and tell myself,

“There is not enough cotton on earth
to block the impact
when the blocks of the broken Temple
fall from above.”

I see them lost,
seeking comfort in vain
from me, and
I tell myself,
as the blocks fall around me,
that this is why it is good
that I have no children:
I would likely just use them
as paving stones
on my way toward
the abstraction of living.
This is why it is good
that I have no children
in my core.  This is why
the news reporter exists:
so children can thrive
on a plane I can’t reach
through marathon
or long hours sailing
the deep seas
in the dark before dawn,
no matter how hard
I might try.