sparked by the love of my own teeth
i smile even when i’m hardly ready
to show a face someone might like to touch

i’m thinking bite and sharp and blood
and torn armskin while it looks to all
like I’m echo of sunshine and good cheery days

i’m thinking cracking down to the marrow
and the pop of fingers as they’re bitten off
while it seems likely to the casual viewer

that i’m just being friendly
but i’m a smiley kinda villain
i’m a fake snake who looks splendid on a good lawn

during the day i follow criminals
to learn their shit
at night i regale the adoring with the day’s stories

longing to spit in their faces
i’ve got acid in a mouth pouch
i like the idea of the melt

and then i come home
alone and say gimme a reason
and a word to make into a vulture

and i’ll let it feast on my liver
moaning the whole time like i’m in cat heat
about how it hurts

i like it hurting
i like to spread the hurt
it makes me smile

and people love it when i smile
i look so good and smell like impending christmas
though i’ve got a gift for being hell

Comment, son,
on the darkness you feel
when you hear the word
“Father.”

Comment on
its bat wings, how it navigates
in darkness, how it fills its mouth
with mosquitoes full of your blood.

Comment on its
soft opening, seduction
in its syllables and
its growling finish.

Comment, Mother,
on how it feels
when your son says it
in the hopeful, dreadful way.

Comment on its acid
and the bag of regrets
that hangs from it
as it flies from him.

Comment, say something
to make the word mean something
it hasn’t meant for a while.
Comment so you can both remember

how to breathe.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations

Mario stirs
from a dream where he’s become
a children’s book.

He looks at the clock
and thinks, “I need more time.
I don’t know how I begin.

I know where I am supposed to end
but that first sentence, how to lead
a child into me…it is not there yet.”

He falls back into
his pages
and finds himself

staring at that first white leaf.
“There ought to be some
huge illustration here, bursting

with all the colors,
and one line that sets me in motion
and makes me irresistible,

but nothing comes to mind.
Why would I as a child
would have wanted to know

this story?  Maybe
there is no beginning
and I’m a pure middle,

graspable once I’m formed
but hard to enter.  Would I
as a child have made an effort

to look into me as I am now,
or would I have been ignored
in favor of another?”

Mario dreams on
as his daughter tosses and cries out
in another room, another house,

and Daniel, the new man her mother married,
rises to comfort her.
Dan reads her a story

full of moon and stars, mice
and fishes and bluebirds and turtles
who speak in rhymes of lovely things

set in a full home, a place
with no blanks.  She falls uneasily into
her own incomplete dreams.

“When I’m singing that song —
yeah, I know it’s stupid, a stupid
song — who cares?  It’s like
I’m the star and I remember
why I liked it once, and I like it again
for a few minutes.”  She is clinging to
a margarita.  Someone
is singing a Prince song
very very badly
but the crowd screams
as if it was Prince himself
up there. 

I want to run out the door
of this young loud club, but I can’t:

it’s my turn soon, and “Dock Of The Bay”
is calling.  At least it’s not a stupid song
and I’ve always liked it
from when I first heard it
on a white clock radio
in my bedroom at fourteen. 

I’m no star
but I will do it
justice,
and then I’m gonna leave
and never come back.

Don’t shade your eyes against
the hawk above you
or the animal, unnamed but present,
that is slipping through the brush on the roadside.

Invite them
to your day — include them
as if they were family,
for they are, a branch

you have never known well,
but who nonetheless
carry news of kinship
from unknown regions.

You will not understand them.
That’s all right.  It will be their world
and yours touching, not blending
or overlapping — you are too far along

this path for that to happen,
at least right now.  For a moment, though,
you’ll feel them breathing, see flight
in a different way, try to name

what is in the underbrush simply by sound.
Skunk, possum, raccoon…or something else?
You’ll invent, perhaps, a new word
for what is unseen there.  It may call out

that swift creature
to stand before you unafraid. Maybe
you’ll stare back into its amber eyes
while the hawk observes you two,

gathers your images in, tells itself: yes,
I recall this, there was a time when all of us
took each other on as simple travelers,
and did not scare so easily.

Walking
among the hard and careless
without mentioning what I see
makes me soft.  There are
buddies, friends, and acquaintances
who do not see how things connect.
Can’t read between lines, can’t see
or hear the trembling in voices
afraid to be anything but soft.

Soft —
I long to remain in bed
all day, melt into the covers
and only think and speak
in cotton and down.  To be
legitimately soft and caring,
to slide into the pillows
comfortably with no desire
to rise; how can I remain so
when the world is hard
on the soft? 

Morning is the time
for the diamond tongue
that scratches truth into
the bathroom mirror.
I want to see those words
across my face.  Always
a reminder that hard
is necessary if soft
is to follow, and that soft
cannot be enjoyed
without knowing hard.

The older I get

the more gunshots sound like music,
the more a baby crying makes me want to say
“Ahhh…the kid’s learning something.”

And also,
the more often I am compelled to weep
at some song as it perfects
the air it rides on. 

The older I get

the less I believe
that what everybody says
is true, the more I want to look for
and proclaim
exceptions to rules.

And also,
how simple my understanding of God becomes
when I take concern for humanity
out of the definition of “God.” 

The older I get

the more amazed I become
that I am older, that I have survived,
and also
that it has not become easier
with experience…

such arrogance.
Such selfishness!

That this exists, all of it,
ought to humble me out of any desire
for more than this,
but I behave as if I am central
and my needs are central,
as if salvation
was ever any part of the Plan.

The older I get,
the more at ease I become
with the idea that I will pass
sooner than later, and also,
that I will be
forgotten sooner,
replaced, regrown,  
and God won’t even notice.

What’s up, you ask?

All the shades are down
and I’m afraid of the street
rising like a wave to crest
through the windows. 

I almost struck a man
in the store today
for cutting me off with his
cart.

Came home
with white knuckles
and a fiery imagination
full of apocalypse, hoping
the cat could calm me
and now he’s taken shelter
somewhere. 

I’m going
to kick something —

are you coming over?  Please
say yes, I’ll let you in.
I need someone here
who can see me
even when I have become
invisible.