It’s the kind of art
that makes you
contemplate its meaning
for hours
before taking a hammer to it

The kind of art
that boils water
and that’s all it’s good for

The kind of art
that flies avoid landing upon

The artist is a rube
who has stumbled into genius
once
and sparked
slapdash rebellion

It’s the kind of art
that prompts us to say

“everyone must be good at something
once”

Duration is beside the point
Talk of legacy is laughable

The kind of art
that shines when the right light hits it
and come closing time
doesn’t show up at all

but it’s working right now
and when that light gets itself lined up
just right on the piece

it’ll be like a drunk hobo is all over your lapels
spitting unintentionally foul aphorisms
and you’ll tell everyone about it the next day
and keep the story in your party repertoire
for a long time

Once he dared to think
he could be delivered from this,
but it has always pulled him back.

The neighbors stare at his car
all the way to the parking space out front.
One gives a perfunctory wave.

In his childhood home
the air is thick and sugary.  Old songs
cling to his new shoes.

His mother is still waving food
at him and Dad’s still
outside

waiting for the obligatory
visit to discuss the tractor and
the shed.

A quick sandwich to keep the peace,
then back to the car.  He waits
until the turn off from Main Street,

into the back roads leading back to the highway,
to roll down the window,
turn up the radio, and scream.

A woman sees a dragonfly.

She creates a dragonfly oracle
from it as it rises, hovers
where she can point at it.
Says, “It’s a sign.”

A child, bandaged
and slightly broken,
takes his crutch to be a sword
and slays the dragonfly,
acting as its name recommends he act.

A man sees the dead dragonfly
on the sand. Sees the beach as
a long gravel road heading south
and knows he will reach the end of it
one day, alone, no one by his side.

These three
will carry what they saw with them
for as long as they live,
dragonfly oracle, adversary,
and talisman each moving, flying,
carrying them forward.

The dragonflies see it differently.
In the Dragonflies’ Great Vision,
everything is broken out, held in a facet
and each facet shares its truth with the others.

A dead brother
is just scrap. Its brothers brush
its existence to one side
as just another moment that has ended.

And the woman, child,
and man are just moments who have ended.
What they mean is irrelevant
to the dragonflies.  Their wings
are always spread.  They already
know how to fly.

The apparently uncaring
Great Being
(named God by some)

is resting unconscious
among the peas
and the snails in the side garden,

never letting the trouble
of any one person
intrude.

All those books
and churches
that say we are important
mock
this divine sleep

which tells of a faith
that all will work out
without prayer or salvation
if it is allowed to continue.

The Great Being
wishes we’d shut up

so that the silent burst
of the leaves from the soil,
the patient searches outlined
in silver among them,

can testify to the perfection
of a totality
of all things taken
as they are.

If you are an animal
at night,

you are an animal.

Because that is
unacceptable,
you call yourself as animal
a dream.

But you had fur
or scales, you were beaked
and open-mouthed
hunting then,

or you were prey.

Enter the nature
of yourself, slipping
your ties to humanity,

and say it, honoring
the truth:

I was tiger
or turtle, pelican
or slug.  I am

not always separate.
There are times when I am whole.

Someone I know
always says
“the darkness is habitable.”

I don’t think we know
the same darkness,
or at least

his monsters
must be more tamable
than mine. 

My monsters
say that they love me,
but I think this is a statement

that is more like
my own lip smacking
at a good menu.

There are nights
when I can smell
the hunger, others

when I can feel
the teeth.  There are nights
when I feel masticated.

I think my friend’s darkness
is full of monsters
he doesn’t know.  He assumes

any of them might
turn from predator
to pal if he welcomes them.

He might be right.
When I try to see beyond
my circle of weak firelight,

I know everyone who’s waiting there.
They whisper, “Remember that time
when you…you know…and you liked it?

You wouldn’t tell a soul how much
it jazzed you, but we know.”  They
rip at the fringe of the shadow

with sweeping arms, as much
welcome as threat. I know
my darkness is terrible and

full of monsters, that no one
could possibly live there,
because if pressed, I could.

I wish I was a rocket
opening the next frontier.

Wish I was oil
conquering the ocean.

If I were to become a microchip
I’d be inserted under perfect skin
and ride there tracking the travels
of flawlessness.

Wish I had
superpowers — how could I not
considering the way they’re drawn?

Maybe I could take on
the anima of a tiger
and slink my power
through forests seeking
to change lives.

Longing to have some effect
leads me away from wanting to be
human.

If I could talk to animals
would they tell me
they wanted to be me?

If I could be a rocket
or a computer, if I could
ride the waves as oil,
would I feel my being?

I desire technology
or shamanism
for myself, want to erase
the big old man I am
who can’t make anything happen.

Would I still care
that things were changing
around me and because of me
then?

All in now,
admitting

to being a big bad
boomer with a
bawdy voice,

callout captain,
dwelling dimmer,
electric eel tongue
flung free,
gagging on the gape
of my own mouth…

sharp and flat
applied as necessary…

They didn’t give me
this name for nothing —

bastard.
Bastard!

I didn’t know my father,
my mother never knew me,
so I’ve made myself up as I went along —
music to my own ears,
note on my note,
strung up and burning open or closed,
roar of child fantasy of power in my vein,

you’d better hope I never come into my own
interrupted passions
and longing —

my head rolling off my shoulders,
my body caked with sweat and dirt like fur,
no longer quite human but geographic,
my own country, my own continent,

and pray that you don’t live here when that happens…

for I’m hungry,
I sing my hunger,

and you look like nothing but a meal.

What I most desire

is the meat of a lion
and a fork smeared with hemlock
to spear it with,

to raise courage
and a hint of poison
to my lips
at once.

But with what shall I wash it down?

There is currently
the juice of an artist’s suicide
in my cup.

If I want that certainty,
I am a fool —
and I am no fool.

There is water,
but I don’t want water.
There is beer,
but I don’t want beer.

Perhaps I shall choke down the meal
with no drink at all,
feel it roughen my throat
and sicken me slightly
even as I grow strong
and brave.

Perhaps the lion
died feelingthat way,
the spear that killed him
erupting through his middle
even as he turned to fight
that which had hunted him
even as he hunted,

becoming (even as he ceased)
fully
lion.

I would not call this being awake.

I can see the trash on the curb where I stacked it last night,
the fanblades are coating me in hot but moving air,
I’m hungry, the coffee came out pretty decent for once,
but I’m still not sure anyone would say
this is waking life

for I’m not yet free of last night’s dreams,
or even the ones from the day before;
I still feel the laughter of the circle of flashing men,
hear the vulgar songs, the blade of the guillotine
whistling down along its path of rough wood.
The silver warrior birds and the dolls with cracked faces
may not be visible, but I feel them in the room.

If this is being awake,
conscious
in this world and of this world,

I will return to sleep at once
and face what waits there,
get it truly over with

or learn that world
and live there.

Something must happen soon
to hook me into the present,

or I will not leave the shadows
today.