Don’t ever give a reader
all the facts.

A good falsehood,
larded into the meat of the tale
like a dose of belladonna,
will make the readers’ pupils
grow wide.

They’ll convince themselves
they’re seeing deep
because of how much light
is getting in.

You’ll be a hero!
And
a million times
a million lies
inlaid in a base of truth
makes a heroic body of Work.

Make it vast enough
and it’ll give you time,
while the adulation and praise
for your vulnerability rolls in
to sit back
and try to differentiate
what’s a lie from what is true
at your uncomfortable leisure.

In bed now with Virginia Woolf
and Sigur Ros, after a late snack
of fresh blueberries in yogurt,
after an evening
with the Home Run Derby, after a day
installing blinds and washing windows
and writing while listening to Thelonius Monk and
Travis Tritt and Common, after a breakfast of
whole wheat bread spread thick with jam,
after the news from the BBC World Service
woke me into this day…

You of course now believe
that by knowing my list
you know me,
and you can go coring through it
to seek meaning, for in our time
it is our right
to define a man
by the products he says he uses —

unless of course I am lying
about some or all of them,
and in learning that you begin to know
something else
about me: that I am
as untrustworthy as any other poet.

You may then wonder
why I chose to mention the things I did mention,
and what that says about me,

and at some point you may begin to wonder
what it says about you
that in that list there are things you like
I may not, or that I may like
and you do not, or that you don’t know,

and then think perhaps that I do not know
some or all of them either,
simply choosing to mention them
and then identify the mentions of them
as potential untruths
in order to assist us both in reaching a point

where the only thing there is left to do
is lie awake before dawn,
at sea without anchor,
utterly disgusted with poem and poet,
stare at the ceiling in complete silence,
swept pile of books in disarray on the floor
beside the bed, radio broken, computer off,
stomach growling with hunger
that will not abate,

and begin to understand that some voids
in our understanding of each other
cannot be so easily filled.

If there had been more rain
there might have been a chance
that what grew so little might have grown more
and the cats and badgers that stopped hunting and rooting
in the sun savaged yard might have stayed at it longer
and there might have been life in the house

If there had been a little more snow
there might have been cover
over the dirt in the wind beaten yard
and the sparrows and the raggedy squirrels
might have left tracks in the drifts
and there might have been life in this house

If there had been a five hundred year storm
to lift this pile of loss from its foundation
there might have been a chance to see
the worms and centipedes scattering from their holes
and it might have been easier to understand after the fact
why whatever was here did not constitute life in this house

above the treeline
there are animals
who grow round
in response to cold
they stay close to the ground

the few plants
that do grow up there
grow low and flat
to save themselves
from the wind

there are legends of yeti
as tall as the peaks themselves
who do not hesitate
to rise into the hazards
that surround them

they are notoriously elusive
certainly very rare
and probably imaginary
as you who live in this world
might guess

when a sighting happens
you thrill to hear it
seize upon it as gospel
wake up for work the next day
with a little more spring in your step

A long line of
the beautifully unaware
forms before the sign up list.
They are anxious to share
perky, quirky poems
that will defend
their fortress mentality.
For form’s sake, some of them
will express a bit of outrage
at something in the recent news,
then go back
to their humorous and poignant observations
of the Way Things Are In Here.

From the curb outside the coffeehouse
an old man accosts me
and proffers an empty cup for change.
I dig into my pocket for a few coins;
he thanks me saying, “Some’s bastards,
some ain’t, that the score.”  Then,
“That’s Jack Kerouac, you know.”

I talk with him for a little while,
exchanging small talk on literature
and how hard the cold stone is on his ass,
but there’s a long drive
into the American night
ahead of me still,
and soon I begin speeding
past the brownstones
and triple deckers,
along the highways lined
with thick wooden fences
that keep both the view
and the sound of the road
away from the bedrooms
of the currently secure.

twirl
in a bog, frighten
a nearby spirit, see it
flee into peat and muck
among long-drowned roots

the dank remainder
of dark ages
holds itself apart
from where you stand
and dissipates

even as you
sneer at the mundane fools
who would prevent you
from mounting such
perimeter guard

when they try to stop you
you cannot speak of it
but with your flashing eyes
attempt to warn them
of the folly of trying

for the twirl
you can offer
is a signal service toward keeping
the worst parts of the bog
at bay