i know this is not a new message
another stupid poem
about old hats

but we keep killing so
here it is again

to remind us all of those casual killings
which keep us alive and happy

we live off the deaths of those
we do not stop to consider

perhaps it will get us closer to the truth
to admit that we were made for deathmongering
and that to lie awake too long overthinking our steps and missteps
is to ride unicorns
into the flames around the sword protecting paradise
from the likes of us

there have been many societies
in history
who believed that what they hunted
and what they gathered
the animals they slaughtered
and the plants they cut down
shared equal consciousness
that veganism is a clumsy rationalization
when all life has a face
whether we see it or not

but they did not stop eating
from guilt
they simply understood
that one being’s survival
costs another’s life

this is not to say that we should sleep on
unnecessary pain
suffering
and war
this is not to say that we should sleep on
factory farms
the business of existence as commodity
or exploitation of others
or anything that divorces us
from the bite of the cost of living

these old hats are full of blood
but we should wear them
not proudly but humbly
because they are ours

perhaps we should say that
meat is murder indeed
and so what if it is
when the corn cries we don’t hear it
but it cries nonetheless

perhaps if we agree that abortion does cause death
but also propose that choosing it is not evil
or perhaps say that war is atrocity
but we are all atrocious

perhaps if we count the blood metals
in our cellphones and computers
and think of the dead miners
and call them unfortunate victims
when we message our likeminded friends
to join us in an online discussion about them

we can at last admit who we are
see each other as beings locked into slaughter

and see each other at last
with some compassion
we have not allowed ourselves to feel
for fear of revealing
the vital hypocrisy
we need to survive

that we all claim to want fewer
or even none
but we each have caused many
and will not surrender the living we love
until we each cause many more

hey canvas,
I’m gonna make a sail
outta you. or a painting,
or a pair of pants.

canvas, you say
you’re material.  I say
I love you more than
the material.  spirit says

god made you bleachy-pale
for the writing upon, tough
stitchability, force a curved needle
to do that and it’ll punch my hand,

don’t care.  god’s impersonal enough
not to care about you if it’s better
for me to make you creation-ground.
I’ll get my blood on you, canvas,

and no backtalk, no ticktock
or ripsnap when the wind gets at
your back.  mine, canvas, you’re mine
and I’ll sail you wear you cover you

in vision and oils maybe all at once.
I can do anything, says god.  not yours,
mine.  thank the bastard of my head,
he’s on my side.  canvas old buddy,

you’re never gonna know what hit ya.

This is how it happens: your voice finds its word
and it’s suddenly bigger than you are.
You’re carried to the top
of its eruption…

now you’re lava,
ash, sticking to cars and walls
of compounds in tropical plains
at the foot of the word,
it builds a cone
so steep, you’re going to slide off,
become a refugee fleeing it…

then you stop,
dig in, be honest and ruthless
with yourself: you were always
a nascent chimera, embryo dragon,
you roared but didn’t know
how to breathe fire or how to be
your combinations, here is your chance to learn
as you tumble across
smashed landscape of home,
your backpack full of notes, letters;

and you craft the next word
now, your voice so shattered settling
like Atlas moving a little to make the weight
bearable, now you are blackwhite crawler on moonscape,
first time visitor to naked rock: perhaps
traces of past natives, but who cares, you’re here…

and now it is fire and now it is a sea boiling up ahead,
and it’s time for the next word,
you’ll coin it
for the pinpoint bludgeoning of the rolling soil
cooling to blue now, red now and again and after,
roads melt, glass melts, salt melts,
the sugary drug of not caring where the word goes
and how the voice roughens around it;
for you know now you were never
just a throat, a lung,
you were always more
than a bearer of air in a vessel
you didn’t build.

You’re a damn good pure sight to see
for those who flee this, looking back at you
surfing your voice on that word,
riding atop the archaic spit
of the mantle below the crust
making new land
that once tilled will be rich.

Whenever it stops killing
and smoldering, wherever it stops,
that’s where you deepen into your own.

That when you
can claim it.  Call yourself writer,
story teller, poet.  Call yourself
volcano surfer.  Call out the name
you choose for it.  Pick the next word.
Call up the fire.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations

We watched him
break
then saw him
fixed. 

“Fixed”
is a perfect word, lays claim
to past wounds that are now invisible
or only reminders if the scars show.

“Repaired” is also perfect, suggests
meeting of unnaturally separated parts,
so the sight of him once shattered
and now repaired is heartening.

We shuffle along
swept up in our own cracks,
puzzling through the memory
of not being in pieces,
if we can recall that at all…

so when he speaks
from his entirety,
not concealing past injury
but showing how he has healed,

we see it.  We feel it.
We are moved to action,
and perhaps
a little ashamed.

Enslaved to a horoscope,
some won’t drive far when Mercury is retrograde.

Engaged by humor,
they let offense slide off their numb tongues.

Enthralled by heritage,
they won’t give credit to others.

Eviscerated by holy writ,
they scourge the unbelievers in their prayers.

Enlisted by history,
they reap the bodies of the designated scapegoats.

Every time it happens,
we call it instinct

or natural order or divine will or the stars aligning,
when in fact it comes down to

what we allow
to rule us without forethought,

and from horoscope to Holocaust
is not all that far to travel.

Bridges are burning and
I’m a little glad to see it.

Crossing them
seemed sometimes
a blasphemy.

In broad daylight
or even at night
when I’ve been alone,

there have been moments
of silence and separation
when I’ve felt that those distances
from rail to wave
and across the stream
were just meant to be.

Still, despite
my fear of heights,
there will be times
when I will think
of those bridges
on fire
and long for the courage
to run out along
the cracking spans
and see how close I could come
to the other side

before I fell.

From atop this rock
I can see seven others
in this stream. 
Some are slick
and moss-black
and breach the surface
almost not at all;
others hump fully up
gray and knobbed
into dry air.
Depending on how
willing I am
to leap across
or soak myself
stepping in,
there are so many ways
to get from here
to the far side
that I am perplexed
at least, frightened
at most, with thoughts
of what may happen
if I fail to choose
correctly.
Stupid,
says a branch rubbing
another branch by chance
above me;
stupid, says
a broken acorn falling
then floating by;
stupid,
echoed by the click of stones
against stones in the stream bed
pushed into speech by the flood;
stupid.  Get across
by crossing.
So I spring from the rock I’m on
with eyes closed, knees bent,
waiting to see how I land
before deciding
how to proceed from there.

A remedy is offered in an alley.
Money moves
from sufferer to healer.
quickly.  What has been purchased
proves to be weaker than was desired,
but will do.  The sufferer mutters,
but settles for it.

A farmer settles on a smaller price
for a larger crop, smoldering
with thoughts of winter ahead.

Linchpins
are carved from hard wood
in places where there are no forges.

Where there is only soft copper
and little wood,
those who need linchpins
traditionally long for iron,
will scrounge and scheme
for something to trade for it,

and plan for war.

While we’re all making do,
civilization develops,
rises, and falls in upon itself.

Without each other to shore up
our resentments, to bear
our brunt,

we’re nothing.