Under the pilot light,
under the stove,
under the linoleum,
there is something
that’s been there a while.

I don’t know what it is.
I’ve never seen it or smelled it.
I couldn’t describe it to you.
But it’s there, something dropped
by someone who lived here before me.

It’s an old house, built
in 1900, and maybe the thing
under the pilot, stove, etc.
is something that old too:
a coin, an earring, a scrap
of paper with half a letter
or word missing and no chance
of figuring out what it might have said.

I know it’s there,
sopping with grease and meaning,
kept warm by that small flame.

It has to be there. There’s no way
I can live here without having something
of those who also lived here
remain in my space
that was there space.  It’s luck
or curse or just remnant, relic
trash.  Nothing disappears
and nothing stops affecting me,
ever. 

One of these days I might fix the floor
and you bet I’ll dig it out and hold it
in my hand.  I’ll put it back before I’m done,
and I won’t bother adding something of my own —

better my own addition
be accidental as well, the perfect piece
of my life left behind for the next tenant
to puzzle on late at night;

though he or she
might never understand
what that feeling means,
it’ll be good to be alive
and present here
for a long, long time.

A good friend
spends his weekends
liberally applying
bacon grease to his arms
and drawing swirls in it.

He stinks.  He plays with the patterns
constantly.  He leaves stains
on everything.  He’s always happy.
He calls himself
the pig tattoo king.

Yes,
it’s odd.  But I’ve met
people
who swill money
like chocolate, coat themselves
in dirty metals pulled from the ground,
smell like rare flowers
crippled with salt,
build small honesty into huge lies
to keep people guessing
and off balance.

What you see is what you get with him.
That’s more than you can say about a lot of folks.

I never liked Seattle.
Too many of the homeless
looked like my father.

In Southern California,
there are seventeen faces
shared by everyone
and I couldn’t tell them apart.

Albuquerque and Gallup
filled up my rearview
with insistent new ghosts
who claimed they were relations.

Austin and Dallas
made me lonely
for those I’d never known
and I knew I’d find them
if I stayed too long.

Kansas City has a bad neighborhood
or two or three, they told me at the hotel.
They all felt bad to me.

Chicago laid itself at my feet
and then swept my leg.
I left my bags on an El platform
in December, in rain,
and never went back to get them.

I was robbed in New York City,
by New York City, of all I had left,
so I went home.

Then I was home,
one haunted room full of avalanche drums
and a slim face pinched in the closet door.
I couldn’t wait to go again.

I know my tribe
is waiting for me in bus stations
and airport bars.

We don’t talk much
and we like it just fine that way.

A nod and a flick of the eyelid
is enough to make a stool or a bench
home,
which is where we are
when only we are there.

I’m taking the best bite out of your life,
screams the dirty little tooth.

The myth that either the heart or brain
is paramount keeps the tooth amused

with its throne hidden in plain sight.  The tooth
kings itself on your nerve endings

and leaps into the red square.  You fall
wincing into the black.  I’m taking a bite

out of your life, screams the sharp little tooth
as it sticks you a second time.  The old story:

you’d give up a small fortune for relief
from that broken bastard.  It’s no game

to go a-hopping in pain around the board
in thrall to the little king.  I’m a bite

of your living, screams the shard of a tooth
one last time before you yank and toss it.

It leaves a raw hole.  Game over?  But you can’t keep
your tongue out of the space.

I still rule you, calls the missing tooth
from afar.

I’m so diamond
the mirror is terrified
of me — no, not that,
not that glamor —

I’m so oak,
acorns rush to my bosom
even after I’m table and chairs.

So coal tar shampoo,
so rough washcloth,
so pumice soap,
dirt’s gone and put me on wanted posters.

I’m so eggplant
eggplant drunk dials me
and whines,
“Why don’t you ever call?”

Hard, ruthless, delicious.
I’m the Wild Boar Of Sunday Morning!

No, not that —

I’m the smile of the mundane
that knows
you don’t get far
without stopping for me.

Hedge shears at this hour? No.
Some bird’s scissor-chirp.  Nice to think
of the neighbor hard at work, though.

Is the street collapsing? No.
Trains, jostling in the near yard
of the downtown terminal.  Nice to think
of an earthquake out there
changing everything, though.

Can’t feel anything inside yet
with certainty.
How’s my aching back?
How’s my aging bladder?
If I move too much I’ll find out,
so at first I don’t.

What time is it?
I must have swept the alarm clock
from the bedside table
with a mad arm sweep
sometime in the night
so I’ll guess: at best, it’s six AM.

Since I’m awake,
I’ll get up to write,
make an early start;
I find seven-thirty on the stove,
the microwave, the coffee maker.

The once-pliable concrete day
at once sets up hard.

Now
I need painkillers,
a pot to piss in,
coffee, silence,
metaphors, effort,
and wrong answers
from which to refashion
what I thought I was sure of
not ten minutes ago.

A sudden tail
of smoke twitching
away and to the left,
moving contrary to the patterns of air flow
you’ve long observed in this room,
sets you to considering
that a window may be open
somewhere
that was not open before;

it tells you that you may not be
the only actor
in the house,
that another may have been here earlier,
opening windows
or shutting doors
without your knowledge;
you are not even certain
that you’re alone now.

That errant smoke is such a tease:
does it promise
death or seduction?
Is there, possibly,
either a thug or a lover
in the next room?

It’s a relief to think
that one way or another,

loneliness may not be permanent.

Rappelling:
a first step, then

a horizontal stand,
a leap,
a swing and
a fall,
a collision,
a leap;

repeat.

And all backwards
without looking
to see what is rising
to meet you.

Is it
because you know?

Yes.
It is because
you already know.

How important you feel,
controlling that approach
while not looking to see it,
not directly;  how
divinely inspired the fall
you’re taking.

And at the bottom,
how imploded.
How wasted the journey
since all you can see
is where you were.

A ruptured bottle
of what may be clear soda
in the middle of the floor
is tantamount to a declaration
of the End Times
if you encounter it
unexpectedly upon returning home.

Search every corner of the house
with a Louisville Slugger
and your uncle’s Marine knife
from World War II, hoping to save yourself
from the Satan, the Antichrist
dressed as local crackhead
or desperate soul awaiting battle and death
though justifiable mayhem on your part;
how the papers will honor you if you do this,
this one allowable kill.

But there’s nothing, no one here,
and you’re forced to conclude
it was some feat of nature
that dropped and burst the bottle,
or perhaps it was the cat making mischief.

You drop and tug the bewildered cat close,
your weapons on the floor behind you,
heart askew with relief
and regret. You soak up the regret
with the cat held close, returning yourself
from the killing field.