Suck it up —
you aren’t anointed.
You shit like anyone else.
More, probably,
you eat so much that’s bad for you —

fuck indiscriminately
(though you won’t admit it)
or base your choice in partners
on the same chemicals
the rest do —

not so hot on the evolution of thought —
you buy the same ideas
your friends bought —

and oh how pretty
your conceits and paradigms
look in the reflected light
from others’ eyes —

Suck it up, all of it,
all you bother with
is as much insult as exaltation —

and the roses
know more than you
and smell better too —

I think I see a prejudice
peeking out, a bias or two
set up to support the lifestyle —

you’re just a
whatever you are
and you measure up about the same
as the rest of them —

I can’t tell you apart
and I’m the same
so this ain’t sour grapes
as much as it is a loving
awareness that feels
like someone took a sledgehammer
to my shell —

all of us do the same damn dances
and there’s not a damn thing
a damn one of us could do
to change a damn step —

granted,

once in a while there’s a genius
who stumbles well
but you won’t know it
till the genius gets copied
and then we name the stumble
as new dance —

and watch us do that same damn dance —

Suck it up,
you obvious,
you clown crown of clones —

admit it:
nothing new here —

because it’s easier that way

Say a mail carrier
delivers a thick envelope to you
from an unknown sender
and you open it to find pages
of closely spaced handwriting
in another language.
Do you keep it or discard it?

You don’t know enough
and you ask the wrong questions.

Say a sheep you glimpse
from your car window
runs toward the fence,
bleating at you.
Do you stop or keep going?

You don’t see the signs
and you don’t get the messages.

Say a woman walks by you
and hisses you filthy beast
without turning her head
or slowing her progress.
Do you take it to heart or ignore it?

You don’t place it in context
and you don’t think you need to.

Say anything at all
happens to you.
An involuntary trip to Senegal,
the corner store
being robbed as you leave,
a curse hurled your way
from an unfamiliar car. 
Do you imagine yourself changed
or forget that change is inevitable?

You don’t like any of this
and make no bones about it.

Say there’s a name for you
and you won’t answer to it
no matter how often you’re called.
Do you recognize it as yours,
or do you simply not care to respond?

In tenth-century Arab Andalusia
under Abd-ar-Rahman the Third,
poetry took the place
of newspapers and poets
sang of everything
from the faces of God
to the price of mutton.
While the rest of Europe lay dark and stony
in thrall to iron Church singularity,
Cordoba rang with Jewish and Christian songs
as the muezzins roused others to prayer
with Arabic.  Spain as we know it today
was being born,
someone was listening to all of this
while looking at an oud
and inventing the guitar,
everywhere the gardens were light
and filled with splashing water,
palaces were cool
and open,
the streets were tingling with ideas…

and now,
it’s all we can do
to look at one another.

Two hours into the daylight
and I’m still hunting A Beast
Apparently Too Stubborn
To Be Taken.

Considering, therefore,
a return to bed for an hour
or two.  There’s potential refreshment
in that casual, temporary death

that may lead to sharper tools.
Certainly, there’s no point
in watching the news and sipping
mediocre coffee; no inspiration

in there for further effort.  The Beast
thrives on a diet of unconsciousness
and rejection.  If I offer these to him
as bait, he may come shyly forward

and lie down that I may take him
and tame him.  That’s such hard work.
While I may appear slothful
to the uninformed,

It takes such measures
to grind away
a pursuit that kills
as much as it enlivens.

It only looks easy
because all most people see
is the tamed Beast.  Only hunters
understand what it takes to tame him.

Often I dream of fetuses:
sentient, amazed at the prospect
of soon having new material to work with
when they themselves dream.

Of their aborted kin they say nothing,
understanding that sometimes,
dreams are not meant
to come true.

They focus instead upon
the dark ocean
that is all they know.
They don’t care for discussions

of genocide or choice, see
such topics as issues for a less
all-encompassing world. 
Particulars, they say; details

we don’t care to address
until we’ve gotten out and lived a little
and had a chance to understand
the meaning of the word “dichotomy.”

If the ones who did not have a chance
to make it to that point were here,
they’d likely say the same.  But they’re gone
and that’s that.  We don’t know about them,

say the fetuses. 
Wherever they’ve gone
they’re probably waiting for their own moment
of emergence, and like us they probably don’t see

the point in debating
the merits of life versus death.  That’s an issue
for later. We’ll let you do the fighting while we float
and until we’re out of here somehow, assume nothing

of what we would say if we could speak.

Snow falls to the ocean
and vanishes,
like the line between
sky and sea.

Division, an illusion;
all is water.

I’m on the beach
and that seems a hard line,
but then I see water oozing
from around my shoes.

When the mountains rose,
they were sea-floor. 
When a fault
splits with a dark rumble,
ground water fills the gap.

I’m the guest here,
full of water.  I’ll melt
eventually and release it all.
When I am part of the sea,
the great water,
it will be unremembered
that I ever was separate,
that I ever participated
in the illusion.

Out of control
from the bees who’ve nested
in your glove

Fling it off then reach
with a bloated hand for the doorknob
to get out of there

Bypass
the kitchen sink
the cold water and antiseptic

Run to the easel
Try to paint the flinging
and the urge to do it

Call it
“Art by accident and misadventure”
It’s crude and fascinating

Makes a splash
Go buy some more gloves
and try to replicate it

Stick your hand in a hive
over and over again
React in paint

The word “pain”
makes up the greater part
of the word “paint”

Some days
it’s the whole word
and the whole world

The chase, he says, the chase is
what’s most exhilarating. 

Try it,
if only for the weediness of it —

how it leads you
from the trimmed lawns
and edged paths
out to the cattails
left neglected by the waterside,

out into the weeds and mushy ground
where you’ve always wanted to seek things out.

Try it, like you would
a rollercoaster.
It’s the loveliest fear by far
that you might lose yourself
in the wonder of what might happen
if a bolt comes loose or a memory
breaks rogue-free
while you’re out there.

Try it,
I’ve opened my hand to you, he says.
Take it,
or don’t;

the moment of choice,
of knowing there is a choice
and agreeing to choose,

will be more important than what you actually choose.

pretended indifference
to what the tree sheds on my car.
in truth, rage as comprehensive

as any felt toward evil
or avoidable tragedy, which
is the same.  no filter

for fault.  it’s all my fault —
parking the car there, my fault
because I can’t afford a garage.

my fault the weather that kills
and floods and refuses to quench thirst.
my fault darfur.  something will pay

and it’ll likely be me.  my fault too,
that: self-destruction a sin, an incurred cost
of doing my business.  those maple wings

aren’t going anywhere except
between me and my hairshirt.  same with
words regretted, actions untaken that led

to trouble — between itch and rash
they go and when i keep quiet in spite of
the insane sensation i know it shows

on my face and my fingers
and the twitching of my cheek. pretended
indifference fooling only me. everyone else

knows i’m bugging and all because
nature and i are at war because
i can’t tell the difference between us.

Charging the phone,
keeping the windows open.

The cold air, the light snow.
First coverage of the season,
and it won’t last long into tomorrow.

The phone not ringing this late:
both a bad and a good thing. It’s waiting,

and I’m waiting for the snow to fall and then melt.
I keep the windows open a crack.  Might
hear a person calling

from out in the snow, where sound gets crisp
and carries far.  Phone’s on, windows are open:

it’s cold, snowing, and the night
is breathless.  I’m huddled here waiting
for something, someone.  A good thing.

Lock me down for the night
in the ghost’s house.  I’ll come out
in the morning and tell you everything.
I’ll explain the halting voice
that reaches peak whisper-rasp
in the ears of the scoffing father.
I’ll explain the knocking doors
that stick rock chopsticks
in the mother’s head. 
I’ll tell you all about
what the youngest child stares at
through the slats in his hell-closet.

Lock me down for the night
in the ghost’s house
and I’ll come out and tell you
how easy it is to raise the dead.
The unfinished business of rickety attachment
is what keeps them jerky and repetitive here,
monotonous and bored within these walls.
Nothing in there’s got an ounce of harm
in any ectoplasmic bone it shakes
as it strolls partway down the halls
and back again.  

Lock me in with them
and I’ll come out and tell you: 
I lived through worse
a long time ago when I was a kid like yours,
the one who lives here now, and what he fears most
isn’t the dumb ghost who’s hung on so long here,
but the one he might become if he doesn’t figure out
how to get past your fright and fear and learn to live.