This late snowfall
an afterthought,
though the calendar
still insists otherwise.
Inside me now a refusal
to clear the walk
knowing the temperature
will rise tomorrow.
Is this hope?  Been
so long, I’m uncertain.
It may be instead
surrender, white flag
waved in the white face
of more on top of so much.
Story of my life,
lately, this unwillingness
to negotiate with
relentless
and impersonal events;
I don’t want anything
to happen —
at least, nothing
this cold.

whose graves we choose
to fantasize
the tarantelle upon

is less relevant
than knowing we all
have the deep longing
to dance there

polarity’s
the public target
of disgust
but honestly?
we all love to sin
that light fantastic
we can’t seem to sit still
red, blue
left, right

love that happy dance

how soft the ground
and yielding
how haughty our heels

how good it feels
to be swinging
above them
and they can’t do a thing
about it

the beautiful American word
revenge
is a toe dance of righteousness

everyone’s tapping
some on top
some waiting their turn

but every bastard one of us
wants to dance that dance

It has, it has been
Long Time. Taffy
hours, sweet, rotten
on teeth. 

Has been,
I.  Distinct in
non-sequential
being, my days random keys
not fitting any of a row of
locks. 

Do you crave sense?
Here’s scent, my own
unwashed.  Here’s sight,
hair cropped to mess.
Sound?  Whine
of martyr’s arrows.  Taste?
Regard the taffy hours
and their damage. And
under the fingers,
the lazy stubble.

Has been time
and time again.  Staring
into it, at me.  I,
respect abated in
seconds upon
reflecting.  I,
upstart once, deal
of the week now,
bargain.

Sweet rotten mouth.
Stink of not doing, of being
still. 

Lift every voice, birds
who magnify loss
at each dawn.  Allowing for
natural cessation, slow rundown
of the body, it can’t be long.
Has been long time already.

How much more?
I can’t chew, talk,
anything.  Sit and
slip.  Sit.  Long
Time pulling away
from my bite on it.

I’m never ready for my close-up

that shot that approaches
steadily

moving over the breakfast table
the orange scone decimated on the plate
the coffee pooling around the cheap mug
then ending gently but firmly
in a tight wrap upon my face
full of dark and light patches
and tiny bone-tone flakes
wherever I’ve dried out a bit

Not ready
any morning
for you to see me
so carefully

yet
you do

I endure it

because it happens
so often
and I still can’t believe that

In the greenspring dark,
your foot finds a rock upon which
to trip as the neighbor’s girl

skips on the far sidewalk.
Lying hurt on your belly,
you can’t

get yourself up to go back in.
So you stay.  You stay while the grass
under the moon swallows you.

Her mother calls her in for the night.
Ah well, it’s warm out here. Alone
under the moon in the grass.

There’s a fence, and something moves
along it at the groundline.  Possum,
skunk, no scent carries to you

so something else perhaps.  It stays away.
Maybe it smells you — a stink
of draining health?  It’s cold under

the moon.  You’re on your belly
and hurt.  It’s fine.  Under the greenspring
dark, it’s not hard to consider

ending here among animals
who will eventually draw near
even as the neighbors drift away,

even as you drift away.  By day
it’ll be so easy for them to see you there
on your belly, your last thought

a memory
of a skipping child
and the lowering greenspring dark.

In your house
that’s burning down
a little more every day,
there’s an armored bird

nesting in the couch
you can’t leave.
A war bird, tearing
at you, making you tired.

You can’t distinguish
the days of the week.
It would be so lovely
to sleep well and wake up better.

To lie down and sleep
with the armored bird
is to know you’ll awaken
with cuts.

You don’t even know her name
yet you lie there
and imagine you’ll learn something
from her.

She flies in her sleep, you know;
all night you’ll be scratched
and scraped with the tips
of her steel wings.

When you go to the window
in the morning, the sun
will strike and illuminate
each small wound.

It will be as if
your skin’s become Braille;
lovely reliefs that mean nothing
to the eye, that can only be understood

by touch.  You are longing
to be read, and this is why
you lay with that armored bird
in the first place;

it’s the only way
to make use of her —
let her write upon you
something for another.

Two keys on a rusty ring.
On one key
there is a label:  “Front Door.”
I assume the unlabeled one
is the back door. 

The key labeled “Front Door”
unlocks the back door
as well.  The unlabeled key
unlocks nothing at all
I can find.

I hang the useless key
on a leather thong around my neck,
cold there for a moment
until my skin warms it enough
for me to forget it’s there.

What to do now —

shall I spend the entire day
worrying that the missing label fell off
or the other was misapplied,
thinking about a door I must have missed,
or hovering in the open doorways,
awaiting the imminent arrival
of spring?

Tall thin rack of man
in a cheap dark suit
glides around the room,
ice skater on wood,
not on surface but above.

Fire outside.
Maybe the whole house,
or the whole world.
But I’m cold anyway.

You think this is
“just a nightmare?”

Who’s watching you
at night?  Are you sure
things are not ash
when you sleep
and solid when you wake?
And why are you so attached
to only walking on the floor?

Here, the people abide
by a strict rule of conduct:
“Do whatever you like,
but do not show your work.”

It’s a lovely place,
although the palates of the people
are limited:

the only media allowed for art
are C4
and saccharine.

Observe the homes linked
on a web of cables
and satellite signals.

Between the explosions
and cloying aftertastes,
and with all the enervation
of constant hiding
in spite of relentless connection,
it’s a wonder
anyone’s still able
to move.

At night, one can drive
for hours, listening
to televisions muting
the sound of weeping.

Once in a while,
a child grows up
to break free for a while.
Most of them come back
eventually.  The fates
of the ones who do not
are a mystery to the inhabitants,
even if the kids become famous.

You don’t know the dog show
has been staged for your benefit
and all these dogs represent
people you’ve forgotten to thank
for their contributions to your life.

You don’t see that the handlers
in their odd and dowdy suits
are the teachers who brought you
the lessons you needed to learn
and paraded them before you.

You don’t recognize that those shiny coats
and brushed out fur and white hard teeth
are signifiers of crucial junctures
when you worshipped style over substance
and feared the honest chomp of a deserved bite.

All you know is the vague preferences
that stir you. You like the Westie,
the Skye, the Bearded Collie;
you are indifferent to the Toys;
you feel love for the Scottish Deerhound,

and that Viszla reminds you of
moments you were just ahead of Death,
who coursed behind you snapping at your heels
and guiding you to this moment where you
are the dog show watcher. 

You are fur, and breath, and memory.
You are observing effort that you’d never make yourself.
You are badly dressed and amazed and squealing
over animals that seem perfect and at ease when they move.
You wish you’d done something like this with your life.

Forty years of careful use
of a razor down the drain:
one bad swipe took the tiny birthmark
off my jaw, flush with the skin.
It bled for hours, it hurt like hell,
but the worst was yet to come:

the scar that replaced it came back
white and angry and tall, like a whitehead
gone rogue, screaming to all:
“Unclean! Adolescent! This one
killed his birthright with a blade!
This one has no skill! Ask him
about it! Make him explain it!”

I’d grow my full beard back
and hide it in there
if I thought it would help, but
I know I’d just hear it calling out
that it had been silenced. I’d walk around
mumbling, “shut up! SHUT UP! It was
an accident!” and poking at it buried deep
in the beard. Besides —
the beard these days
would come in full gray
and likely screaming about its own issues,
and one problem like that is quite enough.

So I let the scar stand out there on my jaw
for all to see. I have no idea what others think
it is. To me, it’s a badge, or a dodge
to convince myself I’m not so vain
as to care what others think. But I do.
Oh, I do. And I hate that in me,
how afraid I am of the voice in my jaw
that tells the world I screwed up. It was just a birthmark
but when I think about how that slip
has changed the way I see myself in the mirror,

it might as well have been an eye.

What do you mean,
your country?
I live here, it’s mine too…

then you explain how the borders of your country
are underground hip-hop and authors
I’ve never heard of.

Ridiculous, I say —
this country is Brit-fueled blues rock
layered in martial arts films —
and out at the border, they’re showing a spaghetti Western.

An eavesdropper says we’re both wrong

and this country smells
like a manger at its heart
with a general store owner
sweeping the borders daily
to keep them nice and clean.

Another says it’s a renovated storefront
full of screaming bands who have put meat
off their plates and out on the border
to rot where the sun can fall upon it.

Wrong, says a patient woman;
this is the country of betrayed pigments
and all its borders converge
on the Middle Passage.

A man who might be Indian, might be Latino,
maybe both, is raising his hand to speak
but he’s clearly from beyond another set of borders
so we don’t recognize him
although he protests that he’s been waiting and waving
for a very long time.

On the television there’s a woman who proclaims
that the border is right here, right outside
the studio, and her country is mint truffles
and Merlot, and sweet tunes from a Broadway stage.

A neighborhood warden says he never watches television
and that is perfection, since the borders keep spilling
through the screen.

And someone says: this is not my country
yet, I carry mine everywhere with me
and the borders are no more distant
than the edges of his pockets.

Your country, I hiss at them all,
is no country.  That echoes longer
than I would have thought it might;

how loud those words seem,
how much they stand out in the conversation,
as if they’ve never been uttered before
although it seems like it’s all anyone is saying.

Space

is mentioned in a conversation.

As in, “I need space.”
As in, “Give me space.”

As in the room will be expanding
to hold a continent
and incredibly powerful telescopes
will be needed to see
each other when we’re in
the same room.

As in voices
needing to build
to supervolcano
to be heard.

As in the stars
over there where
the television
used to be.

As in no air,
gamma rays,
asteroids
and absolute zero.

As in
how far away
other life
may be, if
it exists at all.