Ninety minutes into
a prairie, a desert,
an ocean.
Found
in the middle of each:
safety, a breach
in the routine protocols
of fear.  Out there,
it’s one fear all at once,
one fear of losing
oneself in such space —
such a relief from
daily death by small
cuts.

I can’t climb
so I stay away from mountains,
can’t fly
so I stay away from sky —

but I can plod
and I can drift
so I go ninety minutes
into a prairie, a desert,
a sea

and bask in One Fear
until all others
are lost, burned,
or drowned.

The guitar I took from Grandpa’s closet
is nearly 80 years old. The strings
can’t be much newer; I never saw
or heard him play, what with the
arthritis and all.

Guitars are not like violins:
they peak and fail after a time.
There’s no such thing
as a three hundred year old
perfect player; their voices fall
into wisps of their former roar.

Gramps was like that too, or so I’m told;
numbers runner, bookie, bootlegger
in the secret room downstairs. We found
a small revolver flocked green with corrosion
in a grape crate after he was gone, pulled
strips of paper with forgotten debts
from crannies in the stone walls. Hard to imagine
what he must have been like, since all I knew of him
was the wheelchair, the voice so crusted with emphysema
he was barely intelligible, the branch-crooked fingers
and the bottle of Old Grandad next to his bed.

I check out the instrument, get it close to tune,
draw a G-chord from the fragile box. Surprise myself
when the tears come to my eyes. Surprise myself
when I try to recall the melody to “Stagger Lee”
and try to play it though I knew the strings might snap
and cut me if they fly unbridled through the air
into the wet skin of my cheek. Surprise myself
when I say to myself, “I don’t care,” and
keep on puzzling out that old outlaw song.

She
is at last upon
the throne of
comfortable
new.
Formerly
abraded
by wind
and steady
insult, she
imagined
a lotion
that soothed
below skin-
deep, and
it happened.
Others wanted
it, she held it
for her own,
and now she
is on the throne
of comfortable
new skin.
Sometimes,
selfish
heals. Some-
times, it
is not selfish
at all.

All I desired was stuck
in the craw of an angel
masquerading as Crow.
Chased it down, forced Crow
to cough it up, it fell
slippery from my hands
and rolled under an abandoned,
jacked-up car on a seedy side street.
Crawled in on hands and knees to seize it
and it bit me. I recoiled
from blood and pain and watched it
scuttle off toward a church
on the corner. Followed it
at a careful distance
and saw it climb the altar
singing. Fell to my belly
before it and it leaped onto my back
howling in flow and rhyme of
my ignorance. I rolled over
and saw it flee laughing
into the mouth of a thunderbird
and lightning issued from
behind the teeth of the deity.
I despaired of it then
and turned back toward job
and family but it came out
and tugged on my pants leg,
saying, “Have you never understood
that the chase itself
is all you seek?” And it ran
and I ran and ran and it’s always
ahead of me and I am become
the thing itself, that which has been
inside the angel, Crow,
church, fiery bird; a swallowed
transmission from this profane
and sacred earth.

1.
Capture what’s needed, what ingredients you’ll want:

the whisper willow, the ugly bayonet, the atrocity hollow, the blank armor, the stirred charnelhouse floor,
the scent of dandelion leaves rubbed into your own prepubescent skin, the darkling charm of pockets,
the rejected lift in a ballet of sweet arms, the last time you saw home and called it home.

2.
Choose the tool:

the whip, the plow blade, the helicopter, the shotgun, the scalpel, the lion-skin shield, the sextant, the spoon.

3.
Describe the path:

the long, the hop, the stride, the stumble, the windblown, the straightedge, the safecrack, the stonecutter, the sprint,
the border flirt, the beach hike, the pilgrimage, the forced march, the leftover journey, the lost scramble, the armchair.

4.
With tool in hand or mouth,
with ingredients in bowl or pouch,
with path certainly not complete,
with detours assured,
with eyes squinting,
with feet blistered,
with car towed,
with bedtime iffy,
with funds humorous,
with credit stolen,
with distress signal singing in your left lung,
with glory in a hole,
with partner on the sly,

cover ground
until it falls away from you
and all you’ve collected is consumed
in the compost of the miles behind you,

each item having been bent crooked
then hidden from you:

inserted into crevices,
buried in mass graves,
handed off to momentary hobos,
sold for meals,
sent to family for safekeeping;

descriptions carved into stone
and marked for aging
until you are forgotten
and all you carried is all
that anyone recalls when they speak your name.

Sunrise
a mistake, again.

Instant coffee in an old cup —
dishwater taste, faded designs.

Make a taut face in the bathroom,
a blade against my throat.

See this long line in my hand?
A lie, I suspect.

The door a puzzle.
Getting out today?  Perhaps.

Sleep all the way
through the deadly commute.

Ashes on the sleeve.
In exile in the smoking cold.

What did the book say
about my expectations? No matter now.

Tomorrow?
I’m not laughing. I won’t be.

is not that I know
what it feels like when a knife
enters a human body;

it’s that I alone know
which end of the knife
taught me that.

1.
new year
new rules
and no one will tell me
what has changed

2.
that dead preacher
can’t fool me
judged on color or character
I’ll still be judged

3.
a groundhog
is gonna come out later today
and see my shadow
I’ll have six more lives
of winter

4.
presidential eyes
following me
from their bills

5.
there would be whole days
dedicated to mom and dad

6.
damn fireworks
I try to pick those flowers
but they always fade
before I can get to them

5.
how to celebrate labor day
when you don’t work
and haven’t really been born
either

6.
my turkey
has his own axe

7.
why do the christmas bells
have to be so loud?