One of the deep
moments that keeps itself
face up in the memory bed,
asleep but ever-stirring, threatening

to open its eyes and fix me
like a bug on its pin:

the time I killed the squirrel
on the front lawn after
its mauling by the big stray mutt
we all hated. I pulled

a good strong knife and slashed
once then twice over the tooth-mashed throat,
saw the spurt, saw it relax at once;

then I reached for a stone
and nailed that dog in the ribs
and it took off howling with me howling
after it, running it off, its shallow flanks
pumping ahead of me too fast
to catch.

I do not fear the memory
for its horror,
but for its delights —
its promise of deus ex machina,
its flavor of massacres, camps,
and gallows blessed by others.

Its tang of permission.

When you pontificate
to your chosen or found audience,
offering advice,
opining that the listener
should “do one thing every day
that scares you,”
you use the statement
to draw the attention away
from your shaking hands.

Getting up scares you.  Coffeemaking
scares you. Being naked in a shower
scares you.  Clothing yourself
post-shower scares you. Conversation
scares you.  Eating with others scares you.
Sex scares you. Sleeping
scares you, until you’re lost to it.

That dark thrill of a catchphrase
offered as entertainment or uplift
disguises how fearful and careful
you’ve become, how little
you can find in your day-to-day
that makes you calm.  

But you keep saying it, doing it.
“Do one thing everyday that scares you.”

What you’re talking about
is unclear.  You mean it, that’s
obvious; you reach for it,
the effort is visible, palpable
to the watchers.
You wrangle
something out of the air
and hold it
till it stops squirming.  
But what is it?
Can you even name it?  
Is it big enough for a label? 

I think all you want
is to be in control of some fleeting thing
in the middle of your steady chaos.
To keep from pissing your pants
long enough to pretend
that this is good enough for now.

It’s a magic spell.
It conjures a drug.
A hospice drug.

On the cliff above Long Pond
standing well back from the edge
to defeat my natural desire to fly
and my natural tendency to fall,

my natural longing to be the next
in the historical record, the next 
big item in the local paper, the next
small article in the regional news section

of the big-city paper,
the next completed form
in the state’s file of recent deaths. 
That’s what I’m protecting myself from —

posterity.  As long as I hang back
I’m safe.  Not a soul will ever know 
I was here.  I’ll be just one more pair
of feet on the trail leaving a small,

near-untraceable trace.  I came here
for the sense of smallness gained
by standing high above the much larger
world.  I came here to forget myself

and now I’m consumed with the threat
of becoming much more; perhaps I can regain
that diminishment by inching closer,
closer…trying to disappear…

Watching the parade
automatically
I mistrust

the clergyman
walking amongst 
a crowd of children
in the parade;

the admiral
speaking of sacrifice 
from the podium;

the policeman
approaching the kids
holding the Puerto Rican flag
on the sidelines;

the politician waving
and shaking hands
along the route.

I’m wrong
to suspect automatically
that nothing is what it seems,
but after all

this is 
an all-American holiday, and I’m
a Yankee Doodle Dandy,

Yankee Doodle
do or die.  I grew up
with an erratic uncle and
I wasn’t born yesterday.

I’m wrong
to automatically suspect
anyone of anything but

isn’t it just as wrong
that mistrust has so often been
well founded, cheapening
my honest Yankee Doodle joy?

Legacy
communicates
through being
entirely what it is:
it has no need to speak
of itself, it does not need
interpreters, it has no desire
to be explained, it stands there 
and says nothing, maybe it beckons
a bit, but no more, stands there mute
demanding nothing except acceptance, 
contains revelation, offers complexity and
shadow along with illumination, tells no story,
the pyramid of its existence is its entire message,
complete, allows entrance without a map, is sturdy, 
is cool to the trembling touch of those who would know more
but will not reveal itself unless they are willing to climb it as it is
from broad base to tip-top view down over what has been scaled,
and then it waits for them to say how terrifying that view is, that they’re
unworthy, will build their own with this knowledge – but first, they need to come down.

You allow the hot stream in you
to tear open trash dams  
and pull blood
out of your clogged
and rubbery vessels —
emptying the blue highways that carry flow
back to the heart, the red arteries
carrying flow away from the heart.

Let it speak as it wishes, let the stream
attack and defend, define defilement
of what’s expected, chide the correct,
offer comfort to the addicted
and perpetually unjustly wronged.

This is how you learn
that what is permitted is also
somehow most forbidden in most places:
the undressed and messy view
of the charcoal body
of a prisoner newly released from fire,
the taste of that same fire in the words
once tangled and now unraveling
out of your head.

Let the stream pour from you
into the dirty streets, your blood
and delicious delirium
spreading and pooling,
staining everywhere as redly
as the insides are stained;

let it reveal the truth,
the large Truth
without compromise in image
or substance…let it show
what has been trapped inside you,
the charcoal prisoner’s body
that is now a gray covenant
between you and the jailors
that you’ll not shut up
at all, ever,
never stop accusing them
of negligent surrealism,
of imposing a small outside world
that imprisons the immense inside world
until no one can believe in it
or begin to understand it
without speaking, however poorly,
of how hot it is in there… 

“”Awake” will appear in the Winter 2012 issue of Amethyst Arsenic, www.amethystarsenic.com.”

can you think your way
into art
while feeling your way
past the artists 

can you hear
a keened note
from Miles’ horn
and not feel it
at least a bit
as the whistle-wind of his hand
cutting through the air
to land on a woman’s cheek

can you read Sexton
and not sense that the lessons of torture
which she rendered so delicately
were learned as much
through her infliction of it
as her suffering from it

can you watch Brando
and marvel at his sensitivity
while forgetting
his dead, stunted children

and can you
see through me through my words
and know I’m
a bad, bad boy
as often as I’m
a full-on man 

if you can answer these questions 
at all
no matter how you answer

please
more than glib is owed
to some questions
more than outbursts of disgust
or simpleton indulgence
for the creative process

please
don’t answer easily 
more than that
is owed to these

The lizard of self-loathing
was not looking for food
or shelter.  He sought
something else: your sense
of purpose.

And oh, he was good at it  —
been stealing from you for years.

So, you’ve disguised yourself —
haircut; wardrobe; new glasses, contacts
even; lose some weight,
change your name, set goals, resolve
to be better.  

Next time he drags by your door,
he doesn’t even stop.  Long tail-trail
in the dust behind him
indicating where he’s been —
in your business all these years.

Resentment made you do the work,
dammit; now it’s time to do
the right stuff for the right reasons.
Let the lizard be —  
you don’t need to kill him.

He’s so well-fed and sturdy
you marvel at what he must
have found nourishing in what you
had discounted about yourself.

Time to take stock of that —
you look good, feel good,
see sharply, move quickly.
You’re a hell of a guy
but you’re full of questions:
could you have done this earlier,
could your life have been easier?

Stop with the regrets already — see how
he’s turned to look back, sensing
something on which to feed?

Instead,
call it a new day
and go back to your house.
You won’t have to see him again
if you don’t want to. 

He began by admitting
its appeal, admitting
that the mere whiff of it
would so often shank
his more outlandish
fantasies,
and that he was kind of
in love
with the sight
of all that green blood.

He invited in
and gave it a bath
in salt water.  Dumped
a whole shaker into
a pan and slipped it in.

The next time
he imagined a rogue elephant
trampling his nemesis,
he let it in to the room,
set it up
on a little stand, a lap desk
perhaps, and listened
as it advised him
how to really get over
on all that bother.

He’d plod by the closet
where he kept 
the ritual vestments
and resolved to hit up Goodwill
for some worn Dickies
and green workshirts
before the next service.

It took a little while, 
but he got a real job.
Gave up the fire harvesting
and the raising of gryphons
for their talon dust.
Started
punching in and measuring time
in clicks and increments,
rather than in depth and flow.

Once he was stable,
he’d get home from work every day
and coo all night to the little one.
C’mere, my baby, my spreadsheet,
my Reddenbacher bag, he’d say.
C’mere and flue me, grue me, do me,
backbend screw me till I don’t want
the weird ever again.

You think: hey, I’d never be happy like that.
If you say that to him, now, he’ll say:

don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.
Try it first and then knock it: I recommend that.
It’ll open up like a door
to another door, exactly the same
as the previous one.  
I haven’t gone through that one yet,
but I anticipate pretty much
the same thing will happen,
and you wouldn’t think so,
but it’s kind of a relief.
I’m kind of in love with it.