Ready now
for red or gray dawn,
warm or cold day,
rain or sun, dark or
lit night.

I’m holding my face
forward.  What’s behind
stays behind — recalled
but unwatched.  I’ve seen
enough of it.

Fly by me, all you
winged things; crawl by,
all manner of snakes and
creatures; swim by, eels
and carp and bottom feeders.

The path behind me’s
closed, and just ahead
this one’s impenetrable.
I will be scarred, and scratched,
and die up there in the thickets.

That’s the glory of the passage —
that it is forged and cut
by those who know it leads
to an ending and an unknowable home.
Homeward bound: tied tight

to the need to reach it,
I will step out not looking
to either side.  Not seeing,
in fact.  Not hearing or speaking.
All I’ll be doing is walking home.

Stack your hardest imaginings
into a forest.  Let go of the illusion
that they may become something
you intend.  They’ll grow and change
until you will not know them
as your own.  You’ll be lost in them.

Stack your electronics into a wall.
Stand behind it.  Live
behind it.  Here’s the coal to run it,
hear it firing its synapses into
your own.  Long arcs
carry half-formed dreams
through the smoking air.
You toss fuel into the blaze.

Stack your clothes neatly
on the bed.  Don’t ever put them
away.  Leave them in piles
where you can see them because
the closets and drawers are so full
they may as well be empty, you don’t
go there much.  Naked’s a wardrobe
too, though not one you’ll recognize.

Stack yourself on top
of others into an orgy.  You’ll 
shuffle often enough to stay
comfortable and fulfilled
until you catch yourself kissing
your own arm, thinking it belongs
to another.  You’ll say, did I not do this
to avoid this happening?

Stack, stack, stack.
Pile up what you have.
See how high you build,
no mind to stability.  This is
so America, so World,
so much a Global heap,
see words disappearing
in there, words like
solitude, fringe of sea pearls,
oysters, eagles, vision quest,
unencumbered.  You mute
in it. 

Made clear:
you see a box with a check mark in it
on my face
whenever you look at me.

I run my hand
over my forehead —
it feels as it always does.
When did I get this?

I don’t see it, myself,
when I look in the mirror.
Perhaps I’m
selectively blind?

Or perhaps the check box
is so large I can’t feel it
because all of me is inside?
That may be.

Maybe I made the check
in the box with every word
and deed, and all you’re doing
is reading it.  Or perhaps

there’s no box on me at all
and the image is burned
into your eyes and brain
so that when you look at anything

you see it and judge accordingly?
It’s not hard to want to believe that.
It certainly would take the pressure off of me
to believe that,

which is why I’m doubly pressured
to scrub myself as hard as I can
until I bleed before I go out
into the world,

and why I am still uncertain,
and cowardly. I may not see it,
but I can feel that I’ve turned myself
into a scab just for you.