He started young and early on he’d sold a few
to postcard shoppers or doctors
decorating their offices;
those impressed by neatness
and purity rendered without soul.

He kept painting right up
to the beginning of the war.
Small works — church walls,
ruins, architecture, cheap furniture,
humble homes and shops and such.

One curious fact: all those houses,
all those chimneys, and only now and then
a puff of smoke visible
in any scene, as if he was saving
his best renderings of it for his masterpiece.

Sometimes, the question’s raised:
would he, would the world have been different
had he had more talent or been more
validated as a genius or a true artist?  It doesn’t matter
if there’s an answer to that.  He painted

and failed at it,
then died in the dark
with critical bombs falling around him,
in the way that all monsters die;
most artists die that way as well.

We gawk at his work still.  We seek its provenance
and authenticity, preserve and hawk
its curious value, tell ourselves stories
about his lack of merit, how much a rankless
amateur he was — and yet, the works still sell.

This egg hates the color blue, 
this one smells of television innards.  
This one honors all equally,
this one is resolutely green.
This one is a rant of disabling fervor… 

What to make of this?
They say if you want an omelette,
then you must break eggs;
I must want an omelette. 

I’m so proud of the eggs I’ve broken so far!
The egg full of the love of music, that enjoys the guitar;
the egg that can’t love as well as it wants, that yearns for more;
the egg that falls on ice skates, the egg that kneels to pray;
the egg dumbfounded before the coast of Maine;
the egg on the floor that I will have to clean up;
the egg that proved to be fertilized, which I’m mourning now.

All of it goes
into the big blue chipped ceramic bowl
that’s my hand me down mama’s boy
only relic.  Big soup of yellow
and clear bits and spheres.  
Sticky stringy,
but everything’s there…
now, if I only had herbs, fine cheeses,
a stove, a pan, fire, utensils,
a plate, silverware, 
napkins, and an appetite,
I’d be ready to begin.

I’m a big blue messy bowl
and I’m cracked through.  I can feel
me leaking.  All those broken eggs
all over the last clean surface in the house,
and not a stove in sight,

but I still want my omelette,
I still want to make something
of all these shattered embryos
before I break from the frenzied beating,
before they spill, and spoil, and are lost.

Triangulating
among two cities
and a desert:  where I have lived,
where I want to live.

The city by the sea;
the city in the central hills;
the desert far away
which I cannot deny still pulls.

I stay where I am,
trisected.  Here is where
I make my stand: not 
whole but contained,

feeling the parts straining
under the tug of all my possible
homes.  I won’t ever really belong
anywhere, I think.

They tell you it’s good
to put down roots, but
some roots work best ungrounded,
constantly sensing what’s on

the wind.  That’s me, I guess:
the air plant.  The one that grows
even with a tenuous hold on place.
The one that got away.

They’re killing poets in Bahrain,
cutting out their tongues in Yemen.
Things like that are always happening.

It’s not the first time it’s happened,
won’t be the last.  It seems a habit
in some places,

while here in the good old USA,
we are ignored, on occasion vilified —
or just as often, commodified.

Those dead remain poets after their deaths.
When we suffer what we suffer here,
can we say the same?

Box full of red paper
in a pile in the spare room.
It held a good gift once
and now it’s a paper box holding

red paper and nothing else.
Maybe it’s waiting for a new gift.
Maybe it remembers when it held
a promise of joy.

I put the box full of red paper out on the floor
and let the ferret attack it, climbing in and out,
shredding the paper,
delighting in the mild destruction.  

After I return her to her cage
to sleep and twitch in her dreams, 
I do not think I am imagining
that I can see the box still quivering.

an older man bought a mustang, a horse,
hoping it might bring him
a recalled wildness.  he owned fine
tack, rode well, but one day fell off, gladly
breaking himself.  did not ride again
but kept the horse and the tack.
did not regret his wheelchair
much. sat and spoke softly to the horse
through the fence of the paddock.
stroked the saddle and ran the bridle
through his hands when no one was looking,
was always smiling.

another older man
bought a mustang, a car.
he sought the spirit of
the high school backseat
he never had.  looked
like a fool driving it carefully
between the lines. died
with no one to leave it to.
it was sold to a child
who drove it dumbly thinking
he was all grown up now.

the mustang: the horse,
the car, the symbol. sexy
as fast can be.  potent
as only that which can be
controlled with some effort
can appear. its name
is an artifact.  its chromed
profile on a medallion
is an artifact as is the car
upon which the medallion
appears, as are

its riders, its drivers
who bear its power
like a badge
until they become the badge
themselves. 

Lonely
is bootless
in late spring snow.

Happy
is bootless on asphalt
in highest August. 

Chagrinned:
where are the boots
I left here?

Angry:
bootless but charging
the armed line leveling
their weapons. 

Sad is bootless
on a city street, guarding
against the heavy tread
of blindly walking hordes. 

Bootless
is human.  Bootless
is how we begin, how
we end 

awed by the universe:
falling down bootless
under the stars in any season,
careless of mood. 

If you are a native
speaker of digital
or
if you were born analog 
and learned digital
or even
if you’re analog still
pure
analog

no matter what
I’m still your people,
your people, don’t leave me,
don’t leave me,
please don’t go away

if
when Jay-Z and Kanye are mentioned
the room glows neon gold
for you
if
when KRS-One and Chuck D are mentioned
the room glows fire-red warm
for you
but
if Mutubaruka is mentioned
if Blowfly is mentioned
if Linton Kwesi Johnson 
or Lee Scratch Perry are mentioned
and you find yourself sitting in the dark
they’re still your people, your people;
you can know them, your people, your people;
don’t leave them, leave them, your people,
please don’t go away…

There is nothing easier 
than ignorance
in this country
that enables ignorance
as a point of pride

I spent the 80s ignorant
of Michael Jackson
When I say this
people are amazed

It was easy

Easy enough to disappear left of the dial
into an alternative punk rock
world music classical folk-friendly hole
where it was required that you sneered
at what everyone else was doing

Segregation 
was easy there
Still is

So don’t leave me, don’t leave me
I’m still your people, your people
Please don’t go away

Let’s play a game
You say one thing, I’ll negate it
At the end we’ll see who wins

You say
Kerouac 
I say  
co-opted rebellion
You say Bukowski
I say
drunk
I say
Watchmen
you say
unwatchable men
I say 
Geronimo
You say
bin Laden
You say
baseball
I say 
what the hell is that

And someone will validate you
And someone will validate me
And we’ll find boxes where we can hide

but don’t leave me, don’t leave me
I’m still your people, your people
Please don’t go away

above all
the quietest division
that we are not the same
at all
that we are unique and suffering
and ecstatic
each unable to understand each
each unable to speak to each
generations and communities juxtaposed
and bound away from touching
because we each say we do not know
the truth of the other side
or deny the truth on the other side
we are more than our pop culture
my trivial penstroke is your vital document
your passionate gold is my aluminum trinket

please
don’t go away
because there is a gulf between us
please
don’t go away
because they don’t teach swimming around here
please
don’t go away
my people
I reach for you
you’re a sight for blind eyes
please 
don’t turn away

A prayer of full love
is a prayer aware
of flaw, perfection,
shade, sex, and 
skin.  It is solid —
sweet as agave nectar,
firm as rose-pink fruit:

and it is particular. So

when we speak
in adoration of being, of voice,
can we dismiss such details as
the gender of gums
and the way in which 
they hold
teeth, form words,
support
the bite? 
Is blood clear
when it pours from those
wounded
in struggle?
Is there
any satisfying hymn
to bones
that praises them for strength,
but does not note
their appearance?

When I hold my arms out to you —
colorful,
fleshy, ripe
for complete embrace;
when I take you in the same way,
the whole of you
for my sustenance, and I offer
my whole as well…

when this hymn is sung,
it is sung for the details.

1.
Inside little Johnny’s head, what were once
“learning experiences” are being remodeled
into “failures” and “mistakes.”
That’s not his head’s fault;
you might blame his parents
or peers or even his teachers for it.
And in a few years, someone will. In fact,
affixing blame for what goes on in Johnny’s head
is going to be a national pastime
a couple of years from now.

2.
The man in the yellow shirt
is not a suspect in the disappearance
of the young mother.  At least,
not right now he isn’t.  Give it time.

3.
The combination of long term consumption
of particular brands of pickles — sour or dill — 
and tap water from old municipal pipes
causes virulent cancers.  No researcher
is ever going to discover this. 

4.
As a symbolic gesture in the fight
for equality,
we’ll eventually give up
numbering things — why commemorate
what came first?

—

A lonely man
is going to write some poems.
Another lonely man
is going to read those poems
and say, “That guy
really gets me.”  
One day they’ll meet
and their loneliness
will form a black hole.
Everything they know will disappear
into that hole,
which will be renamed
“a school curriculum.”
It will be widely used,
and will be in use
at the school little Johnny —
you must recall little Johnny —
will attend.  
Little Johnny will like the lonely black-hole poetry
and will write some lonely black-hole poetry 
of his own. Some of it will eventually be published
in a psychological journal, and on the front page
of The New York Times.