I am
packaging.  I was
all the wrapping
my Inside needed,
and now that it’s gone,
I’m trash.  

If you pick me
up I’ll mutely honor you
for putting me in 
a proper receptacle — either
a recycling bin or
a garbage can.
Your decision
will be
the right one; no matter
which one you pick
I’ll lie inside it 
shiny and empty
until the time comes
for me to move on,
perhaps to recycling
and flame and reshaping,
perhaps to burial 
in dark, polluted earth.

Either way, you’ll have made
the right choice  —
for I was made 
only to contain
and not to have my own path.

I live, and have lived always
in the service
of another,
and see no reason
to stop now. 

A big blue cheer goes up
over the town when they find
the body of Joey the town drunk
lying on the common at dawn.

“We always knew
it’d end this way,” they hoot.
It’s always grim around here,
so everyone laughs

over such a public death.
They don’t happen often —
the kid cut apart on the North End tracks,
the frozen corpse uncovered

after the snows finally melt.
This one’s no less funny
for having been
so long anticipated.

No more, then, the lopsided mouth
and the ever present crusted briar pipe.
No more the mumbled nosiness
if you were out on the street

too late for his sensibilities.
“Where you going? Too young
for this late, too young,”
and he’d brandish a bottle

of ginger brandy in admonishment.  Irony
was unknown when we were kids
and we’d stay away until we knew
how easy he was to tweak

into incoherent anger.
How easy it was to steal that bottle
and toss it into the bushes
behind the library, and run.

When the word spread that he’d died
sleeping rough, we felt a twinge
of guilt that passed.  The town
wouldn’t be the same without him;

we bent then our seemingly immortal selves
to the task of replacing him.
How could we continue to live here
if there was no unfortunate to jeer,

if there was no Joey to laugh at?
We stared at each other as we passed
the bag, the joint, the mirror,
visualizing briar pipes in each other’s mouths,

wondering to whom
would fall the honor
of being
the butt of the traditional joke.

If you don’t do
what you’re told
as a matter of course,

if you know you heard
the antithesis come out of their mouths
a minute ago,

if you see where
their cards are hidden,
come sit by me.

If saying the right thing
is hemlock on your lips
when the wrong thing is true,

if they’re naked
but pretending to preen
their vaporwear,

if you know the gutpunch
of being self-destructively aware,
come sit by me.

Been there, done that,
bought the hairshirt.
I’ve seen the palms of too many hands

turned toward me, used to rage
at that,  finally said:
someone needs to do this,

it might as well be me
and the few I find
with the stomach for the blow.

We don’t live happy, we don’t
live well or long, but we live
stung and awake all the time.

There’s not much room
on this hard little bench I’ve made,
but it’s got a killer view.

There’s not much to drink
but water and nothing to eat
but hard bread; ah, well.

So if the ones you love most
offend you the most with this crap
because you thought they knew better,

if they spit and kick at you
and call you spare dog, old junk,
ripper of social fabric,

if you look at your hands all day
and wonder why they’re empty
and no one is shaking them anymore,

if you can see clear across the river
to the hallows on the other side
and know that no boat is gonna come for you

with balloons and ponies and a banner
saying “WE MISSED YOU,” and no band
will be playing when you get to the dock,

if you know all this and also know
that nothing’s able to still your disbelief
in the things that are not true,

or your anger at those
who would blind Mercy for others
to save their own righteousness

(even as you have from time to time,
you admit that, you know
you’re as bad as the rest

but you at least take a beat
to consider that before digging
into such tender eyes), if

you are alone right now
and ready to sink from it,
come sit by me.

we saw an upright creature
that did not seem to be a bear

we saw the coils of a serpent
rising, falling on the surface
of the lake

we saw an animal
on two legs
with great wings

we saw an owl
the size of a man
dressed in a business suit

we saw
other upright creatures
with great fortunes
walking among us
as if they were familiar
with how we lived

we saw a yeti
in a cafe
speaking well of Noam Chomsky
while drinking fair trade coffee

we saw money we were owed
in the paws of chupacabras

we saw the Mendes goat
playing dominoes

we saw an equation
that measured Nessie
covering a chalkboard
while a posse of swamp apes
debated its nature

we saw compassionate
border patrols of mothmen
floating over the Rio Grande

we knew these were the legends of old
the monsters of the imagination

we saw in the margins of old maps
the words “here be dragons”
and recognized our surroundings
at once

dirty man
dark as this old house
with a chicken coop tumbled
down back

musty fellow
grime and shabby thought
big round hands
bald eyed and wanting
a shave
a pill
a clean mind
first stoop bound
then through the thin door

if i can get a home
i can get a job
if i can get a job
i can keep a house
if i can keep a house
i can keep chickens
then chickens
will keep me

shard of a man
now in the coop

the small curled feathers
on the gray floor
like shavings from a plane

they made some things here
i could too

squat man
spreads blanket

if i can stay here
i can stay here
if i can stay here
i can stay here
can stay here
if i can
if i can maybe
be home
with chickens
to keep me
keep me
keep a home

I’m not planning on dying
yet — indeed, at all, if I
can help it.  I plan to
cast myself in hollow resin,
build robotic pumps and filters
for the insides,
and stay hooked into the grid
in lieu of having a brain,
memories, human
connection.

I can exist, I think,
without eyes for new beauty
and ears for novel sounds —
I’ve seen and heard quite enough,
thank you.  Food’s
a distraction and a crutch,
so here’s an unregretted good bye
to taste, and 
what my skin has taught me
has been mostly treacherous.

But, oh, the nose —

I don’t know how to 
lose that forever;
I don’t know
how to live
without these scents
that drag up specifics,
that cause recoil and 
draw me into events
and people I would not 
have otherwise known:

a red onion left too long on a plate.
The vague odor of the trash.
The neck after swimming.
The firepit next door.

How shall I set myself free
of these
without knowing the ends
of the stories?

Stay strictly
humane — do no
harm.  Gentle
the way through.

Leaper? No,
crawler.  Stay close
on your belly to
soil.  Get stained.
Low eye level
is universal enough.

Believe not in the 
door, but in the hinge. 
Value not the leaving, but
the bag you carry
upon leaving —

stay close to the earth
and see what you make
of the view, the filthy slither
ahead, the gentle
way through.  Do no harm,
especially not
to your self. 

It is hard to fathom
that such soft edges
could draw such a large volume
of blood, but there it is, 
a straight cut perfect line
across the thumb,
spilling red onto the desk.

Paper can be
a most dangerous weapon —
but let’s not go down the route
of discussing bad laws and treaties,
warrants, evil books and screeds.
Those are all beside the point
that begs to be made here:
that those thin sheets
can open skin as easily
and cleanly as any knife.

I’ve done my share of bleeding
from well angled paper.
I’ve felt how much wince
a cut can deliver. 
I’ve done the slightly horrible thing,
pressing the lips of the wound
to make the flow burst and bubble
and drip onto the dropped page
leaving me on it to stay.

I’ve tossed a few of those pages —

but in my notes, in my files,
more than a few remain
with a dirty word or two upon them,
written after they’d dried;

each dated, brown cups
where the droplets fell
rippling the plane of the sheets,
ink laid right over them
describing my cursing, my
hissing expressions of pain,
my self-described idiocy
in plain view there.

Tonight, though,
there was no paper to stain.
The cut came from
something being read,

and so I wiped it up,
and kept on typing,
hoping this is enough
to remind me of the past
when I had visible reminders
of how much this work
can hurt. 

This decade
you adore?
I wasn’t around for it.

I was born in time to see it,
was here for all ten of its years,
but I missed it completely.

Where I was, 
we were living 
differently.  

We didn’t have
the luxury of it.
Didn’t know

the slang of it.
Didn’t wear
the style of it.

Whatever
you loved of it
washed right past us

while we were staying
up late with 
occupying forces

and famines.
We made do,
got by.

We were not
part of
the fabulousness.

So I don’t know
your markers,
your symbols,

your retro chic.
When you say
what I’m wearing

is some geeked out
cool, ghetto
fabulous, hipster

sacred — well,
this is what I brought 
with me to this place.  

I had no idea
that this was
worthy of note;

it’s just some
of the little I saved.
So be it, then.  Well and good.

But I cannot help
but think that 
had you been present 

in my decade
instead of yours,
these words you use

to explain old clothes
would not be part
of your vocabulary now.