Less than fifty miles from here,
nearly all of the people I love 
are waking up too early
or going to bed in daylight
and everyone’s talking,
talking, talking…about poetry.

In the back yard the big oak
is mute, showing alternate stripes
of wet mud-dark and dry sandy-light bark
to the world — evidence
of another thunderstorm
well-weathered…

this early,
this neighborhood’s 
damn near silent,

except for this poem.

What was saved:
our ephemera.  What was lost:
trusted, enduring granite basics
that, somehow, wore away.

We’d long been
idiot kings who enjoyed
the thrones
for as long as we had them,

then scrapped them
for firewood and
short cash.  Now,
sitting with the remnants,

I wonder: what was it
we thought we were ruling?
Sovereigns of vapor and paper,
lords of all we purveyed,

now that the stock’s
played out, the shelves emptied,
who could say what it all meant?
I stare at the petty archives

and tell myself that somewhere,
what was lost is still carved in rock
everlasting.  I love that kind of lie;
it’s familiar as anything I’ve ever believed.

1. The Tao Of Our Meat

The Meat that can be known
is not the true Meat.

The best Meat does not attack.
The superior Meat succeeds without violence.
The greatest Meat wins without struggle.
The most successful Meat leads without dictating.
This is intelligent non aggressiveness.
This is called the mastery of The Meat.

We turn Our Meat to make a vessel,
but it is on the space
where there is nothing
that the usefulness of the Meat Vessel depends.

Our Meat is fluid, soft, and yielding.  But Our Meat
will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield.
As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding
will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.
This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.
The Soft Meat is the Strong Meat. 

Our Meat is difficult to govern
because it has too much knowledge. 

Wonder into wonder;
existence opens…

2. The Art Of Our Meat At War

All warfare is based in Our Deceptive Meat.

To know your Enemy,
you must become your Enemy’s Meat.

All men can see these tactics
whereby I conquer The Meat,
but what none can see is the strategy
out of which victory over Meat is evolved.

There is no instance of a nation’s Meat
benefitting from prolonged warfare.

If you know your enemy’s Meat
and you know your own, 
you need not fear the results
of a hundred battles.

If you know your own Meat
but not the enemy’s,
for every victory gained
you will also suffer a defeat.

If you know
neither the enemy’s Meat
nor your own,
you will succumb in every battle.

Wonder into wonder;
existence opens…

3. In Our Own Words, Our Meat

Wonder into wonder,
existence opens…

The Meat rises from the bed,
throwing off the covers.

The Meat moves the day
as it moves Itself.  
Whatever distance we move,
this is the distance moved
by Our Meat.

What does it profit us
to gain our souls
but then lose, forget, and evaporate
from within
Our Meat?

Explorer, adventurer,
nose for past and eye for future,
and yet, the present tense of Our Meat
is too often kept from us,
as if it were spoiled and poisonous,
and we are its jailors.

Where the Meat
is honored,
there we most easily find ourselves,
raw and ready; and

wonder into wonder,
there is where existence opens…

If it twists, it twists.
Say so, twist
with it and near it
and follow how it turns.

If it’s straight, do
the same; slide down it
in a long shout of joy for the ride.

If it’s broken,
see it broken.  See it
in pieces or still hanging
together though shattered.
See it, say it.  Don’t move
to repair it until
you can say it is broken.

If it is whole, say that;
no flaw or fracture to mention
needs to be created.

If it’s wrong, it’s not
right.  Admit the
flaw and speak to it,
coax it out, let it be
as ugly as it is.  Some ugly
you can smooth, some
you can’t, but you won’t know
until you look closely
and describe, almost endlessly,
the hideous nature.

And if it is beautiful?
Don’t be constrained
by the overused word —
holler.

As for yourself:

admit the smooth, the torn,
the twisted, the plain,
the ugly and the lovely
are all there.  You’re
not the beast alone, not
the angel either; no devil
without a saint by his side,
no splintered bone left
unscrimshawed and made
into new beauty.  Stagger
past your failed masterpieces
into the hall where your friends
await you with food and drink,
and no false modesty.  

Admit
what’s there and real and
true.  True
is all that matters. 

If I had fur
I’d at least be soft
to the touch
even if there was still
broken glass and shrapnel
under my skin

Caressing
would be ever
an option
as it is not now
Cuddling
would be
accessible
as it is not now

But I have no fur
I’ve rolled and rolled and rolled
in so many sharps
you can’t see my skin
I am not
easily lovable 
cannot be held 

If I seek fur
now it’s only by
the only way I know
hunting
killing and skinning
bullet and knife
and blood spent
in the search for a warmer
hide

but no one loves
the hunter
who comes home soaked in blood
no matter
how soft he now appears

so why bother
live instead spined and ragged
with cuts and scars
and if no one comes to stroke me
all for the good 

You’ve got
the happy house
I’ve got the shed in back
the one that’s out of sight

I’m the bullet
you need to chamber
the one you’re afraid to load
I’m your dog in the fight 

Call me menthol eyedrops
so I can clear your sight
It’s gonna hurt
but I will make you see cold

I let them steal my warmth
so they’d leave yours alone
Call me crazy, un-patriotic
I was born to be rolled

but I can take it —
I do the wet work so you
don’t have to — 
God loves drunks, fools, and me

when I’m the roar from your gut
The handyman of rage and impotence
transformed into drill sergeant
shock trooper, born free,

agent at the iron gates
of thieves and cutthroats
You get the happy house
I get the shed out back —

no one wants to live here with me
on the dirt floor and the thorn bed
under the sheets you discarded
your dinner candles down to their last wax

your crusts of bread and your graywater
You may not come out to say hi too often
but let something go wrong and here you are
not quite begging me but the message is clear

You want me to be the bullet in your chamber
You don’t like what you see with your freezing eyes
You’re scrambling for a dark foothold
The steps are slippery and you hate being here

Cut it short
Get back in the house
and light a good fire
I’ll be back in a second

shiny and slick
Dim and brutal
As nice as a good chef’s knife
used in a way you hadn’t reckoned

but knew was necessary
And when you ask me if I’m happy
Or if I’ve done the all-American thing
and at least pursued happiness as I wished

I’ll look at your house and that big fire
before I turn on my heel and go to my shack
You don’t get to ask that
You don’t get to know what I yearn for, what I’ve missed

by knowing that I was meant for this —
you in the happy house, me out back
You safe and sound, me the spent shell in the chamber
with cold eyes and chattering regret

that sounds like a bass guitar and snapping percussion
like the knots blowing up in your fireplace
like the sound of your feet hitting the floor
after each pop and report from the ashes you lit

I’m your spent shot and your guttering candle
Your easy to call on and hard to reject
Your cousin, your brother, your dirty old uncle
in the shack where you send me when you try to forget

Afterward, when I’ve grown soft
and lie back intact but somehow torn,
waiting for the stitching of sleep
to begin,

I let the wind into me
upon drifting off and it blows
across all my thoughts, my decisions
large and small, stirring them, letting them

fall back not quite where they were
but close enough, shifting them just so
I can tell they’ve been moved, letting me know
I’m alright, nothing’s so out of place

it can’t be set right, or is in fact right
as it is, yet I can tell they’ve moved
and thus reconsider them, not regretting
anything but seeing them again.

That’s the gift of
afterward: it lets you know
you’ve been moved but are safe,
and falling asleep is not a terror

as it is most nights, but a comfort.