You’ve been proclaimed
one of that ilk,
the Big Ilk. The sucklers
of The Even Bigger Ilk’s
poison milk who then
soak smaller ilk
with whatever stings.

You’re in all the pictures now.
You’re in all the pictures
you weren’t even alive
to be in. 

In fact,
no one knows what you were thinking
when you walked
against the talk
with the bottle in your hand
as casually as you might at home,

fogging your hedge against wasps.

You’re of that ilk now —
the ones who walk
the talk, even if it’s not
their talk.  Even if
you had a smidge
of heart for the ones
you soaked.

I imagine you at home
not watching the news.
Maybe you take a walk.
Maybe you talk
to the neighbors.  Maybe
they clap you on the back.
Maybe they stand back. 

Maybe you go home
and sit for a while
not talking.  Maybe
you’re just fine, maybe
your eyes well up.

In the pictures
you’re so 
matter-of-fact. So
just do it, so
army of one, so
thin blue line —
maybe at home
you’re someone else,
but you’ll forever be
one of that ilk
in the pictures.

I picture this —
a walk where you don’t
fire, their talk
ignored. No ire
and thus no pictures.
No knowledge, even,
of your name. 

Maybe that’s
what you think about too
while you’re sitting in the dark.

Everything currently going on
has always been going on

What happens on the Silk Road
has never stayed on the Silk Road

What happened on Potosi
is still happening on Potosi and in Boston

and East Willowdale and Basra too
What happens is always happening everywhere

There’s never been a deus ex machina
that didn’t have a machinist behind it

Everything going on right now
has always been going on

There have always been 
palaces and shackles

There has always been
a remembered/imagined wilderness

as a source for cautionary taletelling
Everything is the moment as always

No wars fought for untested reasons
No poverty not impressed from above

Everything going on is always going on
Every moment a syllable of a common language

All that’s new is that we can see it all now
as one moment

which is why it’s so hard to see it
as one moment — we have no practice in that

and it’s why we’re sitting relatively still
and quiet as the moment surges along

observing the entire Flood at once
and hoping we maintain our sanity

The revolution proceeds
in sunlight
and morning cold.

Its exhaled cloud
is rising freely while mine,
condensing indoors, costs me dearly.

I’d consider losing 
more than a few coins
and heartbeats

for the wherewithal
to get out there
into the open air

where the action is.
But instead I’m here
because I have to be.

I tell myself if I can hold my breath a while,
something will change;
the bills will shrink, the accounts

will swell.  I’ll get out
from under the weight of 
hermitage and shackles.

But that’s just more
wasted breath.  A revolution
underway, and despite the slogans

I’m not a part of it, of them;
I’ve got a feeling
I never will be. So I exhale

and bend back to the tasks
at hand, the minute torture
of getting by,

wishing the revolution’s air
would sweep in
and clear this stale room.