Clench your hand hard enough
that blood
leaches into
the finger tips,
leaving them
taut and red.
Simple survival is in your grasp —
how hard can you hold on to that,
and for how long?
There’s no actual cliff here
for you, no tenuous
but obvious ledge
on which to cling,
from which to hang,
but you hang and cling
above a drop
as real as any.  The stop
at the bottom
would be as fatal.
How long
will you hang?
How long will you wait
to find out
how it feels
to land?

When this child of explosions
opens her mouth,
fences blow down.

When this child of fences
averts her eyes,
a flagpole bends.

When this child of the flagpole
sits down to dinner,
the meat burns phosphor white.

Phosphor child,
flagpole child, fence and
explosion child, offspring

of the warrior age, largely unparented by us,
fostered more by the fire and the wind,
fed on and led on and made to dance

hot and crushed, around and around —
oh, my country, ’tis of thee, sweet child,
of thee I sing.  Throw yourself

into the cold, roll till you’re quiet
and quenched — then get
as far away from us as you possibly can.

in our most remarkable moments
we should remind ourselves
that at our primal best
we know what we should do.

our bodies will take over and
we’ll run, or take tighter hold;
feed, fight or flee.
these soft and convoluted brains

want to complicate
everything
but our bodies
know better.

when we stop evolving for a second
and just are lovers or warriors
or right-acting cowards, we are
what we were grown to be

when long ago
we lived
under the
African stars.

Are we ripe enough yet
to fall from the Tree
and in dying send our hopes
ahead of where we lie?

Are we yet mad enough
to join others we have never known,
spoon with them and recognize
common ground to hold?

Are we steel enough yet
to accept that when we fall we will rust,
but it will be a slow rusting
and in the meantime we can be used to carve?

Are we sane enough yet to accept
that action leads to reaction,
that when we act we invite reaction,
and knowing that, act anyway?

Comes a revolution. We will fall.
Comes a harvest, we will be discarded
separately, left for fuel for the next crop.
Our present to be made future, our past

to be made now — are we yet ready to die
for the right to believe that a death
may be worth dying?  Are we steel-sane,
mad-ripe for that now? If we are,

we should whisper it or shout it or even
say nothing at all as we step to it.  If we are ready
then none should see fear in us — or if they do
let it be only for a moment as we ripen to the full.

Woke thrashing,
seeking something.
Science, perhaps? It makes
no sense but yes I think
science.  Sleek and solid
object of desire 
that woke me from sleep
so sloshingly full
of the clear sense
that something was missing
that I suddenly felt
an urgent, sleep-depriving
need to seek something.

So — I ended up 
awake with this 
under my fingers, 
rising into the white screen
science offers me —
and now I crave sleep
and the getting lost in it,
as what I’m doing here
begins to fatigue me
away from itself.  

You can’t win.  You can’t
get away from it —
whatever time it is
it’ll always be the time
for the Other Thing.

But I’m thankful for how
poems will come at those times,

when they slip out from in between
the worlds of sleek Science
and rough Unconsciousness,

like buzzsaws opening wood
that was never meant to be opened.

1.
Re-reading
my previous night’s
scribblings, 
sinking again
into their deranged language,
their protest against
language’s power to
derange.

I’m calmer this morning
and the sky
has unsteeled
its war-grade gray.

I remember some trivial things
that I’d intended to say,
and jot down the raw specifics  
though I don’t yet know where they go
or if they go at all. 

2.
Insisting on coherence

is the white man’s way
of dismissing 
thousands of years
of deep brown knowledge.

I know, I know.

What I really meant to say was,
“don’t look for fair and balanced here.”

What I really meant to say was,

some things you know,
some things you know better.

Some things you know so well
you can tell right away 
who will understand them
if you speak of them.

3.
I know now
where yesterday’s trivial things belong,
and they are not trivial at all,
they’re of course the whole point
of yesterday’s scribblings.

The problem,
the eternal Problem
with these sorts of things,
is that there’s no one place
they fit best.  I don’t think
I even need to write them out.

In fact,
they might be better implied
or glimpsed in the cracks,
inferred from where they’ve been 
interred.

4.
As for the inflammatory
above:

my thumb’s sore,
but I stick it out anyway
to find passage
to wherever I’m going,

as I don’t trust
that my current ride
will get me there.

St. Teflon, patron saint
of bullet dodgers.

St. Tango,
source of comfort against
blind divergent storms.

St. Bullwhip,
defender against the wealthy.

St. Lifter, overseer
of the doomed in any case.

St. Angelcake, who strokes
the heads of the raped. St. Watchfob,
who picks fruit and cleans the poisons
from the flesh.  St. Linger,
warrior with no hard weapons.
St. Rollie Of The Bones,
bringer of square deals and luck.

Call up the old saints.
You’ll find them retired and
disinclined to help.  “Not our world,”
they say.  “Not our gospel.  You need

The Blessed Version, The Sherman
On The Mount, The Irascible
Conception, a new Bible written
by scribes drunk on the manic milk
of modern circumstance.  You need

St. Rattler of the found quarter,
St. Lobster of the century reboot,
St. Jack of the feast day
of unicorn meat.
Call that the long shot gospel
and hang on. They’ll make a saint
for you,
someday,
and maybe it’ll even be in time.”

All are, in fact, meaningless
in one sense, 
as long as there is
death
to snicker at them; still, there are times
when a branch grows just long enough
to scrape the wall when it comes down

and that scratch lasts a while,
at least till the next rain,
and everyone points at the mark and says,
“Remember that?  Remember 
when that fell and there was that crash
and we thought the whole house
was about to fall?  Man, we dodged a bullet
that day.”  

And then those people move, or die,
or lose their minds, and no one
mentions that branch again —

but somewhere the wood decays
or is burned and the vapors rise from it
and are inhaled by someone who says,
“Hmmm…I think I’ll go for it.  What have I
got to lose, at least for myself —
and it might mean something to someone,
after all.”

The branches over your head all began at a trunk
and grew out.  The trunk started from a hole in the ground
and grew up.  The meaningless goal
grew up and out and reached and failed, 
or left a transient mark, or lasted eons.  
It’s all the same, all as pointless as any other endeavor;
in the end, it’s the growing that counts,
and not the place where it all ended.

His fuel for today is
a short memory
of her hairbrush in motion
years ago.

Her hair silked in, stroke
upon stroke.
Her with back turned.
Her.
She’s how he goes around
and comes around today.
Not quite
inside, not quite out,
but moving.

A big dog woofing.
Chainsaws running all day.
Me?  I’m not smoking tonight,
too much to do in the morning.

God, sometimes a day
runs you over.  Sometimes
you’re killed almost by it.
That’s big dog’s fault;

gets loud and mean and then
chases the day right out of its yard
and into the street and over us.
Those chainsaws must rile him up —

right here in the city, all that northwoods noise.
Didn’t think there were that many trees here.
The big dog pissed on all of them
and now he can’t tell where his territory is

so he’s woofing and we’re all a little on edge.
Days like this you wanna curl up with a bowl
and fake dead for the daylight hours.  Can’t, 
though; too much to do, and the dog’ll be hunting

bright and early,
and that dog will hunt and bite,
and the day will crush us before he gets to us
if we don’t get a move on.

It had stopped being cool when I was a kid
and became cool again as soon as I was not.

The only thing I know for sure
is that as practiced now it is a kind of low flight.

I know that you can move by grinding
or by sliding.  That’s the same as when you’re an adult.

I think some trick is called “gleaming the cube.”
Or perhaps there isn’t.  Some things are meant to be

obscure or meaningless. and that’s the same
as when you’re an adult.

But to fly like that, to ride handrails and swoop
through bowls and off ramps and dry pools?

To be in love with the thick clack of deck
and truck on hard surfaces?

To fall, again and again, and still smile and see it all
as joy and fun and purpose despite the blood and fracture?

Somehow, the appeal of that last bit escapes me
as I sit here looking out the window

at them rocking out.  “Damn kids,” I say.
Damn them and their flying where all I can do is plod.