“What was the name of that poem
about the raven?”
she asks.

“It’s called 
‘The Raven,’ ”
I say.

“No, not that one.
The one about the raven
picking at a body.”

“I don’t know that one, Mom,”
I shrug.  “I don’t know the name
of every poem ever written
about a raven.”

She’s convinced me
to come back here
where I haven’t been for years —

back among the marred wood
on every piece of furniture
in the family room,

a dent
in the unpainted drywall,
perfectly placed at the level 
of a ten year old’s 
head.

She runs her hand
over the depression.

“You knew the name once,”
she says, as her hand flutters away from the wall.
“It was a good poem.  You knew a lot
of good poems, and all their names.”

“I know.  I used to have a memory for things,
Ma.  
I used to have a mind like a trap. Now..” 

Lion-flavored flatgrass
for a last mattress:
I don’t care.

I have named half the vultures
I can see above me:
it’s all I’ve got to do.

I don’t even have
pockets to empty:
I’ve fine tuned my poverty

from want
to lack of want.
It’s slimming.

The more of me I surrender
to a disregard for preservation,
the more of me there is to love.

I love this lying about.  
I am hoping
to name all the vultures

before the lion
comes home
to rob me of that game.

this is the here
at the end of the road
from there to here
the here of here with no regrets
for the time spent there or in between 

I wash my hands
of the dirt and the dust
absorbed between there and here

there were pale children on the road
between me there and me here
there were filthy men and women
rod-hard dogs ravenning
cats as quick as bats
to put their fangs upon our necks
from hunger or pain

I do not regret how many I trampled
or pushed past to get to here
every angel is terrible
I do not regret the dogs and cats I slew
every angel is terrible

now that I am here
I open my blood-tipped wings
this is a heaven I’ve earned
here is where I choose to make
the gates of pearl

they may call me what they will
I walked the road I was meant to walk
and put my feet where they were meant to step
and now I am here
the here of my heel in the clotted earth
made to stand 
made to stand firm
made
not born
to be here

The whisky master says,
“I suck the tongue of truth
in every glass.”

The wine master says,
“This sweet burning
puts my eye on Heaven.”

The pot smoker
sits on his hands but he’s praying,
grinning at the answers.

Whatever we stone ourselves with
revives in us the kick
we last used in the womb —

fighting toward what’s out there,
though we have never seen it; still, we’re
surely getting there.

I’ve never changed my name,
but there was a day
when a new me blew past the old
as fast as “Dylan” flew by “Zimmerman.”

I sat back from a page
and said to myself, “It took a year
but at last it’s right,”  and then that poem
reached up out of the paper and slapped
a difference on me I could not deny.

Mark of Cain, secret superhero status,
witness protection mask,
luchador camouflage — no.  
Nothing like that.
I looked the same to all but me,
but that poem raised a battle flag

behind my eyes,
that only I could see,
that prodded me then
and prods me still to be
something more than slapdash, 
someone who digs,
someone I was not born to be.

Someone once drafted
under his own name, and then
told he was another man entirely,

so as if in spite of whatever man I truly am,
I live and love and work and fight
as if I was indeed that man.

Balance,
not always as peaceful
and serene as predicted, 
sometimes barks “Buy me! Buy me!”
from a store shelf, the cries
of a gadget or doo-dad
that you know will fill a hole
and now and then it does
for a bit or even longer.
Sometimes it works forever.
Why not?  Even a shaman
has fetishes for the focusing
of power, an altar holds
fragments of spirit made solid,
and when smothered in 
the clutter of living,
you can hardly be blamed
for reaching toward 
what calls to you,
can you? 

Their bodies
bled dry,
carved out, then
smothered in salt.
Not a scrap of soft
left in there.

You too
can create such things
without so much
as a paring knife.

You have to start
while they’re
very young.

Your tongue’s
quite enough
to start the job
and your
averted eyes
can finish it.  

They are not likely
to love you
for your efforts

but at least
they’ll forever be
your little mummies.

When your people love other people
who have treated you badly
you sit back and eat
a bowl of knives.  Sugar it
with dead bees.  Wash it down
with dishwater.

When your people love other people
who have treated you badly
you run the other way
right into the walls of the Lascaux caves
and sit dazed asking the paintings
for a chance to start all the way over.

When your people love other people
who have treated you badly
you go to bed under a chain comforter.
Your ribs snap.  You can’t move.
You steer the pain toward a good dream.

When your people love other people
who have treated you badly
you should just tell yourself
it’s your fault.  You must have been
one bad pony to have no herd anymore
but maybe no one in the herd has to know
that you don’t belong.

Shhh…
this is how you get along.