Listening to Jaco a long time
Long time is how he played
stretching time in between notes
Long Time
And all the notes took up the same space
at the same time!

How he did it — was Crzy, was Md
how some of us 
have to be
and that’s how he ended
drunk a little
and Crzy Md enough
to get himself killed

Listening to Jaco is easier
when I am not Crzy
When I am not Md
it is easier to let Jaco be it for me
But the times when I most understand
how to hang on Jaco
and limber growl lines and bark notes that yell Showtime
and skein along on the lines
and oh the notes all at the same space
so I bump into myself in the moment

those times I get why I am so loving
of the idea of a death in a nightclub
so none call it what it was

if I never get to the streets
I can still be an artist can’t I
Crzy and Md are all that it takes
then time will stretch and notes will hang
the skeins will be obvious
in the daze is the loss of boundary
required here listening to Jaco
chasing Jaco
into the unyielding night

In the warrior
a dislike of war,
a disdain for the love of killing,
a disgust with the killer self.

Yet, also,
a skill at all the art of death,
a willingness to be Death
if Death is who is needed.

I knew a poet once
who disdained the art, who disliked rhyme
but was good at both, too good in fact
not to be famous in spite of herself.

Once, the poet
met the warrior
and they sat and talked
a long time

of comparison and metaphor
and sniper’s range and lyric’s force.
They spoke of throw weight and arc
and how slippery a battlefield can be

after a war has passed, of how slippery
the world is to a poet
who’s described it often enough
in stretched and violent ways.

They make me uneasy, sitting there
with hands full of liquor, heads tipped in close,
seeming to agree on everything.
I like my poets gentler, my warriors more taciturn.

I like to see them not love each other
as much as these two seem to love.
I like my world to have a place for each,
and for that place to be somewhere

out of earshot, sight, and reach.

We awaken to 
Elvis Costello’s
“Miracle Man.”

What do you want
to happen next?

Argue again
about why the radio
was left on all night.

And what do you want 
to happen next?

Get over it, then claim
our inheritance
from a spooky old nun.

What do you want 
to happen next?

 Go on an adventure
with a better car — 
something bitchin’ and rugged.

Then what do you want 
to happen next?

Take back every instance
where I have ever used
the word “bitchin,”
and still get to keep the car…

Then what do you want 
to happen next?

Stop being so frivolous

and what do you want 
to happen next?

and easily distracted

and what do you want 
to happen next?

and get back to the story
we started with
about the adventure and the car.

and what do you want 
to happen next?

Oh, I want to be
less tired of adventure

I want our inheritance
to fall into our laps

Want the radio to wake us up
with music we both love

and boy do we need a better car
Something we can make love in

when we pause
from our adventures

and what do you want 
to happen next?

Not a thing
Nothing at all
Let’s just stop right there
for now and always 

Let’s take the money
and buy a Thomas Kinkade house
full of butterscotch light
It’s soaked into everything
Let’s eat it all up

Let’s even eat
the couch
Swallow its little spongy
yellow chunks

Wonder about what 
might happen next

right now
there ought to be
heavy metal welling
from the floor and
rising to my knees
at the least

because if I am too hurt
my own karma and enter
this place again
I ought to have
the proper soundtrack
for how sludgy that walk
feels

right now only shredded trust 
and hoarse-creamed-lava on toast
will do

I want to be in here
when it burns
and smell it burning
before anyone else can

I want the burning
to have
incoherence as a soundtrack
(I want to know
the words)

I want to stumble away
fall on fire far
from the main blaze
set off the stubborn second fire
die before too much time
goes by 

I hated
being here as
I hate
dying here
I hate the red and the black 
of it all
the crunch of it
the distortion of it
chug
chug chug
chug 

What drives what I am
is the thrill I get when dark syllables
clink together.  You might say
I’ve got a thing for such sound aggression.
A thing for near-shattering. A thing
for hairline cracking.

Other than that I’ve got no love
for anything about this mess
less required than breathing, eating,
pissing, shitting, sleeping, fucking,
or commiserating.

I call these moments of noting
hard truth about myself
“Portland Moments”
for the first one I recall,
when I was smoking a joint
on the fourth level of a downtown garage
in Portland, Maine.  The sky was sky blue,
the air was winter cold, the ocean
as ocean as it could possibly be —
for half a second I believed the Sixties
had it right and all you needed was weed
and light, and love would make it all work.

That was not the Portland Moment, though —

that came a second later
while ducking the cops and hacking,
my lungs cough-laughing at me
crouching behind the car; I said,
gee, sorry, almost had myself fooled
into thinking I was someone else

and not the guy
who’s got a thing for aggression,
a thing for near-shattering, a thing
for hairline cracks and rough repair —

a guy much like Portland, Maine,
where even the hippies walk around
with punk rockers glaring
from the rooms behind their eyes.

We have been accumulating solace.
Make us afraid of how we were.    
~~ Rumi 

When I’m all tore up.  When I’m
pissed at being at loose ends
and how I can’t tighten them.  
When I’m heating the air
with spew and it’s not fooling
anyone, or me either:  God,

smack me.  Don’t even try to 
touch me without full-swinging
an open palm.  

Mumbling now something about
stones thrown
in the crystal house:  
whatever, I want
to be judged and found wanting.  
Looking for a finger to write
a burning on my wall, my skin.
Hold off on the embraces a while.

Mumbling, now,
about the Abuser,
the Great Abuser:  whatever,
hello,
no, not that.  Not saying

that.  But
I could bear
a judicious scar or two
if the story behind them
is worth remembering and 
keeps me from gaping,
wounded, later on.

No sense in holding
all the comfort for myself;
it’s good, I don’t need it,
give it away, somewhere it
will be appreciated.

My inner child
was a whiner.  I like him
better now that I’m all
tore up or at loose ends.
I check in on him, say:

hey buddy, now what?
And he says:  up to you,
it always is.  
Stay afraid
of your used-to-be, then
let it rip.