A clown can’t be approached, though a clown is easy to point at.  
The clown fails professionally, for entertainment’s sake,
as I am failing now to explain whatever I mean
by this.  I am failing now.  I’m sure you

understand. I can understand why
you’d try to help at the last possible,
least useful moment.  I am failing.  Now
is the easiest time to offer, the hardest time

for it to matter. You’ll get to say 
you knew me when I wasn’t and that
you were shocked or not, whatever. 
You can show the greasepaint on your sleeves

where you tried to hug the clown.  What 
I am failing now to completely explain:
it’s not your fault you were late, of course.
Not your fault that what you saw as a hug

I saw as a last smothering.  
Listen:  I am failing now.  
What was once art is now a bad habit.
You don’t need to see this.

she caught the katy
and left me a mule to ride… 

an old blues
to filter inner noise,
to leave some echo —

weird names, slang
that makes just enough sense
to sing along with;

the idea that this story 
is my story, is
all stories:

can’t help but love
that hard headed woman of mine…

You’ll crack a hip
straddling
a black snake

Wreck a wrist
clinging to its
barbed-whip reins

Things will change when
you’re in the chains 
Wise up son for

rowdy boyhood
might make for either
a grimmer manhood

or a more joyful one
You decide the road
but all must lead through

blacksnake riptide
slashhand chains and
wristsnap buck and roll

getting through is all 
in how
you ride

my DIY earrings
used to piss off my mom
now she asks
I need my holes reopened
where did you get yours done? 

my DIY music used to piss off dad
now we’re both too deaf to care

my face used to piss me off
now when I look at it I’m DIY scared

DIY baby
all grown now
no money, no school, no job to speak of
fifteen guitars and no band with whom to hang
fifteen broken vessels in the drunkman wreckage of my face
DIY baby, DIY

I’m DIY, asshole
no one’s bitch or friend
except for the bills, totally free of chains
no cent in the bank and no skin in the game
nostalgia a pillow for the banged head still ringing 
DIY baby, DIY

my DIY was always gimme gimme throw it away
no TV, no DVDs, certainly never a radio
I still have my original twitch from 1977
I still have my original itch and no drugs to put on it
understood the D, understood the Y, 
struggled all these years to figure out the I
but think I’ve got a handle on it now
what I’ve been doing
what I’ve been making
DIY
the three letters inked on my chest
have become a blotch on one saggy tit 
on my DIY body 
my doughy body
my fatty body
my old running out 
body
DIY baby 
DIY

was it worth it
to turn away from so much
while getting to middle age decrepit and poor
with no fun, no wave to catch, no future
but for the obvious one all can see coming
I look like any working man with shelled over eyes
hands numbing from work so I can’t really play
(which was always the goal though it was uncool to say)
blood clogged with the leftovers of how angry I was
and still am but now it’s not charming to be so irritable
when paralysis strikes will the world be charitable
to someone like me who still pushes all away

will it be worth it when soon I die alone
dressed in black for my own ritual
of last negligence recalled for cautionary tale
if i leave burial instructions who will be sure that they are done

the one thing you can’t do for yourself
is remember who you are once you’re gone
too few who’ve seen me will remember me except
as the canvas of the slogan stubborn to the death
DIY, baby
DIY, buddy
DI
DI
DI
Y

Last night of many nights in a row
of this Golden Spike (in which
the mood is that of coal locomotives
on parallel tracks,
racing)

and now will come what always follows
(in which regret, which has been an egret floating
above a calm swamp,
becomes a buzzard eager to feed) — 

What should I call this?
The beginning of this time
of Open Wound under the point of Golden Spike?

What should I call myself?  
Am I just the imagination
of coal, of what was once
a Triassic jungle
now ready to smut up a chimney
as it burns?

There I am saying,
“I once grew and was green
and I now I burn and crumble,
black to red to black
again?”  

No.  It’s all good, even
the very bad.

Regrets?
I’ve had a few but then again,
manic depression is just another word
for what it’s like to have a buzzard poking
at your once high-velocity liver

as you recall how from the train
the cursed bird once looked
like a white, bright blessing.

Careful for the scavenger beasts
that may be found on the street on trash day —
cats and dogs, possums and raccoons,
even the occasional bear in outlying sections —
I placed the entire contents
of a failed refrigerator on the curb,  trailing
a cloud of flies with me from the back porch.
Spoiled meat, spoiled milk, spoiled everything;
everything gone, everything rich ripe and gross
to the human nose.  Two heavy bags reeking,
unbearable almost to the touch.  I heaved them
into place, came back inside;
do you know, not ten minutes passed
before I heard a coyote at the curb?

I let him have at it with his long snout, sensitive enough
to find the good in all the bad I thought was there.
A car came down the hill, and I watched him go
into the back yard and disappear, leaving
only a neat hole in each bag
to show he’d ever been there.  And if I prayed,
held my breath for a second in his presence
as I thought of how my cast-off was his treasure?
That’s my own concern.  From here,
you should go and seek your own in whatever
you are trying to discard, in whatever
is chosen by another to redeem.

I spent years praying in the voice of a bullwhip  
until I broke a heel one day while walking,
bent to fix my shoe and saw my face in a puddle
and realized I was in fact a riding crop, more sting than welt,
more martinet than full-scale danger.  

I stopped, one day, in favor of my own face, my own smile,
my own slim crack of a voice that was not soft
but was not the bludgeoning tail I’d once admired
and sought for myself.  It’s enough, I said, as is: just a quirt,
yet cold enough to do what’s needed as needed.

Save me, then, from overreach, from scheming to be
more than I am when what I am is more than enough.
I know a God who cares more for the long term than my terms;
I like that God a lot.  I owe that God a holler from my own throat
even if it’s drowned out behind another.  Sometimes that rough harmony’s

all we need.  Sometimes a drive goes better
with the small sting
than with the bullwhip’s
skin-opening smack.  Sometimes
we need them both.  

Surge and shake,
vein in my belly.
I watch you shiver
under skin.

Nothing feels right,
comfort is nothing,
my peace is nothing to me.
If the world works, that’s enough.

I think, often, that I am dying
of any of the diseases
I know I have, or one of the ones
I suspect I have.  Who cares if I do?

Some will be sad, more or less.
I won’t be, though.  I’ll be gone
and maybe the world will be better,
maybe it won’t.  

What one does or does not do
might make up for nothing or everything
that has happened.  But death, now or
tomorrow — what’s to fear

from one event? Big deal, says the mind.
Big deal indeed, says the heart.  And the vein
in my belly says:  coming, dear.  We’re
coming soon, neutral on arrival.  What is, just is. 

In some anger
there is cleansing.  In some rage
there is fire that removes
the ragged, leaves behind the
minimal, leaves behind a site
ready to grow scars and new flesh.

Some of us are born angry
because we’re needed; narrow-boned,
slinky as assassins, assigned
to the fire priests:  the
clean up squad, and while we burn
with the job, scream a little with it,
we mostly don’t complain. 

It would have been nice
to be cool 
and happy,
to learn, for instance, why everyone
likes swimming so much.  But
not all of us were born
to be happy. Some of us 
were born
to live an entire life
ablaze;

you can thank us whenever
you’ve stopped shouting at us.

Test poet, test poem,
test post —

is this thing visible,
audible, there for you?

Am I showing up?
Is there something present?

A small number of words
being sent into the air.  A small man

frantic for impact.  A small poem
typed into a white field on a small screen —

testing this as a connection,
failing in confidence, failing as art

when it’s this desperate, when it matters
too much to me. 

Oh, say I have not
completely forgotten
the lion?  For
there was a lion once,
seated in the supermarket
near the cereal.

I had been shopping
and turned the corner
to find it — yes, this is coming back
to me now —
there was a lion, not raging,
not sleeping, just sitting.
I thought at first
it was some promotion, then realized
only I could see it.   

I looked at the lion a long time 

without being able
to see it completely.
It seemed mostly eyes
and of course teeth.
But color of mane, of fur, of claws —
I could see none of these, or can remember
nothing.  

What is this lion to me 
now?  Reminder
of how we all hunted once
or perhaps of how we were hunted.
Speaker for the wild not found
in the supermarket. Disturbance
in the daily, torn fabric in the mask.

Memory of eyes, mostly.
Of teeth.  And present emotion?
Mostly still fear, but now less of the lion
than of forgetting the lion.