Good morning, unsettled awesome — 
my whole body just cracked like a knuckle
and I rose above the bed
to the cobwebbed dirty ceiling.

There has to be a big reason for this:  magic
wasn’t necessary to reveal the extent of my sloppiness
and casual approach to housecleaning.
Maybe the spiders want to thank me for their habitat?

Am hearing voices.  Am beginning to shiver. 
Am wondering who died and made me delusional
or divine, and will there be a sign to tell me
upon which interpretation to rely?

By the time you are old enough 
to know what to do,
there’s no one left to do it with.  

Take this last funeral
for an example: you were driving home alone from burying
a murdered friend,

someone who had just been in the wrong place
at the wrong time.  You stopped by the roadside
above a creek choked with deadfall,

and in spite of your suit
and good shoes and your blinding tears
you climbed down and cleared it

so it ran free and clear again.
You went back to the car,
scrambling through gravel, 

climbing over the guard rail carefully,
sitting there, chest aching, knees aching,
muddy and scratched and is that a tear

in the sleeve of the shirt?  There is
a tear.  You tell yourself
“right place, right time, wrong clothes.”

You laugh, you cry,
the friend you just buried
would have done the same

but there’s no one left in your life
to give a damn
about this well-set gem of a moment.

It’s time to go home, change, read the paper,
eat, change, clean the gun, do some writing,
change one last time, and get ready for bed.