The biggest question
for many of my friends
as they slice and dice
and chat and scat
and tweet and skeet
the news from war zones
round the world
under all their other questions
is

who are you rooting for

I’m sure they would
deny that
claiming instead
to hate all war
and wishing it was
all gone away
but
I have to ask

who are you rooting for

I think what they truly want
is for the prettier flag bar graph or table to win
the only war they actually care about
being the war to shut adversaries up
through superior use of graphics
invocation of Godwin’s Law
well turned meme
well framed news story comment

who are you rooting for
 
Buddy
you are rooting of course for yourself
You’ll be sad when that other war is over because
it’s a messy one indeed that never seems nailed down

and without an accurate body count at the end
your charts will suffer 

It’s a ten showers day
though you are not visibly
more unclean
today;  some days
you take ten showers,
though ten showers
are not enough on those days
when you cannot forget
you were born
into your family,
and your family was
a stewpot of blood.

Take a hundred showers, take a thousand,
spend all day under the stream
or in the steam, it won’t be enough.
Even when you sleep you sleep dirty
remembering the reddened people,
their hands upon you, sick satisfaction
and ogrish comfort you took there
in the midst of soil and stink.  

No,
neither ten
nor one hundred
nor ten thousand
showers shall be enough.

Better off, now, to do one of two things:
drown yourself
getting fantastically
and falsely clean,

or move on.  Admit
to the blood in your teeth and
the clots under your nails.
Admit that it feels good
to have survived.   You must have done it right
and there’s no need
to hide it and never go back
to the stewpot again,

no matter how strongly the blood-stink pulls you
because it is bitter and iron-rich
and smells unforgettably like home. 

I do not know what or where paradise is.
I just know I’ve always sought it
and it’s never been where I thought
it was going to be when I settled
here, there, everywhere. 

If I were there, I’d certainly stay there.
Rain, fire, earthquake, war.
I would own or rent or squat,
be loose and unhoused on the streets,
I would never leave.

Unless of course the place itself
shook me off like a flea from its coat…
I’d find another paradise then, or something 
close to it.  Declare it the same, name it
New Paradise.  Lie to myself

that I was ever certain of just what it was
until I’d found and lost it.  Every quest
requires a rediscovery; you’ve got to lose one
to win one, etc.  I’ve never known paradise
but I’m sure that this is how it is.

The television
in the other room
is showing a cartoon

and from it I can hear the screams
of angry and humiliated people,
sounding more real

than any news cast
would allow them to sound
if they were screaming something real.

Never mind living large.
Better to say we’re living loud.
Better to say we’re all cartoons.

Better to say slow down and shut down
a little.  Whoever wants us to live at full volume
is hoping we drown something else out — 

maybe a hum from the undermining, or a dull roar
from things collapsing one after the other.
A savagery beginning to bubble and burst.

I’m shutting that TV down.  I’m going outside
to see what’s hiding in plain sight,
living without having to be turned on.

If we hold hands we can go together.
Here’s the open palm — please take hold.
You don’t have to say a word.

A story begun.

A miniaturized tap dancer.
A resting camel.
An unsteady carousel.
Fingers, shellfish, bored gardeners.
In the longhouse converted from dwelling to storage, many loose feathers.

A stopping point: try to determine where this is happening.
A map:  somewhere near Barrington, Rhode Island.

A small war initiated between the principal actors — a socialite, a meteor.
There’s that tap dancer, struggling to understand her fate, her sudden strange deficiency.

An overarching question:
if it all means nothing, why  are these images occurring to you in this order at this moment?

The real woman shakes her dark hair after coming in from the storm.
She looks at you and says, “Are you done playing?”

Are you done playing?
You set the dancer on the camel in the longhouse.
You close the computer lid.

Yes, you say.  Yes, I am done playing,
although this felt so serious while it was happening
and it may continue for a while without me.
I may come back to learn things and find murders, rapes, pleasant evenings, calm mornings;
or there may be nothing to see when I return.
Maybe a tableau standing stock still.
Maybe crushed legs.
Maybe all will be dead

but in real life the real woman beckons
and in real life reminds me that in real life,
such tragedies happen all the time.

Out in the old neighborhood
something has gotten loose 
that resembles a sun-headed god

It just ran behind Morelli’s Market
which has been closed for twenty years
The rotten old building’s shining like bonfire

There are a lot of indigent gods these days
many of whom live off the scraps of blood sacrifice
Morelli’s had the best meat anywhere

so maybe the renegade’s got a taste 
for decades-old clotted sawdust
or wants to suck the dry butcher’s block

A polytheist might tell you there’s a rebirth here
An acolyte of such a god might demand you bow your head
I’m going to say it’s only a modestly big deal

I think the god is indeed inside the buliding 
With that face he’s likely a sky god and therefore 
almost certainly a male and vandalous god

so we have to get him out of there
before he burns the place down
Sky gods always seem to screw things up

So in I go with a goat on a chain and a bag
to slip over Sunface when he bends to suck the goat
(It’s a myth promulgated by the gods

that a god cannot be easily subdued)
Once we’ve got him
we take him to the river and drown him

his head sizzling the pond almost dry
as it sputters out to a coal then an ember
then a memory relic or theological curiosity

We leave him there on the bank on display
It’s safer than trying to bury him
Someone eventually always digs them up 

and they come phoenix-quick back to bug us again

After we’re done I go back to where Morelli’s was
When I was young this was my bright Saturday morning
Up early with Mom to buy meat

I loved to watch the blood pool
in the sawdust behind the counter 
until Mike Morelli swept it away 

Now it’s a prime place for these old gods to hide 
in the wreckage of past age full of red memory
I chase one out of here at least once a week

shining like bonfire
faces smeared
I almost regret the deaths of all those goats

Did you know,
my dear, that I
am a realist?  
I have no
beliefs, only work
from what I know
is real —

so when you seem so
ghostly, slipping around
as much through me as 
near me,

I find it hard to hold on.
I know I should just
stepm back and believe
but instead

I’m floating here staggered
by the possibility
that I am the ghost
in our love, and therefore
unworthy of myself.