you don’t want that two percent
but it’s all they have.

you want that one percent.  
that’s the good stuff,
what the one per cent uses.

the one percent are always thin and happy
’cause they use that one per cent.
it’s not too fatty, still tastes right, looks right,
not thin blue like insufficient skim
but as white as a bride, in fact
as white in a glass
as a tall thin bride.

you don’t know if the bride
could have gotten by
on two per cent.

you don’t remember the city
ever looking so empty.
you don’t know where everyone is.
you don’t know why they aren’t looking.

you don’t know if anyone
will look at the bride the way they used to
when she stood tall and white as a glass of milk
motionless in harvard square.

you don’t know how it happened
that you lost that ability
to make something out of nothing.
you don’t want to keep faking it.
you don’t know how to make it.

you don’t know why no one looks now
until you wave your frantic hands.
you only know the waving of frantic hands.

you don’t know how to stop.
you don’t know how to stop.
you don’t know how to stop.

here comes the bride.

tall, pale, frantic,
notching it up 
yet again,  
yet another

one per cent — 

hell,
two percent.

do you have

an I love you is the right thing to say here feeling
a no need to say it feeling
a feeling like this will last feeling
a terrible mistake feeling

a late night hassled by drunks feeling
a someone walking behind you feeling
a lifetime of guarded feeling

a they’re following you in the store again feeling
a they’re shocked at how articulate you are feeling
a they are locking their doors when I pass feeling
a they don’t know that sometimes I wanna justify that
feeling

a meal behind the eightball hungry feeling
a this last food stamp won’t cover postage to my Senator feeling

a yacht purchasing feeling
a leveraged buyout feeling

a fucked again by the same two lovers feeling
a tuna sandwich lost in the bedclothes for a whole day feeling
a can’t get out of the bed for the restraints feeling

a Darfur feeling
a Palestine feeling
a Swedish camp massacre feeling

a there it is now death feeling
a stare the cop in the eyes and shoot back numbly feeling
a soldiers in the night again feeling
a that is what a drone sounds like son feeling

a New York state of mind includes sleeping rough near the Triboro feeling
a Boston sneers at me but I bought Boston Strong T-shirts anyway feeling

a Chicago Cubs feeling

a medications aren’t working feeling
a puppy is better at least for tonight feeling
a purchased love is only good for the first two minutes feeling
a whisky you’re the devil and I am anton lavey feeling
a seeds are exploding in the last joint I’ve got and she’s laughing at me feeling
a good god I am disgusting feeling
a good fucking god you turned out to be feeling
a damn myth you got me into mom feeling
a damn myth you turned out to be feeling

do you have
a stretched feeling
a pulled feeling
a yanked feeling
a torn feeling
a bull just shat feeling
a call and response feeling
a response to a call out feeling

do you have
a lazy feeling
a brainwashed feeling
a sheep feeling
a groping toward feeling
perhaps even
a shamed feeling
of your very own

Yet-to-be-fully-imagined
country we all want to live in,

country of peace groves
full of lemon trees, country

where we let
our own blood

into the garden soil
to feed it, where we all sing

in our own tongues in the front yards
and kneel silently in the back yards

under the open sky, seeking
guidance or a little rain; country

yet to be founded,
already rich and storied,

abandoned, rediscovered,
abandoned again and again;

country, not nation, not state;
homeland, not seat of empire.

Country yet to be ours, country
we’ll have to define — a country we’ll all 

agree to defend against the poisons
of borders, flags, anthems, suspicions.

When we come to that country
we’ll look into each other’s eyes

and we’ll know what to name it 
without hearing a single campaign speech.

We’ll know how to run it
without a single task force.

We’ll know how to love it
without a single weapon.

We’ll know we’ve truly settled there
when we look into each other’s eyes

and see a neighbor, a cousin,
or a self, no matter what else we see.

I turned around
at the end of a long corridor
to seek contemporaries,
found a few,
craned my neck to find peers,
found a few,
looked then for friends —

and they were distant,
at the far end
of the hall, whispering,
perhaps wondering
where I’d gone…

Little of what they said
was coherent
over such a distance

but from tone of voice 
I knew, I understood, that 
it is I who left them, that
it is I who cannot see a way back.

No matter how clearly I can see
and understand
how straight and direct
the corridor between us is,
there is no way back.  

The strains
of the old song ring out:
non, je ne regrette rien.
“I Regret Nothing.”  
The singer’s last words?

“Every damn thing
you do in this life,
you pay for.”

I remember one glorious time
I had no questions
about anything at all.

The moon was a condor I needed to snare
and I knew I would fall off the mountain
as I did.  And I knew that as I fell

the mountain would change into water,
a great wave in the Pacific tumbling me
into the sea-bed.  I knew that the sea-bed

would refuse me and thrust me high
into the air, higher even than the wave
that first tucked me into it, and that

there would appear at that moment a truer condor
 to forgive me, catch me up in mid air
and carry me back to the mountains

as if nothing had ever happened. 
I did not question then that fantastic things
were happening around me;

how is it
that I have forgotten
how to do that?

An early morning road trip ahead:
long distance, heavy traffic,
not quite enough sleep.

Coffee in my future —
soon enough
in my hand.

Can I make the music loud enough
to carry me all the way 
so that I don’t have to do all the driving?

I’m going to find out,
so will everyone else.
If you hear me coming look up

as I may be flying, not driving.  I’ll be
soaring over my neighbors on the interstate,
borne aloft on Patti Smith, screaming south on Slayer.

I don’t find enlightenment
in sitting or contemplation.  Instead
it comes in fast, crescendos to a peak

north of Hartford on 84,
and usually stays with me
after I’ve returned home

to sit briefly in the driveway,
waiting for that perfect moment
to turn the music off.

What he thinks about often
is a scene from a movie
he hasn’t seen that is not yet in 
release, but is nonetheless familiar:

the stone in his chest,
no larger than a heart,
holds him on his back
on the floor.

There was time once
to deal with the stone,
to unflutter the heart,
to clear the paths.

Time’s still a factor
but not a friend.  Now,
he’s feeling the stone
grow immense.

It has grown large enough
to compress the lungs,
shade the brain, and finally
to cover the light.  

He has to confess 
it’s a pretty good flick.
It has a certain sense
of justice. A certain sense

of preordainment
he recalls whenever
the pain cuts
into his left arm

for a second or two 
late after dinner, or while
he’s doing something
no one would call strenuous.

In the movie 
his character never goes
to the doctor
and neither does he —

that would be too much like 
fast forwarding to within
fifteen minutes of the end
and claiming to have watched it all.

Here’s a planet with
at least a million million
small Gods.  

New heartbeat begins in
a village in Bolivia;

now, estimate is a million million
and one.  

Not every inhabitant 
has a small God in attendance;
some just echo others.  Some
believe in none.  All are here together,
many thrive
and many starve
regardless of belief —

a thick strangler tree breaks through
the layers of a rain forest floor:
a million million two.  A rock, smoking 
on a Hawaii lava flow: four more, though
I don’t know how that’s possible —
I know only what we can see and I clearly see
the birth of four more Gods from the cleft
of a rock in Hawaii.

One species here kills each other often
arguing about God and associated artifacts.
They’ve gotten so much wrong about those things,
and about holy places which care not at all
about how they are honored
or even if they are honored at all.

A million million and forty-three.
They will never get their heads around that number
in a thousand thousand lifetimes — 

a million million fifty four.
It’s going to be the death of them all —

million million
sixty-eight.

Beyond the sunrise shine
of the meadow
we just passed

Beyond the hot tail
the sun’s dragging across
the gloss of the lake
we just passed

Beyond these
the whole world

The parallel rails
ahead of us
must be shining
until we cover them
as we pass

Sun to the left
and then to the right
then to the left again
as we curve and weave
as we pass

Behind me
my love’s getting ready to leave
for her own journey
to the south
to her work
the sun on her face
almost all the way
as she passes

So much adjusting to be done
ahead and behind
to the left
to the right
above and below

Beyond us
the whole world

I’m on a train
to Boston
a few days after Boston
blew up
and became
a darling victim
of the whole world

At the end of this line
there will surely be
guns
suspicion
defiance
sorrow
grief
anger
seized joy
hope
acceptance

There will be
children shouting at this train
and pointing

At the end of this line
the whole world