I own one string
of 108 white beads
that were strung for prayer

purchased with the intention 
of taming the negatives around me
by the process of counting them off —
ninety
ninety one
ninety two —

count them all often enough
it is said
and one tames oneself
most securely
through following directions 

Lay the beads in the right hand
over the middle finger
Over the ego finger
From the head bead
move on to the next
using the thumb alone
seeking in the count
the OM

But I don’t feel tamed when I count  
Instead I start itching for a fight
thinking of the host
of red-dark demons around me
I have more fights
than strings of beads
to tame them

Perhaps my battles
are my blessings
and instead of blessings
I should count battles 
eighty nine
ninety
ninety one 

Lay the beads in the right hand
over the middle finger
Over the ego finger
From the head bead 
move on to the next 
using the thumb alone
seeking in the count 
the OM

If I break this string of beads
will the blessings be scattered
will the battles be strewn about
fifty one
fifty two
fifty three
Will I feel better
in the rage that rises
when I see them
bounce across the floor

One hundred and eight little chances
to discount the process of taming anger
on a daily basis 
is not what the holy ones intended
when they dreamed this up

but there are
some of us
for whom such inner taming
is erasure

Lay the beads in the right hand
over the middle finger
Tangled on the ego finger
From the head bead 
move on to the next 
using the thumb alone
seeking in the count 
the OM
but finding instead
the void 

Sometimes
I burst from sleep
imagining that I am self-sired,
never tired,  solo flight
across the Atlantic,
great aviator all alone;

easy as the day seems then
it usually takes only a swipe or two,
a smirk or three, a cutting framing
of what I thought was my glory
by a beloved one, and there I go 
down, down into the gray and cold.

Self-sired, never tired — those are my best lies.
As if I’ve ever been anything but a lonely son, as if
I’ve ever been unexhausted in this life. 
As if the hard sleep I rise from
hasn’t been stolen from the dark. As if I
have ever been cleared for landing.

No vulture can circle widely enough,
no worm can open her gullet enough,
no fly can buzz to the target and feed swiftly enough,
no gravedigger has a shovel large enough

to dig the grave that needs digging
for the hulk that lies dying here.
No hearse large enough to carry it away
to a better cemetary,

no undertaker skilled enough to empty it
or make it up to seem plastic alive
(though it often looked that way in life,
seeing it now confirms that those days have passed.)

One hope to avoid the poisoning sure to come
from its breaking down and leaching out:
that we who are watching it die will at the proper moment
set the giant bonfire needed to cleanse the earth where it lies.

There is no story behind
this broken arm
Nothing explains it

If I name one more damage
with no story to explain it
you will begin one

so instead I say
rise, finality, next,
no connections

loser wagon 
condensation
anxiety chalkboard

If I offer one more non sequitur
you will make a story of them
thus destroying them

so instead I say
Ha Ha Ha
instead I say Eh

we try to make a world from
separate things
though the world is already one thing

if I laugh again
you will make a routine of this
and then a theory for it

though no understanding’s
needed for what is
randomly being here

enough, ha ha ha
to know we don’t know
or should be so

they see you ready to end it all, hopeless, etc.
so your friends start to speak in cliches.
they tell you how dark the night,
how cold the ground.  tie a knot, hang on, etc. 

understand that this is the lingua franca
of those encountering despair.
it’s the only language they have in common
with each other when faced with you.

they will comfort each other
in this same language, reciting to each other
what they said to you, once you are gone,
once they feel satisfied you can no longer hear.

don’t respond as you’d wish.  don’t let them know
they aren’t really your friends now.
they need you to make themselves
feel better. you are of value.  take comfort in that.

instead, ask them: ok, how am I supposed
to tie the savior knot when I will have to let go
of the rope to do it? and, what if dawn
brings me before a firing squad? 

watch them wiggle, hear them squeal.  it won’t be fun to see
but how else will they learn that
their silent presence cools fire,
and stop trying so hard to talk you out of the frying pan?

Let’s burn a guitar
for the honor of those
who’ve died among us
and made us sing 
in their wake.

Let’s pretend
to reggae, let’s
assume the position
of blues;

though we’re lying sacks
of middle-class shit
when we do that
tonight
our dead friends have signed
the permission slip
for those journeys, so

under that whiter than white moon
let’s light a fire
and coax last songs out of
a broken, rackety-rick pawnshop axe,
singing

Sloop John B,
Statesboro Blues,
Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?

then listening to the flames 
in the snapping strings
as the poor old thing
disappears in the smoke,

just as we will later disappear
into the dark
around a fading fire. 

It is impossible to say 
everything out loud today
in our accustomed way.

In the church we offer eulogy,
homily, the rites,
all the orations of grief;

but at the graveside behind the formal speech
we offer each other a butterfly language,
floating and whispering, unlipped and tongueless.

In that we tell of life and death
without a word, understand and
are understood without knowing how it happens.

Go home, we say to each other
in this formless tongue.  Go home 
and be at peace

in the day to day
now that we have laid him to rest;
he has no more need of us. Remember

how this began and ended
when you think of him, remember 
what lay between those gates — 

who he was, who we were
with him, who we are without him;
we keep it, and he’s beyond it.  Don’t rely

on the priests for an explanation;
we understand this
in our deep animal being.

It’s why we use the butterfly language
to speak of it and not
the rough pulse of speech.  It is older,

smarter, tighter,
better on the breath,
lighter in the ear.  It heals.

Underneath
what you see of me,
what you think you see
but can’t imagine, really:
the Big Anger, much of that drawn
from what you don’t see. 

Underneath 
what you see:
hard to describe, really; let’s
manifest it this way — 
I’m a chain smoking demon
sitting out a rain delay
in a ballpark where
I can’t light up.

Underneath 
what you see,
what you can’t see but
maybe you can hear:  let’s go,
batter up, America’s Game,
batter up.  Let me take 
a swing if you’re not ready — 
and man, are you not ready.

If your wind starts rustling
through trees —
end it.  Cut the wind off.

If at any time you feel compelled to speak
of your soul, if you feel it stirring, joining, seeking
its mate — end it.  Cut the soul free. It’s damn tired
of doing those things and it will embrace you for this.

What else?  Skip dusk, skip dawn.
If you can’t get down with
two in the afternoon, or three fifty-six AM —

please, end it.  Stop.  Cut the clock free.
Nothing wants to do this same old same old
forever, except for your genitals

and even they get bored occasionally…
so, workshop it all right out.  Bash
a cliche in the head till it blooms.  Skip
eyes, crystalline, waves, skin, moist — 

give us instead conveyor belt, chatter,
soapy, saw blade, match heads,
horse tooth, chipper, mess, orchestral.

Listen: we need you.  Be you. 
Only you are standing where you are. 
What’s it look like,
sound like there? 

You can start by realizing
that none of the above
is about how to write a poem.