Went to borrow
skin from Johnny —
back soon. Call if you need
anything — will be going by
the Louvre on the way home so…

~~~~~~~~

Have the kids the dog and dragon
Back by 3
Left something black in the fridge for you
Better than it looks! 
love

~~~~~~~~~

Did you pay the ferryman?
He called twice

~~~~~~~~~

Had to run to the ice pack
Forgot the reason why —
hope to remember
before I get there
Don’t wait up

~~~~~~~~~

Don’t open the cellar door!
Will explain when I get home
Remember I love ya

~~~~~~~~~

Peaches
We needed peaches
That’s right, peaches

~~~~~~~~~

I left 40,000 dollars for you
under the eaves of the old shed

I spoke kindly of you to Them
I hope it is enough

We aren’t likely to see each other again
for a long time

You would be best served by
forgetting me

as I shall forget you
I promise

It is morning, someone says,
though I could tell that by myself.

My first thought is of the landscape
near the closest football stadium.

My second is of a scrap of paper.
Upon it these words: “your prime

is seven.” My next thought is of
an esoteric cabal of crushingly

huge men chanting prime numbers
as they thunder across the world,

because this early I’m primarily an engine
for cobbling together random things.

It is morning, someone says,
though it’s obvious to me.

My next thought is that I ought
to sit up in bed and see how I feel.

My first action is to sit up in bed
and see how I feel.  I’m still lightly

furred and a little clammy, drier
in some areas than others,

afraid of social media, angry without
cause, desperately in love.  

It is morning, I am saying it clearly now,
I am the new carrier of the disjointed day,

next up in the relay.  My first true action
upon others is coming soon.  It will be

angry or loving or based in fear — wait:
it will be angry and loving and based in fear.  

Don’t be afraid — it won’t be large.
It will not assume the guise of a linebacker.

It is morning, my leaping little thoughts cry.
Count to seven, push aside the covers.  Get up.

The world needs me.  People like me
are the sand grains outside the oyster:

we are many, we all have pearl potential,
some become random irritants, but most likely

we’ll just be the bed upon which
beauty happens, mostly without us.

It is morning, someone says. 
Get up, dreamer. Make yourself useful

or at least practical. Useful
will be a stretch at best.

Early
and hardly up
with the light and
the clatter of the  
cat beating on the blind
to try and see outside.
Birds, squirrels, then someone
starting a loud car — must be
the red van two doors down,
know that rattle and growl
by heart by now, it has taken
all spring to get this loud
and now it’s distinctive as
any robin’s liquid call.
I don’t blame the cat
for being a cat when it’s
this busy this early.
She’s trying to tell me
some creature surely
ought to care
about the bustle,
it’s too much for dawn
to contain, and 
who can say
what will fall apart
if such vibrancy
goes on unnoticed?
She has a point, 
so I feed her.  
As she eats,
collar clinking
on the plate,
I sit by the window —
she’s right, oh
how right.
 
 

Start by giving until
you are hollow.
Hollow is the given
here, the expectation.
You’ll soon be empty
if there’s any good 
in you to give.

Speak as spoken to
and be heard as well;
love it as you are loved,
or oppose it and be
ignored, despised,
or shunned.

(If you are already
the Other,
a role will be
chosen for you.)

As for full membership
and its privileges: of course
it’s open to all
and not hard to achieve —
the hurdles are few and low.
Start anytime.
We will let you know
when you’re finished.

We will let you know.

We’ll let you know.

I promise, we’ll let you know.

“Every angel is terrifying,” said 
Rilke, and I love those words, 
and I long have agreed.

I have them tattooed, you see,
across my back
right where wings would be. 

I thought a long while
about the language I should use
for this — English, or original German —

and settled for English, so that no one
at the beach or gym
with All American monolingual ignorance

will ever assume
that based on the look of the words,
I must be a Nazi — instead,

they’ll maybe think I’m a lapsed Catholic
or troubled Christian of another sort,
with a blue-black charm across my skin

to fend off the possibility
that I might be terrible too, someday.
I’m certain most will still not understand.

How is it possible, most will say,
that what God created for His comfort
and support could scare anyone?

Isn’t it supposed to be lovely in Heaven, isn’t it
peace beyond understanding
expressed as real estate?

And I’ll laugh, and say that
it’s ‘personal,’ and at any rate
I’ve only ever seen the words on me

backwards in a mirror, so maybe
that way it means something else?
And they will move away from me,

which is all I’ve ever wanted.
Every angel is terrifying, even one
without wings, even one waiting

to return home.  I must keep the people
away from me, I cannot be responsible
if they discern the truth and begin to scream.

It’s not polite to say this
Why don’t you go away
We want you to die
or to not have ever existed 
would have been better

It’s not right to say this
Why aren’t you a memory
or not even a memory
We want to not know you
We want you to be fictional

but who would
have written you
Whose idea could you
have been
Where would you have
percolated up from
What oily bed would
have given you birth

It’s not possible to understand
why are you what you are
Why aren’t you extinct
We’d love you more were you fossilized
We’d love to ponder if you were real

The hot wars, acid suspicions
and other pleasantries
of our families both blood and chosen

keep boiling into the fabric
of our robes and threaten
to scald the threads,

stripping them bare
of any color and half or more
of their strength.  

We are soggy and scared,
burned, either afraid to stand up
or defiant and ready to scream.

What are we going to be —
the same cloth as always,
or something new

that drapes us naturally
and shows us off with deep color
and soft hand? 

islands began to sink
yesterday

(it was in fact a few years ago
you only noticed yesterday)

oak trees are spotting pink
in open places on their bark

half the moths
are immigrants

half the toads
are emigrants

mostly all the bees
are genocided

listen to the
rain’s complaint:

this is not
soil
I recognize

and the wind’s confusion:

whose hair is this
so rough and sparse

what’s to be done?

dear humans:

you are
ours too so as family
you are requested to stop calling
hurricanes twisters and floods (oh my)
“natural disasters”

the preferred term
from this side
is

“affirmations”

It started with a humble
scratch in the dirt
that turned into a trench,
then a mine, then a canyon.
This week has gone startlingly deep;
there are ancient roots

showing everywhere
and now, here I am
in the lowest bottom
where the only smell is dirt and
all around me is dark,
but I can see stars

when I look at the blue noontime up top.
From where I’m standing,
that appears to be the only reason
I’m here: to see stars in a daylight sky
that’s a mile farther away from me
than it is from everyone else.

67,000 perfectly lovely
gods out there.
One of them wants us
to believe there’s just One.

67,000 facets
to the diamond of God-Being
and one of them says
the light’s coming out of just One.

Try to be serious!
That one must be
the God Of Cosmic Jokes,
or of the Ego.

67,000 little gods
out there,
and that’s just what
we can see.  Probably

another 67,000 at least,
invisible to the poor
human eye,
that we could call on,

yet one god in that mix
demands we believe
in One God,
claims there is only

a God of
Umbrella and Blanket
covering every possible
need for Deity.  

We keep listening
to that one,
we’re going to be
in trouble, I think.

All you need to do
is listen to this world screaming
right now, from its roots
to its crown canopies,

from its abyssal waters
to its rock peaks; listen
the old way, the way we listened
before we stopped listening

to 67,000 gods and started
listening to that One
with the blanket and the umbrella
and the sword and the plow.  

67,000 gods: at least that,
perhaps twice that
or even more than that,
reminding us that

before we ever heard
that insistent One, they were talking
directly to us in small voices
all the time.  

Remember how that sounded? Like 
whales, like crickets, like wind, like water,
like fire: the 67,000 voices
of our particular patches of Earth.  

Good world,
I will today
not force myself
to look down on you
from rage or sadness.
I will not manufacture
excuses not to marvel
at the light
and the dark of you.

When I cannot control
a storm within me,
I will today remember
to close my eyes
and hold that cyclone
in, let it whirl and bash me
and not you, good world;
neither you nor your people
shall suffer because of it.

Neither you nor your people,
good world, will today feel
what disease and
the crippling coping
with disease
have done to me — good world,
I know you’re good even if
I am blind to that now and then.

Some tell me
to open my eyes
and let you heal me,
good world; some claim
your Buddha
or your Jesus all alone
could make it so; some say
your skin and your nature
are enough — and good world,
I believe that may be true 
for some; 

but oh, we’ve been around,
you and I.  Tried so much
and failed to change the inside
storms.  Better still,
I think, to say: 

Good world,
I will today let you be good
and not malign or slander you
if I cannot stop the storm
from seizing me; I will not
forget the difference
between what I am
and where I am.