first, of course, I want
what I need and do not yet know
I need.  some surprise as it fills a gap
I was unfamilar with.

next: a reminder of what
I’ve forgotten I know.  reactivation
of a dormant circuit.  the missing shard
in a broken urn that held an ancestor
with a message for me.

beauty? no. not conventional beauty.
love? no. not conventional love.
uplift? only as provided by the updraft
from a grand pyre.

discomfort, roiling, smackdown,
chastening, reordering, anger at self,
spit takes, bonecracks, slapstick law —

yes.

I don’t care who writes it.  if I write it,
good; if you do, good.  if it’s a child, good;
a senior dead woman, a junior dead man,
any human iteration at all —
so long as I am
shifted after.

entertainment is simply the wrong word
for what I want, as is
affirmation.  as is any gentling meditation,
as is any peace that is in fact
an appeasement.

it may kill its idols,
its darlings,
its television.

it ought to be smelly
and chewy spiky soft,
it should force me to hold my ears
forward to hear.  it ought to look like
damnation in the mouth of salvation,
a dog in the rain seeking home,
baring its teeth.

last:
the truth, always the truth,
whether it be carried by facts
or myths.  I offer you
poetic license to leap and amend
and scatter clues.  I do not care for
insistent journalism,
don’t want an
easy to follow
path.

I don’t want anything from a poem
except that it should
fire its meaning
by sound and pattern,
creating something beyond
its content, creating
a wave, a cloud,
a quake that opens
old faults and raises
the new.