It gets
no better
than this.

We’re toasty warm!  Lovely
furnishings, good food
and drink,

all justified by 
how awful the outside world
appears to be — how dare

they!  When we raise our 
pinkies, they raise theirs;
they laugh whenever we do.

We are so not like them, 
just outside, doing what we do
as we do it — not like them —

mocking us,
imitating us 
so badly, anyone can see

how utterly unlike
each other we are.
Why, they are even saying

the same things about us
out there, but of course,
the accent is all wrong

and see, the light strikes
their skin differently — such
sad imitations — wait, at last

I’ve come up with
a way this world 
could be better:

empty their hollow
information out.  
They are nothing

like us.  They are nothing
like us.  Nothing.  Don’t listen
as they try to insist otherwise.

Before dawn,
the room’s flooded
with evangelical Spanish
from the radio.

No music.  Pure preaching.
The only words I catch
in his rapid flow are
“contigo” and “alleluia.”

Rise, fall,
whitewater ecstasies
and imprecations
soak the morning

in splashes from
a torrent
rinsing away
my unholy dreams.

In my Good Book
a lot is left to imagination.

You attach a tag called “faith”
to every stone and garbage can.

For you, belief is as percussive
as a bowling ball fired through those trashcans.

Is that racket what you call your Creator?
I’ve heard worse, smaller names.

I cannot imagine the depth
of such bomb crater hymns.

It’s not up to me to police
the rituals you choose.

It’s not up to me to pretend
I believe in everything at once.

A deity as certain and as loud as yours
demands you frame your devotion in steel.

I’m more of a water man
enslaved to a God with little rigidity.

Who gets to say which is the right one?
Each of us.  Each deluded one of us.

In frog weather,
leap and splash.
In crow weather,
flock and caw.
In squirrel weather,
hurtle along bare wood;
in bear weather,
sleep long, sleep well.

That’s all.
All you need to know
to live around here
and fit in.

You could resist,
try each spirit on
out of turn
to prove you
are not subject to
the tried and true…
bah! As if we haven’t
already spent millenia
incorrectly.

It’s a deep cold day —
bear weather.
If you find you still need
the frog,

dream of it.

Your hand
on a mug
of morning tea
brewed to be
as strong as coffee.

Pins and needles
up your arm.

You want to speak
of aging, of decay,
of survival
against decay, or even 
of late growth?  
Start here

with the importance
of the tea,
the jolt you sought
upon waking.  
Continue with how
the pains
in your arm
don’t alarm you
this morning,
how the pain
in your face
is at last invisible.

You don’t even know
why you get up
in the morning 
most days,
but you always do,
and you always
drink something
to start the day:
a mug of strong tea.

A strong cup of tea,
two bags, minimal milk,
a touch of sweetener.
The bitter edge
from nearly oversteeping it,
the tiny triumph
of knowing how close
you came,
the first sip that confirms
you can live with it.

You can live with it.
You have and you will.
The only way to live:
touch something,
feel something, trust 
the weight of it
in your hand, and
don’t speak of it
or its lessons
too soon.

Coronary, my constant friend,
stay over there — as much as I know
you’d like to give me 
what I’ve said for years
I most desired,
I need to do that for myself
in my own time.

Diabetes, new comrade,
stay at arm’s length — 
while you’ve been hiding for a while now,
only just introduced yourself,
I am determined
not to get to know you well
as you intend to rob me of
what I stubbornly prefer
to discard on my own.

And you, seesaw brain,
tipping point mood –as much as I 
have gained from our grappling,
I am weary of it and 
you need to back off.  What I’ve said
of you for years has turned out to be
too true — you’ll let me win a day or a week
in order to slam me for a month,
and I’ve lost all respect.
I’m nothing to be toyed with,
can crush myself better and more solidly
than you can.

Just you watch.  
I am the master of
my fate, the whatever of my whatever;
when I’m on, I’m on;
when I decide to be off,
I will be off
and there’s not an ill friend in the world
who can do better for me
than I can do for myself.

Waiting for the storm to begin
out there in the dark,
the cat charges around and around,
knocking things over, 
breaking my sleep.

I get up and ask her what’s wrong.
I never learn the answer,

but she drops to the ground,
rolls over and takes a belly scratch
without attempting
to tear my hand apart for once.

We’re in this together,
she seems to say.  What’s coming
is going to be long and difficult.
Take time with me, I’ll offer
some time of my own to you.

She got up on the fridge to sleep.
I’m still awake an hour later,
chasing something around and around,
something I can’t seem to catch.

I turn to the cat  for advice — damn,

where’d she go?
Can’t hear her in the house anywhere,
not above the noise of the storm
rising outside.

Only one thing to do now — wait.
Lie down, try to get back to sleep.
Maybe she’ll be here on the bed
in the morning.

I’m a something, a something elsewhere
extraterrestrial thought with alien hair
and left-behind giggle, with cigarette jump
pulse back digger religion,
forgiven game pack smoke rider
on a warp plane to the back door.

If I understood a whiskey scented minute
of the identity I’ve lifted from the cookie truck,
if I were enough of a problem to organize
a solution for, if I had a wallet
thicker than a hippo tongue, thyroid lover
bankroll, meaning infested puppy guy —

it would be easier being me, not the wet sand
of the sidewalk, the knife wheel gyroscope
on some fascinating spin journey, musical daybed,
artist bathroom flush with potential mates,
crystal mythology partner, priest of the hole
in the pocket, small dirty lord of the problematic;

if I were something somewhere elsewhere,
something, not a me, not a him or her,
an I with an I with star eyes.  If I were that,
would be geared up and mechanical, queenery,
kingmaker wigmaker, trying to stay alive as I do,
as I will…or I would if I were elsewhere.

Did you know
I spoke once to a rock
and it answered?

My family told me
to keep that to myself.

My family told me
rock-tongues are truthful
but riddling.

I have uncles
who know these things.

I have aunts
who taught the uncles
and guide their knowing.

I would tell you what the rock said,
but I didn’t know the language.

Aunts and uncles understood
and they told me not to worry
about the message.

They said
I’d know it in time.

I’m still waiting,
family.  I’m still waiting
for the translation.

I lift and hold rocks to my ears
any time I walk outside.

All I ever hear is whispers
of how hard the world can be,
of how family can withhold

something necessary,
something they were meant to share.

From Maine to Massachusetts
down the coast,
slowing down the whole way,

driving into a snowstorm,
into the particulate tunnel
carved by the high-beams.

It doesn’t feel like it,
but it’s all about
playing with Death.

Then again, all driving and moving
is playing with Death,
though we don’t mention it

most of the time.  Of course,
it’s the beauty
of this late night game

that sweetens the risk a bit
and opens the door
for speaking

of how favored music
rouses us against
the lull of the tire noise,

how we fight through how lovely
the drive is,
how we long for home

although this,
this now,
is a kind of perfection.