I pay no attention,
instead give it freely.

I offer no fresh comfort,
instead will help find 
comfort which has been
misplaced.

If a mystery’s
preferable, I stop
solving.  
If it later needs
a solution, I fade
toward a clue before 
vanishing.

Unnecessary, extra,
useless man.  
That’s the whole point.
I have never yearned
to be
of service.
Toss me today
or tomorrow
as a luxury or a
hanger-on,
please.  But

some of what’s
been made here,
some of the smalls
you finger incessantly 
in your pockets,
you could do without,
yet
you don’t. 

You savor them
and think twice
about facing
struggle without them
though they offer no 
advantage in war.
You never leave
the house without them.
A house is not a home
without them.

I sit holding beads made
from some animal’s bones,
praying for guidance.

Something fails in me, leading me
to understand that there is no dogma
in a hawk’s view of God.

There’s no sect reserved
for wolf, no war-breeding schism
between salmon and trout,

no factions to be found
among the elk.
Worms are worms

without yearning
to become
Other Than Worms.

We’ve been opening animals
to stare at their entrails
for millenia,

seeking truths there;
we’ve made them into symbols
and messages, even into gods

themselves.
Not a one has ever
given up a story of infinity

except for one
that warns us against
feigning any identity

but our own, because God
won’t recognize us
if we’re too often in disguise.

Faith has failed in me. Alleluia.
I’m going outside to bury these beads, alleluia.
I will brush the dirt from my hands, alleluia,

will stand up straight
and call myself
myself.

First, notice
Words. See their Eyes — 
see that Words have Eyes — 
keep them Open — 

See through them, see
what Words alone see.
Link them — make of them
a Puzzle Box?  Inside

Clarity, Brevity —
Enough. Then,
cut down even more till you
Startle with — What’s Left.

From the corner of the bar
the woman in your sights
sneers at your feeble targeting.
Says you should know better
than to play at being a boy
in grown up places
and circumstances.
Says you ought to go home
and tuck yourself in.

Give it a minute.
You’ll down the last of that craft beer
and get up
and get out.

You’ll go home
and sit up the rest of the night
listening to the most profound music
you own, which ten years from now
won’t impress you or
anyone else,
and you’ll think about
how wrong she was

till just before dawn
when as you fall asleep
you’ll allow yourself
a boy’s luxury
of a single
acquiescent tear
of agreement:
yeah, you guess
you should have
known better.

When you wake up
at dusk,
you will have forgotten.

They say:

over there,
somewhere,
is an ancient road
laid down upon
a meridian,
perhaps along
a ley line
long ago —
its surface
now piecemealed by frost
over time,
that steady damage punctuated
with divots torn
by occasional cannonballs.

Where it goes,
where it comes from;
which end is origin, which
destination;
can’t tell those things
from standing
on its injured pavement,
somewhere between.

Picking a direction
and traveling along it,
mindful of holes and cracks
and of a potential, sudden,
fatal blow
from one projectile
or another:  
even risking life
and sanity
to walk it
is no sure way to learn
about this road,
but it’s all they can do
so they do.

At least,
that’s what
they say;

then again,
they’re sitting here
safely in front of us
and can only give 
vague directions
as to exactly 
where that road
might be.

Came a day when living with others was too much like work.
I withdrew to a seacoast cave.

Gulls sihouetted across the mouth of it mocked me.
We go anywhere, their easy flight proclaimed.  

I went nowhere for weeks, stayed holed up, sat cursing.
Holed up in shadow just back from the opening.

Lit a fire back in the dark where smoke and light couldn’t be seen.
Lived on a few fish and the last of my provisions.  

Sunrises seen from the cave were red lovely most mornings.
Gray dawns were trouble, meant storms but nothing I couldn’t handle.

Came a day when I was stiff from salt air and knew I had to leave.
Put out the fire and get back out into it.

Before dawn I had scaled the small bluff to the highland.
When full light came up I was several miles along the road.

Came to my house still locked, still safe.
Went in and I was alone, but at least I was comfortable again.

I made breakfast and wondered: was this episode a metaphor for something?
If so it seemed a lot of trouble to go to for one.

If so, know that it took several showers before all the metaphor was out of my hair.
My broken nails took several weeks to grow metaphorically back.

I have to this day a deep and abiding metaphorical distaste for the cries of gulls.
I couldn’t eat a fish again if you metaphorically paid me.

I left, was tried, came back home, and settled into a slant on my old life.
If that is a metaphor, it’s all yours; I still have some laundry to do.

Go, please —
flame on, sun on, turn
your light outside;

my baby, glow;
I implore you:
sun on.

This is not
a well-lit world.
Plenty of dark corners,

much in the shadows
and there’s good there
and bad, much bad,

but your light
will help sort it out
if you keep it lit.

You’ve also got me
to deal with — I know
what that means,

even if you do not fully,
not yet; let’s just say
I’m a tankful of shadow

and some days
I’m leakier than others.
You might wake up one day

awash in flooding gloom.
If it happens, promise me
you’ll go flame on,

sun on, and get moving
even if I don’t follow.
All my limited hope

is in your light and heat;
I’m not mean enough
to hold you in my dark;

promise me you’ll remember
and flame on, sun on, light on —
promise you’ll follow it, and live.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

NOTE:  today is the sixth anniversary of this blog.  (There are older dated entries because I imported my old Livejournal entries here.)  

Also, this is the 5000th post, for whatever that’s worth.

Thanks for reading — T

Thinking today
of the cave high in the cliff
above Frijoles Canyon,

how I needed to climb
140 feet straight up
to see it,

how I tore off
up the trembling ladders
bearing my fear of heights

on my back the whole way,
facing into the rock
as I rose

until I faced the scooped out
back wall of the cave,
walked to the kiva

and looked inside, how I then
sat for a while looking out
until

I had to turn and step
into space backward
140 feet in the air

to begin the descent,
how I had to prepare
to fall, to fall, to fall

just that one
first step and how I felt
upon finding it —

and what I felt like
once back on the floor of
Frijoles Canyon,

how I ran back up the trail
to the parking lot — thinking today
of how it can be that 

once upon a time
I took my fear, bundled it up,
took it with me to the place of fear

and did not die —

how is it that this escapes me daily,
how is it that I cannot
stop being a coward?

If I’d been born a house,
I would have liked to have had
a family within me.  I’d have enjoyed
the traditional nature of my insides
and thrilled to the secrets and confidences
shared among the loving members, and if
had by chance been infected with
a family of abuse, perhaps a light
through one of my windows
might have illuminated a moment of pain,
and changed the approach of a bad person
into one of remorse.

If I’d been born a workshop,
a factory, or a personal craft studio —
I’d have enjoyed the daily industry within,
the making of well-tooled items
by hand or with complex and elegant
machines.  At night after all
had returned to their homes I’d have light
from the moon enter and caress
the worn surfaces, the works in progress,
the waiting benches yearning to be filled.

But I was born instead a man
with an interior crowded with guts and stench,
and there’s no light getting in there.
I don’t know how to take what goes on in there,
from war to self-hatred, from spilled bile
to a circular flow of sugar sludged blood.
I see it all and ask myself, how is it possible
that I am guest or intruder
in my own skin? If I am that,
then I want to believe
that a spirit also dwells within,
something different,
something handy,
something skilled,
something like family
to this betrayed munchkin
speaking to you here
who is watching helplessly
as it all goes to shit;
but the evidence suggests
otherwise,
and that’s why
I daydream
of such very different
birthdays.

When the word got out
that dogs are in fact 
those angels spoken of
in so many spiritual traditions,
there was a run on premium chow
and custom leather collars.

When the word got out
that cats made up a portion
of the heavenly host as well,
salmon became endangered
and mice were demonized anew.

When it became known
that those without homes, 
those who walk our streets
seeking shelter, those filthy
difficult humans
who huddle wherever 
some measure of heat and 
roof can be found
also have a holy role —

nothing changed, as those
who depend on sweet faces
and soft touch as talismans
of good refused that Word
and relied upon their own ease
to validate the meanness 
of their theology.