Here’s the very definition
of an asshole for you:

took up inordinate space in our heads
while alive,

keeps on doing it now that
he’s dead.

Up early again
but this time, 
raised up out of sleep
by contentment.  
Winter’s
almost over.
Can’t hear a bird out there yet.

Next door, though, Luis
and his battered old pickup
are rattling around in the driveway,
meaning most likely
he’s found work again at last,

and since he’s a carpenter,
a framer of homes, 
that’s a likely
sign of spring — that

and all the gray trash
we thought we’d lost
in all those storms
peeking out
of the shrinking snowbanks
where it’s been hiding,

and this suddenly familiar,
utterly different light
between the triple deckers
which now look like
they need a good wash.

Waking up content —
in need of a good wash myself,
not yet pissed at Luis
for being so noisy so early,
not yet shamed 
into picking up
the gray trash (waiting
sensibly
till those banks melt
a bit more),
knowing 
there will be birds
and green
soon enough.

A city spring
doesn’t come in
abruptly,
offering instead
something more
in keeping with
how dark it has been
for a while now —
not wanting to shock us
by exploding
into lovely
all at once.

dead horse
start digging

it isn’t going to hurt you
start digging

dead horse
it’s not a game
it can’t be won

dead horse
start digging

put the whip away
the club away
stop shouting
start digging 

it’s going to be
hot tomorrow
it’s warmer today
than yesterday
it’s a dead horse
it’s upwind of us
start digging

stop beating it
you can’t win

stop beating 
the dead horse

dead horse
start digging
dig that dead horse
how it smells

it’s no prize
it’s not a game

you can’t win
stop beating

start digging
dead horse
start digging
a big hole
bigger
make it bigger digger
bigger

dead horse takes a big hole to hide

stop beating it
it just gets softer and harder to roll
when you do
and we’re going to need to roll it
into the hole
when we’re done

dig
big
it’s a big horse
a dead horse
dead

Wake up
what you call
“alone”
but for the furniture,
ceiling, walls, floor,
paint, wiring, 
glass windows,
art, books, 
consumer electronics,

all of which are talking,
all of which are listening.

Later, still (perhaps)
“alone”
except for the aforementioned 
et cetera, and
all have shut up
or down
or fallen silent. 

Describe my days
however you want.
Say lonely, 
say empty,
say sad:

I still don’t miss you.

My body’s not right tonight.
I have to keep it from writing this poem.
I have to intervene. It’s attempting
the first person, so I respond:

butter pat,
maple sauce,
meaty arms of the morning.

This may make it seem that I am forgetting my manners,
not addressing you, my guest, when in fact I am trying
to make you comfortable, keep my body
from breaking house rules:

iron opening, 
bronze axe,
stone regard.

My body escapes, taking hostages
as it flees.  It demands the poem
as ransom. I counter the offer,
a good faith gesture:

car diversion,
bicycle mentor,
skateboard stopgap.

Alas, my body still demands the first person.
I hand it over. I, I, I 
apologize to you, my guest, sorry as well 
to the gatekeepers, I’m only trying to save — 

lead box,
lead coffin,
lead grave marker

trying to save another
from my body’s insistence
upon a faithful rendition
of its version of this moment — 

lead box, 
lead casket,
lead picture frame

The content of the moment is never what matters.
What my body insists upon never changes.
How it is insulted and ravaged never changes.
How it blossoms anyway never changes —

rose escapement,
daisy escarpment,
aster entrapment

I will not apologize again to you, my guest here;
by now it must be obvious that what matters
is not what the body demands, but whether it presents the demand
as sentence, or as spell.

Small wars are
fought daily, arson
is our flag, conflagrations
our gross national product, smoke is
always rising somewhere,
look for its sources and you’ll find reason
brittle and blackened in the embers,
compassion remnants scrap metal hot
in the embers, the bones of children
in the embers. Constant scent of meat
rising from the embers.  Gag reflex
would seem the only sane discourse left to us
once we see the embers, and yet
we start new fires, toss the same fuel
into them, stagger home to survey the sky
and go out again the next morning
to mourn over the same deathful embers
as if we expected things to be different
simply because we wrung our hands so strongly
over the deathful embers
we saw the day before.

For a long time, medical experts recommended
a daily gargle with salt water. So

she went to the ocean, where at once
she wished she had gone to the desert.

There were trees growing out of holes
in the city sidewalks back then. So

when she got home from the ocean she walked that walk,
only to wish she had instead talked the talk.

Every possible avenue has been exhausted
for the resolution of our most basic problems. So

she dwells now in a gated community where she dreams
of life on the road in a retiree-retrofitted RV.

If anything ever went as planned everyone would die
of shock followed by boredom. So

she is going to take notes on every dissatisfied moment
from now on.  At some point she will be content,

then a moment later will turn back
to all the other paths, just to see

if the same emotions rise to meet her
on different roads.

Dead flowers,
sang the Stones,
dead flowers
make a proper gift,
and roses
on a grave
make for
a proper response.

I don’t know
if that’s true,
but once
an angry woman
laid a fifty dollar bill on me

screaming that she
could not return
flowers I had given her
since they were already
dead and discarded.

I know
I could have used a grave
right then
in which to hide from her
and I can still feel
her blowtorch eyes today
though I truly cannot recall
what I did
to earn such
a rock and roll shaming
as that.

Spent the whole night
swallowing stones,
they did —
eating them off the ground
unwashed.  Licking them
all over for the full flavor
of the dirt
before swallowing
each one unchewed.

They described this
as a grounding practice,
a spiritual risk to be taken.
The heaviness
they admitted they felt
was their sense
of godly fists inside them
molding them to be useful
in some future fight,
and then they went to sleep
and stayed there.

I tell this
not to deter anyone
from swallowing stones,
eating dirt, or doing
other distasteful things
in the name of a calling.
This is only to remind you
that they’re gone now.

What I
remember of him
was that he tried hard, always;
succeeded often,
failed sometimes,
until one day that pattern reversed,
his poles shifting; 

I recall
how he was
often cocky, often laughing,
poked fun at himself
as gently as he treated others
until one day that pattern reversed,
his poles shifting;

what I
remember was that he
once was sterling strong,
not perfect ever but secure
in both his flaws
and his strengths,
until one day his poles reversed

and when the ocean
rose violently in their wake,
he turned his face
into the waves
and at last relaxed
and at last
drowned.

Either nothing depends
on anything
or everything depends
on everything else.

Wheelbarrows, plums,
glazing water, ice, chickens
not knowing their doom
is upon them —

some say each
depends on the others
for meaning, some say
all are independent actors

and the gears of this life
are unmeshingly broken,
it’s all tumbling down, it’s
all sentient objects for themselves.

Whatever the larger truth is,
I depend on the things of the world.
So much of me is revealed
when I gaze upon them

that I might never rest again
if they are not nearby,
giving me my anchor
to my small corner of home.

while you listen
your eyes close
and it all changes.

what were once words
become symbols
burned into dark slate.

what were once urgencies
become meditations.
chants become mandalas.

whether asleep or simply engaged differently
than when you are
wide awake, what matters

is that you are absorbing this.
what seems passive is in fact
osmosis, which is still an activity

on your part. soft, inexorable transfer
of knowledge, feeling,
the backstory unspoken behind spoken.

when you open your eyes
you will have changed.
not all will notice. not all

will care to notice. wait them out,
closing your eyes again
if necessary.

Those who must
for the sake
of family or form
mourn in public
a person they did not love,
one who may in fact have been
loathed and feared,

shall after the funeral
be granted
a huge, selfish wish
by the golden handed saint
of compassionate lies.

Those who must
in the presence
of general or specific bigotry
bite their tongues
to save a job, to provide
for their loved ones,

shall be granted
one roundhouse swing at
and full connection with
a target of their choosing,
and they shall get away
clean.

Those whose lives
are slated
for demolition,
slotted for
dimunition, whose
lives regularly break
beneath the blows
of ignorant policy,

shall be given
keys to once-locked doors
and matches
and gasoline
and violins
for when the burning
begins.

This shall not be called
“karma.”
You should not have to wait
that long
for recompense.

Balance
will be determined
by the formerly
oppressed.