Originally posted 6/23/2011.

Here’s to you,

wake and bakers,
joint over coffee suckers,
hiders of whiskey 
in “World’s Greatest Dad” mugs,
pills at daybreak takers,
Marley rocking pajama stoners,
carpool dodgers passing the buck
in favor of lifting the mood;

here’s to your health
and the health of the children
you didn’t drive to soccer practice
on a Saturday morning
because the clouds were so…cloudy;

here’s to you, 
shower tomorrow people,
maybe tomorrow people,
call it a day before 9:00 AM people;

here’s to you.

May you open the party
and close the bar
before the rest of us even know
you’re wrecked.

May you live long,
your eyes red as sunrise 
flashing back at the dawn;
may you dance clumsily behind the blinds
and tell yourself, again and again,
it’s just this one more time
as you slip into the folds of the comforter
and fall back into a stupor.  

May the sleep you enter be dead
and may the death be temporary.  

May you open your eyes to a new life
where you can take the morning straight.
May you find yourself drunk at last
on nothing but the good light of the good day
you have believed, always,
would someday come
without you having
to coax it into being.

Link to a recording of this poem:  One For The Wake And Bakers

Originally posted on 2/17/2011.

At night, one can drive
for hours, listening
to televisions
as they mask the weeping.

Here, the people abide by
one strict rule of conduct: 
“Do what you like, 
but do not show your work.”

The only media 
allowed for art
are C4 and artificial sweeteners;
the fabric of life is therefore
primarily explosions 
and cloying aftertaste.

Now and then a child grows up
and breaks free.

Most of them 
come back eventually.  
The ones who do not
remain a mystery 
to the inhabitants,

even if they become famous.

Originally posted 12/29/2012. Original title: “Pull It Up”

From the place
I buried them
I shall pull up the cocaine
and the late night breakfasts
that never stayed with me
for longer than it took
to get in the car
and get moving,
drunk and wired,
toward whatever couch
was that morning’s home;
shall pull up
the little empty gun
I got in trade
for all that acid;
shall pull up the skinny tie
and the hospital scrubs,
the songs I wrote
when bored,
the awful poetry
I believed in so hard
even when
there was no evidence
for its quality,
no reason for it
to exist at all;
shall pull up the arrogant
know it all
callous boy
ready to screw
whoever was up for it;
shall pull up that boy,
that still-skinny boy
not yet tending toward heft;
that stupid young man
with a bad car,
a jammed tapedeck,
an inability to love
and be loyal
if there was a road
on which to run
and someone’s words
he could steal.
That past
is a thicket of weeds now;
pull it all up, toss it
onto the hot pavement,
let it dry down to dust
and blow away or wash away
in the next strong storm.
If the child
is father to the man,
let me make myself
an orphan before you
get one inch closer;
don’t call it foolish
don’t call it impossible
or unnecessary. You
didn’t know him;
if I can help it,
you never will,
even if I have to scorch
the earth for miles around
to make that so.

Originally posted 4/10/2013.

Some have, some have not.
Those who have, keep;

those who do not have
do not know they likely never will.

Occasionally someone who doesn’t have
will be allowed a taste

via lottery number, a great arm,
a pleasant singing voice.

They let you think
you can get some too — 

hard work, they say, hard work
will do it and anyone can rise;

but not anyone rises.
Those allowed to rise do,

and those allowed to rise
learn how to keep

the little they’re
allowed to keep.

Your job is made to leave you
jealous and striving.

Your leisure is a stunted ration
of your small time here

and when you come home
to cradle that son or daughter,

you whisper that it will be
better for them —

but it likely will not be.
All that gold

will blind them as swiftly
as it blinded you.

Everyone thinks they’ll be rich someday.
Everyone thinks it’ll be better someday

while the oil runs out,
the seas lift from their beds,

the bridges fall sooner rather than later.
The whirlwind spins a noose over our necks.

Some of you still think love
will make it better.

You will be fooled again and again
into believing that love will win.

Love cannot win
in the long sunset of this age.

We have exhausted ourselves.
Love is nothing more than a gesture now.

You’ll still sit back and say it was better once.
You’ll imagine a time when love was enough.

But love has never been enough
to conquer this.

What’s always been needed
is a terrifying justice. 

Gaia is preparing
a terrifying justice:

one swipe of her hand,
and we are gnats full of blood

who cannot rouse themselves
to fly.

You want a golden age?
Get rid of the gold

ahead of that sweeping hand.
Learn to fly for your life.

Land in something new.
It will not be called America.

If when you land you want to try love,
then by all means try it,

but do not expect it
to grow in this soil

so full of gold,
blood, and lies — 

not without
a cleansing fire.

Originally posted 3/24/2012.

America
I wish you could see Death
as I do

As wave of star enveloping
As wave of earth encompassing
As wave of wind embracing
And the next minute
moment
second
instant it must be —

not this
Not This
As NOT THIS
as any moment ever

All I want to know about that moment
I cannot know
so I sit here
speaking of Death
waiting for Death
with fingers tapping

Damn this notion of having to wait
You wait as you will
I will be not be calm and resigned
I will instead call for tacos and pizza
and meats and cigarettes
to be delivered unto me
for those are American foods of Death

and in this country devoted
to living forever
I am starving for Death

In this country
devoted to living forever
I believe in live and let live
but I also don’t care
how anyone dies

Do you think that is awesome
or troubling or false
Am I now riding a wave
of your suspicion

America I wish you could see Death as I do
As wave of the star enveloping
As wave of the earth encompassing
As wave of the wind embracing us
whispering

come as you are

This is not the customary
way of Death
in America
Death is considered
a mistake
a justice
or an honor
We greet it
with a keening of grief
or a holler
and chorus
and cadence of joy 

There are such vigilante songs
in your heart
America
You don’t care how we die
as long as the lettuce stays crisp

I am wearing the mask
of a wave all-encompassing
but if I tear this mask off
and look at you hard
with the right kind of gaze
between glare and adore
perhaps I shall then learn
how the rockets and twilight
lead to dawn’s early light

Till then
don’t be surprised if
we don’t care
how you die 
as long as it makes sense
in the moment of Death
as long as it closes
the long running plot

Originally posted 7/27/2013.

For each guest a gift —
honey in a small jar.  

Broad leaves laden with
sticky rice as a bed

for cloud-white fresh fish, steamed
and spiced. Tall tumblers

of tart juice, a good wine
of local provenance

in a thick-walled carafe.
After, fruits and nuts

placed within reach
to be eaten at leisure.  

When I woke, this all became
a rapidly fading dream.

Ten minutes later, could recall
neither the perfect conversation

that accompanied it
nor the name of she who sat across from me

and made me feel small and
as full of future as if I were a seed.

I did recall how her eyes
were sweeter than the fruit,

sweeter than the honey in glass
that glowed in the sunset; 

I still recall how much I wanted
to call that place home.

Originally posted 3/21/2010.

Silent now
after a yapping lifetime,
silent
and happy,
sitting on a rock 
by the shore,
naked except for 
my long gray hair,
happy to be called upon
only now and then
when my particular gray is needed
to color a braided rope 
someone is making
to moor their ship
when it comes in
or to dangle from
high on a cliff
on their way
from bottom to top.

With time, one learns
what one can give
without losing oneself
entirely, without the need
to discuss, criticize,
or loudly hate either 
the folly
or the fools 
who live it; so

I cut a lock for them to use
without another word,
knowing it will be so long 
before I’m asked again,
I’ll have time to grow it back;
silent, happy
to be needed so seldom
for so little.