Tall brick halls echo
every small sound, longing
for how loud it used to be.
Oily floors full of holes,
the spaces where bolts
that held looms
once fitted.
That’s all done now.
The mills are hollow;
some go condo, some
become business centers
full of small hopes, some 
crumble away or burn down.
I grew up in a town
full of these,
a New England town
haunted by ghosts
from its woolen mills.  

Remembering the scent
of the dirt and oil
and the rattlebang nature
of every shift; remembering
long wool-laden walks
pushing through the boiling air
in the card rooms
and dye rooms; the dark docks 
where the raw wool came in
and the blankets went out.
The sub-basements full of rats
and stink and stories of men
who went in as children and 
came out only rarely.  Upstairs
their wives and girlfriends, their daughters
and widows, spun the carded wool,
filled the bobbins, built the warps
the looms would then eat
and shit out as fabric.  

I was there for a while — 
a floor worker, a near-useless
utility boy,
getting through
by getting coked out
and smoked up 
and usually drunk enough

that no one should have trusted me
with knives to cut away scrap wool and cranes
to hoist huge spools wound with wool
to the racks to wait for the looms
to suck them in
and turn them all
to someone else’s profit,
but they did.  Who else
was there to do it
except drunks and kids
on their way to being drunks?

I was a drunk.
I joined the union, drunk.
Got blow jobs drunk
from other drunks
in the back of the shop
or in vans at bars
where I’d dance
to Southern rock drunk
because that is the only way
to dance to it;
I was drunk the first time
I took a line up my nose,
drunk every time
I took a fist to my nose,
and drunk the last time
they laid me off
along with all the other drunks
on a Friday night
not long after Christmas.
We took our penultimate paychecks
to the bars
where we always cashed them 

and laid into drunkenness
and bad sex
and a last eightball of blow
before we turned

to the business
of haunting this town, stepping 
outside for a cigarette,
making drunk money where we can,
catching the scent of ghost wool
on a dead February wind from 1981
that cuts deep
no matter the year or season 
where it finds us.

In my twelve year old hand is a length of pipe
that I took from a corner of my dank cellar
that I’m swinging like a sword in my backyard
that whistles as it flies

I wish it was connecting with someone’s head
I wish it was cracking someone’s skull
I wish it was making a sick impact
I wish it was hurting Him

who needs His head cracked
who needs pain returned to Him
who dealt me some pain
who passed on too much of His own

Be glad I am twelve in this vision
Be glad I never took that pipe to His head
Be glad I’m old and held that murder inside me
Be glad I kept the fractures to myself

as I am glad that I am the last broken one
as I am glad that I did not become a breaker
as I am glad that I am alone in these later years
as I am glad to be without an heir

Remember:

there’s no elevator
to success,
so you’ll have to
throw yourself 
down the stairs.

Lead, follow,
or get your ass 
out of the way 
is the motto here, 
not that you
have any choice:
remember,

success is 
10% inspiration and 
90% flop sweat 
while you’re waiting
to be revealed 
as a fraud
and you’re obviously
soaked through.
Remember

that there’s no “I” 
in “team” but
there is one 
at the beginning
of “isolation,” 
another one buried
in the heart of 
“exile,” one close
to the end of
“rejection.” Remember

that the longest
journey begins
with a single half-aware
solo stumble. Take it.  
Take that step
and only stop 
when you realize 

that you are suddenly
up to your ass in
alligators.  

Remember then that this
is success since
your objective
was to get so deep
in the swamp
that they would never
find your body.

I want my people

to look at me and say
there is something different
about me they can’t
put a name on.  Want to have
a new face that somehow

already fits with my old name,
a face that seems strange and
exhilarating yet
utterly comfortable
and familiar at the same time,
as if I’d died and been reborn

as my own better replica,
my soft corners sharp enough once again
to startle a friend
into renewed affection, lift
a lover back into passion, prod
myself into waking refreshed

from what had seemed a near-dead sleep.

Washed in blood,
crusted over,
shivering, sleeping,
torn by adversarial wind,
breaking down
in salty weather…
I like this so much.
I like it too much, sing
an exaggerated song

of ennobling agony,

offering it as passport
into your circle — giving you

a chance to offer
a comforting word,
to dip into
your cache of care and try

to ease me.  Try to ease me
long enough to gloat about

how my pain disappeared under
your good hands and words. I live
for that. I live for how
distant I can get from you
even as you think I’ll have to stay,

will need to stay.  You forget

what I am, what I’ve been,
how a longing for storm
has gotten me this far,

how much I liked it out there,
how it made me

sing

before I ever knew you.

on bad days he hates waking up

to another round of
attempting to find peace
in each day’s casual violence.

in his sleep he can be

no longer sunken in otherness.
he reimagines himself as just
one of the guys,

or better than that, he becomes

a welcome part of a world
he makes, one he longs for,
one that lasts past dawn.

he hates waking up

most days. there are some days,
though, where hope intrudes
into his mild and hellish routine

for a few hours, sometimes;

long enough for him to think of otherness
as a gift again, the way he
has always wanted it to be seen

by those he calls others.

we seek symbolism
in the high wind
and the decrepit walnut tree.

what’s coming
seems obvious.

we’re braced for
breakage and fall —

and then, it stands!

the question now is
what’s the right miracle
for us to emulate here:

the wind relenting,
or the tree unyielding?