Originally posted 8/5/2012.

I’m telling myself the truth
for a change.
I admit
that now and then

it would feel good
to swing a hand
and connect with a
hard yet crackable jaw.

I disregard the claims of
comfortable wisdom and note
that most criminals I’ve known
had mountain-high self esteem.

That war thing, the one
where we rush into it singing?
We’ve all tried for years to stop it,
yet it keeps coming up.

Anger, said the Dalai Lama,
is unnatural. Yet somehow
every baby I’ve ever seen
knew from birth how to make a fist.

Originally posted 3/1/2010.

Left at the top of the stairs
and then another left
and then a right
takes me into the blue room
I lived in through junior and senior high,
the room I drywalled
and painted for myself
with my father’s help.

I chose the color
and the now-embarrassing
blue shag rug.
(Blue was my favorite color then.)

I laid the oak floors
that lie beneath the carpet — 
nailing through the tongues
of the narrow planks,
fitting the grooves to them,
beautiful unstained wood I covered
with blue shag carpet.

I chose these red and blue plaid curtains.
Dirty as hell, limp with fade and dust.
No one’s vacuumed since I left.
I just found a cannabis seed
in the rug under the side window
where I’d smoke late at night
from a homemade pipe
I made from an old steam radiator valve.

I had an FM radio then
that taught me how to hear 
Mickey and Sylvia played
after Rashaan Roland Kirk
and I tried to stop thinking the world 
was rigid and orderly.

One time I broke up with someone 
and dropped acid late that night
and stared at my squirming self
in the mirror for a long time.
Afterward I took a piece of paper
from a spiral bound notebook
and wrote a whole story 
that sounded pretty much

like this one.

If I lived here now
I’d tear up this rug.
If the oak still looked good
I’d sand and stain and polish it;
I’d change the curtains and
I’d certainly have to paint — 
not blue this time,

or at least a different blue.

When I was done I’d play
the modern, stale radio, 
smoke a big joint in plain view of the windows,
sit there and think about
Rashaan Roland Kirk
having the blues and one working arm and no sight.
Dig up a hazed memory of
“Rip, Rig, And Panic.” Then
I’d imagine him singing
“Love Will Make You Fail In School.”
That’s still true. It really will.
I can vouch for that
even if I can’t remember
more than that. Thank God

I’ll never have to do all that —
move back here
into this room
and cobble together
a new life
with the blue
and the dirt
and the leftovers. After all
you can’t go home again
when you never really left

and it never really felt like home to begin with.

Originally posted 1/7/2006.

1.
i was 15
a man grabbed me from behind
i turned and cut him
did not stop to see what happened
ran as fast as i could back to the party

two friends helped me
scrub off the blood
someone else
lent me a shirt

i went home that night
my parents never knew
i have watched the news for years
still don’t know what happened

why nothing has ever happened

2.
she was really pretty and
if i could have recalled her name
i would have called her

i am still trying 

3.
at 17 i stole a book of robert bly’s poetry
and later had him sign it
this was wrong in so many ways

i still have the book

4.
i should have called her
i should have called her
i should have called her
who was she

who am i that i thought i could call her

5.
i should have hit him
i should not have hit him
i’m glad i hit him

i should never have pulled my knife
i am glad i pulled my knife

years later i saw the one
i should not have pulled the knife on 
in a club

he backed away from me
both hands raised

it felt good

you’re the indian, right
he said

it felt good

something like that
i said

i like indians, he said

i stepped toward him
he fled
it felt good

5.
there is only so much of yourself you can handle
before you have to start dividing and conquering

i will own this
but i will not own that

but i am this because
i was that
and was not that

you don’t really know me
and you never will

i know me
but not all of me
and not all at once

Originally posted 5/17/2009.

Ein Jeder Engel Ist Schrecklich (Every angel is terrifying). — Rilke

Close a door, open a door,
write a letter, burn a letter:
endings are as easy as beginnings
when there’s little potency attached.
What makes it hard to end or begin
is the Angel of Possibility who hovers
on the margin of each decision. 

I know much of her scarred wings 
and fruit-toned breath. Each time
I have flown with her
I have been scared of the height
from which I might fall;

tonight she floats 
at the edge of vision,
near the door, beckoning to me
as I pray for my feet
to remain on the ground — 

yet she is an Angel,
after all, and I begin
to rise, attended by
all the terror
I can bear.