Mirrors go to war armed with glass 
and glossy bullets. Perfect aim, 
lust for fame, long pained memories.  
Effortless strategy, clear risk assessments.

Armies stare at each other
before battle begins. They recognize
themselves in the enemy lines.  They
charge certain of who’s over there.

Mirrors at war break as any glass breaks.
All those silvered knives littering the ground
of battle. All those tiny, sharp reflections; civilians
will be shredding their feet and shedding blood

for eons after. Both sides ever
unable to walk straight. It won’t be forever
till someone angers up and takes up the charge,
and then it will be mirror, mirror once again.

writing another poem
is as pointless as
taking another breath

Considering the empty plate before me

Considering fullness of all our plates
Considering lack of nourishment there

Considering the Buddha-nature of a plate-maker
Considering the plate-maker creating emptiness

Considering broken plates that can hold nothing
Considering meals un-plated both good and bad

Considering a bowl of seeds
Considering it inedible yet so many meals to come there

Considering space that appears to be full of stars
Considering distances between them that hold next to nothing

Considering the pan my brain sits in
Considering the mind cannot be found there no matter how long you look

Considering an open door with a broken lock
Considering this a joyful damage as the room has emptied of its prisoners

Considering the words filling this page
Considering the silence in which they’ve been written

Considering my voice and its origin from deep caverns within me
Considering how I might never speak again and have no choice in that

Considering Death the great emptier that yet fills the world
Considering an empty place setting at a holiday table filling with presence

Considering hunger for its ample gnawing filling me
Considering a meal that empties the body of its hunger

Considering the empty plate before me

Never have had wild dreams.
Most of mine

have been quite mild.
There was the one, though, where

I carried the drowned body
of a large bird

into a room full of people
and it transformed

into a woman
who raised her head

and spoke to me, her face
like a Greek statue,

pale and bloodless
though she’d come

back to life,
her stone-gray eyes

restless upon mine.
What was wildest

about it is that now
and then to this day

I hear a voice
in the dark of the bedroom

and I know it is hers
though she never spoke

in the first dream
and I cannot make out

what she is saying;
what is wildest is how

I only dreamed it one time 
and still recall it

and still wait for her
to speak and explain

how she drowned,
how she transformed,

why she did not fly away
instead of drowning,

how I found her,
how in death she transformed,

how she has stayed with me
for decades now —

how wild her voice,
how wild her granite eyes.

Sweeping floors
with a new broom
one finds debris and
is occasionally shocked
to recognize how old
some of these minute scraps
are, to recognize how long it’s been
since they first fell from their sources;
take for instance the corner
of a candy wrapper
from a few months back,
consumed in anger
while you muttered
at your body’s refusal to shrink,
after which you tossed all the candy
into the trash and haven’t bought 
any since, so this is without question
from that wrapper you tore off
and that scrap is angering you
again, or your weight is, or
your sloth and slovenly habits are,
it never ends, a new broom
can only sweep so much clean,
why bother, why bother to sweep
at all, everything leaves its dirt behind
and underfoot it makes a sad noise
as it cuts into your sad feet,
needling and whining
remember, remember
as if forgetting was an option.

Good night,
good night. Off
these painful feet
for a while — 
sleeping, dreaming
(maybe, it happens
so rarely). The bed
won’t hurt much 
till morning;
the best part
of this day will be 
spent unconscious, 
darkly numb
in matching darkness,
soaking all night in that
without being aware of it.
Good night,
good night; no need
to say it again.

Smoky in that head of yours — 
can’t see to think, right? Can’t think
about what you see?
Right. You can smell it
through all that haze.
All that fragrance
of roasted cells and spent fuel
with the weight of 
a wildfire out of control, the kind
they give names to;
the Canyon Burn,
the Summit Fire,
the Gully Blaze.
You’re waiting for
the name of this one
to manifest while choking
on its smoke. You need to
adjust your expectations.
Might just miss it if
you stay in there.
Might suffocate
if you don’t break out,
dummy up, admit defeat
at least for now, 
smokyhead,
burnt bauble, ore without
value, trinket
on the blackened floor, 
dead man from the neck up
with nothing and no one
to Lazarus you back
to bright.

Need to cross
a crazy, busy highway,
twist an ankle getting 
to the other side.
Need to break a window, cut myself,
enter a forbidden place. I miss
that kind of pain — that adventure pain,
that how’d I get here pain –anything but 
this salty wounded routine 
I live now.  I know how this happened.
I know what put me achingly 
here. I know what keeps me
cowering here: the calendar, the clock,
the skull-grin ahead of me I could always see
but far off, far off…Need to invite 
that boneface valet
to come closer. Need to let it
brush me when I reach for ripe fruit
on the farthest, thinnest branch
I can get to. Need once again 
to blow that smiling mistake a kiss
as the bough breaks
and I fall.