You don’t want to admit it
but lately you have been thinking
that your big moments 
have all passed. 

You abhor the sentiment 
but truth is, you do sit around
thinking that you’re in stasis
and therefore decline.

Man, it’s like
you’re a damn walnut — hard-shelled,
long-fallen, full of potential,
sunken into the ground.

Maybe you’ll get out 
and grow.  Maybe you’ll rot.
Maybe you’ll be uncovered
by a squirrel and be consumed

by a being with a more urgent need
than any of your own and that will be
your biggest moment, your greatest
contribution. It ain’t over yet,

is what I’m trying to say.

we the most precious
examples of how the spin of flesh
makes vessels of each of us

sets us whirling in place
our parts and bits end up
precisely where they should be

their placement in our lives
perfection — all of us exactly 
where we are meant to be

even if it leaves us in despair
or rage to be present
with our moment personal and global

even if it leaves us wanting
difference and upheaval 
we the agents of the disruption

this is no false peace
we were neither meant for peace
nor holy acceptance

of bend and bow and scrape 
we are the warriors and medics
of today’s mayhem and failure

we must look each other 
in the eyes and say
you are perfect not broken

worthy not deficient
honored not disgraced
no time for shaming or discarding

as we the mass are
one last chance for miracles 
vectors for hope

From 1999.

there’s that ghost in your face —
the ghost of your mother

beloved ice mist peeking
from underneath the skin so clearly

in one frozen second
your father sees it and gasps

covers his face
before your twin images

as light plays into
the planes along your nose

a shadow covers
your own face

her face seeps through
before everything goes finally dark

you carry so much of her inside you
it’s no wonder he refuses to speak with you

at certain times when he is lonely for her
the heart can only take so much

there can only be so many reminders
before it breaks completely

There is a light
that never fails

in a safe house
somewhere,

one that lights
the way home

for those who seek it
from dark places; as dim

as it might be from 
some places on the path

it always comes through
the trees eventually,

is glimpsed from 
the ship on the rocks,

shimmers on the edge
of sight when seen from 

a distant ridge; it blinks
of home and safety

to the long absent
traveller. At least that’s

what I’ve
been told.

When running up
to a finish line
you will feel 
swords
in your chest

You must decide then
whether to ignore them
or stop to draw them forth
to either die there
or recover and finish

or even win

No choice is wrong

but what happens
to your swords
after you choose

That’s a puzzle
with its own sword hanging over it

Leave them in 
and push through and perhaps
you die or turn cold
and twisted in pain

Pull them out and contaminate all
with your blood as you fail
or finish or win
without them

but leave them behind
so others flay themselves
as they approach you

standing there
laurel-decked and
whistling from
all your holes

Aftermath is where
right and wrong
come out to play

Aftermath
is everything
in this race

End this

and the diamond horse it rides

Blow the bridge behind and before it
Bring fire to it where it stands bewildered
between the two

But it has come so far, you plead
Not far enough we respond
and how long must we wait for it
to come the rest of the way it should go

Blow the bridge to the past behind it
that it may not return
Blow the bridge to the present before it
that we may be safe from what it brings us
from that past

End this and its platinum blonde warrior locks
End this and its steel hoofed steed
End this with a song or a sword it does not matter
as long as it ends and ends hard and finally

let it not leave a thing behind it
when it goes
Let the diamond horse
shatter and melt away
Let the rider
fall into the shadows
and be gone

My hands 
began to lose hope 
somewhere around two PM
on a Tuesday. 

On Wednesday I looked
at what they were doing
on my guitar’s strings;
familiar songs,
songs I’d written,
did not sound the same.

I sit with them in my lap
often now: invalid limbs,
kin to my feet
that lately burn and prick 
with the same disease.
They sob out loud 
at times but mostly
fry in silence as we watch 
the world itself
attempting suicide.

Hopeless, failed hands;
stinging, failed soles
of unsteady feet; heat and
drought everywhere and
a tingle within
that whispers both personal
and general doom.

When I tell my hands
there is no easy end to this,
that this is no longer
a crisis, but a state of being,
they flutter up from my lap
and then fall still. 
It is hard for hands like these
to see all that demands to be done.
Hard for feet like these
to see how far there is to go.

As for me: in this body,
nothing is solid. Nothing
stops shaking. My hands
lose their grip. My feet fall out
from under me. I end up, daily,
staring up immobilized
from endangered ground,
ashamed that somehow,
I keep breathing.