To go to work
in this time
is to take a raven
off her perch,
set her on your shoulder,
and set to your tasks

with her croaking
impossible instructions and 
vague prophecies
into your ear at exactly
the worst possible moments:

during meetings,
at the beginning of your commutes,
alone at your desk in deep focus
on critical concerns.

You try to brush it off,
to silence the bird,

but since you’re the one
who put her there,
who took her from the top
of the door frame and put her
on your shoulder,

you feel a little guilty.
“Shut up,” you whisper.
“I’ve got so much to do.”

She sits, and shits,
and croaks out far more words
than you thought she knew.
Everything’s so complex.
Meanings are so obscure.
You’d assumed
you already knew 
her whole vocabulary,

but no.

To go home from work
in this time
is to set the raven
on the seat next to you
and say,

“Traffic’s bad.
I just want to get home
fast and safe.
Raven, find a way.
Raven, take me home,”

but she chooses this moment
to fly out the window
and go home on her own
(or so you assume.)

You start the car,
ooze out onto
the clogged roads
and wonder how long
it will take
and what you will find
when you get there.

The only thing I want now is
a taste, a sniff
of life. A sample of it.

Living itself
has become 
such a cold concern. 

To have access
to any flavor 
that reminds me

of how warm it used to feel
to be immersed
in living, to think of 

living as a surge
into which
one could dive

to come up soaking
and joyful with life:
that’s all I want.

A memory of that
would be enough.
Living as we do now

is beyond me.
I can’t do what living
in these times

demands: the virtual killing,
the deadly spiritual sneer,
the all or nothing thrust

of getting through
and getting by
on this world’s current terms.

Whoops!
Something has fallen and broken
in a nearby room.

It sounded like 
diamonds scattering
over flagstone tiles.

There are no diamonds
or flagstones here, though.
Something poorer

must have tumbled, then.
We should go and see
what it was, what might need

to be gathered,
what should be discarded,
what might need repair.

But we’re not moving.
Sitting here speculating,
imagining diamonds

and stone or else
terrifying ourselves
with fabricated demons 

and myths about 
the end of the world
coming in the form of 

a shattered vessel
for what we held dear.
But look outside — 

there’s the world
as always, either ignorant of
or unbothered by what we

most fear. Time
to get up, high time,
someone says.

Ah well — the seats 
are so comfortable.
Next time, maybe. Next time.

Mistakes are made,
half-measures are taken
in half-hearted response,

but no one can ever name
maker, taker,
responder — 

it is as if
things just happen and
no one needs to be present

in this wonderland, this
busted clockwork world 
where no one acts;

things slumping
to a conclusion; a slowing
ticking as it shuts down,

anthem for all of us
watching, shrugging; 
our eyes moist, confused;

looking at each other,
suspecting each other,
more than halfway certain

of each other’s guilt
in the matter of the mistakes
that were made.

First:
cracked my skull.
Exposed the walnut
within. 

Next:
slipped on blood. Fell and 
watched the meat roll
out and under a stone.
Scrabbled over to retrieve it
and under there was
a world.

After that?
Learned the language of 
the world under stone.
Didn’t need my head for that.

All at once: 
bisected brain
lost its seam. Stopped asking
the questions I’d been taught
solved everything.

Then, this.
Absorption
then exposition of 
ghost tongue. This
translation, not perfect,
of what I’d heard:
that historic intellect
is a type of fog.
Talking in a circle,
moving away from 
all-potent straight line, 
surrendering
forced orientation of 
Point A to Point B.

Last: waiting
to hear back.

If understood, joy.
If not, patience.

Inside, bewilderment;
becoming wild, as in

loving trees more than
Aristotle. Waves
more than Plato.
Autumn scent
more than Descartes,

understanding that
there’s no word
in this tongue
for Jesus.

Let us lay the bones of this nation in a damp hole 
and cover them with the ripest flowers we can find.

Let us sing a common song in all our languages,
a dirge for its history of black and blue skin, for its red, red blood.

Let us look at its birth certificate and last will and testament,
shaking our heads at how it might have been and what it left us.

Let us wash our hands of its illnesses and plagues.
Let us pretend that none of its wounds were self-inflicted.

Let us sit for hours by the graveside
and suffocate in the smell of bloom and rot.

Let us walk away when we think we have
somewhere better to go. 

Let us try to forget
that we knew the dead.

Let us try to forget that we knew it was dead
long before the hole had to be dug.