Write, paint, they say;
also, stay away.

Do what you haven’t done;
do it alone.

Break open your inner star.
We will watch you from afar.

Learn, teach, and entertain — 
this is all that remains.

Stay clean, stay safe, 
and then create — 

as if the dirt and risk of living
were never themselves a source of life.

As if an everyday touch of death
was never as vital to me as breath.

I sit and stew and stare
and think of how far removed I am

from what I need to be myself:
to be again the Work itself.

Still, the danger’s out there
waiting for the unprepared.

Here I am, and there’s the world.
I stay enclosed and safe from all.

They tell us all: create and play.
I don’t know how to do that.

I’m terrible at safety, at risk-free art.
Free fall’s better for me by far —

but somehow, though it all feels more like death
than any danger ever has,

the cloister here is less sanctuary
than prison and I am weary

of such long and sterile days;
I stew. I stare. Nothing for me to say.

In these challenging times
you want to get right with us.

In this moment of crisis
you need to get on board.

In these difficult days
we have what you need.

In this time of crisis we are all seeking
new translations of “open sesame”

for your wallet. For your time.
For your attention, your opinion,

your locks and combinations.
In this time of panic

we need you to stay calm.
In this critical period

we beg you to not look up
and see us and become critical.

In this unprecedented moment
we don’t want you to think of 

precedents or of how
there have in fact been many

and in this moment of teeter-totter
the last thing any of us want

is for you to ask anyone anywhere
who lives on the front line every day

what it means to cower indoors 
from anything and everything. 

In this moment of how it feels
to worry about death everywhere

we don’t want you to worry so much
you decide to empathize with any place

that just lives this way and has for generations. 
In this commerce-fucking moment

please forget the words Gaza, 
Standing Rock, Afghanistan,

Ferguson, Baltimore, Darfur,
Biafra  — and never mind the rest.

In this moment of confusion
we applaud the challenge of feeling,

for once, like we’re in this together
though we really aren’t. Not if we can help it.

In these moments of isolation
the last thing we really need is you

joining hands and saying enough,
enough. Now that we know,

we can never turn back.
In these challenging times

we’d rather you die 
than say that.

I am busy wishing everybody well
when someone asks me for a light.
I tell them I do not smoke and also 
that I am not an arsonist but they keep asking.

In order to avoid a confrontation,
I duck into a store. It sells lighters 
and other instruments of peace. I buy two
and toss one out the door into the hands

of my still-insistent questioner, who uses it at once
to burn a stack of dollar bills on the sidewalk. 
How silly of me not to have asked them
what they needed it for. Now I have my own lighter

and a few less dollars to burn myself;
that’s the way the cookie crumbles — 
into a pile of ash. I walk around the city
in a dream of fire, of all the money

in people’s pockets flying into the air
and incinerating itself. This is how I wish 
them well, I tell myself; I shall collect money
and burn it and that will bring joy and light

to the world, to all the world. The people
will enjoy the spectacle and the more money
I burn, the more they will give me to burn.
I am at the end of a great adventure today:

thanks to the idea of lighting money on fire
and the one who gave it to me and the lighter — 
I should have charged them for the lighter I gave them.
Call it an investment, I think. I should find

and thank them with fire. My fire. 
I wish them well, all the burning masses.
I wish them one lighter each and small money
to burn. A little flame makes for a brighter abyss.

there are days when healing feels like sleep
its attendant feelings slow me down 
to a point where instead of standing and walking
I seep from place to place like viscous fluid
I cover the floor but do not evaporate

and other days when healing feels like bouncing
from wall to ceiling and back and the windows
from outside are filthy and from inside
they aren’t much better but I can’t stop bouncing
and it would be hilarious if every strike didn’t bruise me

but there are more and more days of healing through skill building
days when instead of bouncing or seeping I am training my hands
to cradle bullets and stop itching while on a trigger 
because to heal is in part to eradicate causes and vectors
and there are people in charge who need to be healed