A man folds himself
into a bass drum
and rolls down a hill. 

He expects to die 
and does not. Instead,
he emerges rhythmically
into battered new life
once he stops, bruised
and deafened, in
a broad valley.

There is a village 
not far away, its chimneys
smoking as if this were
The Home of
The Fairytale Ending.
He begins to walk toward it.

Waking up today
from this. Paradise, he thinks.

Last night instead of this
he was at
his childhood drive-in seafood place.
A tumble of bad actors
from his whole life till now
poured out of
a rusted white Cadillac
parked in front
to jeer him as he ordered
fish and chips
for his whole family
just like every Friday before.

Woke up
from that yesterday.
Damnation, he thinks.

It is
not yet dawn.
Knowing that nothing
in daylight can either
delight or terrify him,
he goes forward
as a blank from here
with no rhythm left,
no vision of future;
no taste for what is passed
and gone; waiting
for night and what 
that may bring. Hoping
for nothing. Praying
for sleep without dreams. 

An apple lands hard
ahead of me on
my flagstoned walk.

I’m next to a high wall.
No tree peeking over;
it must have been thrown.

Was it an offering or
is this aggression? 

I walk to a gate
and shout that question
hoping for any response.
None follows.

How long
do I wait before
I ask again?

Am I well-served
by not simply choosing
to believe it was a gift
and shouting “thank you”
before continuing?

No second apple comes over
and unsatisfied though I am
as to intention,
I do shout my gratitude
to what is hidden
and walk on.

We were confused when he passed
and we learned from his obituary
that he was exactly who we thought he was.
There were no secrets in that life.

He had met all expectations daily.
He had said exactly what he thought.
He had thought exactly what we expected
a moderately average person to think

about moderately average things 
and if there were outliers
among those thoughts
he kept them appropriately to himself. 

In his backyard he kept a fig tree
which bore good purple fruit. 
He would take a few fruits
daily when in season,

leave the rest 
for birds and rats and squirrels 
and us when we were kids;
when we could we’d sneak in to steal

our sticky few, avoiding the wasps
who truly owned the tree, now and then
getting a sly wink from the porch
from Mr. Montressore.

When he died someone bought the home
and cut the fig tree down to put in a pool
and pretty soon we began to whisper
about them and how could they do that?

They must have been from somewhere else.
They must have disliked wasps or joy taken
in a quiet life moderately engaged with neighbors
and garnished by figs.

We whispered about them.
Made up stories about
why they kept to themselves
like monsters.

We learned what we needed to know about
the people who replaced Mr. Montressore
by the sight of a ravished stump 
beyond the far edge of the pool. 

It’s not like it was,
we’d say.
This whole world
is going to hell.

There are
some little things
that like being little
and you can’t change that
even if you try to grow them.

I’ve met a plant or two
that were like that — 
giving them a bigger pot
killed them.
Or maybe I did it
with some clumsiness
I did not recognize
at the time —
a torn root, a missed
watering. 

What happened to me, 
for instance?

I was supposed
to be better than I am 
but became corrupt.
I don’t recall when
hubris entwined itself
with my fiber,
and now I’m here
and the way back is dark
and the soil I’m in
will be wasted on this being
that is
much smaller at heart
than it appears. 

Attempted recreation (and improvement, I hope) of the second poem I ever published, in “Joycean Lively Arts Guild Review,” long defunct. Written in 1975, I think? Maybe 1976? Who knows now. I was in high school, no more than 15 or 16.

After shift I wait 
at the bus stop
where a loose dog
sniffs around and 
trundles away:
perhaps
to home;
perhaps
to other bus stops.

At the end of the bench
there’s a studiously
shaggy kid
sitting with
a shaggy copy of
“Beyond Good And Evil”
on his knee. 

He’s asleep 
or nearly so, oblivious 
to dog and man.

He does stir when the bus
approaches, jerks upright
into full fear
when he sees me sitting 
right there
looking at him. 

“Ah, college,”
I say to myself.

If I’d said it out loud,
he would likely 
not have heard me.

Go ahead and stuff that filth of yours
under your couch, out of sight
but close by, within reach
once you rearrange
all the furniture
to make it so.

Build a pretty box in which 
to stash it. Play pretty music
to cover the hammering
the sawing. Stain it
a rich mahogany. The hardware
gold, the lining green velvet;
look how that resets your filth
as a curious relic you keep to remind you
of what you are, although 
you never pull it out to admire
or shame yourself with it
unless there’s no one there to see.

There you are with your filth
all gussied up and well-hidden and nearby 
and look at all the other knick-knacks
you think make better sense for a world
you want to inhabit. You
have it all figured it out, you

well-adjusted fuck, don’t you?
At night, or sometimes
in bright daylight when you think
no one can tell what you are doing,
you crinkle
that handsome nose of yours
and delicately sniff the air;
is that a smile?  

Preparing for what is to come
when I don’t know what is to come — 

I may be up early, barely awake
with sleeping no longer an option when

there ’s that much natural light
outside. Day starts, I start:

ready for nothing, ready for not
and I am the cartoon character face of not.

People say they love dawn and how 
it strokes them out of bed, 

pulls them into action. I might get
a second of that before dawn crushes me

with the weight of what’s coming. 
It’s always something. Even if it never

manifests obviously, it’s still there. 
Even if I never learn what it is, it hurts. 

If dawn never came again,
I’d be fine with that. Call me selfish

to say it, say I’m reckless to 
others, say I’m letting myself down;

I’m the advertising mascot
for a let down. It’s what I was 

born to be and now this campaign
has run its curse. Now I say me

down, and sleep. I don’t pray
for anything to anyone. If I rise

before I wake I’ll keep going
until there’s nothing left to take;

there is so little left 
as it is, light fingered dawn

may have it if it desires.
I’ll be fine with that. 

When you
have been held
as tightly by illusion
as you have been
for so long,

tearing free
must leave behind
so much blood
you might
find yourself overcome
with longing

to turn back and dive in
to that red pool, one so deep
you can’t find a bottom
to touch and rebound up
to free air again;

but I beg you, do so:

bounce back up 
if you go back down,
break surface through 
your own lost blood and 
once the red has drained 
from your eyes
and you open them
in full spectrum light
you will see all of what’s here
as it should be seen, tinged
with what is natural,
inherent, normal — 

sooner or later 
your lost blood will refill
and you will keep it inside
where it belongs
and the old illusions
to which you were chained
will fade into a darkness
kept forever at bay
by the light into which
you’ve emerged.