A man lifts his head
from his despair couch,

sees pictures of 
his family on the table

across from his seat,
imagines them seeking

comfort. Right out loud
he asks the empty room:

where will we hide
if the fire comes?

I grew up and away
from having to think 

about this, and now
I have to think of it

again, not only for myself
but for loved ones, 

wondering how
to keep them

from the fire if it comes — 
and if fire comes

will I be ready, will I
know how to shelter us

from flame
and storm and

the long night
that will surely follow?

The pictures
do not respond,

staring into his
numb, silenced face.

A breeze shivers
the house.

The summer air 
simmers.

The couch accepts
his face as he falls

back into its warm,
illusory hug,

the night still safely
dark around him,

no sudden spark out there
breaking the world into coals.

I rise early to start work
upon a treatise 
to be called,

“An Inquiry Into Not Being
Violently Sick To My Stomach From
Reading The News.”

I don’t have a clue as to 
how to begin this. There
is no talk therapy for it.

Every effective pill is either fatal
or so obliterating that
the rest of my life

would be swept away too.
I could do what some do and 
never open a book or paper

again and try to forget, sink into
coffee or beer or weed, play 
the oldest music I could remember,

plug into unplugging from the right now.
I’d be lying if I said I haven’t tried
all that; I’m not capable of lying

anymore. My stomach keeps me
honest, spits up truth in spite of my fear.
As convulsed as I am minute to minute 

it would be hard to say
I’m not a better person for it:
my gut’s well-toned enough now

from retching to take whatever
stab or blow or bullet that comes;
even if I am pierced, even if I am killed,

I will leave this work behind and survive.
I dip my head over the page,
fight back what’s in my throat, and begin.

A bald brown man
is out on the curb with a black
trash bag of a kind disallowed 
by my city carefully picking through
our building’s recyclable bins
for cans and bottles, almost tenderly
placing those he cannot use
to one side on the pavement before 
adding to his bag with what little
he gets from us and then
putting the ones on the pavement
back into the bins, although
I cannot be sure
he puts them back into the ones
they came from they all go back
into the bins where they belong
without ever touching the yellow bags
the city makes us use for trash
and then he straightens up and 
moves on, up the hill, up the street
to the next three decker, then the next;
then he crosses over and descends
doing the same on the other side 
where I see him one more time, 
directly across from my window, 
picking through the plentiful options
from the green building’s bins,
and I note as an afterthought that
he’s new, not one of the usual crew
who come through on Wednesdays
or Thursdays if Monday was a holiday;
he’s younger, fitter, more neatly dressed,
stands up straighter, looks like he can carry
more weight as the bad black bag the city
won’t let us use for trash is full now
and he is tying it off and pulling
another one
from his back pocket
where you’d expect
a man
to carry
his wallet.

I’ve seen stains
on the road where 
it happened.  I’ve seen
ambulance lights
heading away from 
where it happened.
I’ve heard weeping
and screaming, 
tortured explanations
of torture and death,
condescension turned to
terrorism, eventual drift
from truth to shrug, and
blue, blue winds blowing
any remaining truth like
so many dandelion seeds away
from where it happened;

if you want me 
to testify about where 
it happened, where
exactly it happened, 

we’ll be here a while
as I point and say
there and
there and
there
and there and
there

is where it happened.
Everywhere
is where it happened.