They sell straw hats at the supermarket
and in the seasonal aisles of drugstores.

They sell surgical scrubs in the seasonal aisles of drugstores
and milk and cigarettes in the gas station mini-mart.

There’s jerky and coffee on sale in the gas station mini-mart
and guns being sold from the trunk of a Mazda on A Street.

There’s illusion on sale from a Mazda’s trunk on A Street
and salvation on a rack in the storefront Lighthouse Church next door.

The whole damn nation is a storefront.  
A merchant God compels us to commerce.

We’re outfitted for the part — half cowboy, half doctor.
Well armed, undernourished though stuffed,

jacked up and hacking, righteous,
and dressed for bathing in blood.

They sell lottery tickets everywhere
because while hope is still free and not easily found, 

it’s the only thing
some of us have left.

It’s hard to breathe
when immersed
in this scent.
It’s a man’s scent.  
A patriarch’s scent.  
The Patriarch’s scent.

So man-scented
the question must be asked:
were there any women living
wherever this paper was printed?
If there were
they aren’t present in this smell.

Maybe
they were busy
holding up that world
so a man could write this.  Maybe
they were busy dying
holding up that world 
while thinking of new ones.  

That was a hint of them
just now —  
fouled wood smoke
and a whisper,

burn them,

like the crackling of pyres.

He never got to be

a one-hit wonder
because that’s lightning’s job
and he was instead
the steady drizzle
that glooms all
and never seems
to end.

She never got to be

a regional favorite but 
unknown elsewhere
because she was busy
being unknown
right here.  

I never got to be 

the object of devotion
from a small but loyal
group of fans because
loyalty is for the worthy.

We never got to be

cult artists toiling
in obscurity because
we barely toiled. It was all
so easy.  It all came so 
easily we could not 
define work, never mind
put it in.

As many reasons 
as there are drops of blood
in the soil.  

As many reasons
as there are pieces of art
no one’s ever seen or
cared about beyond the day
they were complete.

As many 
failures and masterpieces
as there are drops of blood
in the soil
on the graves
of people no one bothers
to recall

for longer
than a brushstroke
or a single word’s hang time
in the constantly remixed air.

shhh.

things you do
indeed make you a bad person.  

laughing wrongly
while believing rightly,
thus contradicting yourself,
makes you a bad person.

loving inappropriate music
and not thinking hard about the lyrics 
makes you a bad person, yes.  

the other body hitting the ground hard enough
that the sound of striking elicits not sympathy
but great good relaxing humor and relief 
makes you a bad person.

yes it does.
yes it does. 
shhh.  
shhh.

remember those times when

you did not take a firm no for an answer.

you allowed relaxed attention to detail
to screw another, mildly but 
deliberately, and you did not take the blame.

you cheated on tasks and duties.  
you barked up the wrong trees,
then set them on fire
so no one would know.  

breathing in this climate
makes you a bad person
in this bad world.  you can’t
not be, at least
mostly, even through
holiness delusions
of namaste
and shantih, 

shhh.
shhh.
sotto voce, in a voice not to be overheard.
speak plainly, if sotto voce,
all your objections, your rationalizations,
sotto voce, as they say in 
italy.

notice that
I still speak to you.
you’re a bad person
but I still speak to you,
of course, if only
sotto voce.  get used 

to hearing this voice all the time
struggling to remake you and failing but still 
speaking, sotto voce, getting it right until 
you do.  

shhh.
shhh. 
you’re not right or good, but
listening’s

something, I guess.

shhh.

don’t make me
raise my voice.

This one’s
a hometown.  
It’s the place I’m from
and no place
you would know,
unless you were from there yourself.
It was quiet and peaceful and 
the local papers called it
quaint and 
picturesque.
Some of those things
were true back then,
but not all of them,
and none
remain so;
still, it’s important
to know where you’re from
and so I have this on me
as it is inside me.

This one’s
a name.
She was too young,
very beautiful, 
yes, of course she was.
It was long ago:
a car, a tree, 
a short, accidental flight ago,
an early passing ago. 
The pain’s 
gone away, at least as far
as it will ever go, and so
I keep her name on me
as it is inside me.

As for this one —
that was something
I saw in myself once
when I still thought
I would someday
have a backstory
that would need an end — as in,
once upon a time
I was from a town named this.
Someone with this name lived there.
I left after she died
and turned myself into this,
found another,
lived happily, etc., etc.

It never happened.
I never became that.
I never found another
name to wear.
This last tattoo
now proclaims
a loss, a blank space, 
a holder against
probability
that I will never
be complete.

In the hand place a walnut.  Call it now 
the walnut hand.  A brain-shell in the hand.
Refer to it in the background, somewhere.
Give it a line to

a recognizable tree, a clear leaf,
stone-hard bark.

Answer that clock ticking
in your own walnut shell,
your brain shell.
Answer that clock that says
no time but now
and not much of that.

In the face, place your last thought
of your first love and your last kiss
with your second love and the unknown
first kiss with your last love. Also,
in the cheek’s blush a touch
of the walnut shell, the 
brain shell, and how little time
you have.

Should there be an allusion
to God or a mythology of similar
bent? What should be bent
to service a cause or thought or
patron? Is there any reason to be doing this
that is not in service to
the stain on the walnut and
how it rides in the open hand?

A masterpiece, you know, is 
a question or two or
a hoard of them.  A horde
of them bearing down upon you
from across

all the historical and ahistorical
and myth-drenched plains. 

In the last stroke, the walnut
should hold unseen all 
but the name of your 
final grace

which will be revealed
next.