Originally posted 12/29/2012. Original title: “Pull It Up”

From the place
I buried them
I shall pull up the cocaine
and the late night breakfasts
that never stayed with me
for longer than it took
to get in the car
and get moving,
drunk and wired,
toward whatever couch
was that morning’s home;
shall pull up
the little empty gun
I got in trade
for all that acid;
shall pull up the skinny tie
and the hospital scrubs,
the songs I wrote
when bored,
the awful poetry
I believed in so hard
even when
there was no evidence
for its quality,
no reason for it
to exist at all;
shall pull up the arrogant
know it all
callous boy
ready to screw
whoever was up for it;
shall pull up that boy,
that still-skinny boy
not yet tending toward heft;
that stupid young man
with a bad car,
a jammed tapedeck,
an inability to love
and be loyal
if there was a road
on which to run
and someone’s words
he could steal.
That past
is a thicket of weeds now;
pull it all up, toss it
onto the hot pavement,
let it dry down to dust
and blow away or wash away
in the next strong storm.
If the child
is father to the man,
let me make myself
an orphan before you
get one inch closer;
don’t call it foolish
don’t call it impossible
or unnecessary. You
didn’t know him;
if I can help it,
you never will,
even if I have to scorch
the earth for miles around
to make that so.

Originally posted 4/10/2013.

Some have, some have not.
Those who have, keep;

those who do not have
do not know they likely never will.

Occasionally someone who doesn’t have
will be allowed a taste

via lottery number, a great arm,
a pleasant singing voice.

They let you think
you can get some too — 

hard work, they say, hard work
will do it and anyone can rise;

but not anyone rises.
Those allowed to rise do,

and those allowed to rise
learn how to keep

the little they’re
allowed to keep.

Your job is made to leave you
jealous and striving.

Your leisure is a stunted ration
of your small time here

and when you come home
to cradle that son or daughter,

you whisper that it will be
better for them —

but it likely will not be.
All that gold

will blind them as swiftly
as it blinded you.

Everyone thinks they’ll be rich someday.
Everyone thinks it’ll be better someday

while the oil runs out,
the seas lift from their beds,

the bridges fall sooner rather than later.
The whirlwind spins a noose over our necks.

Some of you still think love
will make it better.

You will be fooled again and again
into believing that love will win.

Love cannot win
in the long sunset of this age.

We have exhausted ourselves.
Love is nothing more than a gesture now.

You’ll still sit back and say it was better once.
You’ll imagine a time when love was enough.

But love has never been enough
to conquer this.

What’s always been needed
is a terrifying justice. 

Gaia is preparing
a terrifying justice:

one swipe of her hand,
and we are gnats full of blood

who cannot rouse themselves
to fly.

You want a golden age?
Get rid of the gold

ahead of that sweeping hand.
Learn to fly for your life.

Land in something new.
It will not be called America.

If when you land you want to try love,
then by all means try it,

but do not expect it
to grow in this soil

so full of gold,
blood, and lies — 

not without
a cleansing fire.

Originally posted 3/24/2012.

America
I wish you could see Death
as I do

As wave of star enveloping
As wave of earth encompassing
As wave of wind embracing
And the next minute
moment
second
instant it must be —

not this
Not This
As NOT THIS
as any moment ever

All I want to know about that moment
I cannot know
so I sit here
speaking of Death
waiting for Death
with fingers tapping

Damn this notion of having to wait
You wait as you will
I will be not be calm and resigned
I will instead call for tacos and pizza
and meats and cigarettes
to be delivered unto me
for those are American foods of Death

and in this country devoted
to living forever
I am starving for Death

In this country
devoted to living forever
I believe in live and let live
but I also don’t care
how anyone dies

Do you think that is awesome
or troubling or false
Am I now riding a wave
of your suspicion

America I wish you could see Death as I do
As wave of the star enveloping
As wave of the earth encompassing
As wave of the wind embracing us
whispering

come as you are

This is not the customary
way of Death
in America
Death is considered
a mistake
a justice
or an honor
We greet it
with a keening of grief
or a holler
and chorus
and cadence of joy 

There are such vigilante songs
in your heart
America
You don’t care how we die
as long as the lettuce stays crisp

I am wearing the mask
of a wave all-encompassing
but if I tear this mask off
and look at you hard
with the right kind of gaze
between glare and adore
perhaps I shall then learn
how the rockets and twilight
lead to dawn’s early light

Till then
don’t be surprised if
we don’t care
how you die 
as long as it makes sense
in the moment of Death
as long as it closes
the long running plot

Originally posted 7/27/2013.

For each guest a gift —
honey in a small jar.  

Broad leaves laden with
sticky rice as a bed

for cloud-white fresh fish, steamed
and spiced. Tall tumblers

of tart juice, a good wine
of local provenance

in a thick-walled carafe.
After, fruits and nuts

placed within reach
to be eaten at leisure.  

When I woke, this all became
a rapidly fading dream.

Ten minutes later, could recall
neither the perfect conversation

that accompanied it
nor the name of she who sat across from me

and made me feel small and
as full of future as if I were a seed.

I did recall how her eyes
were sweeter than the fruit,

sweeter than the honey in glass
that glowed in the sunset; 

I still recall how much I wanted
to call that place home.

Originally posted 3/21/2010.

Silent now
after a yapping lifetime,
silent
and happy,
sitting on a rock 
by the shore,
naked except for 
my long gray hair,
happy to be called upon
only now and then
when my particular gray is needed
to color a braided rope 
someone is making
to moor their ship
when it comes in
or to dangle from
high on a cliff
on their way
from bottom to top.

With time, one learns
what one can give
without losing oneself
entirely, without the need
to discuss, criticize,
or loudly hate either 
the folly
or the fools 
who live it; so

I cut a lock for them to use
without another word,
knowing it will be so long 
before I’m asked again,
I’ll have time to grow it back;
silent, happy
to be needed so seldom
for so little.

Originally posted 5/27/2012.

A shadow coming up
from dark water: could be
a corpse, a crab, or a blue pearl.

The teacher says, surely
we spy here the blue pearl’s
lustrous mystery rising. 

The soldier seizes upon
how the crab, once seized
and raised, will itself seize back.

The undertaker says,
my concern is that corpse.
Wash it clean. Shroud it.  Bury it.

They are ready to pull it aboard.
What’s it going to be:
blue pearl, crab, corpse,

or another thing entirely,
sparking someone else’s
perspective?  As it is heaved

onto the deck there’s a
sigh from all but you.  You
have fallen sobbing to your knees;

everyone knows at once
you alone were meant
to be here today.  Whatever that is,

it’s looking directly into you.
It is not afraid.  You are not
afraid.  You rise to your feet

and approach it as the rest
step back, as the ocean
ceases to be dark.

Originally posted 12/27/2007.

I used to be able to
pull the world to a stop
and stare into
its perfection.

Everything
would slow down,
there was no
no wasted effort,
my arms synched as I turned
toward the yard
away from the screen door
closing behind me,
and then my vision
would sharpen at the edges
and deepen at the center
of my field of view
so that a jonquil stood out
dead still on the lawn, 
honed against the green
so it seemed cut off
from life, from death;
yellow as piss,
yellow as sunshine;

there was a time
I could stop the world
but I have forgotten how;

I have instead
learned how to think and so
I sit ass-heavy
on the couch all day
thinking of those
good times. 

When I leave the house
I close the door
carefully now, never
letting it slam,
afraid of the consequences;
I don’t know how good times
happen anymore
and I don’t want
to scare them off
so I stay in more often than not
getting excited now
only over monochromes:

marathon television viewing,
the relief when the cigarette
is finished and I can breathe
something that’s not grey fire
in my throat, the relief of
lighting the next one,
the longing for
a good night’s sleep

because the only time
the world stops now
is when I am not thinking of it,
when I cannot see it at all,
when the dark eats my dreams
and I live quietly
for a moment,
living dead
for an hour or two
at a time
in unconscious safety,

not succumbing
to the poisonous hope
that one day I’ll remember
exactly how I used to
become still enough to see
the razor beauty
of this world.

Originally posted 5/17/2013.

Once upon a time,
there was Basket,
and there were 
hats in Basket.

Blue cap.
Black beret.
Red beret.  

All day long
a man living
in the apartment with Basket 
changed what hats he wore:
blue cap for the world,
black beret for family,
red beret for his lover. 

After dark
he sat on the fire escape
hatless,
city wind
snaking through
the brick and mortar,

whipping past other bachelor nests
to end up in his hair, 
fingers tousling through
as if the wind
were yet another lover
with a ingrained disdain
for hats.

There was Basket,
Basket full of hats.  There was
a man who changed hats
all day long.  
There was a wind longing
to become a thief, a vandal:

blue cap
to be left on the waterfront.  
Black beret
to be flung into an alley.  
Red beret
to be hung on a fence out of reach.

Go away wind, said the man one day.
I love your fingers and the way you seem
to end up here instead of with other men

but more than that, I love my hats.
If ever I give them up,
it won’t be because
you’ve taken them from me.

Go away yourself, said the wind.
I love your hair a bit, but more than that
I love thinking of your hats disappearing,

escaping, ending up in disguises, 
in the trash,
anywhere but on your head.
I want you without a hat
and I will do hurricane things
to make that happen.

Go away both of you,
said Basket.
Each of you 
is narrow and stubborn
and unchanging. 
My hats are the only thing
that makes either of you
interesting. All your talk
of some imaginary
bare-headed realness
is wasting my time,
and when you’re both quiet,
when it’s just me and the finally
unsymbolic hats in the dark,
that feels like the start 
of the happy part
of happily ever after.

Originally posted 3/27/2010.

A remark you made

affirmed for me
that someone
had indeed
been listening,
at least once,
perhaps by chance
more than
for any reason,
but however it happened
it happened, and so
I thank you,
for as a result

I was able to imagine
for a moment

myself
as carrier,
as burden-bearer
in the oldest sense,
the honorable sense,
stepping out
of my front door
carrying a seed
which by chance or design
I must have dropped
into a good place
as I hurried away.