Small wars are
fought daily, arson
is our flag, conflagrations
our gross national product, smoke is
always rising somewhere,
look for its sources and you’ll find reason
brittle and blackened in the embers,
compassion remnants scrap metal hot
in the embers, the bones of children
in the embers. Constant scent of meat
rising from the embers.  Gag reflex
would seem the only sane discourse left to us
once we see the embers, and yet
we start new fires, toss the same fuel
into them, stagger home to survey the sky
and go out again the next morning
to mourn over the same deathful embers
as if we expected things to be different
simply because we wrung our hands so strongly
over the deathful embers
we saw the day before.

For a long time, medical experts recommended
a daily gargle with salt water. So

she went to the ocean, where at once
she wished she had gone to the desert.

There were trees growing out of holes
in the city sidewalks back then. So

when she got home from the ocean she walked that walk,
only to wish she had instead talked the talk.

Every possible avenue has been exhausted
for the resolution of our most basic problems. So

she dwells now in a gated community where she dreams
of life on the road in a retiree-retrofitted RV.

If anything ever went as planned everyone would die
of shock followed by boredom. So

she is going to take notes on every dissatisfied moment
from now on.  At some point she will be content,

then a moment later will turn back
to all the other paths, just to see

if the same emotions rise to meet her
on different roads.

Dead flowers,
sang the Stones,
dead flowers
make a proper gift,
and roses
on a grave
make for
a proper response.

I don’t know
if that’s true,
but once
an angry woman
laid a fifty dollar bill on me

screaming that she
could not return
flowers I had given her
since they were already
dead and discarded.

I know
I could have used a grave
right then
in which to hide from her
and I can still feel
her blowtorch eyes today
though I truly cannot recall
what I did
to earn such
a rock and roll shaming
as that.

Spent the whole night
swallowing stones,
they did —
eating them off the ground
unwashed.  Licking them
all over for the full flavor
of the dirt
before swallowing
each one unchewed.

They described this
as a grounding practice,
a spiritual risk to be taken.
The heaviness
they admitted they felt
was their sense
of godly fists inside them
molding them to be useful
in some future fight,
and then they went to sleep
and stayed there.

I tell this
not to deter anyone
from swallowing stones,
eating dirt, or doing
other distasteful things
in the name of a calling.
This is only to remind you
that they’re gone now.

What I
remember of him
was that he tried hard, always;
succeeded often,
failed sometimes,
until one day that pattern reversed,
his poles shifting; 

I recall
how he was
often cocky, often laughing,
poked fun at himself
as gently as he treated others
until one day that pattern reversed,
his poles shifting;

what I
remember was that he
once was sterling strong,
not perfect ever but secure
in both his flaws
and his strengths,
until one day his poles reversed

and when the ocean
rose violently in their wake,
he turned his face
into the waves
and at last relaxed
and at last
drowned.

Either nothing depends
on anything
or everything depends
on everything else.

Wheelbarrows, plums,
glazing water, ice, chickens
not knowing their doom
is upon them —

some say each
depends on the others
for meaning, some say
all are independent actors

and the gears of this life
are unmeshingly broken,
it’s all tumbling down, it’s
all sentient objects for themselves.

Whatever the larger truth is,
I depend on the things of the world.
So much of me is revealed
when I gaze upon them

that I might never rest again
if they are not nearby,
giving me my anchor
to my small corner of home.

while you listen
your eyes close
and it all changes.

what were once words
become symbols
burned into dark slate.

what were once urgencies
become meditations.
chants become mandalas.

whether asleep or simply engaged differently
than when you are
wide awake, what matters

is that you are absorbing this.
what seems passive is in fact
osmosis, which is still an activity

on your part. soft, inexorable transfer
of knowledge, feeling,
the backstory unspoken behind spoken.

when you open your eyes
you will have changed.
not all will notice. not all

will care to notice. wait them out,
closing your eyes again
if necessary.

Those who must
for the sake
of family or form
mourn in public
a person they did not love,
one who may in fact have been
loathed and feared,

shall after the funeral
be granted
a huge, selfish wish
by the golden handed saint
of compassionate lies.

Those who must
in the presence
of general or specific bigotry
bite their tongues
to save a job, to provide
for their loved ones,

shall be granted
one roundhouse swing at
and full connection with
a target of their choosing,
and they shall get away
clean.

Those whose lives
are slated
for demolition,
slotted for
dimunition, whose
lives regularly break
beneath the blows
of ignorant policy,

shall be given
keys to once-locked doors
and matches
and gasoline
and violins
for when the burning
begins.

This shall not be called
“karma.”
You should not have to wait
that long
for recompense.

Balance
will be determined
by the formerly
oppressed.

In mid-journey
inevitably comes
a point

where we
are already tired
beyond rational
explanation
and are
asked to do more,
to plunge into
the possibility
of being
swept away.

In mid-journey
we invariably come
to a river
that flows
between us
and the future,

stand
on the bank
amazed
at
how deep
this water is
and how cold,

recall that many
have attempted
a crossing,

that many have
made it, many
have fallen in,
many of the fallen
remained afloat,
and many
have drowned.

We hesitate.  We
think it over
and we wade in
somewhat comforted
by others
and the number of stories
that have come back to us
from those
who made it across.

In mid-journey
we wade in
and some make it
and some drown
and some are swept away
to places from which
we have no stories
so their deaths or survival
mean nothing to us —
at least
nothing
to us mid-journey,

but once on the other side
and firmly back
in the forward trudge
we recall in wonder
the ones
who disappeared —

how they cried out,
at first afraid
that they would join
the ones
already drowned,
then
simply thrilled
to be aimed thus at
the unknown.

without fanfare
or introduction
people were at my door
who led me out and
placed me tenderly
upon the ground

and then 
with similarly
ritual care
clubbed me and
shocked me
while screaming tasteful
epithets

was then elevated
raised by hard hands
manacled and
placed
into a car’s
backseat
taken away
to their castle
and
upon arrival was
laid in a concrete room
bedded upon stone
my head coddled by guards
until 
I slipped peacefully 
away

all the while
dreaming
that my rights
and privileges
would soon swoop in
on downy wings
to save me

It did not happen
overnight.
It started forever ago
with fire

and advanced
with every technological answer
to the question, “Why am I not
God?”

Electricity, light bulbs,
fans, refrigerators,
stoves, irons, telegraphs,
telephones.  Barbed wire.

Steamships
and ironclads.
Repeating rifles and revolvers
and Gatling guns.

Rails
across the country,
the Golden Spike,
the end of suicide pioneering.

With every change, we changed.
It started with fire,
and after that we changed,
kept changing, kept it going.

The first car
needed a driver.
The first television
needed a watcher.

How well we have raised it, this ending,
how thoroughly we have celebrated it
and spread it around.
How determined we’ve been

to keep it safe
behind barbed wire,
our guns at the ready.
How confused we are

that it has gotten away from us.