That unexpected but familiar sound
of glass bottles breaking 
on the street that dead ends behind my house.

Someone owns a paintball gun
and shoots from inside some apartment
at empty forties set up on a junk car

which at one time was blue
but now is mottled pink and red
on one side.

I have watched and been unable to decide
which floor of which three decker 
he or she is shooting from.  

At this point, I’ve lost most interest.
The firing range is over there.  I’m
over here.  I don’t like being awakened.

That’s about it.  Not my land,
not that fearful a firearm, not my car.
Not my business.  Welcome 

to the city of picking your battles,
closing your eyes, covering your ears,
getting by.

When they find our fossils
(if someone is alive and seeking
those parts of us we will have left)
scattered among the bones
as telling as flint points
or Venus totems

will be checklists,
thousands of
fragmented checklists
asking:

have I eaten
the right breakfast,
taken the right pills, 
done the proper number
of reps, laps, poses,
eaten the right portion sizes,
slept the right amount,
breathed through 
correct nostril, played
with the right literary forms,
assumed the right positions,
smiled and kissed and 
hugged enough,
shat the right shits,
pissed the right color,
hit my marks, 
saved enough to die on,
lived the right amount of years,
died well and peacefully
with a minimum of trouble
to others?

They will speak of us
as a people
who lived long lives,
though it will be hard to say
whether or not
we lived well  — as hard for them
to determine
as it is, apparently,
for us.

I’m going to sleep now
having been called the Antichrist
by a man in the street

who pointed at me
in front of everyone
saying I had to be that

for the Antichrist
when he does wrong is feared
and when he does right

is assumed to be the Deceiver
and that’s you he said
that’s you boy oh Boy Obvious

I think of how often
I’ve done wrong or right
and how often I’ve been feared

and then blamed
Maybe it’s no more
than anyone else

but I think I feel it more
so I’m going to sleep off
the weight of my evil

Boy oh Boy Obvious
I’m the Antichrist to a crazy man
and to some guy in the street

Riding herd on the culture
gets old. You can’t keep up, that’s
rule one.  It’s not yours to
manage — physics runs a stampede,
there’s always one just getting started
or in full progress
or just ended and there’s always
blood in the dust after it’s done.
All you can do is ride alongside.
Nudge it a bit, spot
where it’s starting to turn,
join others
in pushing it that way, and hope,
always hope.

Fighting the good fight
gets old. You can’t keep up,
that’s rule one.  Biology
being the soft wet target it is,
your body will fail you at some point
and you’ll sink to the canvas
puzzled and convinced you can
still win.  You can’t win.  All you can do
is slow that demon across from you,
wreck him a bit, wait for time
to wear him out before you fall, and hope,
always hope.

Hope, always hope –
your own inner voice will tell you to ignore
every bit of advice and keep at it.
Mount up, square off, ride like crazy,
or keep swinging.  That’s what you do
even when all the tells suggest
there’s no hope to be had.

Hope, always hope.
It’s what the idiot saint inside you
promises each time you stretch out a hand
to comfort or guard or admonish or point out
a different way.  Hope, always,
is a dumb banner you’ll wave
no matter what you’re told,
won’t you —  because you are
that, of course, you
blessed, necessary fool.

Remember?

The pear tree.
The fallen fruit.
The July sun.
The sweet heavy smell.
The yellowjackets
drunk on the ferment.

Their sound as you bent
close to observe.
The need to touch.
The reaching down in trance —

then the sudden snap up and
the running, the crying.
You are six years old
and stung —

remember?

Remember how, long after that,
you could not be drunk again
like you were at six, drunk
on simply being with the world,
on seeing and hearing the world?

It gets
no better
than this.

We’re toasty warm!  Lovely
furnishings, good food
and drink,

all justified by 
how awful the outside world
appears to be — how dare

they!  When we raise our 
pinkies, they raise theirs;
they laugh whenever we do.

We are so not like them, 
just outside, doing what we do
as we do it — not like them —

mocking us,
imitating us 
so badly, anyone can see

how utterly unlike
each other we are.
Why, they are even saying

the same things about us
out there, but of course,
the accent is all wrong

and see, the light strikes
their skin differently — such
sad imitations — wait, at last

I’ve come up with
a way this world 
could be better:

empty their hollow
information out.  
They are nothing

like us.  They are nothing
like us.  Nothing.  Don’t listen
as they try to insist otherwise.

Before dawn,
the room’s flooded
with evangelical Spanish
from the radio.

No music.  Pure preaching.
The only words I catch
in his rapid flow are
“contigo” and “alleluia.”

Rise, fall,
whitewater ecstasies
and imprecations
soak the morning

in splashes from
a torrent
rinsing away
my unholy dreams.

In my Good Book
a lot is left to imagination.

You attach a tag called “faith”
to every stone and garbage can.

For you, belief is as percussive
as a bowling ball fired through those trashcans.

Is that racket what you call your Creator?
I’ve heard worse, smaller names.

I cannot imagine the depth
of such bomb crater hymns.

It’s not up to me to police
the rituals you choose.

It’s not up to me to pretend
I believe in everything at once.

A deity as certain and as loud as yours
demands you frame your devotion in steel.

I’m more of a water man
enslaved to a God with little rigidity.

Who gets to say which is the right one?
Each of us.  Each deluded one of us.

In frog weather,
leap and splash.
In crow weather,
flock and caw.
In squirrel weather,
hurtle along bare wood;
in bear weather,
sleep long, sleep well.

That’s all.
All you need to know
to live around here
and fit in.

You could resist,
try each spirit on
out of turn
to prove you
are not subject to
the tried and true…
bah! As if we haven’t
already spent millenia
incorrectly.

It’s a deep cold day —
bear weather.
If you find you still need
the frog,

dream of it.

Your hand
on a mug
of morning tea
brewed to be
as strong as coffee.

Pins and needles
up your arm.

You want to speak
of aging, of decay,
of survival
against decay, or even 
of late growth?  
Start here

with the importance
of the tea,
the jolt you sought
upon waking.  
Continue with how
the pains
in your arm
don’t alarm you
this morning,
how the pain
in your face
is at last invisible.

You don’t even know
why you get up
in the morning 
most days,
but you always do,
and you always
drink something
to start the day:
a mug of strong tea.

A strong cup of tea,
two bags, minimal milk,
a touch of sweetener.
The bitter edge
from nearly oversteeping it,
the tiny triumph
of knowing how close
you came,
the first sip that confirms
you can live with it.

You can live with it.
You have and you will.
The only way to live:
touch something,
feel something, trust 
the weight of it
in your hand, and
don’t speak of it
or its lessons
too soon.

Coronary, my constant friend,
stay over there — as much as I know
you’d like to give me 
what I’ve said for years
I most desired,
I need to do that for myself
in my own time.

Diabetes, new comrade,
stay at arm’s length — 
while you’ve been hiding for a while now,
only just introduced yourself,
I am determined
not to get to know you well
as you intend to rob me of
what I stubbornly prefer
to discard on my own.

And you, seesaw brain,
tipping point mood –as much as I 
have gained from our grappling,
I am weary of it and 
you need to back off.  What I’ve said
of you for years has turned out to be
too true — you’ll let me win a day or a week
in order to slam me for a month,
and I’ve lost all respect.
I’m nothing to be toyed with,
can crush myself better and more solidly
than you can.

Just you watch.  
I am the master of
my fate, the whatever of my whatever;
when I’m on, I’m on;
when I decide to be off,
I will be off
and there’s not an ill friend in the world
who can do better for me
than I can do for myself.