Waiting for the storm to begin
out there in the dark,
the cat charges around and around,
knocking things over, 
breaking my sleep.

I get up and ask her what’s wrong.
I never learn the answer,

but she drops to the ground,
rolls over and takes a belly scratch
without attempting
to tear my hand apart for once.

We’re in this together,
she seems to say.  What’s coming
is going to be long and difficult.
Take time with me, I’ll offer
some time of my own to you.

She got up on the fridge to sleep.
I’m still awake an hour later,
chasing something around and around,
something I can’t seem to catch.

I turn to the cat  for advice — damn,

where’d she go?
Can’t hear her in the house anywhere,
not above the noise of the storm
rising outside.

Only one thing to do now — wait.
Lie down, try to get back to sleep.
Maybe she’ll be here on the bed
in the morning.

I’m a something, a something elsewhere
extraterrestrial thought with alien hair
and left-behind giggle, with cigarette jump
pulse back digger religion,
forgiven game pack smoke rider
on a warp plane to the back door.

If I understood a whiskey scented minute
of the identity I’ve lifted from the cookie truck,
if I were enough of a problem to organize
a solution for, if I had a wallet
thicker than a hippo tongue, thyroid lover
bankroll, meaning infested puppy guy —

it would be easier being me, not the wet sand
of the sidewalk, the knife wheel gyroscope
on some fascinating spin journey, musical daybed,
artist bathroom flush with potential mates,
crystal mythology partner, priest of the hole
in the pocket, small dirty lord of the problematic;

if I were something somewhere elsewhere,
something, not a me, not a him or her,
an I with an I with star eyes.  If I were that,
would be geared up and mechanical, queenery,
kingmaker wigmaker, trying to stay alive as I do,
as I will…or I would if I were elsewhere.

Did you know
I spoke once to a rock
and it answered?

My family told me
to keep that to myself.

My family told me
rock-tongues are truthful
but riddling.

I have uncles
who know these things.

I have aunts
who taught the uncles
and guide their knowing.

I would tell you what the rock said,
but I didn’t know the language.

Aunts and uncles understood
and they told me not to worry
about the message.

They said
I’d know it in time.

I’m still waiting,
family.  I’m still waiting
for the translation.

I lift and hold rocks to my ears
any time I walk outside.

All I ever hear is whispers
of how hard the world can be,
of how family can withhold

something necessary,
something they were meant to share.

From Maine to Massachusetts
down the coast,
slowing down the whole way,

driving into a snowstorm,
into the particulate tunnel
carved by the high-beams.

It doesn’t feel like it,
but it’s all about
playing with Death.

Then again, all driving and moving
is playing with Death,
though we don’t mention it

most of the time.  Of course,
it’s the beauty
of this late night game

that sweetens the risk a bit
and opens the door
for speaking

of how favored music
rouses us against
the lull of the tire noise,

how we fight through how lovely
the drive is,
how we long for home

although this,
this now,
is a kind of perfection.

Everything ought to be
making you sick
from honor killings
and stray bullets
to open resistance
against easy corrections
of past mistakes
and ancient injustice

Everything ought to be
crushing your faith
from the way they swing God
like a scythe at our heads
to the faces of stone stupid
ignorant men
staring into the eyes
of simple folk brandishing
facts for the taking
and calling them lies
and calling them liars
or worse than that
turning away

But everything also
can help make you better
If you go out looking 
you are bound to feel better
From touching your hand 
to the lips of a lover
to being amazed
by sunset revelations
From charging the line
they’ve put up to stop you
to striking the tent
after sleeping on mountains
From being the One
for a swift-dying man
To standing alone
where no one else can

And it isn’t like everything 
changes when noticed
Or that nothing worth seeing
is ever forever
It’s all in a balance
between warring and resting
Between screaming and sleeping
Between storming and laughing
It’s all the rage somewhere
to be enraged always
All the rage somewhere else
to leave all rage outside
I say it’s a privilege 
to feel anything anytime
The ones who cannot
are soon enough buried
and all of the living 
we have left to do
is only a living
if we live on both sides
So sicken and heal 
and chatter and humble
What we’re here to see
is everything clearly
What we’re here to do
is everything always

Cold morning
putting out the trash — there’s 
a dead mouse on the porch

that apparently died
in the act of creeping along
the siding toward warmth,

or was perhaps killed by 
something but left
unconsumed:

perhaps as a warning
to others not to pass
this way?  

No matter:
I lift it from the spot
where it passed

and hurl it
into the yard
where it will become

a different kind of message
of how every death absorbed into 
its environment

vanishes.
Will I even remember
next year that I did this?

Was that why
this was written?  Was a mouse
born and killed to give me a poem?

I think this once and snort at my ego
that doesn’t even know 
why I’m here — maybe

I’m just here
to take out
the trash

and will some day die and be found
with the yellow bags in my hands
and others will nod sagely

and agree that I was good at that
as they wrap me up
and hurl me out of their minds.

The crisis passes,
leaves you

broken open, interior exposed,
egg-slick-sticky.

Gold and white
and black opal shimmer

that cannot
be put away

once it’s out —
it can so easily be soiled

and spoiled.  You have
no shell, no protection

for yourself
anymore.

Untrustworthy gods
delight to see you struggle — 

that’s the point, they insist.
You’ll always lose,

but to struggle
is to move on.

And, they promise,
there will be more gold,

more white, more 
opalescent shine

but this time, you’ll 
put the shine on —

it won’t be what you were
born with, but it will gleam.

I never expected to hear
anyone say

“Step away from that,
slowly; that’s
a grown man’s
pogo stick,
son;”

or

“Sixty years ago
married a big
fat fat fat fat fat
wife, we had
six kids
and I don’t recall
her name or any of
theirs;”

or

“I been robbed
five times, that’s why
when I get paid
I take all my money
and put it into
the liquor store;”

or

“Lover, the duration
of how good it feels
is directly proportional
to the heaviness of
the night in which
it’s happening.”

But I’ve heard them all
and even when
I didn’t understand,
I was glad to have heard
evidence of a wave among people
of heart and thought
and pain and quirk;

made me feel
there was a point
even if I was never to know that point;
a point

to living weirdly,
to have been in the right places
at the right times
to have heard such things.

In the name of peace
we kill.  And in the name of God
we do as well.  And in honor of the sun,
the moon, the waves and wind —
slaying, tearing of flesh, drinking of blood.
We did those things, have always
done those things, we still do those things.

Then we bend to pick up our children,
tickle their chins, speak of freedom
and love to them. Touch them with
our bloody hands. Sing to them
with gore on our jaws.  
What are we?  

We are the ones
who refuse to understand
what we are, who think
and have thought
for forty thousand years
that this is the era in which 
we will evolve, that this scheme
or this evocation of God
will make it real at last.

We are beyond
the reach of that,
of course.  We are 
in stasis, envious of the predators
who know how
to stop killing once they
are filled.