My face startles me
as I pass a storefront.

That shadow self
in the window
looks smart as hell
when he’s indistinct.

I know better, of course,
than to listen to him,

trust him even less
when he’s in a mirror
across from me.

Bastard,
I say, I bet Dad
(whoever he was)
broke his own mirror
the first time he caught
a glimpse of that future me
in that image.
He saw the kind of son
he was likely to father,
and that’s why he ran.

You’re not so smart,
I tell my reflection.

It says
the same to me.

Maybe
it’s smarter than it looks,
but it can’t be by much.

So considerate!
He hangs my blue towel
on the correct nail.

We only tango
facing the wall,
our heads snapping about 
as we turn. 

I don’t like your sister watching us,
he says.
And your piano
is in need of tuning.

What I would not give
for a long drive with him
in an MG,

a red MG,
revving up, rolling out
over the long miles of country,

laughing at the signs:
no vacancy,
no vagrancy,

I’d go anywhere with him
though forensics are imminent
and may show soft crumbs of others 

on his knife.

This morning,
I salute the earth.

It should be with tambura,
horns, drums, finger cymbals,
and flutes, I know.
I have none of these.

It should be done with dancing:
heels never touching, a toe-tip reel
grounded but striving upward.
I’m afraid to move too much,
terrified of a last-straw-to-this-body tumble.

I can only do it
with nerve and 
a celebratory shiver
in my stiffening limbs.

I can only do it
with hard-found words
in the one language
I manage to speak.

I may only do it
once well,
and the earth may not catch it
except as a stirring
behind its global back,
once.  

Not to salute the earth
breaks a commandment
that was left out, 
perhaps on purpose,
from the Ten…unless
the one about parents
is supposed to include
this honoring of our source,
but most likely
was not meant that way
so, 

I add it.  New commandment:
“Salute this earth
with whatever you have.
Keep it holy as if every day
were a Sabbath.”  Perhaps
it is? Let us find out:

salute the earth in the morning 
every morning, and let’s see
what if anything
our customary God
does about it.

Him with his flattop cut,
bowtie on short sleeve shirt,
bad pants often plaid pants,
cheap shoes, pocket protector,
lived with his elderly mom
and drove her older Cadillac.  

Him coulda fallen
out of the typecasting folder
of a typecasting agent
but I knew him, he was real,
not at all a bad guy,
an accountant, one of the best,
loan you his money on your word
as to when you’d pay him back,
buy you lunch if you were strapped, 
hard to get started with
but once you were in with him
you were in.

Him unable to use a 
computer, him with his
paper, piles of it, boxes of it, 
him burrowing through
his paper to find fraud, waste,
nuggets of wrong; no one better
at it, all agreed, they handed him
every hard job, impossible error,
stubborn case.  But — 

him?  Him? Inflexible,
they charged.  Not versatile,
they whispered.  Too limited,
they agreed.

On his last day
he cried on my shoulder,
awkwardly, for all of 
ten or fifteen seconds.
He died 
within the year.

I heard a painter
railing against
nine-to-fivers,
a poet railing against 
nine-to-fivers, 
a musician shuddering
at having a nine-to-five
need-to-have, 
all variations of 

how can they go to work each day
and do that with no creativity
or room for play in a schedule?

I want to say,
you should have known him.  
Should have asked him.  
Should have
seen him cry to lose it,
should have
felt him die to not have it.
Should have
had him tell you
how he loved it, how it was like
mining, puzzling,
like a writer finding the pieces
to tell a story.

I want to say
art,
fucker,
is where you find it

and there are more places 
to look
than you, evidently,
have the imagination
to discover.

The Third
turns into the Fourth
over the course
of one dank
fireworked-up night

We the people
are getting
our tricolor freak on

eating after midnight
(shouldn’t be eating this late)

eating something we shouldn’t
(shouldn’t be eating this)

drinking some corporate poison
(shouldn’t be drinking that)

smoking something
(shouldn’t be smoking)

lighting firecrackers
(shouldn’t even have these) 

and thinking
(shouldn’t be thinking this)
it all might be more fun
with a couple of guns
one for dawn 
one to dream on 

On the Fourth Of July
we remember where
the shooting started
feel like we had a hand in it
and resent being ruled
by descendents
of the shooters

but instead of
thinking about it
too much
we stumble about
slightly paralyzed
by our lifestyles
but glad of the day off
and only vaguely troubled
by the Lone Ranger
patting Tonto’s head
while lifting his wallet
to use the cash 
to buy a second home
in Puerto Rico
while standing his ground
(six shooter in hand)
against the terrible increase
in the horrible number
of black teenagers

as river, allow
level to assert
itself and then
follow the tumble. 

as seep, settle
into the shimmer
and sing inside
the slowest notes.

as wail, scrape
inside for last moisture,
spare ocean, water-
spout.  release.

if inside, find the leaky
seam.  break
down.  try to hold it closed.
fail. try. fail.  turn to river.

I own one string
of 108 white beads
that were strung for prayer

purchased with the intention 
of taming the negatives around me
by the process of counting them off —
ninety
ninety one
ninety two —

count them all often enough
it is said
and one tames oneself
most securely
through following directions 

Lay the beads in the right hand
over the middle finger
Over the ego finger
From the head bead
move on to the next
using the thumb alone
seeking in the count
the OM

But I don’t feel tamed when I count  
Instead I start itching for a fight
thinking of the host
of red-dark demons around me
I have more fights
than strings of beads
to tame them

Perhaps my battles
are my blessings
and instead of blessings
I should count battles 
eighty nine
ninety
ninety one 

Lay the beads in the right hand
over the middle finger
Over the ego finger
From the head bead 
move on to the next 
using the thumb alone
seeking in the count 
the OM

If I break this string of beads
will the blessings be scattered
will the battles be strewn about
fifty one
fifty two
fifty three
Will I feel better
in the rage that rises
when I see them
bounce across the floor

One hundred and eight little chances
to discount the process of taming anger
on a daily basis 
is not what the holy ones intended
when they dreamed this up

but there are
some of us
for whom such inner taming
is erasure

Lay the beads in the right hand
over the middle finger
Tangled on the ego finger
From the head bead 
move on to the next 
using the thumb alone
seeking in the count 
the OM
but finding instead
the void 

Sometimes
I burst from sleep
imagining that I am self-sired,
never tired,  solo flight
across the Atlantic,
great aviator all alone;

easy as the day seems then
it usually takes only a swipe or two,
a smirk or three, a cutting framing
of what I thought was my glory
by a beloved one, and there I go 
down, down into the gray and cold.

Self-sired, never tired — those are my best lies.
As if I’ve ever been anything but a lonely son, as if
I’ve ever been unexhausted in this life. 
As if the hard sleep I rise from
hasn’t been stolen from the dark. As if I
have ever been cleared for landing.

No vulture can circle widely enough,
no worm can open her gullet enough,
no fly can buzz to the target and feed swiftly enough,
no gravedigger has a shovel large enough

to dig the grave that needs digging
for the hulk that lies dying here.
No hearse large enough to carry it away
to a better cemetary,

no undertaker skilled enough to empty it
or make it up to seem plastic alive
(though it often looked that way in life,
seeing it now confirms that those days have passed.)

One hope to avoid the poisoning sure to come
from its breaking down and leaching out:
that we who are watching it die will at the proper moment
set the giant bonfire needed to cleanse the earth where it lies.

There is no story behind
this broken arm
Nothing explains it

If I name one more damage
with no story to explain it
you will begin one

so instead I say
rise, finality, next,
no connections

loser wagon 
condensation
anxiety chalkboard

If I offer one more non sequitur
you will make a story of them
thus destroying them

so instead I say
Ha Ha Ha
instead I say Eh

we try to make a world from
separate things
though the world is already one thing

if I laugh again
you will make a routine of this
and then a theory for it

though no understanding’s
needed for what is
randomly being here

enough, ha ha ha
to know we don’t know
or should be so

they see you ready to end it all, hopeless, etc.
so your friends start to speak in cliches.
they tell you how dark the night,
how cold the ground.  tie a knot, hang on, etc. 

understand that this is the lingua franca
of those encountering despair.
it’s the only language they have in common
with each other when faced with you.

they will comfort each other
in this same language, reciting to each other
what they said to you, once you are gone,
once they feel satisfied you can no longer hear.

don’t respond as you’d wish.  don’t let them know
they aren’t really your friends now.
they need you to make themselves
feel better. you are of value.  take comfort in that.

instead, ask them: ok, how am I supposed
to tie the savior knot when I will have to let go
of the rope to do it? and, what if dawn
brings me before a firing squad? 

watch them wiggle, hear them squeal.  it won’t be fun to see
but how else will they learn that
their silent presence cools fire,
and stop trying so hard to talk you out of the frying pan?

Let’s burn a guitar
for the honor of those
who’ve died among us
and made us sing 
in their wake.

Let’s pretend
to reggae, let’s
assume the position
of blues;

though we’re lying sacks
of middle-class shit
when we do that
tonight
our dead friends have signed
the permission slip
for those journeys, so

under that whiter than white moon
let’s light a fire
and coax last songs out of
a broken, rackety-rick pawnshop axe,
singing

Sloop John B,
Statesboro Blues,
Do Ya Think I’m Sexy?

then listening to the flames 
in the snapping strings
as the poor old thing
disappears in the smoke,

just as we will later disappear
into the dark
around a fading fire. 

It is impossible to say 
everything out loud today
in our accustomed way.

In the church we offer eulogy,
homily, the rites,
all the orations of grief;

but at the graveside behind the formal speech
we offer each other a butterfly language,
floating and whispering, unlipped and tongueless.

In that we tell of life and death
without a word, understand and
are understood without knowing how it happens.

Go home, we say to each other
in this formless tongue.  Go home 
and be at peace

in the day to day
now that we have laid him to rest;
he has no more need of us. Remember

how this began and ended
when you think of him, remember 
what lay between those gates — 

who he was, who we were
with him, who we are without him;
we keep it, and he’s beyond it.  Don’t rely

on the priests for an explanation;
we understand this
in our deep animal being.

It’s why we use the butterfly language
to speak of it and not
the rough pulse of speech.  It is older,

smarter, tighter,
better on the breath,
lighter in the ear.  It heals.