Assume it’s all been a hoax.
Assume everything you know
was cooked up to control you
and stuff you with blindness.
Assume Dad and the teacher
and Mom and the boss
were all indifferent about spreading
well-funded lies as long as they
got their share of the funds.  
Assume this is the way it works.

Once you get this
there will be a sudden urge
to uncover the Real, 
so you will stick your hand
into the nearest pond,
pull out some
of the black rot at the bottom,
and wolf it down.

You’ll get sick enough to think you’re dying. 
You probably won’t die.  Instead
you’ll come back thin.  
You’ll come back grim. 
You’ll come back cynical
and pleased as a leech
with a fat vein to suck,
and you will fall in line, 

unless
you are one of the few who simply
can’t.

You’ll know if you are because
there will be a taste
forever in your mouth
called freedom.  
You will be
sick with it
as long as you live, 
and sometimes you will wish
you had died,

but now and then you’ll pass that pond
and note how pretty the sunrise is
across its water
and be glad you’re still alive.

wet sandals
mean of course wet feet

it’s been raining a while now and
stepping back into my house
after the morning walk
feels very briefly
like settling into a lie

to be able to be
on the earth
in this place
at this time
and be dry
almost as soon as I decide
that the novelty of wetness
has worn off
feels briefly wrong

but in the next second
gratitude takes over

I take off my sandals
I dry my feet
I pour a hot coffee and 
sit by my window
watching the rain
from a dry seat
of my choosing

that fellow over there
walking 
appears to be miserable

do not forget that
to have the choice
to be a spectator
to your local weather
is to be privileged

I announce my next task:
improvement of The Circle.

I shall strive to make The Circle better
so that after my redefinition,
all circles drawn prior to it
will look weak.

Upon hearing of this
a man approaches me
with a pill, two pills,
more pills.  “Here,
these will render your task
trivial.”  

They flatten me a while but then
with the realization that they also
are circles, I am illuminated
from within.

So the man approaches me
with a straitjacket.  “Here, put this on,
these arms will encircle you, be
calm and cease the Work.”  

It holds me for a while but then
with the realization that I 
embody the Circle, I shake
free and stand naked.

The man returns with a gun.
“I give up, as should you.
Here are rounds, barrel,
chamber, all of which hold
the Circle you seek.  
Take this, and go
with whatever God you choose.”

I stare at the gun and the bullets
for a while, turn away,
come back to them
again and again.  
It is insanity,
the man has said,
to attempt such a thing
as redefining the Circle
which has been so right
for so long.

But such perfection, such complacency
leaves me wanting.
To have to leave something alone
just because it is perfect as is,
because others have made it so,
is not my calling.

No matter.  There are sun
and moon and gun and pill
and my arms to answer to,
and a huge work to be done.  

I am no crafter,
I am an artist,
I think.  They’ll all
be rounder someday 
when I succeed.

Impossibly well-sculpted heads
shoved deep into
equally pretty asses!

Yogic twist in the morning light!

But, no matter!
They know all of what is needed
these days to get by!
There is no need to entertain
alternative views of reality!

It is very exciting!  Very complete!  
And above all,
there’s no way extraneous sound
may enter as their ears are 
so well plugged with themselves!

They are irresistible, the wave of the future,
the only opinions that matter,
don’t try to fight
what is so right right right!
In fact,
bend now to the same task —
either shove your own inadequate head in there
or take the position that it’s time
to kiss your ass goodbye!

While cutting the weeds I see
a small bit of fur flash
along the fence.

A new species to me, I think,
something unexplored,
unknown.

The great question:

shall I chase it
or let it be, hoping
for it to be revealed
another time?

I let it go,
remembering the cautionary tale
of Columbus, recalling
that Audubon
killed what he documented.

Thunderstorm at dawn?
Too long since I’ve seen one.
This world is either reverting
or transforming.  
I’m going to follow along.

Follow its curves as they lengthen.
Follow its face as it darkens.

I’m set to make music to accompany this
using nothing but my lips and my terror.
It’s a good set of lips
and a singular and useful terror,
the same one that led to 
sharpened stones and the like.
The same one that led to 
what brought the thunderstorm in
before full light.

I don’t even have to get out of bed to chase the change —
if I still had dreams, it would be in there too.
As I don’t, some rough sleep
and twilight thought
will do fine.  It never really
got light this morning, after all,
and who knows if the changes
will allow for such a trivial comfort —

I may as well begin to adapt.

really
if one is to be 
a truly
United States of American poet
one ought to speak
Spanish and English
in equal measure
with equal love for each

and in the interest
of historical accuracy
should have learned
Spanish first

one should also recognize
and pronounce correctly
hundreds of words
in other languages
from all over the world
(and not just the ones from menus)
as well as
understand anger and sorrow songs
in languages of West Africa 

and at least be able to nod 
at the ghosts
who murmur in 1500 languages
spoken here
long before any others
in fact

please
US of American poets
write in Spanish AND English
informed and changed by all these others
these are the tongues of the nation now
speak them with pride and humility

recalling always
that they were originally
the tongues
of oppressors

In the lost year of seventeen
I had blood on my hands
and a heaving song of drugs inside
but I was able to do anything
as I planned to die that soon.

In the lost year of twenty-one
I had more blood on my hands
and dead sex more than live love
so anything was possible because
this was how I was going away.

In the lost years between twenty-four
and forty-four I picked off all the blood
and washed it into the river. I had no itemized
list of seductions.  I lived as if I was
a matter of fact and did not dream on weekdays.

In this lost year, now, at fifty-two
I sing with longing to feel the blood on my hands again,
the rage in sex and passion and God yes the drugged life.
Give me back the sense that I can either create my world
or destroy it.  Help me not care about which I choose as long as I do choose.

An acoustic guitar
you can’t modify much

without destroying it.
Electric guitar though:

man, you can tear that puppy
to pieces and build it up again so new

that leaving that original name on the headstock
seems foolish, but we leave it there and we say

that’s my Fender, my Gibson.  
That’s why

the electric guitar is so damn
American —

no matter how it’s been messed with
somehow it still sounds like bombs and pie,

while an acoustic guitar always sounds like itself,
like it has no country but the one whose hands are on it

right now.  Even if it’s a country of one,
an island nation unto itself,

though of course this is only my opinion,
though of course you have a right to your own,

though of course you can choose your instrument
and play it any way you want to make your point

and we wish you would, go ahead,
the whole world, the entire family of nations, is waiting.