I watched an intellectual
state an opinion with undue confidence
and heard the snikclick of a switchblade
as he waited for response

and heard it again as he responded
to a critique of said fact — snikclick — 
and I thought of tweed and thought of
black leather and thought of textbooks

bound in tweed and black leather — of
entire libraries of tweed and black leather
and switchblades being grafted onto tongues
and how gangs of philosophers might look on Harleys

and thought of smart, picked on kids
getting their gang on with words and ideas
that have no value for them
except when they sound like “snikclick”

All priests
will tell you one thing
and forget to tell you another,
but did you expect them
to do otherwise?  
They are politicians
as much as they are
holy men and women
so trust them as far as you trust
any other human and know 
they will do what’s right for them
and say it’s right from God
because all of us do that.

If you want knowledge
you can trust
don’t listen to a human:  
get thee to an ocean or desert
or the mountains, in fact go
where high desert and mountains
drop into the ocean,
go anywhere like that
and sit near the shore for a week
or a few years.  You’ll get it,
everything you need.  

I would tell you 
to keep it to yourself and not risk
the priesthood that tends to follow,
but it tends to follow.  You will end up
lying about it to others,
telling yourself it’s for their own good.

Where my garden was a week ago
is a box of dirt.  My plants
with their unripe veggies
are piled rotting beside it, victims
of something swift and mysterious.
All that’s left are two watermelon vines
too far behind to bear fruit
before the first frost, and a lone
strawberry which is suddenly
thriving. 

I hate strawberries.

There’s a box of dirt
and a couple of useless-to-me
survivors, and I’m hungry
for the squash and cukes 
I won’t get.  I feel like I’ve presided
over a genocide
and am ready to kill what’s left
out of sheer rage.

A box of dirt, six by three by two.
I could almost lie down in it
if it were empty.  Lie down in a box of dirt
and stare up at the sky, wondering
what happened, how I got here.
Ask myself
who will water me as I once watered
what grew here,  what food
I will need. Ask if I can bear fruit
I would want to live on,
and if I will live long enough
to do that.

Under a casket in the spare room I find
a book I’d forgotten buying, a book titled
Art And Fear.

I think being under a casket
for a few years
has made it a better book
than if it hadn’t been there.
It smells like it soaked up
a little something under there
which I think makes it
far more credible.

This is the part where you ask
about the casket.

This is the part where you ask
why I moved the casket.

This is the part
where you can hear an owl
in the distance and cannot tell
if it’s in the poem, the yard,
or the next room,
the part where you stay awake
long after you should be asleep.

right now no proof
of poetry at all in you

an uncut gem
in your mouth

when you clamp down upon it
it will fire up in there 
will shatter into light

but what light

Too true — it feels good
to swing a hand
and connect with a
hard yet crackable jaw.

Hard for some people
to get this:  most
criminals I’ve known
had mountain-high self esteem.

That war thing, the one
where we rush into it singing?
We’ve tried for years to stop it,
and it keeps coming up.

Anger, said the Dalai Lama,
is unnatural,
yet every baby I’ve ever seen
knew from birth how to make a fist.

We cannot be
the enlightened ones
when we can’t even speak truth
about who we are.

Ignore the gurus
and prophets.  We’re killers
to the core and deep down,
we know it.

What we do to survive
is form societies,
then learn to kill
inside their lines.

When I move, you move…

Truckstop, train station, bus station,
airport, port;  remember when those
were the easy way out,
and no one watched you leave?
Remember sticking a thumb out on the highway?
The all-American way
to travel, depend on the “we’ve all been there”
thing…except we haven’t
and “we” means nothing anymore,
if it ever did, if it was ever anything more
than an illusion.  
Good old flag-wrapped dreamtime,
the American walkabout,
legend woven into collective self.  

When I move, you move…

Try to recall what it was like.
Tell yourself
we used to trust one another.  
Tell yourself
travel was a communal experience
and no one except small town cops
ever patted you down,
and they always let you go on your way
after taking the weed you’d hid in your sock.  
Remember
you didn’t care much
because weed was cheap
and no matter where you ended up
you knew you could find more
one handshake away.

When I move, you move…

We used to travel without a lot of thought.
We used to travel without a lot of anything.
That was how you became American:
you just got on the road.  
Had philosophical encounters and wild,
anonymous sex.  Discussed the meaning of life
in the back seat of a big boatcar
with someone who picked you up
on the way to a Dead concert, a festival, your brother’s house
in Middleburg Heights.  
Found a crash pad in a city
you reached before reaching
the city you wanted to end up in,
and decided to stay there for a while…

When I move, you move… 

Everyone’s so damn stationary now.
No matter the size of the beat surging out of the car
the car sits still and only moves in place,
and no one picks up hitchers, ever.
No one buys a ticket last minute
and gets on a plane without running a gauntlet.  
No one rides a train at all
and we fear the buses will smother us
in other people’s germs…
we don’t move at all
without knowing exactly where we’re going,
without a screen to tell us exactly where we’re going,
without a plan as to where we’re going,
only going where everyone else is going.

When I move, you move…
just like that.

Somewhere
in this endless knitting of words
are sense and story
of what is true and 
important and 
though I cannot say
with certainty
what that means
in any given moment,
it is enough to recall
it exists

each time I ground myself
in the grind of bills and 
the scent of my overheated body,
each time I lose myself 
in the sluice of sound and 
the pick-pick-pick of others’ needs,
each time I catch myself
on the tiny barbs and
snags of what seems real.

Each time I find myself
a moment in a minute and
consider what I have learned
from this endless
digging and sifting, this mincing
and dicing of what one letter
may do to change
what I know and feel
and think I know
and feel,

I feel, for one moment,
better.  As if it matters
to anyone that I feel
in any way at all.  As if it matters
that there is a truth to be had.
As if it matters at all.

A clown can’t be approached, though a clown is easy to point at.  
The clown fails professionally, for entertainment’s sake,
as I am failing now to explain whatever I mean
by this.  I am failing now.  I’m sure you

understand. I can understand why
you’d try to help at the last possible,
least useful moment.  I am failing.  Now
is the easiest time to offer, the hardest time

for it to matter. You’ll get to say 
you knew me when I wasn’t and that
you were shocked or not, whatever. 
You can show the greasepaint on your sleeves

where you tried to hug the clown.  What 
I am failing now to completely explain:
it’s not your fault you were late, of course.
Not your fault that what you saw as a hug

I saw as a last smothering.  
Listen:  I am failing now.  
What was once art is now a bad habit.
You don’t need to see this.

she caught the katy
and left me a mule to ride… 

an old blues
to filter inner noise,
to leave some echo —

weird names, slang
that makes just enough sense
to sing along with;

the idea that this story 
is my story, is
all stories:

can’t help but love
that hard headed woman of mine…

You’ll crack a hip
straddling
a black snake

Wreck a wrist
clinging to its
barbed-whip reins

Things will change when
you’re in the chains 
Wise up son for

rowdy boyhood
might make for either
a grimmer manhood

or a more joyful one
You decide the road
but all must lead through

blacksnake riptide
slashhand chains and
wristsnap buck and roll

getting through is all 
in how
you ride