Didi stutters.

I knew her
when she didn’t.

I know 
who made her stutter,
made her shy.
I know what he did.

I didn’t do
what I should have done
when I found out,

so I guess
I helped
to start her stuttering too.

I guess I wasn’t a man then,
or maybe I was.  

Maybe I 
still am not one, or maybe
I still am.  Maybe

“being a man”
means
brooding about 
being a man,

instead of just
being a man 
differently.

Don’t judge me
by Didi, stuttering
and shy — 
it’s hard to be a man.

That’s what i said, it’s hard
to be a man these days
when men are so not good at
being men —

I said it, yeah.
You heard me —

did I stutter? 

A confident, satisfied,
perfectly still man with his lover’s head
on his chest while they sleep — 
really, how many houses around here
look like that inside?  How many
truly happy beds are nearby?

Don’t ask.  You’ll tear yourself that way.

Think instead
about the moonlight 
on this night 
after the beaver moon.
Think about how
bright color inevitably 
went a little gray
under the beaver moon, 
but it’s still there.  

Think about red, and yellow,
and how they are still there. 

At me, looking.  Say, did I
muscles have, ever?
Was there anything
uneaten? Did I mother
a thing, father a thing
worth any damn?
Hardly a damn at all.
Sat me down instead and wrote
poems of fat and second hand
and not me and here we go tomorrow,
not now.

It shows.

Now, pear-man,
pale freak I am.  Rager,
sadder, so complete in some
potato sack way (empty, sag,
writing on the walls).  Open
to the lies of stardom yet
nearby, all I gotta do is
reach.  No, untold is how
reach doesn’t spell grip —
see how the cramp fingers
bend only enough to claw at,
not hold?  And I’m poor, not broke.  Broke
is today, poor is tomorrow, is all tomorrows.
Make broke often, turns to poor.  

And still, can belief
happen for anyone
who sees this?
It’s a poem gets writ,
not a plan.  It’s words, damn
them — hot little breaths all
done as all I can.  All I can,
what with no muscles and straight fingers
and no plan and all poor and all that —

You say, do something, please,
we all sick of you.  I am,
me too.  Maybe a little
more than you?  I keep
at it, do it like a job
I can’t retire away from,  
grouch water cooler or no.

Used to add value, though —
at me, look, please. 
Give me proof it meant a little more
than a pear in a mirror, fermenting,
spilling, going. 

She is thinking again
about how not to die, ever. 
(As it was yesterday, as it will be
tomorrow.)

Who isn’t?
she wants to know.  Who’s not
figuring it out or at least fretting
about it?  Maybe that 
Goddamn Dalai Lama?  
I hate that guy, y’know,
because he might get there
without trying.  

Peace,
she says,
folds herself into 
a lotus pose 
with a snarl.  

How not to die,
ever.  Have to get that right,
and soon. 

You are composed
of how many stories?

If your answer is six or more,
I despair for you.

If your answer is three to six,
I worry for you.

If you say two,
I will remember you.

If you say one,
I will embrace you.

If you say you do not know,
if you say you are made of none,

I will tell you: you are One.
I will turn you to your First Blank Page

and say, write it here.
Somehow tell that One

as soon as you can,
as clearly as you can,

something depends on it,
something close and dark and dear.

Once in a while 
I have blood in my mouth
upon awakening.
It’s good for you, I tell myself.
Full of iron.  

And once in a while
I have a blocked right ear upon
awakening.  It’s good for you,
I tell myself, it’s telling you
to focus more on what your heart
has to say.  

Now and then
the left side of my left foot 
has no feeling.  Now and then
I have a long lasting pain
across my upper lungs.  Now and then
I roll out of bed in the middle of the night
four or five times to piss; it’s not even an event 
worht noting anymore.

It’s good for you, good for you, good for you,
I tell myself,  it means your body is getting too old
to fuss over and fix.  Pretty soon you’ll be Pure Mind
and ready to let go.  Think of these disturbances
as the clarions
of a new path.  

Now and then, I ask myself
who I’m talking to.
It’s good for you, I respond,
not to be completely sure
of the sources the little voices call upon. 
Not to know what’s a truth and what’s a 
delusion.  Which pains are killing pains
and which are the clarions of a new path
or how many are both.  

I tell myself
relax, it’s natural;

it’s all good for you,
it’s all good.

Inside, something shouts
Awake!  
You rise,

run to the bathroom
without stepping on the cat.
Then, feed the cat.  Then back to bed.

Good job brain and all
associated organs!  But let’s be
honest:  how lovely

was that sudden moment of first waking
where you didn’t know your own name
or recall your own limits?  Where

instead of peeing and serving
you might have flown, or vanished —
but then you knew who you were

and what was expected of you
and you did just fine.  You got
shit done.  Good job, brain.

In last night’s
only remembered dream
my left foot was nailed to the driveway. 

There was curiously no pain or blood
and this morning all I notice is a residual numbness
in the little and next-to-little toes.  That’s all —

that, and a despair that comes
from walking in a small circle
for long cold hours in the dark.

If other things happened,
if I had better dreams, 
of them I am unaware;

every time I am in this dream 
I go around myself all day afterward
trying to understand it.

I.
Stop his body
in mid leap.
Hang it
where it can be seen.

Let a thousand doctors poke it,
let ten thousand vials be filled from it,
let one hundred thousand opinions be offered about it.

Leave him hanging a long, long time.
Pick low hanging fruit and pelt him with it,
laugh at him, censure him, 
explain him in front of strangers
with terms like oncology and prognosis.
Neither should sound good.  Make references 
to habits and lifestyle and such
as if he was the font of all
and suggest kids might need to speak to him
as a cautionary tale.

II.
You’re gone almost, and thank God
for that — I ask if you need anything,
you ask for it, you ask for me
to cut you down and clean you up —

I wish I had the arms to do this.
I suppose I could try.  
I’m not keen on leaving you up there
like some pinata
when God is roaming the streets.

III.
If anyone asks, 
I was in another dimension
all night.

Once a rich man now not so much.
He fell over his own feet into a rock.
Can’t get out.  Can’t even see how.

How did he fall into the rock, you say?
He lost his money and so was made porous
to tragedy.  

He fell onto the rock assuming
it would pass through
and instead he was absorbed.

So now he’s a poor man in a rock.  He’s not alone
in there and he feels a little trapped
but he’s making do until he dies which he has determined

will be his only way out.  But he’s OK with that.
He won’t be rich but he’s OK with that now too
now that the granite walls are feeling more homey. 

He’s glad he’s not alone mostly.  He remembers
being rich.  It was good but there were horrors too
based on the money being such a big armor and cushion

that he felt under attack all the time.  No more.  He’s in the rock
because of how soft and transparent the money had made him.
He thinks he’s more rock himself now.

Better this way around than the other
way around.  He might have become a jerk
if he’d come into the money late.  

Better to have entered the rock
poor and soft at his age  
so being with these people became a community.

You say he might be a jerk now because of his memory
of being rich and having a certain power.  Maybe.
But would he have these friends and family now?

He thinks sometimes he’d like to be rich again
but when he thinks of how soft and invisible he once was 
to others, he smacks his hand in joy upon his wall.