Jonah on the blanket on the sidewalk
yelling at the passers-by
to look at his paintings and sculptures

calls them philistines
confident that few will know
what it means

however the biker
who just kicked his face does
or knows at least he doesn’t like hearing it

Jonah sobs 
as the biker picks up a painting
from the blanket

loudly admires its composition
tosses a greasy twenty at Jonah
exits laughing

Jonah wipes
his mouth
with the bill

straightens the blanket
and his wares
goes back to work

keeping an eye out
for more bikers
(just in case)

Tell me
for the love of this song
what’s this floor
we are dancing on
I thought
when I stepped into the room
it might
be a trap and I’d be falling 
through to
the basement or worse
but it’s solid
and the music makes it more so 

Tell me
for the love of this night
what the clock
is trying to say
I thought
when I took off my watch
it would
stop the night from advancing
but now
I suspect dawn’s found us
and the night
is a lamb waiting to be slain

Tell me
for the love of my love
what mister
she is trying on now
I thought
when I turned my back
she would
by her very nature follow me
but now
she’s dancing with everyone
and everyone
looks happier than me

Tell me
for the love of my name
what man
I am supposed to be now
I thought
when I got here
it all would
clear up the last questions
but now
I am forgetting eveything
and everything
looks like something I’d long ago forgotten

When presented with evidence
of an apparently effortless genius
at your chosen expertise
often you see it and fall
to your figurative knees
with what is either scream
or prayer caught
in your throat

Though you know in fact
there’s hard work behind it
you can’t see it and 
you unworthy fall to 
a state of worship and
envy

Pyramids for tens of centuries
have done this to us too
We argue about what it took
Some talk of magic or space
Others of physics and slaves
In truth we only ever
think we understand
and any view of them at all
raises mostly awe we can’t contain

Coming across a talent you can’t fathom
(as if you’d come across a pyramid
balanced on its broken tip) leads you
to supplicate and call at least within
from anger or envy upon
Deity, Nature
or Nurture
Magic
or Muse
a plea as to 
why it was not 
why it is not 
why not
you

Man, you wanna know
what’s wrong?
She’s gone and I’m
just figuring out I
was in love with her,
I swear —

Krystle,
Krystle was a cashier
at
the Walmart, 
at the Walmart
on 16, out by the new 
Ford dealership,
the one that used to be
farther out on 16 but
moved closer to town — 
yes, that one  — anyway
Krystle,

Krystle,

Krystle — 

listen, man,
stop laughing,
stop laugh-interrupting me, people
got to eat, got to work, and yeah
I’ve seen the damn website —

what you’re saying by laughing is
that you hate the people there
along with the store —

listen,
Krystle
was a friend from high school 
and I was in love with her all these years
and I just figured it out
and she just died.

I can’t tell her as something
she wasn’t.  Maybe —

no.
Man, I don’t even fucking know 
you.  
Don’t want to.
Go.

they all step away
from recent effort
saying “isn’t that the greatest thing”

a portion
then look back and say
“isn’t that the worst thing ever”

even fewer 
say “hmmm…”
and get back to work on it

how few indeed of that last fragment
look at it when they’ve finished
say “it IS the greatest thing”

and then discard it
knowing that to have perfected it
is to have reached a dead end

those few drunk on growth
are the ones whose feet
I bend to kiss

Sourdough,
good ham,
codeine.
 
A sandwich,
a sip or two…
tang on tongue;
then, relief in head.

Hanging 
in a hammock, at rest,
reluctant
to let go all my awareness
and slip under the
surface, but
I say it’s time
and vanish into
flavor, music,
thought, 
worship.

Yes,
worship:
why do you care how I get to my God?
How is my path more false than yours? 
I also break bread, sip syrup, am redeemed.
The only difference
is in the distance
to my Paradise.

Today
more than one
person (dog, cat, bird)
will leave home and
not return.  

Tomorrow,
more than one husband or wife (or lover,
mother, father, or owner) will sit
nervously on a couch, twisting its hands
in its lap, turning them over and over
in a motion not unlike that of
a kitten tumbling with a ball of yarn
in happy ignorance of how the world
kills and takes away casually, every day,

as if it were nothing —
and it is nothing,
but do not speak of that
to the nervous ones.

Today, tomorrow, or
on the day after some number
of the missing will return, and joy
and recriminations will begin,
or joy alone,
or recriminations alone, 

and some will grieve and among them
will be some of the returned
people, dogs, cats, birds
who only wanted a moment apart;

and there will be some who will not come back,
not at all,
not ever, 
because some of them will have no doubt died

while others will have stretched their moment apart
into new lives far from former lovers, spouses,
parents, or other owners.

It will be impossible for the ones left behind
to tell the difference,
impossible to explain it’s not a certain tragedy
for all concerned,
impossible to recall that the words 
“happy ignorance”
existed right up to the moment
the person 
(dog, cat, bird)
slipped away.

I am boredom, drugs
and virtual killing.  
Maybe, occasionally,
I toss in
boning for shits
and giggles.  

At least, that’s
the impression
I think I give off —

but I have so much love to give
I’m certain I work at odds to my needs,
and maybe I’m another altogether?
Not that it matters —

you’ll be dead soon and with either bad or good luck
so will I, if we can’t get past what you did
to the planet.  Fuck you, I say,

and this time you deserve that,
all of that.

Wishing that the room
had more than four walls —
indeed, I wish it had walls at all — 

what?  If there are no walls
how is the door staying up and open?
How is it I can’t see the house next door?
How does the whole world exist at all
if there are no barriers?  

Oh, there are walls — trust me on this.
I know my lies when I see them.
This is why
I scream metaphorically, if at all,
about the trap I’m in —

it’s my making
that makes it so, that makes it
look open and inviting when in fact
it is nothing but.  This world is all
about walls — I put them there and
pretend they aren’t there while knowing
they are there and so we merrily
roll in circles, avoiding the walls
that aren’t there but are there,

thinking about the pictures hanging on them,
ooohing and ahhhhing over them,
occasionally pretending we are free to go.

Hair, shot with gray.
Cut, less than good;
at least the scalp’s not flaking
with the new shampoo.

Face,
starting to furrow, starting to line,
starting to bag and sag in wrong places
and much fuller than it was, much
rounder.

Beard, uneven,
post-trendy, stubbornly
present for thirty years in this form —
the only thing the same from when I was,
arguably, at my peak of flavor.

Neck, undistinguished.
(In fact, let us use that word
as a whole body descriptor,
let us say that as a whole
I am undistiguished except as
noted.)  Shoulders the same.
Here and there a skin tag
which some claim
is proof of heart disease
as if shape and diet were not clues
enough — I assume I have
heart disease, it is one of the few things
I am sure of and as such it makes me
undistinguished as an overweight American
male.

Chest, furry.  Bigger tits
than I should have.  Currently,
I have some great and knifing pains
in my right upper chest, strong enough
to take away my breath, pains that slice
from front to back, from nipple to blade.
Right side argues against heart attack;
I go instead with pulled muscle, or strain
from sleeping wrong; part of me
hopes I’m wrong as it will add to the value
of this poem in my Body Of Work
if I die after writing this — don’t you agree?

Arms, undistinguished. Hands
weirdly lined, a palmist’s wet dream;
joints just recently stiff in the morning.

My eyes suck, barely catching light;
I gotta shout out my ears instead.
My ears support my hands in what they do —
writing, playing music, meddling
in others’ opinions and business.

I don’t know it happened,
but I have a voice that is far better
than undistinguished.

Brain?  Can’t we just
let the soup and stew up there
do for themselves?
Perhaps that can be
for another day?  It’s not
a chemistry to admire,
to emulate
or strive for.  It’s not like
I haven’t got enough documentation
already on that — look at the bottom shelf,
all those books I’ve written, all those
piles of poetry, all those lines.
There must be formulas somewhere.

Gut,
prodigious, not at all
undistinguished but in fact
a salient and unmistakable feature;
all in all, these days the most memorable
feature.   Bullet hole scars all over it
from surgeries, not injuries.  I have not
been well, not at all, not for a while.

Genitals?  Yes,
I have a partial set, a half empty
glass.  I will explain the next time
I’m drunk, if I remember, if
I’m in the mood, if you earn
the right to hear it,
if I want to.
What’s here works,
surprisingly.

Ass?  Undistinguished.

Thighs and knees and shins?
Chickenesque.
Feet?  Cracked
and horned and rimmed with callus;
they are
undistinguished if craggy.

All in all, not horror show,
not Chippendale’s.
Not at all the worst,
not at all the best; mostly
indistinguishable
from tens of millions of fat older men.

So asking me how I feel ought to be
superfluous…
I hope you are listening…

I feel insulted by the dumb young
even as I am exalted by myself.

Think of a slice of heaven
as you would like heaven to be.
I’m that.
For me, it is a dark bliss bubbling over, a pot
of warm molasses, a scrap on the stove
I forgot to clean or put away…
don’t you see how vain I still am?
In this I am indistinguishable from all others.

This body is being forgotten
by those too pleased with being young to understand
how an old body makes richer music.
They may think it plays like a poor heart song —
no.  Every mad note of it, scoffers,

every mad note
is still remarkable.