right now
there ought to be
heavy metal welling
from the floor and
rising to my knees
at the least

because if I am too hurt
my own karma and enter
this place again
I ought to have
the proper soundtrack
for how sludgy that walk
feels

right now only shredded trust 
and hoarse-creamed-lava on toast
will do

I want to be in here
when it burns
and smell it burning
before anyone else can

I want the burning
to have
incoherence as a soundtrack
(I want to know
the words)

I want to stumble away
fall on fire far
from the main blaze
set off the stubborn second fire
die before too much time
goes by 

I hated
being here as
I hate
dying here
I hate the red and the black 
of it all
the crunch of it
the distortion of it
chug
chug chug
chug 

What drives what I am
is the thrill I get when dark syllables
clink together.  You might say
I’ve got a thing for such sound aggression.
A thing for near-shattering. A thing
for hairline cracking.

Other than that I’ve got no love
for anything about this mess
less required than breathing, eating,
pissing, shitting, sleeping, fucking,
or commiserating.

I call these moments of noting
hard truth about myself
“Portland Moments”
for the first one I recall,
when I was smoking a joint
on the fourth level of a downtown garage
in Portland, Maine.  The sky was sky blue,
the air was winter cold, the ocean
as ocean as it could possibly be —
for half a second I believed the Sixties
had it right and all you needed was weed
and light, and love would make it all work.

That was not the Portland Moment, though —

that came a second later
while ducking the cops and hacking,
my lungs cough-laughing at me
crouching behind the car; I said,
gee, sorry, almost had myself fooled
into thinking I was someone else

and not the guy
who’s got a thing for aggression,
a thing for near-shattering, a thing
for hairline cracks and rough repair —

a guy much like Portland, Maine,
where even the hippies walk around
with punk rockers glaring
from the rooms behind their eyes.

We have been accumulating solace.
Make us afraid of how we were.    
~~ Rumi 

When I’m all tore up.  When I’m
pissed at being at loose ends
and how I can’t tighten them.  
When I’m heating the air
with spew and it’s not fooling
anyone, or me either:  God,

smack me.  Don’t even try to 
touch me without full-swinging
an open palm.  

Mumbling now something about
stones thrown
in the crystal house:  
whatever, I want
to be judged and found wanting.  
Looking for a finger to write
a burning on my wall, my skin.
Hold off on the embraces a while.

Mumbling, now,
about the Abuser,
the Great Abuser:  whatever,
hello,
no, not that.  Not saying

that.  But
I could bear
a judicious scar or two
if the story behind them
is worth remembering and 
keeps me from gaping,
wounded, later on.

No sense in holding
all the comfort for myself;
it’s good, I don’t need it,
give it away, somewhere it
will be appreciated.

My inner child
was a whiner.  I like him
better now that I’m all
tore up or at loose ends.
I check in on him, say:

hey buddy, now what?
And he says:  up to you,
it always is.  
Stay afraid
of your used-to-be, then
let it rip.  

Having
a great Dragon to fight
is important.  

Yes,

you say,

I know,
but finding the right dragon
is heavy and hard work.

Is there a short cut, a bypass
that leads past it?
I think I can get by on charm.

Of course you can…
but your Dragon will miss you
and seek you 
and in your later years will find you;

your charm will get singed
and you will find the Dragon smell of belly-smoke
and longing intolerable at a time 
when you have no will or strength left
for fighting. 

The road you are asking about,
by the way,
begins…

here.

if in spite of
the bright organ and
impetuous drumming
that fill this room

you somehow find yourself
unable or unwilling
to dance

stick your back in a corner
and squint at the crowd

count the upraised arms
count the faces glimpsed in 
flashes of light from the stage
count how many of them
have their eyes closed
see how in the roar of the band
so many bodies have lost
the inhibition against
the casual touch of strangers

and say out loud the words
reserved for those who find themselves
separate and alone

say
“I did not want this anyway”
or
“they never want me anyway”

you will be correct
no matter your choice
and maybe you can use this 
to fuel a solitude
a run by yourself to a glory
not bounded by the mass love
of each other and the group rate
for the trip into mmmmmmm…
mingled joy

as a famous loner once said
in a movie
as he held his hand famously
in a bright-hot candle flame

of course it hurts
the trick
is in not minding

as long as you can tell yourself
you don’t mind being alone
everything’s
possible

Architectures of misery:
for one, the brickpiles of public housing;

for another, the triple decker units of aging neighborhoods
with sagging porches and facades of cheap vinyl over clapboard;

for another, the detached homes
and closecut lawns of the suburbs;

for another, the family farmhouse
and its windburned outbuildings huddled tight in the wide plains;

for another the perfect home on the perfect ridge
perfectly sited above the perfect ocean;

for another, the trailers and prefab shacks
on the reservation, clustered in the shadow of all the others.

If you can name a misery you can give it a home
and a palace and a yard and estate to hold it;

if you can name an ecstasy you can do the same,
and the ecstasy of one may be the misery of another, of course.

Admit it: the home in which you are happiest
is a negation of one where another lives best.

Into the heat of the night to chase Lazarus,
for I know what I want to learn from him:

how he got over his anger at his friend
for pulling him back into the struggle. 

I want to ask him how long he held the grudge
and if he led with it whenever he and Jesus talked,

if indeed they ever spoke again after that day,
which seems likely though it’s unrecorded.

How do you have that conversation
about him not just saving your life,

but pulling it all the way back from bankruptcy
and liquidation to deposit it right back where it had been

as if nothing had happened at all and anything 
that soul had seen while it was gone could be forgotten?

I know it can’t.  Know it for a fact.
And I need to know how to speak to a friend

who brought me back just like that, even though 
in my case I really wanted to go.  I want to know

how I’m supposed to be his friend again.
I want to know if it’s even right to try — and if anyone

should know it’s Lazarus. How did he and Jesus
get past it, if they did at all?  They never

put that in the Gospels.  They never made
a sermon out of that.