I’ve never changed my name,
but there was a day
when a new me blew past the old
as fast as “Dylan” flew by “Zimmerman.”

I sat back from a page
and said to myself, “It took a year
but at last it’s right,”  and then that poem
reached up out of the paper and slapped
a difference on me I could not deny.

Mark of Cain, secret superhero status,
witness protection mask,
luchador camouflage — no.  
Nothing like that.
I looked the same to all but me,
but that poem raised a battle flag

behind my eyes,
that only I could see,
that prodded me then
and prods me still to be
something more than slapdash, 
someone who digs,
someone I was not born to be.

Someone once drafted
under his own name, and then
told he was another man entirely,

so as if in spite of whatever man I truly am,
I live and love and work and fight
as if I was indeed that man.

Balance,
not always as peaceful
and serene as predicted, 
sometimes barks “Buy me! Buy me!”
from a store shelf, the cries
of a gadget or doo-dad
that you know will fill a hole
and now and then it does
for a bit or even longer.
Sometimes it works forever.
Why not?  Even a shaman
has fetishes for the focusing
of power, an altar holds
fragments of spirit made solid,
and when smothered in 
the clutter of living,
you can hardly be blamed
for reaching toward 
what calls to you,
can you? 

Their bodies
bled dry,
carved out, then
smothered in salt.
Not a scrap of soft
left in there.

You too
can create such things
without so much
as a paring knife.

You have to start
while they’re
very young.

Your tongue’s
quite enough
to start the job
and your
averted eyes
can finish it.  

They are not likely
to love you
for your efforts

but at least
they’ll forever be
your little mummies.

When your people love other people
who have treated you badly
you sit back and eat
a bowl of knives.  Sugar it
with dead bees.  Wash it down
with dishwater.

When your people love other people
who have treated you badly
you run the other way
right into the walls of the Lascaux caves
and sit dazed asking the paintings
for a chance to start all the way over.

When your people love other people
who have treated you badly
you go to bed under a chain comforter.
Your ribs snap.  You can’t move.
You steer the pain toward a good dream.

When your people love other people
who have treated you badly
you should just tell yourself
it’s your fault.  You must have been
one bad pony to have no herd anymore
but maybe no one in the herd has to know
that you don’t belong.

Shhh…
this is how you get along.

Voices, all inside;
division, all inside;
conflict, war, struggle, impatience —
all inside. Nothing to see
here.

Admit it, man;
you’re not fighting
anything except
the lies you tell
to keep yourself 
from seeing how you really are.
Your whole belief
of the sounds of your enemies
has never been anything
but the sound
of your own garden growing —

roots breaking stones,
leaves pushing into the light.

Stay still and you can hear it all
Now it won’t sound like you’re not whole
if you’re quiet enough —

yet, who, in fact,
are you talking to now?
Can’t you ever shut up long enough
to tend what you’ve grown?

Woke up
neck deep
in something
that might be chocolate pudding,
might be…
the other thing
that looks like
chocolate pudding.

My senses of smell and taste? 
Somehow, gone.

Sittting in front of me
on the surface of the sea of brown,
a spoon.
A sign affixed to it: 

“Eat, then Dig…or Die.” 

You’re thinking,
ooh, a metaphor —
dear reader, you could not be

more wrong.

Took me hours.
No matter what it was,
I was sick by the time
I was free.
I’m still covered in it
but I had to tell you about this —

it’s what I do:
follow the signs
no matter how confused
I become or
how disabled the process makes me,

then put it all on paper
and say, “See
how clever I am and how hard
I have it and isn’t it all such
a mystery?  A lesser man
would have drowned.”

What I wouldn’t give
for a house without spoons,
for one good night’s sleep.
What I wouldn’t give
for the wisdom
to figure out
the difference
between shit and pudding
without plunging in
face first.  What I wouldn’t give
for you to love me
and not my foul
awakenings.

Dave Penny 
said: I only walk
in Providence at night.

That’s when the city
looks its best,
dressed in love-crafty haze,

red eyes blinking in pairs
on the stacks of
the Narragansett Electric plant,

sign of the ghost fires still burning
in the pile of brick, signaling
how much damage there still is in the air.

I walk everywhere I can
in Providence, but only at night,
just to pay tribute to it,

to honor the dim power
cradled in this crook
of the upper Bay

where what we withhold all day
comes out
to define us.

How refined so many are by day, 
striding these cobblestones
in good artist’s clothes, admiring

the East Side brick,
avoiding the South Side, 
slumming in Olneyville,

dipping their well-shod toes
into the Armory district, feeding
their faces on Federal Hill.

They remind themselves of this at night,
overstate the light, recall that 
“Providence” is a name once given

to the source of good fortune,
cling to that.  But I walk the city
at night not to fear but to bathe in the hangover

of the once-rough port, the vanishing villainy 
of the Mob, the elder deities
once conjured here; to imagine

their red eyes blinking at me
at night in Providence, city
of disguises, city that was once

and always will be
my only comfortable
home.  Some of us, after all,

do our best work
in the dark
when we can almost touch 

what we refuse to acknowledge
by day — when we can at last find
others who know who we are

simply because
we all feel at home
in this rough, honest night.

A mouth,
twisted to a pinhole.

Two eyes,
folded into stingy purses.

Ears
apparently unchanged,

but you can tell
they’re closed within.

Hands
rolled up and clubby.

Can’t you see what’s next?
Hear that thumping, see those feet

seeking a jumping-off place?
Get ready for fight

or flight.  To defend
or chase.  To return

to the savanna
we all recall when necessary.

The bees dying, the trees
dying, the tundra melting, the oceans
filling, skies falling and no one’s yet saying

war,
war,
war.

Our pockets broken open, our children
ignorant by others’ choice, our homes
emptying, we sing of nothing and especially not 

war,
war,
war,

for they’ve made up a war to hide that war. 

Shown the threat of it, we cut our hearts free; run up 
suicide charges; serf medieval; dance
tremendous; devil our care in the teeth of 

war,
war,
war.

And all the time we miss the truth,
and the sleight of hand concealing it:  all the time
they’ve been pursuing against us the real

war, 
war,
war.