Insisting you’re a fish
when you stand here on two legs
not
breathing water: listen,
you’re no fish
just because
you jumped into the pool and
you can swim.

In the water
you’re smooth and
shiny.  Swim long ways
under and above.  
We might see that and say
“hey, she’s a fish!” because
we abhor speaking
without comparisons
to ease the talking —

but,
you’re still not a fish.
You don’t know how
to breathe underwater

without drowning.
You can’t swim all the time
surrounded by fishhooks
and harpoons and
fish-hazards we don’t even know.
Don’t know how lovely
gills feel against
your body.  Don’t know
self-fin care.  Don’t understand
milt,
or nests scooped in the bottom.

If you come up on shore
and say,
“I’m a fish, love me
as fish, take me as fish,”

what are we supposed to do —
toss worms? put in 
a line? get you a plastic castle
to live in? No.
Most of us are gonna turn around
and say,

“that’s not a fish.
I know a fish when I see one,”

until (maybe)
you start flopping on the ground
and start drowning in dry air.

Even then, we’ll more likely
say something
about the power
of self-delusion.  Say,

“something smells
fishy here —

no, wait, that’s not it.”

This damn job.
Swear sometimes,
I got a life
like a porno —

perfunctory talk
till the tired obvious
mechanical stuff
takes over. 

Bad soundtrack too,
most of the time.
It’s not like music
as much as it is like

cheap hotel wallpaper.
(And now we’re back
to the boom-chicka wow
action.)

It’s supposed to be 
ecstatic, but
it’s only a 
simulation —

look at us all,
golems hard
at work screwing
and getting screwed.

If I’d half a brain
or a whole heart,
I’d get out and take
a new job — maybe

delivering pizzas 
or cleaning pools.
Something like that.
An honest living

without expectations.
Something clean
for my hands to do.
Something

with a future
that promises
real things.  Yes.
(Boom chicka wow.)

“Every house is a missionary. I don’t build a house without seeing the end of the present social order.” — Frank Lloyd Wright

Each stone a prayer. 
Each beam a hymn.
All the windows, all the glass
stained and unstained
framing rebel scriptures. 

The table in the foyer
holds the tabernacle.
The doors, the moveable walls
of sacristy and nave.

When footsteps
echo in the long hall upstairs,
angels imagine their wings
have unfurled.  Then,

their wings do indeed open
as the kitchen rings with 
sounds of feast.

Outside
the world’s 
functional, 
barely —
inside, 
the palm of paradise
presses the carpets into place,
smooths the tablecloths,
makes straight the way.

If the world is to fail
before it reforms,
let it come through the door
as a beggar
and be reborn
on the warm wooden floors.

“There is no diet to reduce
the weight of judgment,”
said the very wise, very glib,
very fat man.  

He folded into his girth,
enrobed and swollen,
took up an entire bench,
nodded at the condemned
who shrank down,
tried to look as small
as they felt.

As he handed down sentences
he thought of porkchops, potatoes,
port, anything at all he could consume
once he got out of here.  What happened
to the small ones he crushed here
was unimportant.  What was important

was how full he wanted to feel
as soon as possible
upon completion
of his duties.  

The fur of air
on my forearm
reminds me of caves
and forests I think
I must have known.

Is it mink, or is it
bear or bison —
perhaps cougar or
tiger?

I have to admit
that perhaps
it’s a fat domestic cat
I’m recalling,

or a poodle
asleep on the cushion
of my big couch.

It’s animal presence,
that’s all I know.  Even Fido
and Fluffy were
wild once

and maybe feeling this
is the first step
back toward ferality
for all of us.

I know this family
of miserable dolls
who walk around wondering
if you can still get into heaven
when you’ve never believed in God.

These dolls like to walk around
wondering stuff.  They go all
fishy if they’re too certain
for too long, start smelling
the place up.  They gotta question,

gotta walk. Dolls
eat too much, stink, pray
vainly (they think) for salvation,
argue about who they’re praying to,
don’t care where they kneel

as long as everyone sees them
kneeling. Do you believe, they say to 
each other.  Do you believe?
I’ll get there first, they say to each other.
They don’t even notice me

standing there, my nose turned up
at the fishy smell, at how miserable
they seem on their knees pleading
and scrapping and praying.  Do you believe,
they ask each other.  And I’m standing right there

the whole time!  
It’s hysterical, ironic, you name it.
It’s a doll festival of cluelessness.
It’s not gonna get them anywhere.
And I’m not going to tip my hand.

I become
the bully,
the bully bull.
Horns for eyes.
When I observe,
I gore.
When I approach,
I trample.

I know why
the fenced bull bellows:
because he can.  He
must.

I’m generally mostly frozen now,
beef like a
stone.  Watch
friends turn aside.
Watch my own
steaming breath.
I did not, did not
want to be inside
the animal’s hide
completely — only
to wear a bit for show.

All the world’s
an apocryphal red flag.
Picadores
assemble.  All
my intimates seem
to be toreadores.
Which of them
will do for me?

The 24-hour store
has it all,
even
a 24-hour beggar 

on the curb outside
with a cup and a plea
for my spare change 
or butts or attention.

I always give
a little something — not a lot,
for I have my own
problems and needs;

whether he needs my money
for drugs or food,
it’s not my place to judge
his desire.

I might ask someone for a dollar
or a butt on one of these coming
hard days.  I might.  No one knows 
what they’d do when pressed that hard.  

Being in a 24-hour store
this time of night reminds me
that I’ve got my own wants and needs
that drive me to such hours — 

right now, for instance, this store
is within walking distance of the house,
sells smokes, has an ATM,
and everyone knows me here — 

it’s almost Paradise, as
the in-store music is reminding me,
and I almost resemble the angel
with the flaming sword

who won’t let sinners in,
as the beggar’s eyes
are reminding me;
it’s all too almost Biblical for words,

and 4:30 AM
is the wrong time of day
not to pay attention
when things get Biblical,

so before I go in
I hand him my last buck
and my last butts.  I light one 
for him, even,

my silver Zippo
blazing higher than normal,
threatening (for a second)
to burn all four of our hard-cupped hands.

Less than fifty miles from here,
nearly all of the people I love 
are waking up too early
or going to bed in daylight
and everyone’s talking,
talking, talking…about poetry.

In the back yard the big oak
is mute, showing alternate stripes
of wet mud-dark and dry sandy-light bark
to the world — evidence
of another thunderstorm
well-weathered…

this early,
this neighborhood’s 
damn near silent,

except for this poem.

What was saved:
our ephemera.  What was lost:
trusted, enduring granite basics
that, somehow, wore away.

We’d long been
idiot kings who enjoyed
the thrones
for as long as we had them,

then scrapped them
for firewood and
short cash.  Now,
sitting with the remnants,

I wonder: what was it
we thought we were ruling?
Sovereigns of vapor and paper,
lords of all we purveyed,

now that the stock’s
played out, the shelves emptied,
who could say what it all meant?
I stare at the petty archives

and tell myself that somewhere,
what was lost is still carved in rock
everlasting.  I love that kind of lie;
it’s familiar as anything I’ve ever believed.

1. The Tao Of Our Meat

The Meat that can be known
is not the true Meat.

The best Meat does not attack.
The superior Meat succeeds without violence.
The greatest Meat wins without struggle.
The most successful Meat leads without dictating.
This is intelligent non aggressiveness.
This is called the mastery of The Meat.

We turn Our Meat to make a vessel,
but it is on the space
where there is nothing
that the usefulness of the Meat Vessel depends.

Our Meat is fluid, soft, and yielding.  But Our Meat
will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield.
As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding
will overcome whatever is rigid and hard.
This is another paradox: what is soft is strong.
The Soft Meat is the Strong Meat. 

Our Meat is difficult to govern
because it has too much knowledge. 

Wonder into wonder;
existence opens…

2. The Art Of Our Meat At War

All warfare is based in Our Deceptive Meat.

To know your Enemy,
you must become your Enemy’s Meat.

All men can see these tactics
whereby I conquer The Meat,
but what none can see is the strategy
out of which victory over Meat is evolved.

There is no instance of a nation’s Meat
benefitting from prolonged warfare.

If you know your enemy’s Meat
and you know your own, 
you need not fear the results
of a hundred battles.

If you know your own Meat
but not the enemy’s,
for every victory gained
you will also suffer a defeat.

If you know
neither the enemy’s Meat
nor your own,
you will succumb in every battle.

Wonder into wonder;
existence opens…

3. In Our Own Words, Our Meat

Wonder into wonder,
existence opens…

The Meat rises from the bed,
throwing off the covers.

The Meat moves the day
as it moves Itself.  
Whatever distance we move,
this is the distance moved
by Our Meat.

What does it profit us
to gain our souls
but then lose, forget, and evaporate
from within
Our Meat?

Explorer, adventurer,
nose for past and eye for future,
and yet, the present tense of Our Meat
is too often kept from us,
as if it were spoiled and poisonous,
and we are its jailors.

Where the Meat
is honored,
there we most easily find ourselves,
raw and ready; and

wonder into wonder,
there is where existence opens…

If it twists, it twists.
Say so, twist
with it and near it
and follow how it turns.

If it’s straight, do
the same; slide down it
in a long shout of joy for the ride.

If it’s broken,
see it broken.  See it
in pieces or still hanging
together though shattered.
See it, say it.  Don’t move
to repair it until
you can say it is broken.

If it is whole, say that;
no flaw or fracture to mention
needs to be created.

If it’s wrong, it’s not
right.  Admit the
flaw and speak to it,
coax it out, let it be
as ugly as it is.  Some ugly
you can smooth, some
you can’t, but you won’t know
until you look closely
and describe, almost endlessly,
the hideous nature.

And if it is beautiful?
Don’t be constrained
by the overused word —
holler.

As for yourself:

admit the smooth, the torn,
the twisted, the plain,
the ugly and the lovely
are all there.  You’re
not the beast alone, not
the angel either; no devil
without a saint by his side,
no splintered bone left
unscrimshawed and made
into new beauty.  Stagger
past your failed masterpieces
into the hall where your friends
await you with food and drink,
and no false modesty.  

Admit
what’s there and real and
true.  True
is all that matters.