He looked at me
and told me what I couldn’t be,
though I was that and had been that, 
always.  Said, “If you don’t look it,
you’re not.”  And for him, 
that was that.  And for me,
as well.  He was wrong, and so
I put him behind me, and that
was that.

Another told me that because
I didn’t sound right, I wasn’t that.
“It’s that simple, that’s how you win,”
and that was that.  And for him, 
that was that and for me too, so when
I put him behind me because what I called win
was for me a win, and so he was wrong,
that was that.

And then another, and then another,
and then another said I was not 
the one, and for them that was that;
and for me too, almost, because I’d given them
that and now I was no longer that.
“It’s not you, it’s me,” they said, and for a while
I disbelieved but then I changed my mind
and put them behind me, and told myself
that was that.

Now, all those naysayers behind me
have been talking, and they’ve gotten to know
each other, and they call “Fraud!” and “Phony!”
in unison whenever I am quiet for a minute.  
And that’s that.  That’s what it is.  A chorus
of shit-talkers I half-agree with.  I say, “That…”
and then cannot complete, cannot compete
with their dismissal; though I dismissed them myself
once I know that saying “that was that” meant nothing
at all.  I’m pale and flat and dull and wrong, and that,
I gather, I believe, and I know, is that.

My little boy inside
(as predicted by books)
is sad under clouds and
obligations

I will punish him
for not growing up
and out of me 

I have no external children
and must practice bad parenting
somehow
in order to be fully myself
in order to achieve my potential

I am a very bad boy
I am a much better adult
and will be an even better old man
a splendid grouch
with more memory than context
while abusing my inner child

Someone take him away
foster him
reform him
whatever you like
just put him in the system

I’ll only be right
when he’s been thrown away

I know certain stories so well
I can fall into them anywhere
so the torn up, crayoned book
whose only intact pages
reveal the blond in the bed
and the three confused bears
is as dear to me now as it was
when both it and I were new.

So turning on the Manson docudrama
at the moment of the Tate murders
was not disconcerting; I at once began
to hum Beach Boys and Beatles songs
and think about that harem of blood

and remember Snake Lake, Diane
by birth, the girl from Spahn Ranch
I met briefly years later who was still
as cold as the memory of Cielo Drive,

and to wonder where Linda Kasabian
was now, does she ever listen to the band
that bears her name like a grisly hipster badge,
the name that means “butcher” in Armenian

though she never raised a knife to anyone?
Did the name take her to the Family
as surely as any story takes its reader
to its end?  I don’t even blink listening to this;

where has this story taken me since I first heard it
on the news at age nine?
What has it inured me to?
I don’t even need to watch it to see it.
I don’t have any missing pages to comfort me into denial.

The one question left:
why did the bears
not tear Goldilocks to shreds?
Isn’t that
what’s supposed to happen?

Maestro
play on

In the hands of a virtuoso even a decayed instrument, ignored for years, attic-bound,
can make a music strong enough to bend walls.

Maestro
my maestro
play on 

I don’t claim the title for myself but my age being its own reward and punishment at once,
I live toward the words maestro and virtuoso as if they were mine to use.

Virtuoso
I am aficionado
Maestro
I am waiting 

What do I call myself now when, with my instrument all but played out,
I cannot help but seek a clarity in the use of a single string?

Ossessionato
I am obsessed with the hunt
Maestro
I am forsaken

I’ve been told that nothing made on the single string is performable,
but here I find myself facing an audience who expects performance.

Maestro
I am the impression of you only
Aficionado
Ossessionato

In command of the single note
and — of course, now I see!  In command of the silence around it.  

Maestro
I am aficionado
I cannot stop this
Am no virtuoso

Can one perform silence?  On stage, now, I do nothing.
The audience expects something.  But what could replace this?

Sickness poverty
White whining
New American routine:
WHEEEEEEE
Enjoy the slide

In the stop at the bottom
Clarity
You’re never happy unless
some parent’s jiggling house keys
over your face

Flat on your back:
WHEEEEEEEE
Can you feel 
Earth rotating

Someone’s broken into old coffins
Stolen the skulls
Put em up on a pedestal on the Internet
Someone says:
WHEEEEEEEE
Worship here or don’t
Techno-heathen is the new black

This is
A test of the emergency broadcast system
Every time we hear the signal we say:
WHEEEEEEEE
This time it’s for real

We’re pretty sure we know
what’s what
We’re pretty sure what’s up
We’re pretty
Sure
We’re up but we’re unsteady:
WHEEEEEEEE

At bat in the fields of the mock-pocalypse
and every day’s a sinker we can’t hit

at night the dark dribbles in
as does hourglass sand
piling slowly up until all at once
the house is full of it

that’s a lot of darkness
and now I have to wait until the AM
to try and live

turn a switch and chase it
you say

but that’s not how it works
around here
where there’s always a stray grain or two
left to stain my daylight
long after sunrise 

Come here, Isaac,
and fetch a knife before you come.
There’s a thread I need to cut
from my dragging hem.

Maybe it leads to a seam
and my clothing will fall from me
once it’s gone; I don’t know.
Perhaps nothing will happen, 

perhaps I’ll end up
naked and ashamed
before all if I act;
I can’t see that far ahead.

I only know it bothers me
to see it hanging there.
Almost would say it’s calling me
to take it from my view.

Almost I’d say
there’s a sadness in its voice.
A melancholy
that compels like none I’ve ever heard.

I never heard a thread speak before.
That means I have to listen. Isaac,
fetch the knife.  We’ll go far away
and I’ll do the deed in private

with only you to watch me
and you can cover me after
if I am left exposed. This is what
a son and father do, Isaac;

the father acts as he believes is right,
the son then, usually, moves on.
Fetch the knife, and let us go.
There’s a thread that binds me,

irks me, keeps me from my life,
and I need to cut it free.  It demands
that I cut it free.  What else is there to do,
Isaac?  What can we do but do it?

Is there
anything here
that’s my size?
I fit into
nothing — 
too tight to most,
too loose to a very few.
Nothing feels right —
damn country with its
image role models.
I’m supposed to be
beautiful.  The offered styles
of crazy don’t contain me
and the preferred fashion
of talented is too large.
I swim in it. Almost drown in it,
constricted by the crazy
so I can’t move. I’m getting to 
prefer naked, though no one
else likes it.  But that’s me
being myself –what are we
thinking here when that
is considered past season
ugly?

Brinksmanship
is routinely defined
as pushing
to the edge of disaster
in search of
advantage

Today is an exception

Today it’s 
the inexplicable blooming
of this rose
after the first hard frost

and 
the sun bothering
to illuminate
that rose
now that the last leaves
that had sheltered the bush
have finally fallen away

i was the war in the hole at the center of their peace.
I was ape moving into evolution, ten rungs up and climbing,
and no one would acknowledge me there all fancy
in my slick pelt and tool-imminent hands,
so I started howling and it was good rain
on a parched desert, but they wanted the dam
more than the flood and they jeered me.
They jeered me and seized me and dressed me
in the horns prescribed by tradition
and laid guts of homicides and suicides across my back
then drove me into the wild outlands
where I scrape and crawl and try to shed the regalia
of their hand me down shame, and they try to forget me
and it looks like they’ve won,

but they’ve still got the hole at their center,

and I’m snickering
because out here
I’ve learned
to chip stone into knives
and to speak.

All we want:

hair on our arms
to stand up on end
often

a smile that splits the face
immediately after

calm after that
peace and secure
warmth spreading

belly and chest
swelling with a spontaneous
song
sometimes an anthem
sometimes a hum bent
toward one particular ear

unshakeable faith
that if this is the last time
any of this will ever happen
it will only be because
this is the moment
of our last breath

Starved plants visible
in the windows
of Hilda’s house.

Hilda’s in
assisted living now.
It was the neghborhood roaming

in her thin housedress
that brought her family at last
into town from the suburbs.

They’ve moved her closer to them.
They sold her car.  Other cars
I’ve never seen before

are over there all the time.
A lot of stuff’s been carried out
and stashed in a silver van

or loaded into the big
silver pickup.  They come
and pack up and leave.

The leaf stems on her plants
look like threads now.
The stalks are drying; I’ll bet

they’re stiff and would break
if anyone touched them.  No one
seems to have touched them

for a long time.  That seems
a little evil in the middle
of so much urgent care.   

I used to shovel Hilda out
in the winter.  Each of us
took our turn at that.

But now there’s no car
to dig for, no Hilda here
to worry about.  

It’s going to be
a different winter
around here.