no more water
the fire next time

in the wake of every flame
every raid
every war
there is water

the reason for weeping
is that it recalls how evil
was once cleansed
from our world

so Mary
weep

as you lie burned
in the dust behind
the latest army to pass

thinking of the blackened children you’ve lost
whose bodies lie smoking in the wake of the machine
the Kings have driven for thousands of years

hear us, Mary
we are your tears

we will bring back the Flood
to soothe you
abrade your slipping skin
cool your blistered arms and reddened legs
wash your face free of the smoky taste of grief

you will rise
upon the face of the waters
a token of hope
that someday
the world won’t need to burn

so Mary
weep

bring us forth

we will remind God
of His broken promise

that the children
in whose laughter you hear a covenant
and in whose faces you see redemption
would not again become
ashes in your mouth

let us fall from you
strike these scorched stones
to open the springs
in a song of rushing water
and set a rainbow in its mist

no more fire
the water next time
Pharaoh’s gonna get drownded
and no more Marys gonna weep

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations

Off to visit you, Florida,
Sunshine State:
you’ve always been dark to me.
I see outlaws
in your smile, every time
I land there.

Then onto Georgia.
For me you’re just Atlanta
caught behind an endless ring of highway.
I know there’s more to discover
but those concrete barriers
always feel like barbed wire.

I’ve been again and again to places
that I do not really know,
spent time in enclaves
that looked like other enclaves
and ate food that only differed
in a trace of spice or a clever name.

A lot of suburbs and made-up places
built fresh upon what used to be
prairie or desert, swamp or forest,
full of boxes and chain amenities.
A lot of conference rooms
that looked out over other conference rooms.

Those edge cities
with their landscaped camouflage,
all those bright hotels
and their regionally friendly art;
I feel sometimes that when I step
from the airport into them,

I haven’t gone anywhere at all.
The miles add up in my accounts
and tell me I can go anywhere I want
with enough advance notice.
I end up at home on every vacation,
the only place strange enough to charm me.

When we were in the cult
we didn’t get a lot of sleep.
But they said we didn’t need it,
so we didn’t need it.

When we were in the cult
we talked funny; words had meanings there
that seemed a little off,
but we understood each other well enough.

When we were in the cult
we slept with others in the cult
and made a lot of noise about how
everyone ought to be with us.

When we were in the cult
everything that went wrong
was caused by something we’d done.
There were no accidents or errors.

When we were in the cult
we didn’t call it cult.  We just called it
“being there.”  We slept when we could,
fucked each other now and then,

tried not to mess it up
by thinking or saying or doing
things we shouldn’t.  When we were
in the cult, it wasn’t hard

to be in the cult
as long as we didn’t think
we were in one at all.
As long as we told each other that,

it wasn’t bad at all.

I slip and lose myself
in the dim light
of the tale you’re telling,
struggling under its red surface.

There’s warm blood
and cold blood.
I can tell the difference,
and this is warm
almost to boiling.
I like how it feels,
and it doesn’t matter to me
if the blood you’re crying for here
is yours or another’s,
if the story is fiction or not.

All of us have bathed
in the stuff at some point
and understand how it clings
and tastes of iron, no matter
the source.  When it’s stage blood,
it stinks of sugar and sham;
there is steel here.

My tongue sliced open,
my ears full.
I break into air as you finish,
crawling onto the shore
you’ve provided for me.

A ride worth taking,
butcher boy.  May you never
have to tell it again.

sparked by the love of my own teeth
i smile even when i’m hardly ready
to show a face someone might like to touch

i’m thinking bite and sharp and blood
and torn armskin while it looks to all
like I’m echo of sunshine and good cheery days

i’m thinking cracking down to the marrow
and the pop of fingers as they’re bitten off
while it seems likely to the casual viewer

that i’m just being friendly
but i’m a smiley kinda villain
i’m a fake snake who looks splendid on a good lawn

during the day i follow criminals
to learn their shit
at night i regale the adoring with the day’s stories

longing to spit in their faces
i’ve got acid in a mouth pouch
i like the idea of the melt

and then i come home
alone and say gimme a reason
and a word to make into a vulture

and i’ll let it feast on my liver
moaning the whole time like i’m in cat heat
about how it hurts

i like it hurting
i like to spread the hurt
it makes me smile

and people love it when i smile
i look so good and smell like impending christmas
though i’ve got a gift for being hell

Comment, son,
on the darkness you feel
when you hear the word
“Father.”

Comment on
its bat wings, how it navigates
in darkness, how it fills its mouth
with mosquitoes full of your blood.

Comment on its
soft opening, seduction
in its syllables and
its growling finish.

Comment, Mother,
on how it feels
when your son says it
in the hopeful, dreadful way.

Comment on its acid
and the bag of regrets
that hangs from it
as it flies from him.

Comment, say something
to make the word mean something
it hasn’t meant for a while.
Comment so you can both remember

how to breathe.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations

Mario stirs
from a dream where he’s become
a children’s book.

He looks at the clock
and thinks, “I need more time.
I don’t know how I begin.

I know where I am supposed to end
but that first sentence, how to lead
a child into me…it is not there yet.”

He falls back into
his pages
and finds himself

staring at that first white leaf.
“There ought to be some
huge illustration here, bursting

with all the colors,
and one line that sets me in motion
and makes me irresistible,

but nothing comes to mind.
Why would I as a child
would have wanted to know

this story?  Maybe
there is no beginning
and I’m a pure middle,

graspable once I’m formed
but hard to enter.  Would I
as a child have made an effort

to look into me as I am now,
or would I have been ignored
in favor of another?”

Mario dreams on
as his daughter tosses and cries out
in another room, another house,

and Daniel, the new man her mother married,
rises to comfort her.
Dan reads her a story

full of moon and stars, mice
and fishes and bluebirds and turtles
who speak in rhymes of lovely things

set in a full home, a place
with no blanks.  She falls uneasily into
her own incomplete dreams.

“When I’m singing that song —
yeah, I know it’s stupid, a stupid
song — who cares?  It’s like
I’m the star and I remember
why I liked it once, and I like it again
for a few minutes.”  She is clinging to
a margarita.  Someone
is singing a Prince song
very very badly
but the crowd screams
as if it was Prince himself
up there. 

I want to run out the door
of this young loud club, but I can’t:

it’s my turn soon, and “Dock Of The Bay”
is calling.  At least it’s not a stupid song
and I’ve always liked it
from when I first heard it
on a white clock radio
in my bedroom at fourteen. 

I’m no star
but I will do it
justice,
and then I’m gonna leave
and never come back.