Eastwood’s on TV right now
in the usual role where his name matters less than the fact
that it’s Him
and I know the climactic gunfight’s coming up
after the commercial break

There will be impossible shots and trajectories
and justice for all

but first they cut away to a spot
highlighting a woman "making a difference"
in the South Bronx
where she trains "urban youth"
for "green collar jobs"

I don’t catch what they’re selling

When we return it’s business as usual
for The Man With No Name
His Navy Colts blaze with low-footprint accuracy
When all the bad guys are done
(one hanging himself in fear when his ammo runs out)
our hero forgives the last dying outlaw
saying "I don’t blame you for what happened"

Later he drops his badge on an emblematic mahogany desk
and rides away from the corrupt territorial boss
who’s going to get re-elected on a law and order platform
who has the railroad’s blessing
to hang ’em high
if it makes money

Maybe Clint’s off to plant trees somewhere
with the same skill he once used for killing
targeting the right places to put the holes
as carefully as the kids in the South Bronx
who have no names anyone’s telling us
who are being used to further something else

Our heroes have always
had to be careful

I claim, again and again, that it is not enough
to be a bag of hopeful skin waiting for a red dawn
to excite me into action; that it is futile
to lie awake a few minutes before the alarm sounds
and think about rising early to stand at the window
choosing to go outside and feel the first pulse of day;
that every potential carries its own failure…

and every day, despite my desperate position
on these matters, the sun comes up; every day
I may lie there a long time after the clock sounds, but I get up too,
rubbing my hide to get warm as I head for the coffee pot,
rubbing my eyes to clear them of night, deciding how I will get through
to the next moment of dreary necessity — the laundry, the bills.
the phone calls, the shower; how to carry forward
my half of the conversation.

Rilke was wrong; it’s not we
who are terrible,
but our wings.

In life, I always slept
on my back so I could look up
all night and imagine this place;

now I’m stuck
on my belly, and all my dreams
are about from where I came.

I got home early
this afternoon
from my unanticipated
last day
on the job.

My mother,
who’s fought the creep of dementia
for a while now,
was startled
when I came through the door.

She looked me in the eye
and couldn’t speak,
having at last lost my name
the way I lost the burrs and edges
I cut from incomplete miniatures
one at a time
eight hours a day
five days a week
for fifteen years,

perfecting
the visions of men
who had to look down at a paper
to address me
when they told me
to disappear.

A river
has banks that close it in,

canyons along its length perhaps,
coves, eddies, sandbars, drowned trees.

It can be marked on a map.
It can be named.  It can be dammed,

at which point the old path
is hidden but at low times

it may be seen, mourned,
recalled.

But mostly, it flows. Swiftly now, slowly now, it flows.
You may swim in it again and again,

but a river is never
the same place twice.  A trip upstream

sees what is, not what was, and never
what could have been.  All you can ever do

is swim in the river
now.

A violet turtle,
rarely expected and even more rarely mentioned,
bellies his way up the path
to the place where you will meet him

at a spot that physics, if worked
diligently enough,
could predict to the exact minute.
Fortunately, your brain doesn’t allow for that.

If it did, you’d either rush to meet him
or step off the trail entirely
to hide from him, and miss
so much.

When you meet, your attention
will be drawn to that perfect shell,
his brontosaur eyes, his morose appetite.
He will be steady and slow.

You’ll suspend disbelief for one second,
less perhaps.  You’ll marvel at the revealed
nature of azure-red and steel-indigo.  You’ll never
let a rabbit claim your life again.

twenty five, coked out, driving away from my life
with my skewed eyes stuck on the needle
buried at 120 on state road 140  — the snakepath
from the cape to the stubby hills north of Worcester

south of the basalt shadows of New Hampshire
that are full of whatever Lovecraft adored
i strand the Firebird on a leafmold bank
and get out

there’s a puritan darkness under these trees
that still hasn’t lifted
and the inbred imp in charge of hating the different
still sits on the bones of the old farm walls

once you get past the Kennedy mask
and the self-congratulation inside 128
where the Cabots and the Lodges used to play at benevolence
this state’s as redneck as any media slander against the South

in fact there’s a quote from 2 Jeremiah
hanging outside the house across from where I’ve landed
"…your own sword hath devoured your prophets,
like a destroying lion"

some lay ministry of warning
carved with a router into brown stained wood
just like all the other
bed and breakfast signs around here

this state looks pretty as hell
in October from inside a minivan
or even from inside a muscle car
at 120 miles an hour

so people come and gawk from buses
stay over to buy trinkets and maple sap
then go back home to sigh and say
"we love New England in the fall"

but now it’s high summer
and all those not-yet-red leaves
are barely rustling under the moonless sky
they shade God and his devil and the ancient blood in the soil

where the colonists beheaded algonquin children
and brown people still keep to themselves in fear
whenever a boy grows up looking like he wants to break away
or maybe wants to deny how good and right the kingdom is

when he gets to a certain age they start to whisper
he’s gonna end up bad
not gonna make it
often he falls from the prophecies

but sometimes he gets older
and can’t escape the feeling that he’s lived too long
goes looking for the sword in the trees
and keeps offering himself to the lion long after he should have settled down

tonight i’m your boy, simba
i’m your snowfaced speeding bullet
and i’m stumbling into your face full of misery
give me the sharp and set me free

not too far from here
is redemption rock
where the natives once gave a hostage back
and later got themselves killed for their trouble

who am i tonight?
hostage or hostage taker?
colonist or colonized?
prophecy or prophet?

i bleed at the very thought of me
and i bet Lovecraft is thinking
of changing his name from beyond the grave
just because i love him

so i’m on the side of the road
and the car’s idling rough
as I kneel in the gravel on the pavement’s fringe
and listen as hard as I can for the lion’s roar

if you bury a needle deep in these woods
the local ghosts will use it to sew your shroud
and you’ll join them in being
just another sword to wave at unbelievers

i don’t wanna wreck this car
but if there was any light out here tonight
i’d find a shard of glass in the sand
and maybe then i’d take the snakepath of least resistance

turning my head back toward where i started
reminds me that every vehicle has a steering wheel
and a way out might be in no place you ever imagined
and i’ve got a fast car

so i get back in and turn around
i thought i saw a sign somewhere back there
that said there is a highway going somewhere not here
somewhere not in massachusetts

bury that needle
run the pride of horror ravening back into their dens
with an rpm scream and the high beams on
as fast as i can toward bright lights big city anywhere but here

i’ll be up for a while yet
there’s always two directions
to any road
let’s see what this baby can do

My best friend Stash
likes to say life around here
needs to be
"fiction-enhanced."

He couples that now and then
with talk about us being raised
"fact-poor."

The way he sees it,
his cock and ball conquest stories
and personal legends
about wild swings at bikers
are just due compensation
for having grown up
in gray houses
on sooty streets
in our dim little town. 

"If you’re gonna live,
you oughta live big.
If you never lived big,
at least claim you did."

Stash sucks down
the High Life
and fingers the label
he’s peeled from the bottle.

He’s been sitting here
for twenty years
and none of us believe
a word he says about
all the good times that happened

"this one time" in
"this bar I usedta hang out in,"

because we were here the whole time
and we could swear he’s never moved,
but sometimes we can feel the wind
from that mighty blow he laid on the Vandal’s chin,
and sometimes, our fleeting hookups
seem indeed to be the bucking frenzy
that Stash described again for us all
just last night. 

Stash lies to us.
We know he lies.
Bless him. 
Otherwise,
how could we ever
go on?