No boatman
No bridge
No hopping

Leap

Air and water below you
Cold fast spray reminding you
that there is something at stake

Hesitation
won’t work here
(You might even want to close your eyes)

No hopping on one foot
No testing for footing
No poking to see what shakes under your weight
No stopping
No time to think — thinking
is the death of leap

Leap
The worst that can happen
is that you’ll drown

but
oh in that moment
before you strike

you’ll know

The dishes in the sink are growing weeds
so I’m blogging about Gaza
The money’s falling out of my wallet
so here’s a little news about actors

The trees are full of longhorn beetles
and I swear I love the smell of my old socks
The smoke eater’s out of commission
and my head’s wearing headphones without me
The ferret needs to come out and play
so I’m sitting with a book near the window
and contemplating jazz as God-metaphor

I stick freeware in my ears
so I don’t hear the doorbell
There’s a lottery ticket lungfish crawling on the dirty kitchen floor
looking for the next pool to enter

There are a lot of global evils to vanquish today
They’re making me hungry for a perfect cheese
served with a microbrew
on an overdone gas bill
I’ll eat it with relish
while nodding off to classic rock
in an assuredly postmodern sort of way
while wading in shallows
deep enough to drown in

They say
the universe is still expanding.
I can’t always be bothered to check.

One of these days
I’ll sit down and say,
"That’s enough.

Let someone else find
the leading edge."
I should have said it by now,

I tell myself.  Something keeps
me watching the stars, trying
to detect their flight from me.

In one second, I think I see it,
in the next, I’m sure I can’t. 
I watch us dying for plots of holy land

real or imagined, for thoughts
triggered from visions of perfection.
I think we’re all beside the point.

We’re all just human, impossibly stupid
under the blown-out dome
of space. It’s improbable that we’re here,

insignificant that I try and tell my story
when it’s exactly like every other story
ever told:  I want love, immortality,

power over my surroundings,
warmth in cold and cold in warmth.
Always on the wrong side of the moment.

If the universe is expanding,
I’m the center.  Farther away from my limits
every time the clock moves.

One of these days, I’ll say,
"enough," and it will be.  It may be enough now
that I know that.  There was never anything

to be created here that hasn’t been created already
in the rush of light and dark toward…
what’s out there, beyond what we know? Oh…

settling down to watch.

There is a corner —
always, there’s a corner,

perhaps with a bed crammed into it,
or perhaps it’s the end cushion of a worn couch. 

Sometimes your back
is pressed against cold walls

while you look out
upon a small room.

Sometimes
there is a window, sometimes

there is a door.
Sometimes,

all there is
is blindness,

your face crushed
into an angle

that lets nothing
in.

Israel warns Gaza residents: We’ve only just begun…

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

in an open field
in farmland
among the rocks
of mountains
among the dunes
of a desert
in a boat
on a cove
or out at sea

enemies are small targets
on a background
hard to hit
without someone’s strenuous effort

but in cities
the bodies are packed
so close

it is hard to tell
who exactly has died
until after a city’s fabric is torn
into mourning garments
bandages
flags

so what someone has to do
is drop enough bombs
in enough places
fire enough bullets
into enough walls
cover enough of the street grid
with enough clusters and bursts of flame
to ensure
that the targets
desired will be struck

if the barrage rips off
the heads of children
the arms of anonymous old men
the faces of doppelgangers
for old enemies

they will remain uncounted as anything more
than strings from the ragged hems of war

until a face
found unstitched from its skull
can be identified as a target
after the fact

then someone can declare the garment
finished

and the scraps can be swept away