I woke up to the sound of a pipe being banged
and then the sound of a cough. No one
was home beside me. I did not think of ghosts
or intruders. These were outside me,
coming out from inside me. I’d dreaded this day
for years. I’d always suspected
that I would eventually
become secluded among them,
lost in a grove in my head.
What appeared at first to be fertile imagination
was in fact the crazy coming on for its first show.
“Do you have a name?” I asked. No answer.
They would speak in their time which was not mine.
I wasn’t important. I could be if I agreed to listen
and it was hard not to, even as some part of me
stepped aside from the sweats and the beating chest
to remind me that there were likely some pills for this.
“Stay awhile. I’m lonely. It would be nice to have someone
to talk to, even if it’s only me, even if all you can do
is bang on pipes that aren’t out there, but in here.” Still
no answer. I can’t even talk to myself right, I thought,
or heard. I bet there’s a pill for this. I bet again
that I could talk them back inside. I don’t know yet
if I have won. There’s nothing out there now, or in here,
except the furnace and the light in the living room,
the clack of my nails on the keys, my chest still heaving.
I’m no longer worried about waking anything up, disturbing anything.
A good night’s sleep among the gray firs I can see in the kitchen
(formed I am sure by bars of moonlight or perhaps the neighbor’s porchlight)
will be enough to make it all go away. There’s a pill for it,
at any rate, or so I’m told. Someone keeps telling me that, anyway.

Gaza

is approximately
25 miles long
and between 4 and 7
miles wide, contains
around 1,500,000
people, is the 6th
most densely populated area
on the planet with around
4200 people per square kilometer,
although due to issues
with access and administration,
many of those figures
are a matter of some controversy.

It is controlled
by Hamas
and that is a matter of some
controversy.

Hamas has frequently launched rocket attacks
from Gaza into Israel. In recent days
(speaking now at the end of 2008)
said attacks have killed 1 person
and wounded dozens,
although numbers may change,
and the figures remain
a matter of some controversy.

Airstrikes by Israel against targets in Gaza
have led to the deaths of at least 275 people
to this point, with the Israeli government promising that
operations will be continuing for some time.
This is a matter of some controversy.

The pronunciation of the word
"Gaza"
is a matter of some controversy.
Some pronounce it
"My Lai," or "Sand Creek,"
while others pronounce it "necessary
if regrettable" or "a situation that must be
closely monitored."  Which pronunciation
will prevail, even who gets to choose
which pronunciation will prevail —
these are matters of some controversy.

Under the arc of rockets and bombs
there is little to debate.
A limb severed is a limb severed.
A hat still moist with scalp
and brains is irrefutable.
A baby’s arm dusted
in the matte silver of concrete dust,
protruding from rubble and still twitching,
is described the same way in every account,
with wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Controversy
is the art of saying something
that is in opposition
to what someone else is saying.

Silence
is the art of saying nothing.

War is the art of attempting to end
controversy.  It works best in concert
with silence.

Whether a particular war
is a masterpiece of the art form
is frequently
a matter
of controversy for a few,
upon which the majority
is mostly silent.

somewhere near megiddo,
empty dust city in a poor valley,
with armageddon
its holy unholy avatar;
with detroit in background,
new york in background,
washington left to fend off dogpack imaginations,
london a screen for chopped limb and stink,
paris a mistake now corrected back
to abandoned marsh village on septic banking,
moscow ice darling,
beijing concrete boiling,
with a black breeze
hurtling over all
through all
and into every crevice,

he finds a rent metallic casket
by a ravine trash-full of mango peels,
flutes, silk pajamas, and books.

terrific, he said.

early on
we had opened up that lid and let it all fly —
dead trees, faces shrouded in magenta
with burned eyes,
a wailing that went on and on
but we had stopped our ears and pushed ahead
with lamps and bulldozers,
guns and gin.
hammers to nail hands to charred symbols.
nails on blackboards.

it had all ended too slowly to be officially noticed.
rot increasing far out at sea.
sargasso triangle in our heads
becalming solutions.
land falling before relentless chewing of greedy teeth.
unexplained mutations of remembered familars.
oiled-up trivia on papyrus, on monitor,
on showcase pillars on street corners,
on every mind ad infinitum,
"per aspera ad astra"
no more than mystic hokum
from a man
behind a curtain.

he spat on a patch of bare earth.

his blue gray muscles
remembered what had failed
and he recited that bullet dharma:

no more demands,
no fear of summons,
no still unbroken law.
no etiquette, no condescending nod
to willing suspension
of social code.
no notion of art. 
no blisters. 
no callused palms,
no ridges on index fingers.

terrific,
he said.

I can do better
next time.
yes.

he bays

yes
Yes
YES
at an unchanged moon.

someone, he thinks,
will answer,

YES.

that box
may creak,
but it will
open,
someone will say
yes,
and we’ll get back
to work.

Each of us is no more
than a vault of moments,
a bank for remembered scenes.

Poets spend all that they save,
and I am one —
or rather, have been one,
for from this moment on

I refuse to fritter
a second more
in letting my mysteries out
for the world to pick up
like so many stray pennies.
Let it be someone else’s turn.

Yes, there are times
when it comforts me to think again
of the way her hair felt
the first time I touched her
on a Providence street;
there is more to say about that,
and I know ways to make others feel it too,
but I want to keep it for myself.

I could describe what it feels like to press
the point of a hunting knife into my chest,
adding a quarter pound of pressure
with every breath,
shaking and snotty with tears
until I pulled it away…
I could make that real
for anyone who asked,
but could anything I got back
make it worth my while
to transfer that
from my own private store
into the public treasury? 

So much that I saved
from youth to now
has ended up on stages,
spent for others’ amusement,
traded for glad hands
and shifting feet. 
What has it ever gained me?

Just give me now, at last, 
my hoard to hold for me alone.
Let me count my terrors and my ecstasies
in my own time, sitting up late at night
to avoid dreaming them out of my grasp.
Call me a miser if you want.  Complain
that it is not in my character
to be this selfish, and I will agree;
but Lord, how I wish I had been
less profligate with these
when it would have been wiser
to keep them close.

If I can learn to be tighter
with a memory now,
I might yet be happy. 

I could get a job
where no one will ever ask me
about who I was,
where I’d been,
how I view the search for meaning,
how I got here. 

It’s none of your business,
I will say if they ask me. 

Write your own goddamn poems,
that’s what I’ll say. 

We have lived
too long
among replica altars
among liars
among stars full of gunpowder
among jars of fatal honey
among tongues that sharpen crowns
among feral cats who eat sleep

Now we say
This is war

We can taste old tobacco tonight
in the snow-heavy wind

We believe power can be stunned
by an army of empty pockets
Believe the honor assigned to our charming foes
in their secret councils is a paper-poor foundation
for their church of generals

We are coming into our own

Set phosphorus by their sinks
and lay mines in their marble yards

Speak machete in their stores
Spell our names with letters threaded on fuses
and sign away our lives and theirs

We are coming
Magnet doctors
Shoestring traders
Slim warriors with bones akimbo
Reptile headed whores and their lovers

We know this land as well as they do
Better —
we know where the damage is
how to worm a finger in there
pry out loose bricks
for the throwing
at eagle darkened
sale junky
wealthy dog
soon to be
dead

You gave me a hell of a choice —
take a dive before the little one
you’d just dreamed up
or take the bigger plunge
out of the ring for good. 
I took the second option,
figuring pride would give me better wings,
and I’ve always been one
for the grand gesture. 

In the long years since
I’ve had no regrets.
I watch the little man
and my feathers
just won’t stay still. 

If I had agreed
to bow to him,
I’d have forgotten
myself by now.  This way,
I am still a contender.
You rat bastard —  don’t forget:
I was the favorite
once,
and I have learned 
how to wait. 

If I ever change the world I will do it through memory,

recalling that once I could set points and change the dwell
on a distributor; could change a manual typewriter ribbon;
could go all day without a phone call — indeed, I could miss phone calls
and never know they had happened unless someone
called back to say they had called earlier and that they were glad
to catch me at home;

recalling that friends who moved away were lost to me
unless I called at great expense or took great pains to write them
regularly, keeping their letters close at hand
to ensure that I never lost an address or a zip code; recalling that
I knew how to look up their numbers in a phone book and could send them
clippings of items from the local paper to keep them up to date
on what they were missing;

recalling that every kid in my neighborhood could fire a rifle,
spent Saturday nights shooting rats at the town dump, never thinking twice
about the danger of guns because we trusted our guns the way
we trusted each other;

recalling that stores were closed on Sunday, that we waited till Monday
if we needed something, that if we needed something on Sunday
it was not important unless we were dying for lack of it, and that need
rarely was anything more than want amplified.

This is not nostalgia.  Nostalgia is for those
who believe nothing is retrievable from what we remember.
I can believe that everything once possible — the things I recall
of how we made it through before — is still possible.

I can recall the sound of a simple car falling into a purr
under my own hands,
ready to drive because I made it so.  I can recall
being ready to go, being unconcerned about who might miss me.
I can recall how it was to be in control of so much, of so many simple things.

If I am to change the world,
it will be because
I can recall how it was
to live 
with my hands always dirty,
and proud of the same.