usually, you’ll get no argument when you say that
it’s critical to choose good
over evil. but if it were easy to apply that,
there’d be no need to argue about it endlessly
after the choice.

you’d just act, you animal,
limbic and limber in whatever movement followed,
be it attack or embrace. you’d sit back afterward
and lick the wounds from the battle
and forget it ever happened.

instead you trouble yourself with proverbs
that became cliches right after cain
tried to explain why he reached out that first time to abel,
trying to convince yourself that love is hate and
hate is love.

so admit it. evil needs an ass-kicking.
you don’t so much desire non-violence for all
as you wish that different people were dying. kill the
homophobes, the racists, the bigots and haters, exploiters
and rapists — admit it, admit it, your version of love
would allow this and you’d only hate yourself a little for it,
and only at first.

that’s all there is to it: we say the good is easy to choose
and pretend we can’t understand why evil is so present
in this world, but the truth is that we act first
and let good and evil sort themselves out later
when we’ve had a chance to rest
and wipe the blood from our mouths.

we learned this when god chose a blood sacrifice
over the gentle fruit,
then put his thumb on cain when he did the same.
what was good, what was evil?
that ought to be an easy one.
he’s god, after all.

Every window’s open while I clean house
There’s a lot to do and it feels great to be doing it
The radio agrees with me
It’s a good day for some Bob Marley

Don’t worry
‘Bout a thing
Cause every little thing’s
Gonna be all right

Gotta love that island music
Gotta love that reggae beat
And that universal message

One love
One heart
Let’s get together and
feel all right

Christ, I love that song too
I learned it back in college
I learned it from a bong-loading friend of mine
I learned a lot from songs back then

It’s some kind of Marley Festival today
Because it sounds like they’re playing everything —

Cause I feel like bombing a church
now that you know
the preacher was lyin’

I must have missed that one
With that violence that’s more than just implied
Doesn’t sound like the Marley I know
This isn’t on the Legend album, is it?

If you are the big tree, let me tell you that
We are the small axe, sharp and ready
Ready to cut you down

I never heard that one either
That’s not on the Legend album
Where the hell are they finding this stuff
This isn’t really Bob, is it?

Them belly full but we hungry
A hungry mob is an angry mob

oh, come on…

Forget all your troubles and dance

That’s more like it!

You know, I am thinking of a friend of mine
Who took one of those adventure trips
He went kayaking on the Mekong River
and around a bend he came upon a shrine to Bob

He said there were white stones embedded on the bank
and they spelled out his name below his poster on a post
He said the ground was swept clean all around the stones
and the jungle was cut back so anyone could see

He thought it was there for the tourists
I can get behind that
I used to have his poster in my room
I might still have it somewhere

Build your penitentiary, we build your schools
Brainwash education to make us the fools
Hate is your reward for our love
Telling us of your God above

Again, I don’t know this song
I don’t recognize that suspicion
This isn’t what I thought I’d be hearing
when I started jamming in the living room
with a dustpan in my hand

It’s time to turn the dial
If I’m ever gonna get this house clean
How anyone could ever clean house
to music like this
I’m sure I’ll never know

strain your eyes
hard enough
and you will learn what is perfect

dampen them with fatigue
and it will be easy to make
diamonds from the night’s coal

the facets will glint through tears
and halos will form around
headlights

the world becomes more precious
as you become
more tired of it

the moments that will stand out in the dark
will stand out precisely because
you have come so far

and still have far to go

The cat demands that I open his window
no matter how cold it is outside.

Lying on his shelf, his limbs
tucked underneath, he looks like a furry meatloaf.

Birds, commuters, the squirrels too busy at this hour:
every one is working! (Him, too. After all, this is his job

— and mine too, I guess, huddled into the couch with the blanket and laptop warm upon me.)
I’m not even looking to see why he’s smiling, thinking instead

that I might be smiling too if he hadn’t gotten me up.
I plot against him, decide he’d fit in the microwave if I pushed.

The street chatters and beeps and growls but he isn’t even watching now,
damn him. His eyes slit down to slivers of green

while his nose works the morning air and he turns back toward me
to say thank you, to say that’s enough, to say it’s bedtime now.

She woke up last Tuesday
and found that she’d become
a myth: not a lie,
not a falsehood or even a statistic, but a myth.
Her entire biography apparently explained
something cosmic.

Her steps from the bed
to the bathroom echoed; her new toothbrush
was a relic by the time
she’d finished her molars,
and she heard a coterie of acolytes gathering on the patio,
chanting her name as she opened her yogurt.

The train had become a pilgrimage that morning
with saffron robes and smoking censers all around. She saw
her name carved into the vinyl of a forward coach seat
and when she ran her hand over the cuts, passengers all around
held their breath. A conductor roped it off
after she moved away. The crowds hung behind her as she walked to the office

from the station. She kept thinking that this was crazy,
couldn’t they see she was ordinary, a blender and not a standout?
Who could think this was anything sacred, this mess of spreadsheets
and meetings where, even today, nothing was getting done (although
she noticed her boss sneaking looks at her as if she was made of gold
and the room hummed like Delphi every time she spoke)?

That night, while her husband slept, she opened her childhood book
of Greek stories and read for hours of doings that made sense of the world.
Gods coupled with humans, walls of iron warriors rose from the teeth of dragons,
and people were torn apart and rebuilt in the name of bringing order to chaos.
Chaos himself was an actor too, and she thought of him as she read. Thought of
numbers pulled from the air and wrestled into place. Thought of wounds held secret

to prove strength when they were finally revealed.
She began to shine around the third hour
of reading. Her arms were strong against the old current in the air.
She left the house, its daily altars, its offerings; outside
the crowds had thinned but the strongest believers remained true
and hovered below her, watching her rise.

Stepped up
Saw that the faces inside
didn’t see him

Put one hand on either side
of the thick antique window and
pushed

Heard the glazing give
Heard the old wood crackle free
Saw the faces inside
turn and stare
Had the Thought —

so what?

Pushed harder
Shook his head as he pushed
Rocked back
Banged back in and was
Through

Fell forward into the party
Landed on a pile of paper
Knocked it into the fireplace
while getting up

Looked around at the ring
of jewelry and silk
Looked around at tables and chairs
Thrones and risers and tumblers
Jesters and a harem
Soldiers and police
Bishops and judges

Turned back toward the cold air and shouted
to the masses behind him

COME ON

and they came

No Blue Bloods blinking
just a Redtide unblinkered
No Sleepy Hollow legacies
just the Van Winkle casualties
all coming over that busted sill
all wide awake again and ready to wake the Rest

This was The Night Time Right Time
Barging in on Daylight Tradition
This was The Wrong So Wrong
making war on The Stuff Of Legend

COME ON

and what happened next was

born again fiesta pouring over the fat rug into the heart of a drawing room star chamber
anti zombie head busting blackbox waving dog soldiers swarming up online through burned wires
threaded through jimcrack marble and oilsoaked rumors of scriptural falsehood disguised as Godhead
filigree scimitar barks with oars made of sandblasted virgin eponymous rhymewood cut from mythforests
rowing into the shallow end of pools of too warm water scented with the weak piss of old news
dark eyed lovely and bleach pirate plain gong tuning misfits dancing artlessly on slippered wings
while staid children stuck hands into the new air around them and felt orange razor wind
though their now free fingers

COME ON

that was how it started

it always begins
when someone presses just a tad harder
against a window that looks like a wall
till it’s pushed

The dance is simple:
two-step
from bed to work,
work to couch,
couch
to bed, bed
to work…

On weekends
we might break into a brief waltz:
bed to chores or play to bed
to church to chores or couch
to bed,

but always
we come back to
bed to work,
work to couch,
couch
to bed, bed
to work…

There was a movie once
I never saw
about dance marathons. It was called
“They Shoot Horses, Don’t They?”
I was a kid but I remember the trailer
showed couples draped and struggling
on each other while dulled music dragged them
around a dark floor and
I remember I thought it was strange
because dancing was supposed to be fun,
wasn’t it?