Easily the greatest ending in history
was the one where you took my side
even though I was losing badly. Maybe

you did it for that reason, thought
you could save me, turn the tide —
I don’t know, but I do know

that when it became clear
that there was no way out of it for me,
you stayed when you could have gone,

and that is a comfort, although I am sorry
that it cost you so much, that they hounded you
into the dark and kept after you until

you probably perished out there
far from home and joy and safety.
You likely can’t hear this, won’t see it

ever.  It’s written on the same wind
that lifted and scattered my own
defeated bones. It’s all we two have

of that moment of furious and futile
strife and hope. I just needed it said:
you were an ally, you were a friend.

Even if we are forgotten, 
something of that loyalty
will endure; if it’s too much 

to hope for it to triumph
in the long term, it will still
have been worth the doing.

If I tell you that I was surprised to see
one ferret out of her cage
when I got home from shopping,
to find her strolling into the kitchen
to greet me, shoulder to shoulder
with the usually disdainful cat,
all because I’d left her cage partially open
by accident after filling her food bowl
an hour before, I will also have to tell you

of my complete lack of surprise when,
upon catching her and returning her
to the cage and latching it more securely,
I discovered her cage mate still sound asleep
in her hammock, apparently unaware 
both of her botched chance of an adventure
and of her sister’s wild hour on the loose
with the cat who, when all was done,
simply returned to her usual spot 
on top of the fridge and also
went to sleep. 

Somewhere in here is a metaphor 
and a moral and a meaning
that I should tease into a big statement
but I’m ready for a nap myself even though
I should work harder to escape
that kind of captivity, that sloth that holds me back
from deeper thought.  I ought not to be satisfied
with such a bald reporting of simple facts
but it’s all I’ve got for you — one ferret got free, 
one didn’t, the cat took it all in stride,
everyone’s asleep, all is forgotten,

and I’m fighting to stay awake,
to do my job — to keep killing myself
trying to make my life bigger
than it actually is.

Hope unfortunately
gets in the way of Truth
a lot of the time, he smirks.  

If he still smoked
he’d take a long drag now then
side-mouth the exhale, squinting

like Bogart or how he thinks
Bogey would squint. Too young
to have seen it, only having seen

generations-past watering down
that squint, now it’s
part of the language

of failed romantics everywhere
and he’s fluent in that. 
Somebody, get that man 

the right hat. Hope 
is a mistake a lot of the time.
It only gets used

for the wrong stuff. You gotta
go on faith for the important 
things. Hope is a tool

to make it happen but don’t
expect much from it.
We’re doomed. He says that last thing

in the voice of a cartoon donkey
he never saw. We’re Doomed. Hope says
he’s a fool, a kid, a poser; says 

he’ll outgrow this one day, have a kid
of his own, pass the past down
to that one. But you can’t rely

on Hope for everything.  
Maybe this one
means it, maybe every one of these kids

means it.  Maybe we’re doomed
after all. Maybe Hope was just the stuff
Dreams were made of.

Everywhere there’s
a war, anywhere
there’s an enemy 
there’s war so therefore
anywhere, everywhere
is war.

Find your front
and stand. Find your flank
and stay wary. Find your 
rear guard and stay flexible
so that doesn’t become
a second front, the enemy 
is everywhere, anywhere. 

You’re so tired. It’s all
tired. Nothing is
keeping you here
except fear and fatigue
and the knowledge that
there’s nowhere to go where
you won’t be surrounded
by enemies including
past comrades as tired
and as ready for an end
as you are. Everywhere’s a war,
anywhere there’s an enemy
there’s a war so everywhere
there’s a war — everywhere but here

on your path, under your feet,
wherever you lay your body down
after walking away. It’s a hard choice —

they’ll hate you for making it —
it’s all you have left to you —
choosing where you’ll be buried and
not letting someone else
choose your boneyard. 

So, in the middle of the battle,
you go, you’re gone, 
but you were gone long ago,
truth be told. Most of this war
was epilogue, truth be told.

Most of this life, truth be told,
was about wanting to walk away
from a war.

It went wrong from the start, part
of a white batch should have been 
brown batch, could have been honorable
but slipped into shadowed intent, would have been
mistake but instead was evil deliberate
and thoughtful, long hours working out
how to be wrong, devotion to the mess-up
as mask for the getaway plan, give up 
the fess-up in favor of the caught neck deep
in an excuse: it went wrong from the start
and once that goes on for a long time, a lifetime, 
the trip out of the wilderness where it ends up
is long and thirsty work, lonely work
with no comrades to buck up the pace,
work best done alone and even when done
it will be at best only a sloppy poultice
on a gash where blood may drain away
but still there will be hideous visuals for all
who care to see; it went wrong from the start
and the bones of the error are exposed
for all to see and stare upon or shrug at
as dismissal and shunning and forgetfulness
cover the Mistake, the white batch
that should have been brown, as if 
that would have prevented any of this
from happening.

You keep at it 
as if being a poet is special.
There’s nothing special about it —

you see a thing you need to survive,
chase it down, catch it, consume it,
spend hours after cleaning up after yourself
and the mess you’ve made of it, then
sleep until it’s time
to do it again.  Any cheetah can do it,
does it without a lot of thought.

Or you roam constantly foraging
and now and then break into a full run
zigging, zagging, leaping. Looks like fun
to the world watching but it’s complete 
terror on the hoof and maybe (eventually,
probably, certainly)
you die at the end; nothing to it,
any antelope could do it, does it
without a lot of thought.

Yet there you are, doing it
and straining to do it
and pouring angst about it
into a cup fashioned for blood, 
and you want
some kind of award
or some kind of book deal
or some kind of video ranking
or some kind of love for doing it —
God, look at yourself;
could you even survive
if you had to? Could you cheat death
multiple times, or even once?

You want fame for how hard
you’ve made this? You want joy
for being what you have no choice
in being?
Get running or
get gone.
Nothing to this
but that.

No axes,
no hammers
on the pegboards
in the basement.

No kitchen knives, no
rolling pins smoothed and
patina-clothed from meals
without number
in the drawer
next to the stove.

No guitars in the closet
with their necks so worn
in certain spots 
upon the back and
up against particular frets
along the front 
that the seasoned eye 
could tell you, swiftly,
what each instrument
had played — 

this old house has been cleansed.  
Someone’s gone through it.
It’s all new wood and
updates — empty basement
walls where the pegboards once 
hung, empty closets that once held
costumes from Halloweens past,
shoes forgotten in the corners,
those infernal guitars.

A delightful period Colonial
updated with all the modern conveniences
where it used to have inconveniences —

scarce wall plugs, shallow cabinets,
drafty windows, a peculiar rattle
on nights when the wind came from 
exactly the right direction to cause
the eaves to whistle and shake —

it used to be able to talk.
It used to be full of stories,

but now there’s all that new wood and
all those tight and noiseless floors
and doors and heating ducts.

It’s silent, longing to begin
its inevitable fall 
back into wear and want and 
clutter and disrepair, back 
into chatter and clamor
(through stain and splinter)
about those who live here;

it awaits 
restoration from
house
to home.