Originally posted 4/14/2004.

between flirt and affair
between laughter and terror
between the end of the backward rock of the chair
and the start of the backward fall

is the land where you live

before the light wakes up
when your sense is bridging
the space between
nothing and something

is the only time there is

it takes patience
to live this wholly incomplete way
to hang on the day’s pendulum
without falling off

what some call the great unknown

is there such a thing as a marigold’s prayer?
what is an antelope’s last thought
before hitting the wall at full run
unable to turn aside?

the way things are in
this vast continent between the poles
of being and not being
of static and fluid

if you are alive
you cannot win
you are dying in the moment
as fast as you can and

though the wind sleeps

in the blue trance before dawn
something is always moving
at once toward and away
back and forth and up and down

and it only appears to be something other than you

Originally posted 4/23/2012.

Growing up in
Worcester, Springfield,
Lowell, Lawrence,
Fitchburg, or Pittsfield
gives us permanent
leverage
against pretense:
whenever we proudly speak
our hometown names

a seagull in Boston fires from the sky
and ruins an Acura’s windshield,
a raw wool sweater in Northampton
catches on an antique nailhead,
and somewhere on the Cape
an overpriced lobster bites back.  

We wake up some mornings
and realize how handsome we truly are.
It’s enough to make us empty a mill
and start a revolution inside.

Originally posted 9/15/2008.  Inspired by the book by Robert Hogue Harrison of the same title.

The dead man I was born to replace
sits up and watches me from a distance.
Hello, blueprint! It’s comforting to remember
how few of us are innovations,

how almost everyone’s a remake.
Some few are sequels, but each of us
drags behind us the shadow
of some more or less distant Original.  

I’d go talk with that dead man
but why waste time?
I already know
what he’s going to say: he’d remind me

that our monuments and buildings,
overstuffed with our plans, are built
to hide the horizon.
That’s how we keep things going.

Originally posted, 8/31/2009.  Original version was found in old notes; apparently, this was written in 1976, when  I was 16 years old.  I’ve modified it very little, mostly to create end-rhyme breaks and clear up a little weirdly vague imagery that seemed like the result of youthful incompetence versus originality.

“““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`

We all stomp round and round. 
We rage at sky, at ground. 

We hunt and peck and scream. 
We hate, we fear, we dream. 

We honor corpses’ names,
then rip ourselves with games.

The trees know we don’t care
for sea, or fish, or air. 

We strike at those we loathe.
We sleep we those we love.

We can’t tell them apart. 
We turn that into art.

We drink our salty tears. 
We do this all our years. 

We spend our time on pain.
Our children do the same. 

We hope, but hope’s a lie.  
We live, we wait to die. 

We lie down, glad to sleep. 
When we’re gone, few will weep.

Originally posted 1/27/2011.

I decide it’s time
to open up and release
a secret to you
and tell you

that I often write
inspirational messages to myself
on paper plates,
then eat off of those plates
in the hope that hope
will soak into the food
and keep me sane and alive
till the next meal.

When I tell you this,
all you can think of to say is,
why are you killing all those trees?

This is why
I too often lower my eyes
in your presence
and grit my teeth; it’s my prayer
that you’ll stop asking
soon.  It’s why
I hesitated before telling you;

you can’t help but call attention
to the slaughter all around me,
yet still manage to entirely
miss the point.

Originally posted 3/31/2010.

feather
floating

a little this way
a little that

one current lifting
another driving down

will drop at some point
to the floor

where it will stir a little 
now and then

mostly will lie still
having found its level

like my head my truth 
my real face which

no matter how 
propped up with breath 

will fall full of dust
a discard 

don’t care
drift was movement 

was needed
for a while

Originally posted 11/25/2003.

The news speaks of Siegfried and Roy,
of terrible news that a beloved tiger
has turned upon them; also, I see
we are still
at war.

I am not Roy.
I am not Siegfried.
I cannot make any of this
disappear.
Therefore, I will give up. 

I will turn toward the headlines
that call out war and other savagery
and surrender my own head to that tiger.
Into his jaws, the ivory ridged tabernacle,
I shall commend my spirit.

I shall learn to speak in sitcom
and imagine in high definition 
what it’s like to be at war –
if my left eye opens,

I will wash it
in a pool of agreement
and dry it
with a flag.

Somebody teach me
the chords to a country song.
Somebody
pardon me for being slow
to resign myself
to the new reality:
this was supposed to be 
our century, 
our time to shine
with the glazed and handsome
Coca Cola sheen
of the skin on a roasted hog.

Everybody dies
for something these days.
Somebody, anybody,
give me something simple to hold
and I’ll pretend that I like dying for it,

even as I wonder why Roy wasn’t faster,
swinging the mike at the tiger’s head
and leaping back in time to laugh and laugh
at how those handsome teeth closed on air.

Why were our free will 
and his gleaming magic 
not enough to stop the blood?

Why isn’t history dead? 

Why are we still at war?