Stagger
from bed

into dim kitchen
before first light: there,

voice of steady rain
through open window.

“Steady there, ambition;
settle, urgency. No need

for haste.  No need
to water a garden, to

run, to do anything.
Turn around.  I will give you

a good day later.  For now,
sleep again, just a little.”

I do not make a practice
of arguing with rain; instead,

I sing “Hallelujah” modestly,
mostly mouthing it as I comply,

trusting that promise of
a good day later.  Rain’s always

made that promise,
always followed through.

As insidious as the notion
that the universe is pulling for us
can be — always putting slippery faith

into visions of intervention
slipping under doors, bleeding through cracks
to fill desperate holes within —

so too is the evil of believing
that it never pulls for us at all.
Choosing to forget we’re part of it

with a part in it that might require
our continued presence
is a denial and a mistake.

I don’t need personalized divinity
to explain it, or an Almighty God
to define it.

All I need: the notion
of living as a purpose in itself —
my choices as my choices, but not detached

from all others.  I don’t know
what to call it.  No one really knows.
We simply practice like mad for what it might be.

missed most mornings
in the rush to start the day

the gray trail behind me
back to the farthest point
I ever was from here

gray figures
beside the trail

gray figures
in the woods
on the horizon

gray figures that beckoned me
to continue on the trail

encouragement
so indistinct and
necessary

so cloaked now in routine’s amnesia
but visibly present

on the good mornings
I see one or more in the periphery
and stop wherever I am

to nod and acknowledge gently
swiftly so as not to slow my progress

before returning to the trail with
increased confidence
for today at the very least

1.
Miguel once set the back of his head on fire
in an effort to drive the voices
ahead of the flames, into the open —

at least that’s what he claims he’s done,
thought there are no scars or signs of such a blaze.
That he may be lying, though, doesn’t occur to me.

I choose instead to believe
his tale of defense and survival,
and that I have just not earned the right to see the evidence.

2.
Alicia whispers to each turtle
she rescues from our unsafe streets.
She won’t tell anyone what she says

as it’s in the language of turtles that she learned
in childhood, something she insists must be kept private
since such secrets are ripe for theft and corruption

once they become known to all.  I tend to agree —
though it hurts to know that here’s another thing
I don’t need to know, and will never know.

3.
In contrast there’s Krystle who can’t shut up
about all the good little secrets of all my good little neighbors.
I learn in five minutes of through-her-porchscreen chatter

the kinks and hijnks of Crankypants across the street
and what the mail carrier does every day to the fat cat
from the second floor of my building.  How she knows these things

I don’t know, since Krystle never leaves her place
except when her daughter takes her to the clinic,
but I’d never accuse her of lying as I don’t know

what she thinks she knows
about me, and even less about who else she talks to
when I’m not around.

4.
I am salty with these secrets now,
secrets that may or may not carry weight,
water, or truth.  I can taste them in myself.

In a less contorted world, I’d stop
listening, I swear.  I would walk away
from them when offered or uncovered.

Now, though, it seems scary or impolite
or foolish to discount anything I’m told.
I can’t trust anything not to be true,

so I stop and listen to the locals
when they speak.
At least I can touch them.

Real sources, perhaps unreliable, perhaps not,
but with faces I can look into
and eyes I can meet with my own.

The new crop of good dudes
is sitting in the summer cafe
talking nerdcore and geekery
while struggling with beards
that, as the old song says,
have all grown longer overnight.

Rising from those beards:
the perennial incense,
the fuming intoxication of patriarchy.

The dudes know that smell
but this unfamiliar feeling
of safety, the sense that the newly hip beards
give them cover?  The rationalization
that their ethics are slipping but it’s OK,
they’re good dudes
and they vow they will get back
to the struggle
tomorrow?

It’s new to them,
but they’re getting used to it —
they ogle baristas and customers
as secretly as they can,
thinking it’s easily hidden —

fooling themselves,
if no one else.

How stupid:
an American outside its yard
with no flag to protect it.

It wants to believe
it is camouflaged and wary
yet is as loud as a bridle full of bells.

It wants to stray deep
into a foreign affair.  It wants
to be slick yet it’s stomping everything.

When it moves, it tears out
the spot
where it was.

See the country folk shaking their heads
at the city slicker
shining them on — or so it thinks.

They know better
what side their history is buttered on,
as well as how it tends to fall.

School buses are rolling on our streets this morning.
Pictures of a friend’s daughter and her baby arrive in the mail.
I’m waiting on the last tomatoes to redden before frost.

I’m ready
for something to happen.

Maybe it will be
starfire sourcing itself between my eyes.
A beam as wide as a freeway will sprout there
and traffic will begin to bustle back and forth
from within to without.

Hoping for
a new energy,

I’m going to cut off
my beard tonight, and then shave all the hair
from my head.  I will be a bullet, a cannon ball
with a beam of light in the middle of my head
and traffic going in and out, in and out.

I’m ready for something
to happen all right,

because not that much has been happening
with all my old hair and no light to travel on.
Hope is a new energy.  I have to believe that
it will happen.  I’m going to shave and then shine.
I’m going to change the way I look to represent
the change to come, all starfire-beam and speed-revelation.

Here’s to hope,
its own kind of new energy.

Here’s to the close shave of making it through today
with some kind of optimism.  Here’ s to getting stuck
in the traffic going back and forth from my bald head
into the far world.  Here’s to me, cannonball, aimed at peace.
Here’s to me sitting on my fat ass,
waiting for anything to happen.

1.
All weekend sharp-faced old Jacqueline
sat way back in her deep dark porch
and watched her grandson park cars on her lawn

for those coming to the big fair,
helping her to pile up the money she lives on all year
in her firetrap near mansion

where the windsock in the colors of the Irish flag
hangs straight up and down, motionless,
from the pole on the post at the ratty porch stairway.

2.
A leather-skinned couple
bickered lightly by a booth
selling straw cowboy hats.

“Whatya want with that –
you ever ride a horse in yer life?”
”No, but I’ve ridden my man plenty.”

I passed by too quickly
to hear all that followed that,
but it started with smoker’s laughter.

3.
Packs of teenagers — is that the right
collective noun? are they ever anything
but a collective noun? — roamed the midway:

4-H T-shirts
and blue hair;
cowboy hats,
(Connecticut cowboys, again!)
cowboy boots.

Unmistakable: the ones made up
of couples in first sexual union
could not let go of each other long enough
to put sugar and syrup on, let alone eat,
their shared funnel cakes.

4.
The cigar in the face
of the woman tending the shooting
at the midway game
never moved the whole time
she was spieling the skeptical
passers-by.

5.
If the nymph
described in that old song
was ever at this fair

it was not tonight –
I did not see her
among the jostling throngs.

Perhaps the song was written
about sharp faced Jacqueline
as she once was,

and her yard full of cars
is the sequel?  ”They moved
to the fair.”  Or maybe

any woman can be a song
with the right cowboy hat
and the right eyes to see her.

I woke up and found all my deep work 
had washed away overnight,
had vanished somewhere downstream,

and my brain called it a tragedy one time.
Then my body took on the form of a cruise missile,
waiting on a destroyer for flight.  This is no tragedy;

as a cruise missile I wouldn’t even think
of this as anything more than a good joke
to be savored on my way to a real tragedy.

Six weeks ago
a smart man spoke of race and told me
that what I said I was, I was not.  He talked me
out of existence, practically; thanks, smart man.

Shortly after another smart man spoke of poetry
and told me something else I wasn’t.  I’d been that for so long
it left me a little breathess; I blued like a baby.
These poems are not poems, so I’m not therefore a…? Oh. Smart man, thanks.

A smart woman then showed me something about what manner of man I was.
I couldn’t see it at first.  A piece of me is still struggling with it
but I know it will come.  I know it will.  I have to. Thanks for that,
smart woman. Smart people want to help..

Definition, negation, redefinition: smart people 
keep setting me right. Keep me smarting; get me smarter.
No matter how idiot I am, I am grateful for smart people.
They’re good at silencing so much of what of me I need to silence.

I’ve been sure of some things since childhood; 
I was this, I was this — and I was not this other thing
I abhor.  In the new silence I am learning
that I am not those first two things and I am the third.

I will learn from this in silence.  I will surrender
my childhood and its lies.  I will burn past pages born of the lies
and render them harmless.  
I will pull a real man

from the machinery of lies and manliness
and I won’t count myself 
as much of anything again,
not for a long, long time.