who
would you sashay toward, do-si-do beside,
promenade or allemande left with
if you were caught in time,  
found yourself in the corny old elegance
of the square dance?

I picture you in gingham
and me in overalls.
I’m hoping you’d have bowed to this partner.
I’ve got a stereotype of you
gently rocking my head.
something lovely and odd and unreal.

now, who you gonna step to?
who do you want to grind with you
in the more familiar
dances of our day?

I’ve got a picture of that too
and I’m in it
and there’s you too, boo.
like what I see.
but it’s not happening.

let’s runaway from these pictures
and get real in that town from the movies
where no one ever dances
by law.  

it’s some kind of fiction
but let’s go there anyway
since this is some fantasy
and we can defy the dream law
and dance however we want
or maybe

find other stuff to do.
nothing nasty, just moonlight
and making stuff up
we like out of all the pieces from 
the past.  do-si-do, back that
up, do what feels good.  you know:

dance.

“Luck for the counting of wars
she has not seen.
May they be
numbered zero.

Love or at the least care
in every face she will see.
May those forever be
as numberless as waves.”

Had she been born,
I would have placed this blessing on
the girl I’ll never see, the girl I never had,
the one who’ll never be.

But I am content.  I did right
to not bring her into
the things
I have had to see,

though I would have loved her
had she been here.  I loved her,
in fact, enough
to have chosen to keep her safe.

Though some have called this selfish,
and some have shaken their heads,
I say to them that the greatest blessing
I placed upon her is this:

she did not have to know me.

first and foremost
be yourself

by all means
pull teeth if you’re a dentist
but if you discover
halfway through a procedure
that your patient has become a lion
drop the tools and run
you are no lion tamer

don’t be tempted
by the story of Androcles
into believing that the lion will love you
because you eased his pain
his hunger is always
greater than his pain

if you repair his smile 
all you’ll get
is better bitten 

the more of my old clothes I stuff
into bags to be donated
to those who can use them 

the more some will demand
that I wear those better clothes
I will no longer wear

they do not understand
or refuse to understand
or simply fear the truth

that sometimes abandonment
is the best choice of career
sometimes rejection

is the greatest —
indeed the only embrace —
I can offer my future

whether I end up naked
exposed and bitten
however I end in that future

I will be arrayed and adorned
locked in its loving arms
as I and only I wish

Looking for a gift?
This list
should give you
something to work from:

Favorite song:
an open tuned guitar,
randomly banged upon
unti it falls out of harmony
and stops sounding sweet.

Favorite book:
the burned one.

Favorite movie:
any set of credits.

Favorite food:
the fattiest, saltiest selection.

Favorite drug:
any of the Obliterati.

Favorite memory:
No real favorite, but
most persistent is of
the near death car accident,
seeing the boulder at the last minute
and swerving — senior prom night,
otherwise a good if dim memory.

Favorite photo:
me at 20,
peeking over the top
of a headstone
that bears my name.

The insulted clock
sees couples kissing
and stews, ticking indignantly
as they stop time.

What, she says,
is the point of me
when it’s so easy
to forget me?

Come on, she says
to one pair — two short women
wrapped in each other,
hands in each other’s hair.

Come on, get it over with,
get back to being able to hear me.
You can’t get away with eternity
forever,

no matter how good it feels.
I want to get my own hands on you
and remind you that no moment
should be immortalized

above any other.  Love me
and my insistence on forward
and direction and beginning
and ending.  It’s the best advisor

we have, that knowledge
of short time.  You’re messing
that up with love, pleasure,
with your deafness to me. 

Keep this up too long
and when you do come around
I’ll hurt you more than I want to,
and it’s nothing you’ll get over soon. 

Sometimes,
I let myself believe
I matter,

then the wind comes.
I lean away from it
just a little,

and then the sun forces
a hat onto my head 
merely by shining,

so I resolve to be quiet
and insignificant,
just another part of the world

working my small practice.
If it matters, it will matter.
What I do, I do because

I was made to —
what work is mine to do
was given to me,

and the importance
of me to the work
is as incidental as the sweat

on my brow is to the sun:
something to be wiped off,
a distraction.

Let your breathing go,
slack your grasp on day.

Turn your eyes inward
to the frame,
see ivy curling and clinging,
rooting the cracks,
tearing down its own ladder
as it climbs…

as ever intended,
as required;
and now, what you at last desire,
for this is all that’s left to do;
it will be easier soon for you.

yesterday
though it was daylight 
I saw myself as a night landscape
holding multitudes
embracing divisions

I made an effort
to represent myself as split
to others
looking for pity
or a blessed contradiction 

poor me
and me
and me
who cannot connect
and remain at war 

then last night
I saw birds
flying across
all our backyards
with the moon behind them

in daylight
I might have known the difference
(if they were indeed different species)
but last night they flew together 
and they seemed the same

whatever distance I imagine lies
between the voices I speak in by day
is only measurable in mythic units
that do not in fact exist
when I’m by myself in the dark

At the end of a tangled day
I want a house that lets me in
when I’m tired, cold,
and ready to rest.

I want someone to offer me
the sweetness of kinks straightened
and knots cut or unraveled.  

I want a meal that does not feed on me
for hours after I’ve eaten it.

I want a few fine things to comfort
my bruised hands.  I want to touch
the good work of similarly 
bruised hands.

I want to sleep,
dreamless, 
for a whole unbroken night.

I want, I want, I
want.

I’m done with denial. Denial
cut holes in my hands,
and these things have slipped through.
Soaked in fatigue though I am,
I want to rouse my deadfall body 
to reach for those things,

and I want them to be
within reach. 

Prose, he screams
Prose
It’s all prose
Maddening straighforward
dog after cat after mouse after crumbs
Love after lust after like after glance
Sitck a condor in there, he rages
Wrinkle the cloth of living
so it mountains and valleys its meaning
Dam up the slow erosion of simple streams
then let it loose in torrents
I want to be excited
I want no story in the way of direct apprehension
of how it feels and means to be RIGHT THERE NOW
and that condor better make me want to soar

Prose, I tell him
Prose
Is what we have now
There’s a music in this madness someone ought to play
I like a condor as much as the next guy
But there’s nothing soaring here as far as I can see
I want our easy rivers to cut as they desire
And the land here’s flat and it needs a story to rise
I want to be excited but I don’t need to try for that
These people speak in storms if you listen
And right here, right now feels like a chest cold
Stops the breathing and strangles the throat
If I choose a poetry made from our workaday wheezing
If I choose a poetry that smells like discount soap
If I choose a poetry that wants a paycheck and not a treasure chest
I think I’m closer to the condor’s flight than you
Because the condor doesn’t soar just to make you swell with art
That bird’s looking for food
And I imagine he’s too hungry to care
if you want him for a metaphor just now

All morning, the Work,
interrupted by a talk with an old friend
about the weird weather.

More Work, then more talk with another friend
about him fearing the future.
I have a lot of that to say, too.

To the store for dinner.
An old man counting out his wallet
while the cashier waits.

Late-day coffee.
The woman in front of me
clutches keno tickets.

Homeward bound
with a few bags of food
and new music in the car stereo.

Warmer now
than I was at midday.
Broke, wired, but feeling lucky.

Good things ahead, I hope.
I get the oven ready and begin,
still humming.

I can’t wait to feed another.
I can’t wait to be fed.
I cannot wait to forget the diary

and leave the entry
till tomorrow, when I may choose
to say nothing about today at all. 

you let yourself fall on rocks
even if yet-unknown hands
are not there
to catch you 

and when they do not

you honestly rise
and honestly fall again,
honestly expecting
to be caught 

and when you are not

you get up again
and do not lie about your fear
but fall again
this time expecting
to be caught

and when you are not
you do it again
and when you are not
you do it again
and when you are not

you get up again
and fall

eventually you break the rocks