1.
I like the muscles
in words.  I like
how they move.  I like
how it’s not even work
when they move,
how different work is
from that.

2.
Ripple
in still water: a line
from some old song.

You can buy lines these days
from any songs
you want. 
This one suits me fine:

I’m the ripple sometimes,
the water sometimes;
doesn’t matter,
I always hum along.  I paid
for it, after all.  The moment
can always be made to fit.

3.
Don’t want these
hands or cornfields anymore.
Don’t want
to hold things
or be well-fed.
That would be too American of me.
I’m trying to be a citizen
of the world.

4.
Forever, the blue
and the red
for this white.  Forever
the straining for the anthem’s
penultimate note,
keening as did the heart
torn from the captive’s
chest.

5.
If I still listened
to new songs, or wrote them;
if I needed these hands
for what might be held,
then there might be hope.

6.
I’ve not left this home soil
once in the last twenty years.
I was born here
as were all my genes.
The only time I left
was to go and kill
elsewhere, and all that happened
was that I came home certain
that all the creation stories
my little nation ever believed in
were literally true.  Coyote
brought us fire, the snakes
were postal carriers to the gods.
I was fashioned a warrior,
and someday, the vast occupation
will fall head first into our villages
slain.  It has to be true:
every brown person I killed
told me the same story.

7.
This house is a perfect shade
of rose.  It’s clothed
in vinyl.  It’s air conditioned,
well-heated,
and it smells of mountain spring
in the dead of winter.  It chases me
when I try to flee, and when I tire
and fall, I crawl right in
and fall back to sleep.

More than once
I’ve mistaken my current self
for a teenager. 
I’ve answered incorrectly
on my official biography. 
I’ve wondered
who the hell that is in the mirror,
on the license,
in others’ eyes.

I’ve ruthlessly cut me as if I were cane,
looking for sweetness.  Cooked myself,
hoping for a square meal.  Woven myself
into doormats.  Welded myself
to juggernauts.  Stapled myself
to manuscripts, glued myself
to the TV thinking I might
be better off inside. 

Ah, division,
myth of the shadow self,
delusion of persona.

In fact
I’m easily explained:
every face I’ve assumed
or been assigned,
any self I’ve come to believe
is hidden under the surface,
has functioned
as a cover
for escaping
what I am:

coward,
liar,
cheat,
lazy fox too smart to be
foxy,
spineless hedgehog rolling into
a futile ball.

It’s a lie when anyone says,
“that’s not the man
I thought I knew.”

Listen,
they say,
it’s OK. 

We know
you couldn’t help
being born this way.

Your color’s
your color, your gender’s
your gender.  That accent’s

a marker, but that’s all
we hear there.  No reason
to believe it matters,

really.  We know
the biology, the genetics,
your body’s opinion

of what your body
should be.  What’s
the hurry?  All’s

forgiven, all’s forgotten
if you will do the same.
It’s not like we need

to name the past, right?
We’re blind to it, we figure
you’ll thank us for

our blindness.  So buck up
and c’mon, don’t be that way —
and so we can

move forward.  Forward,
down that path over there,
we take such pride in.

Just step back a bit,
and let us go first — after all,
we know what we’re doing,

and we’d hate to see you, so tender
and new, get hurt
on the way.

A single bird
over the church
at the top of our hill.
I can see from his fingered wings
he’s a buzzard, he of
naked head and taste for death,

but from here,
he soars.

It’s going to snow tomorrow
and I have an urge
to cover the daffodils
that are just emerging
from the compacted mulch,

but it passes.
They’ll be fine.

In the dark of the apartment
the fears and concerns of the day
slide around me in bed
like eels — electric or moray
I can’t say, but they come close
and my skin pulls back;

then I sleep,
and they move away.

In waves upon waves
the disguised and dissembling
cover the earth.  From where I stand
there’s nothing out there but
a danger of drowning,

but I bob up to the surface
and see the sky every time.

talk about walnuts dammit
or bananas or plywood
maybe there’s a door to consider
or typewriters themselves sexy and willing
to be closely observed

talk about bricks dammit
spend an hour staring at one
until you have red dust and pitting down
until the brick’s all mopped up
and ready to be wrung out

here’s the pavement — kiss it
here’s the cobweb — swallow it
here’s a key — stuff it up your nose
brass smells of dirty fingers and ozone
gimme an epic about that scent — start maybe with

first time you noticed it was when your mother died
the keys were in the hand you bunched up to your face
you could smell and taste them mingled
with tears and varnish on the oak table
upon which you laid your head to weep when it happened

or something or other
some incident something or nothing at all
just talk about something real
rage has no flavor and neither does love
but bodies do and so does your blood

which until now you’ve been unwilling to share

Start on the tip of edge and of border.
Air no cushion, just a stall to the drop
from ridge to gully, valley, canyon floor.

Don’t face the fall.  Don’t look down.
You’re going in the hard way.
With luck and magic, you’ll be okay.

Start the backwards march — go toward the ahead,
while facing the left-behind.
You will trip and fall, sky-faced;

just before impact, some force
will flip you — trust us, we’ve been there.
You’ll land on your feet with the cliff before you.

Begin to walk backwards. It will be painful,
but work it till you speak cramp
like a mother tongue, offering a praise chorus

to the pain of gain.  You’ll see
new ground but you’ll know that
only after you pass it.

Red inside,
if light intrudes.
Open the body
or enter the body with
illumination; you’ll see

a blossoming of
hue, new information,
a tug upon reflexive
misery.  Memories
of movies, television,

accidents, war. 
We see ourselves
as we were not meant
to be seen
in these lit, sprung bodies.

At the moment of entry:
change.  We
change.  We long for
blindness, even as we crane
to see.

Which parts
of mine are
in these words?

Heart or gut, eyes
or ears.  How much
of my piece

is in this piece?
Ask instead
what parts of this piece

are my parts.  Ask
how I feel seeing
from blank holes

or poking at the skin
flush now from jawbone
to dome.  As for heart

and lungs, ask me
if I’m still alive.  See
if I spit blood when I speak.

She says,

I prefer not to surround myself
with negative people,
with negative energy

as she listens over earbuds to her eclectic
music archive:
Nirvana,
Beethoven,
Miles;

as she browses through the extensive
poetry collection on her Kindle:
Frost,
Sexton,
Plath;

doing this as she sits alone on the sofa
in the coffee house
under the reproduction
of

The Starry Night,

painted by Van Gogh
from a memory of the view
out the window of his sanitarium.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations

Immortals
are easy to find:
ask around a local dive
and you’ll be pointed to them
seated with a mug
and a shot of ginger brandy
at a spot on the bar
grooved to match their perpetual
elbows.

Johnny, for instance,
one hundred and sixty if
he’s a day, recalls
how they cut the tree
that made the countertop
where the cash register sits.

Count the rings in the grain, he says,
and I’ll tell you a story for each band.
But before you start,
pour me another
beer and a bump.  Stories
are good but the now-buzz
is better, that’s how
I stay alive.

Maybe if you buy this round
and join him in it,
you’ll end up here too,
telling Johnny-stories
to seekers
a century from now.  Immortality
smells like an old drunk, sharp
with sweat and herbs
and the hoppy scent of sticking around
long after people forget you’re alive.