The principal product of my hometown
is people who want to be elsewhere.
The principal product of where I live now
is chips to be worn on shoulders.

I took a job as a packaging designer
for these products of town and city.
I’d wrap them up in shroud cloth
and wait for ideas.

I’d gather my bitter friends
and we’d brainstorm.  We’d use
the same buzzwords you always hear —
let’s throw stuff on the wall to see what sticks,

or let’s run this up the flagpole and see who salutes.
We’d bore ourselves silly.  We’d smoke cigarettes outside
in rainstorms and then come in to sit glumly
over our half-finished cups of coffee.

We were really stuck for concepts.  How can we sell
ennui and hostility, we’d ask?  Everyone’s already got all
they need of both.  And we’d try again and again, to no avail.
Soon we lost the account.  We retired to a bar

and tried to figure out what went wrong. 
We certainly knew the market.
We certainly knew the product.   Maybe
a change of scene would help?

Jesus,
it is said,
will kill thousands
in the last battle
with a sword that issues
from his mouth.
This is why I’m not
a Christian anymore:
I’ve heard this sort of thing
my whole life
from the dry-honed lips
of my peers and this Jesus
sound too much like a poet
to be trusted. 
If there’s an Armageddon
some day
I suspect words will be
secondary
at the least,
superfluous
at the most, and God
will find a way to do the work
without intercession
from one of these
metaphor-slinging
cats with a vision of
how dangerous
his words are. 

Hey —
are you
vessel
or conduit?
Do you contain
or channel?

Are you
content or process?
Are you intention
or execution?

Don’t even try to push me —
don’t care if you’re black or white —

are you, instead,
colonizer or colonized?
Oppression or resistance?

If you answer,
I could be any
and am all,

we can speak further;

but if you choose,
you choose
alone.

feather
head, floating

a little this way,
a little that;

one current lifts,
another drives down;

no matter how I prop it up
with breath it will drop

at some point to the floor
where it will stir a little

now and then
but mostly will lie still

having found its lowest level.
at last, I don’t care.

the drift was movement
and what I needed to do.

that feather, my head
on the floor full of dust,

that’s my truth and my real face.
hollow, almost weightless,

a discard.  you can’t look at it
and tell where it’s been.  you know

it was made for flight and it’s not
flying now.  that’s all you and I know.

don’t say
you cannot believe
you’re in love again.

say instead you are pleased
that the cup on the shelf
is battered metal
but still holds water,
or wine, or paper clips,
that it remains fillable.

don’t say you’re afraid,

say instead that the cat
is unaccustomed to sleeping
on the back of the couch
and is striving to seem at ease
but looks like he knows he may fall.

don’t say
you are sure of failure.

say instead that when the nut falls
from its branch,
two scars always remain: one on the tree,
one on the nut.  say instead
that breakage precedes growth.

the world offers you
agreement upon agreement.
take what help is offered,
no matter whence it comes.

While daydreaming
another installment
in the series
titled, “What I Do Not Care About,”
I went completely blank.

I woke myself up
and left the house
to sit in soft mud
among early leaves.
My ass got filthy

and I shivered a lot
for the fifteen minutes
I could stand it.  Then
I stood up and realized
the kids across the street

were laughing at me.
I waved back, went inside,
showered, made coffee,
toast, sat down to resume
the daydream with no shortage

of material to work with.

confirmed
that someone
had indeed been listening to me,
at least once
by chance more than anything;

lovely, indeed,
to imagine that for a moment,

to think of the earth
outside the front door
cradling a seed
I dropped without thinking
on my hurried way
to another place
where no one would listen
for more than a moment.

Yes, I’m grateful to you and
yes, I’m glad it is spring
at last, and that there may be
a chance, a small chance,
of seeing green soon.