The bones
were rolled for you at birth.
They chose your great adversary:
maggots, melancholy, militia…?

You decide
what’s next:
double down 
or bow and fold. 

How you come
to your war
once you’ve chosen
your battlefield

is the battle.
Is history’s gamble, not yours.
Listen: the house
is snickering.

cleaning out
an old apartment
(new to you)

unremarkable contents
of the cheap and shallow
medicine cabinet
include a straight razor
with one massive nick
in its rust-flecked blade

bottle of iodine
wood-shafted cotton swab
on the glass shelves lined
with folded paper towels

as stated
unremarkable
except
for a kid’s ring 
plastic shank
set with plastic gem
centered by itself
on one shelf

imagine that kid
now an adult wondering
where her ring had gone
although it’s more likely that 
she doesn’t remember
at all
her onetime treasure
left behind
for you to find
in an old apartment
(new to you)

you will
soon enough
toss those abandoned artifacts
into the trash
as you prepare  
the place where you
are going to live
to be your own

a new place
to leave your stuff
when you go

I think I could be
happily a worm

if I was not so terrified
of ending up drowned
on a concrete walk
after a storm

Forced to leave
dark soil
surrounded by roots
where I’d been
most grounded
or worse
desiccated upon
a blacktopped driveway

where even
the slightest sunlight
could take from me
my pink life
and leave behind
my dark leather corpse

Even the robins
will not take that

Will leave me instead
to disappear bit by bit
into a trail of ants
bearing me
down the hatch
into their small volcano
of a home
in the sand
along the fence

I could be happily a worm
if I knew I’d be 
remaining
forever or for at least a few seasons
away from all
grounded and blind
underground

A new tattoo on my mind.
Simple banner: “I Am A Bad Person.”

Placement yet to be decided. 
Naked body in the mirror:

across my chest, above my heart?
Others could easily see, and I would too.

Would the message sink in from there?
I look myself over again.

Down my dominant forearm
where it would remind all 

of my strength and weakness at once?
Ah, but then I could pull my sleeve down

and no one would know. So,
forehead instead? Maybe doubled

in reverse so that my mirror 
would tell me the tale, too? 

Do I want that level of 
awareness? Instead of that

perhaps two banners,
one on the bottom of each foot. 

I’d walk that message everywhere.
It would not be obvious to others

but I’d always know
what was haunting my steps.

Maybe I’ll just keep it quiet and run the banner
right across my lower gut, right above my privates.

Only those close enough to already know
would ever see. By that point

it might mean nothing to them
and might only bring a quick pang for me. 

The struggle to bypass the pain
of pressing strings to fretboard
is too much to bear now so maybe
it’s time to stop the music
long enough to allow
for an amputation of my
left hand if only to see
if the ghostly nerves 
of the missing piece
can play without pain

I’ve been told this
makes no sense but sense
has never guided me
all that well in pursuit
of my absolutes

and if anything is
an absolute 
then the need to play
is as absolute as 
the need to write
and speak and 

there are other needs
and surgeries to consider
but first things first
First the music then
the dance

Wondering

if I start at the base of the neck
to cut myself free of all ailments
will I become whole and if not
what parts will remain alive
and for how long
 
What will my music become
What will my dance become

Who shall take up my guitar 

The place where I begin my work
rises from blue in sound and hue. 

I ease its lock open each morning
and go into blue shade and blue whisper.

Sometimes I cannot leave until
the stubborn lock releases me. 

Those days I cannot leave until
I agree to leave a portion of me there.

The place I go to keep working
might be brighter, might be — not.

But it will be blue, too. 
A progression forward, a run upon a fretboard,

a waiting for the light to change. It may blaze
or sputter, but it will be blue. 

The place I go to rest is dark enough
to let me sleep. It’s deepest blue

in pang and and riff, deep enough
to shake me through and soon

I am up and pulling
on work clothes, looking for

the key to the place
where I begin my work, the room

of blue, of sound and hue, of pang and riff,
of everything I thought I left here yesterday

and the day before and the day before that:
things whispering from concealment in the shade.

The dishes from
last night’s dinner
fill the sink and
whisper, “lazy…”

Blankets left
unfolded in a basket,
waiting to be put back
on the couch to protect

the upholstery from 
cat hair and spills and warm you
as needed; there’s a cat already
sleeping on them, of course.

Just this once, maybe,
leave everything as is? Sure.
That’s you. Unfinished business.
You are that. Guilty as charged.

You are the One
grounded in worry and incompletion.
Every letter of your writing is unfinished. 
Your hands quit on you

long before your guitar did.
Your bridges smolder but look
safe enough to recross. Of course
there’s a government to topple

and a culture to unlearn
but with furniture to protect
and dishes to do where will the time
come from? Not from anywhere,

it appears. Chop wood and carry water,
then drop the armload on the way
into the hearth and home and
spill the water where it will leave

the biggest stain. You have
formed around looking at
leftover chores and saying 
it’s enough to have started,

but you know better even as you
lie back and close your eyes to it all. 
You know sleeping will heal nothing.
It’s been forever since you made it through the night.