a man
became a critter

creeping
over land

not seeing connection
to humans

he sat on rocks
turned em over for moral guidance

he’s a cemetery
of thinking —

left over
animal

reptile brained
chunk of reaction

fight and bite
sleep where it’s friendly

stay out of the cold
of other opinions

screw a little
when called to it

a story so common
you might be forgiven

for pretending it’s
just another legend

until you cross paths with him
while trying to fall in love

“Death,”
said the grub,
“is always deserved
because it is the only thing
other than birth
that each living thing
is always owed
strictly by virtue
of having been born –”

but because I did not speak grub
in those days,
I took far too much satisfaction
from cutting the thing in half
with a trowel as I dug
the new bed
for the flowering onions. 

Had I known
of The Serene Acceptance,
I would have refrained from the act,
for it would not have been fun
if I had known there no resistance
there.

How do I know this, you ask?

Because it is a good day to die,
I think, this understanding
came to me unbidden,
if you can believe that,
or even hear it.

he’s gunning
for anything that reminds him
of where he came from. 
let one word escape your lips
that feels familiar and he’ll
begin. the first stone is his altar
and the sound
of your own windows breaking
is his favorite hymn. 
your angry response
will be his excuse to feel
superior as he shows off something
he picked up along his way here,
twirling it in his hand.  he’s
threatening you, then himself,
depending on which way the barrel’s
facing at any given moment.  who will fall
when the trigger’s pulled is anyone’s guess,
but assume the worst happens —

who do you see on the ground?

— after Gunter Grass

There is a city,
and there is a man in the city
who is alone.
One hundred eighty thousand people
are said to live there
but he is alone,
so for his purposes we can say
there is no city.

There is a man
who is alone in the space
called a city by others, and he
is happy there, so we may say
he is alone and happy
and for his purposes we must say
that the space is solitude,
not loneliness, and he is in it.

There is a city, and a man,
and if he sees another he thinks
the man is a part of his solitude,
so the city becomes a memory,
and for his purposes
and ours we must remember a time
when a city existed, and that time is not now
as there is solitude in its former place.

If the city exists now somewhere else,
there is likely a man in that city
for whom there is no city, and for whom
only solitude exists, and happiness
at the sight of another whom he sees as
an extension of his solitude.
Who truly lives in a city?
Do cities truly exist,

or are we who imagine that we live in cities
alone in misery and cheer alike, moving among
memories while choosing tomatoes
and beer, paying rent to imaginary landlords,
speaking to ourselves as if we could
hear and understand the answers we give ourselves?
Here is a city, here is a man who lives here;
the man is alone, the city his comfortable nest of fiction.