it’s a cool tape
someone’s gonna put it on the Web

there’s a lot of silence
punched up with sick sounds once in a while

that’s me yelling "abort abort abort"
by now you’ll know if I heard

Ten people in a room,
drinking beer,
claiming to socialize.

Five open laptops,
seven cell phones in plain sight and frequent use,
long silences bubbling through the chatter.

How intolerable must we all be
that the means for escaping each other
must always be close at hand?

In order to survive
the changing climate,
I shall fight the natural order
and become the extinct dire wolf.
Six foot tall at the shoulder
and a stone match for anything that moves,
I’ll be regenerate tooth and claw
in a land of current rabbits.

Everyone will be taken by surprise.
People will demand proof of my existence
even as I lay waste to the countryside.
Experts will shake their heads and deny it,
victims will point at their wounds,
and while the debate rages
I’ll be licking my atavistic balls
in pleasure over it all
because I know better
than any of them do
how irrelevance itself can lead to
this kind of savage rebirth
Ignore some people long enough
and they die quietly; ignore others
and they come back as the monsters
you dimly recall  which you haven’t seen in years.

One day, after a distinguished history of rampage,
someone will shoot me
and won’t they all be amazed at my carcass:
the stiff fur,
the mange,
the blood on my jaws.
They’ll mount me somewhere public,
I’ll grow dusty again,
and schoolkids will point at me on field trips.

I’ll have a plaque at my feet
explaining the whole damn story…

and a neat little button
that when pressed
will let them hear my howl.

Silence at last.  I’m tired of speaking
and weary of responding.

People don’t understand that
in their voices I can perpetually hear

the deliberate roar of the pistol
through my own jaw;

or rather I could
until a few minutes ago, when

I got home and ran to the bedroom
to take the bullets out of my gun

and stuff them
into my ears.

I can put off my end
as long as I live in the quiet.

Every voice I heard tonight told me I was doomed.
Every deaf moment since I got home has kept that doom at bay.

No one knows I can hear the Scythe when they speak
unless I come out and confess it,

and then they want to tell me I’m lying about it
or that I have missed the joy of living.  No one understands

that I have known that joy,
and it’s that joy that makes me think of triggers and torn bones.

It’s knowing that I knew that all too well once
and that it seems more distant

every time a happy person breathes
or laughs in light of something

perfectly silly
or delightfully small.

I don’t hate them for their joy,
and begrudge them nothing.

It’s just safer for me here in the leaden comfort
of not hearing so many reminders of how distant pleasure is now.

I drill the bullets deeper into my head.
I do it without irony.  I know myself well enough

to know that if ever I decide to use them as they were designed,
it would be the hatred of their noise I’d have to overcome,

and not
of the silence to follow.

A Telecaster’s
what I need

a no-frills slab of easy
made to be played hard

Something venerable
that can sting and scream

Something born to run a straight line
from chicken-picking country

right up a stairway to heaven
(even though I don’t believe in such a thing)

I need a maple telephone
because I’ve got to call London back

I need to write a syrupy note
to all I’ve ever loved

and although my big blond dreadnought girl
is always at my side

I can’t write everything I want to say
with the same pen all the time

So give me the ancient quill
and let me do my thing

my Isley thing
my countless bar-band idol thing

let me lay my head back
in Leo’s arms

let me chop at the rhythm
and let that baby scream

sting
and sing

When a larva pupates
it has a past and a future
and is in neither and in both at once. 

We can’t know
what it knows of itself
as it hangs poised between appetite
and flight.

Those who knew it as caterpillar
and would embrace it
because they loved as it once was
are confused when
love
is unnecessary to it at that moment,
is likely even unknown to it.

All this is by way of saying
that I am sorry i haven’t written to you
in so long. 

I am
pupa:

I appear arrogant, perhaps,
suspended like this, but know that I am
aware of you
as something more
than just a reminder
of voracious days. 

If I do not find a way back to you
when I emerge,

it will not be without
regret that I have had to abandon
that world. 

My instinct tells me
my country doesn’t need bifocals.
America needs the long view only.
America knows reading rots the mind.
America loves kittens on chin-up bars
because the letters are big and spelling doesn’t matter.

My instinct speaks in a voice that sounds like
my mother’s wrinkled brow
over my crib. (How I love you, Mom, your
gray eyes like the storms of myth,
and how I love my father,
steering us toward the perfectly
integrated calm of promise.)
My instinct tells me
I am right to see America
as a present from nostalgia.

Love America, says my instinct.
Love the wordless ways by which all Americans assemble meaning,
America is a Rose Bowl
of equally loving machineries
opposed on principle
and battling it out
despite loose bolts and general disrepair.
It keeps going anyway
propelled by ruptured stream pipes
that burn off skin
while leaving the muscles intact.

My instinct speaks to me, saying
the muscles! The muscles are what matters!
That and the bones are all we need! Forget the skins
and all we’ve said about them! We’re cured!
We’re aglow with blisters and blisters hold
pure fresh water! America is a vast reservoir
and we swim in it every minute!

My instinct says cruelty is a television turned off
and a radio that plays requests while planting trees.
My instinct says a warmer planet leads to more housing starts
year round! It says the pocket of my jeans
will brim with honey without my asking for such sweet treasure.
How can I refuse such a pleasing God?

Instinct, I love you! Let us listen to each other always,
only forgoing our real dialogue on national holidays.
You want me to race ahead of it all and I shall!
Experiment in progress, Instinct!
We are the new imagination of the new century! I am as blind
as instinct is deaf to the rejects who tell us we are aiming
for a cliff above Babylon! I grow my hair out into locks
of clean red shimmer, bloody ground forgotten in favor of Valhalla,
streaming out behind me as I fly the course!
Flip me over, I’m done!
Show me the river!
Show me an America I believe I already inhabit!
Show me I am right to trust my gut
that laps over my belt
with the fat of a stolen birthright,
one I would never sell without your OK!
Is this it? Is this the OK?
If it is, say it! Instinct,
tell me what to charge!
I await your instructions
with all my intubated breath!

he was a secretly weepy man
whose life was overall easier than he let on
and at the same time fraught enough
with occasional tension that he allowed it to color
the good times, which were long enough
to make him feel guilty for being in pain.

he lived a long time in one place
and then again in another.  nothing felt like
home at all except once in a while
and he pushed that down right away
because he felt guilty about always feeling alone.
rootless old dog that he was
he kept secrets.  they were like home to him.

he used to say that the typical cynic
is just a clumsy romantic.
he knew the former worked better for him
because the latter needs more tending
and he let things spoil
through inattention all the time.

he worked too hard on easy things.
he never wore his heart on his sleeve
because it was too jumpy to be pinned down.
he slept too little.  he talked too much.
he walked away when it suited him
and he would have called you a sentimental fool
for bothering to call after him.

"When I was sixteen
I was hornier ‘n six minks in a mail sack.
At twenty-one I learned how to let ’em out one at a time
and make it last all night long.
‘Slammin’ Johnny,’ the women called me
and I bet you can guess why.
At thirty they started to die off.
At forty, I slept alone more often than not
with the bag just stirring now and then.
Now I’m old as the dirty dozen
and I wouldn’t know a mink if one bit me,
but a body next to mine keeps me warm
so I make the effort once in a while.
There are times when it’s enough
to know that if I wake up next morning,
it won’t be alone.  And if I don’t wake up,
maybe it’ll mean something to whoever’s
lying there.  Maybe they’ll remember me
for a week or two after they get over the shock.

"You know, ‘The Dirty Dozen’ was a great movie.  All those ugly guys
making people watch them.  I was ugly as any of them
but I wasn’t famous. I had to make do
with that bag of minks and a reputation
for taming them.  I can’t say I was ever in love
with that.  I always liked the idea of that movie more
than any other — ugly guys banging away
and getting it done when no one else could.
Maybe I should have watched more movies.
Maybe I missed something.

"Ah, you could spend all night listening to me say, ‘maybe.’
Maybe that’s what you want.  I dunno.
I can’t tell you shit about women.  I useta think
I could, but I can’t.  I useta think it was love
when it was just me jumping off and on till I was done,
and done felt good enough to make me think it was love,
but it never lasted.  But I ain’t complainin’. I’ve had it good.
Maybe that’s why I’m here tonight, and not cold in some grave
already.  Maybe that doesn’t cut it for everyone,
but it’s how it was, and how it is.  Now,
you wanna buy me a beer
and stop asking me so many questions?
I gotta bed upstairs that’s calling my name."

I have seen more sunrises
while falling asleep than I ever wanted,
closing my eyes to blood seeping back
into gray skin and charcoal sky.

I’ve held my own hand
just to know it still could grasp
another.

I lived so long
on a patch of cloth
on a worn couch
or in a cracking leather chair
that I forgot what eye level
was like.  I looked up at anyone
talking to me because down
is where I did my best work,
my only work.

I couldn’t say a good word
about myself
without imagining
how it would sound in
another person’s mouth,
and I couldn’t get it right.
My spit tasted
of dust bowls
and cedar splinters
driven into skulls
by tornadoes, and I couldn’t help
swallowing.

On the nights when
I did see the sunrise,
I never warmed up.
I welcomed
snow and rain in the morning, better still
if it rained into snow
and everything became deep slush.
That was the only time
I felt like I fit, when everyone was
as cold and sodden as I was,
when the steel shade of the outside world
looked like home.

I look at all that now
in the mornings when I rise
to the sun falling lukewarm
upon the ice outside,
and I can see
how water is still running down the street,
but now,
it’s from the melting.