I’m not interested in
the heartbreak
or despair of anyone
and I don’t care for happiness
or ecstasy either
because they are always the same:
the blues are the blues
and they pass, the joy of living
passes as well. We are made to bounce
from one extreme to the other
and we are certain to think
we are the first to discover
the territory,
wherever we land.  Talk to me instead
of sitting
on your porch
waiting for the mail
because you’ve got the chores done
and the day is warmer
than it should be this time of year;
tell me how the neighbors are moving out
and you never knew their names;
tell me you’re not exactly happy
or unhappy, that you’re mostly just waiting
for the mail, for new neighbors,
for the day to day to finally feel comfortable
and for your own words to match at last
the truth of living: that there’s nothing much
going on in your life
that no one else has never heard of. 
That everything
passes into the next thing
without much fanfare.
That the new neighbors
will be pretty much like the old ones,
and you’ll probably never learn
their names, either.
This is truth
I have known for years.
It’s something
I never think about
until someone else
mentions it.  I need to think of it
more often.

Ten years from now,
you’ll look the same,
You’ll look in the mirror
and say, "hey, I know you."

You’ll point at yourself and
you’ll point right back.
You’ll be pleased with that
and you’ll sail out of the house

convinced
of your uncommon nature.
"Haven’t I proven my fame
by being able to recognize myself, again and again?" you’ll say.

"All that self-destructive
feeding and drinking, all that
lax attention to the body  —
good to know I am still myself."

In the second you die,
another ten years on, you’ll think of that
when the pang hits your heart, when your ass
refuses to lift from the couch no matter how hard

you will it to rise.  You’ll recall
that there are stories of vampires
who look ruddy and fresh
for years after apparent death.

"Who was that liar
who looked back at me that day in the mirror
ten years ago?" you’ll ask yourself with a Gothic blink
right before you forget you ever existed.  "Was that

some already undead notion, some spectre
that represented an unwitting corpse?" 
You will die regretting
that you will not be buried with a mirror

on your chest
so you can accuse yourself endlessly
in the endless dark.  You will die forgetting
that mirrors do not show vampires as they are;

at most, there is a mist in the glass.  A mirage
of immortality looking back
at a dilapidated house which, if it notices you at all,
only does so to mock you.

tony is thinking that green is the new black
tony is imagining a stem in his forehead
tony is sprouting starfruit

tony is dancing with an architect to the music of ionic columns

tony is capitalizing the second letter of a full sentence
tony is confusing the cat on the bed by standing on his hands
tony is fattening himself for snakes

tony is daddy to a bush baby’s mama
tony is sleek in the rain
tony is privately closing a library door
tony is cracking under pleasure

tony is singing "oh atlanta" to a snow globe

tony is your best friend

tony is your dangling participle
tony is a black male of indistinguishable height wielding a gun
tony is a blonde hottie with a mole on her right temple

tony is pastor of the right temple
tony is a right living cowboy
tony is the right wing of a left flying duck

tony is stringing together unrelated words
tony is throwing dice under a shower of scorn

tony is a social network anchor
tony is a reclusive ringleader
tony is a refusenik twenty years late for martyrdom

tony is naked
and running as fast as he can
toward you
in case you are blind to his own nude need
and hoping you’ll accept him anyway

tony is trying to think of what he could say
to redeem himself right now

Yes,
I know,

the first official Thanksgiving Day
was ordered to celebrate
the massacre of
700 Pequots
in 1637;

yes,
I feel

accountable to the dead
for eating too much every November,
thus joining the rush to hide behind
the legend of the feast 16 years earlier
in Plymouth
that is used these days
to screen us from
an ocean of blood;

yes,
i must balance

gratitude and shame
when I sit with family and friends
and look at a bounty
built on theft and genocide;

if I say no
to every contradiction
I face every day,

I will sit alone in a hermit’s cave
barely breathing for fear of hurting another,
spend the rest of my life in mourning
for every cruel act done in my name
and never try to see the glad faces
of those I love
as anything more than a lie.

So yes,
yes

to making a temple anew
from sharing bread with others; and
yes, yes to holding tight to the memory
of death in the fields around villages
burning like candles on the shore
of Long Island Sound;

yes
to believing

that while the past is alive
in every bite of every dish,
all I have is the present
and the hope that the future will be born
in a revolution rising
from injustice I do not forget;

in the remaking of myths
through truth applied as lesson,
and not as bludgeon.

It’s 7 AM
and there’s frost on all the windshields,
thick enough to scrape for the first time all season.
Trash is all outside, the cat’s all balled up in his window,
all’s right with the immediate world —

so I shall consider having a shot of Jack Daniels
just because I want to sleep some more
and I’m too awake to do so,
just because I can…

People will think it alarming, and crazy.
It will cause concern among my closest friends.
Others will think I am more artistic for doing so
and others will think I am alcoholic simply for considering it
and I’m sure someone will suggest I try some tea I’ve never heard of
or some rare yogurt or perhaps some exercise or yoga
or quote me something about the drunkard’s soul
that they read in a fake shaman’s latest book
or maybe someone will say, "Right on!"
in a fake 60s libertine voice they don’t understand well enough to use
and someone will refrain from commenting but secretly agree with me
while reaching for the tumbler she didn’t empty before falling asleep
and another friend will send me a message asking, "Are you OK?"

I’m fine. I’m good.
In fact this morning
I can welcome the entire world
to my arms,

which is why I’m publicly considering
having a shot of Jack Daniels
on a Wednesday morning at 7 AM…
really, there’s no reason not to have one
beyond the reasons I choose to entertain —
no one’s waiting for me to be strong and corporate today,

and the thought of that
is enough to make me sleepy,
and laugh at myself,
and pet the cat,
and then head back to bed
to sleep like a drunk, like a baby,
only getting up when I’m damn good and ready,

in pure spite of all the judgment
in the freezing air.

In tenth-century Arab Andalusia
under Abd-ar-Rahman the Third,
poetry took the place
of newspapers and poets
sang of everything
from the faces of God
to the price of mutton.
While the rest of Europe lay dark and stony
in thrall to iron Church singularity,
Cordoba rang with Jewish and Christian songs
as the muezzins roused others to prayer
with Arabic.  Spain as we know it today
was being born,
someone was listening to all of this
while looking at an oud
and thinking about inventing the guitar,
everywhere the gardens were light
and filled with splashing water,
palaces were cool
and open,
the streets were tingling with ideas…

and now,
it’s all we can do
to look at one another.

a guitar
socking into tune
each string matching its fretted neighbor’s tone when sounded together
the bell-throbbing of a not-quite-there pitch
disappearing into one clear note
shared between two

thrills me
like archery’s
pull and release
that sends an arrow
true

1.

You are my highway —
lines in the night, my destination
ahead, my home, safety, warmth.

2.

You are the highway —
the road that goes one, splits,
shifts from blacktop to gravel
and back again…

3.

You are highway.  There —
path on sand, skein on rock:
binding a promised land. 

4.

Highway: made by hand
and filthy machines.  Black in rain,
slick as danger, the only way to go
these days…drive: we’ve got
miles left to cover, and we can talk anytime.