marvelous here, say the civic leaders,
wonderful that we’ve got

coney island hotdogs,
the kenmore,
the boulevard,

the numbers,
the cardinal,
the hotel vernon;

ralph’s diner,
ralph’s tavern,
ralph’s plumbing.

gotta love that blue collar charm.

it’s almost scriptural for some that
having a lot of guys
named ralph in your town
can make a place unique —

until you get on the road
and find the next
flock of ralphs
because there’s always
a next flock of ralphs
even if they pretend
to different names.

i once ate a pizza
in a bar in suburban chicago
and damned if the guy who made it
wasn’t a ralph
with the same lithe fingers
and dumb drunk charm as the ralph
i dropped off at his apartment
just before i left worcester.

if ten blind men named ralph
put their hands
on the walls of any city,
they’d complain about
the same ten different things.

nothing in worcester
is different enough
to make me want to stay,
anywhere else
is the city i want to live in,
i am afraid i’ll get lost
and come back around
no matter how far away i go,

so this is just to say
i’m changing my name to ralph
because if i’m going to stay
or even if i end up leaving,
i want to make an effort to fit in.

first i’ll breed my gripes
in the marrow of my thighs
and try to keep my eyes open.

then, with a name like any other,
no matter where i am
it’ll feel like home
when i set my hands flat against the walls
and begin to speak disdainfully

of ralph the pothead
at the door of the blues club
that ought to be called ralph’s
but for some reason isn’t,

of ralph the worst cop in town
who for some reason here is named
maritza,

never mentioning ralph the whiny sumbitch
straining against
the bricks, closing his eyes
again, translating for himself

the nickoby tavern, the blackthorn
social club, el coqui, lafayette’s feather,
yet another coney island, yet another george’s,

yet another band of ralphs
simmering in the evening, staring
at the road out of town.

This is an instrument
I’ve never fully understood —
at first sight it was
everything I dislike in a guitar —
but it works, somehow,
most of the time.
Big body, blonde maple
ribs, blonde spruce top
and decoration from the butt
all the way up the neck
to the head. Brand new, too —
no vintage splendid ruin
with the nicks and scratches
to tell all its previous owners’ stories
and prove its worth.

Till now I have always counted
on age’s cachet to make me love
a guitar: checking the patterns
of wear and tear to try and puzzle up
the best way to play it, play it
as it always has been played,
make it tell me what it knows.
I’ve loved best of all
a grown up guitar.

But now I play this infant
and more and more
no instrument has ever been
more dead on right for me: the thump
of the woody bass, the ring
of hard treble
and brightness, brightness
on every stroke and strum.
It tells me everything
I’ve always needed to know.

Sure, there are nights
when it hurts
to play it
for hours at a time,
wrapping myself around
its wide pale waist,
both arms gone to needles
and pins as the fingers
squeeze frets and
stumble across strings,
pulling out
flat old songs and odd
noodlings of new tunes
that sound suspiciously
like old songs anyway.
On those nights it hurts
to hear the maple first resist me,
then reluctantly give
just half of itself up
because it knows
there’s no one warmer
and better loved around.

More often these days,
it’s more than a tease.
It’s becoming comfortable enough
to play with me through
the wrecking of my hands,
play through our mutual
bulk and inexperience
to get the sound we seek.
This is starting to be joy.

And then there is the peace that comes
from knowing that someday
someone will see my own marks on this one,
my signatures all skull-weary
and blue tears, and it seems
all I need to do
is grit my teeth and keep learning
how to make them mean more
than first impressions might lead one
to believe.

1.
Star: a sharp response
to this blunt question: “what if
I never get there?”

2.
Shroud: reservoir, urn;
grey coat of many collars.
Put it on. Forget.

3.
Death: a shrouded star
wished upon hard enough to
shine, briefly, for you.

— written 7/1/07 at the Java Hut; inspired by another’s work

The hemp t-shirt
next to you
at the rally
bears a fair trade
coffee stain.
The hemp t-shirt next to you
on the other side
has a Mayan glyph on the back:
a seated god laughing
balanced on a single point
while a bulky base supports him.
You have just finished an iced mocha
and tossed the cup away, mindful of
stain danger. You burned
your own hemp shirt with a stray ember of hydro
not too long ago and don’t want
to look more like a hippie than you already do,
with your carefully cultivated three-day beard
moisturized by pure vegetable oils grown
somewhere on a plantation in Guatemala
tended by someone
descended from someone
who designed a pyramid
a thousand years ago.

Your’e here today because
where you live there’s a pyramid too
and at the top of the pyramid
there’s rage because
people are crossing
a government line, and everyone’s forgetting
that the crossing’s not an exception,
the line is the exception,
the line is something new
that Maya and Aztec and lots of others
have nevertheless crossed and recrossed
that land for years
looking for a way to stay alive.
Today they’re cleaning cars, raising garages
and clean organic vegetables, local food
for global shoppers
who own reckless amounts of things.

You know all this,
and while you can admit that you are one
of the reckless ones
at least you can say today you are thinking
of your footprint, your
sweatshop free footprint.
You looked for a recycling bin for that cup you tossed,
after all, and even though there wasn’t one
you figure you get to stand
righteous on the sandy earth today
denouncing the pyramid
on behalf of the children of
Maya and Aztecs.

And so you do it, you raise the banner high
for the Cause,
and once you get home
you coast
among the CNN and BBC and Google News sites,
burning the midnight Venezuelan oil
looking for one proof shot of yourself
holding that banner that proclaims
the downfall of all pyramids
even as you stood on top of one
because you convinced yourself
that’s where the banner
would be most easily seen.

Yes, that’s you. And you look
good.

The Maya
once tore the hearts from captives
and bathed their pyramids in red
even as they clocked the heavens,
carved down the jungles,
developed perfect time,
and scryed the end of their world
from far above their sticky
plazas. Once they knew what was coming
they left what they built behind
and the green came back
with life full and lush
from long years of blood
and swiftly rolled over the proud stone.
Do you suppose that
years later the Aztecs,
on the eve of the Conquest,
knowing the world was changing
but not expecting the end,
do you think they pitied the Maya,
thought of them as children
while sipping bitter chocolate,
standing about smugly and preening
in the steep angled light of their evening?

In a corner booth at a party
a guy who’s a friend of a friend
tells me:

“One night some years ago
I made calls
to two different crisis hotlines.

The first call,
I shit you not I was on hold
for ten minutes.

The second call, I asked the counselor
for a place I could go
for emergency meds. He told me the story

of how Michael Jordan and the Bulls
had to be beaten by the Pistons
before finding the drive they needed

to become champions,
and what I needed was to see
that this was my time to find

my inner drive.
I thanked him when I hung up on him
because

there was no way
I was going to end my life
with either a bad punchline

or a sports metaphor
as the last thing I ever heard,
and I’ve made it my business since

never to stick around
longer than is polite
when the phone plays me sad music

or someone who claims they care
proves they’ve got nothing
but game to share.”