It is not at all
in the shape
you planned for.
It is a plastic rendering
of what was meant for bronze.
Plaster over paint chinking off.
Scar story of measured failings,
but not a whole failing. Not that.
You expected whole failing and this
is not that.  More an
improvised recall of what was
intended. 

Seeking that mold
that was not used you will find
it was cracked through.  This is
better, a sentence away from
incomplete fashioning
of original thought.  It is made
up, dashed off, strokes of genius
crossed with kindergarten theory,
intersections of lost paths
in childhood weedlots retraced
by graying men looking at losses.

Remarkable stars still above it.
Unsurprised streams.
Ponds not as deep when measured
against longer shins
but just as cold, muck as sucking
as ever. Easier to take —

it is not what was planned
or expected.  It is what’s
passed into present.
It is. 

Allow for it.
Pocket your silly sorrow, it lives
and is yours
and you own the germ of
a next pass at the shape
it should be.

After a while,
nothing feels new
because it’s not.

I stop being tolerant
of people discovering
what I already know to be ageless,
forgetting how it felt
when I discovered it —

it all becomes wearying,
the blah, blah, blah
of wow, this is so
important, so cool,
so brand spanking new
and I know damn well it’s not —

but then I recall how I’ve seen
meteors before,
more than once,
even one that burned green
and showed sparks
and skipped across the whole sky;

and I’ll certainly step out tonight to see them anyway.

And I would certainly cry
to see anyone else see one
for the first time.

Joe Frazier’s left hooks
were on my mind
right after I turned eleven
and had just listened, surreptitiously,
to the Fight Of The Century
on a scratchy AM radio
a few nights before, so
although I was a righty
I threw one at Jeff Maxwell’s jaw
in the middle school gym
and (though we were just playing,
no animus between us) I laid him out
flat and crying, and I admit
it felt OK to see him there, sliding
on his ass away from me as I tried
to explain it was all in fun to Mr. Tornello
as he shook me and dragged me to
his sweat-soaked office to await
my parents;

and right jabs and Muhammad Ali
were on my mind
a few years later when Henry Gifford
got dropped, this time in anger,
on the shores of Thompson Pond
for cussing me out over losing my mind
over his breaking my switchblade, and this time
there was blood on him mouth
and I admit it felt OK
to see it shining moonlit black
on his face and I was glad
that I hadn’t had the knife in hand
at the time;

and kung-fu movies and Bruce Lee
were much on my mind a few years after that
when it felt OK to deliver
a straight-arm open palm blow to the side
of Joe Peron’s nose in a work dispute
in a warehouse, and there was blood again
and the gentle snap of his bridge breaking,
and he knelt holding his nose in his hands
that soaked and dripped in blood,
and that felt better than OK for a minute
and because we were men we just shook it off
and told no one of the fight.

They are all on my mind again,
childhood and adulthood, fighter heroes
of ring and screen, and I can’t shake off
being old and heavy, and thoughtful
about how much harder I could hit today
now that I know how it feels to hit.
How good it felt then, and how good it would feel again
if the opponents I have now could be
dispatched that easily;

but despairing of the unpunchable bills,
the bloodless banks, the rapacious
creditors, the creeping sense
of having no enemy I can beat,

I stand in the kitchen
thrashing the kitchen air —

cross, jab, hook, uppercut,
palm strike, temple strike,
slash and stab, icepick grip,
sword grip, kick a support
off a rickety chair.

I wish I could be a pacifist
in soul and action
but I am not.

And the urge to admire again
the blood I know I can draw,
to know the joy of winning simply and quickly,
is almost more than I can bear.

shaved for battle…
used to be a rallying cry.

now, it’s half-assed half-blind
redemption song.  you laugh
to see what’s covered you up
as the locks hit the floor
and you’re hoping the old you
was underneath it all along

but you look a little balder
than you’d hoped, a little less
warrior and a little more cueball,
you can see how your greater silver
makes your brown look like less.

you’re shaved for a new battle
and the breeze in your scalp
makes you cooler,
in temperature if not in style;

if you’re going to lose the war,
you might as well get to the front
in comfort.

Front yard covered in
Johnny–jump-ups, flowers
too small
for their name

which reminds me
of a crew of riff-raff soldiers
on a suicide mission
in a late 60s movie trailer:
“…they were expendable, they were
unpredictable, they got the job done
when no one else could…
THE JOHNNY JUMP UPS!”…”
and then you’d get a list
that would certainly include
Alejandro Rey and Ernest Borgnine
and maybe Lee Marvin, and some young
macho male looking for a name for himself…

and the flowers,
small as mentioned, tiny even,
variegated and pansy-violet faced,
they’re forgotten entirely
in favor of the association with
something artificial.
All of the other flowers get the treatment too:
I’m sure the Daffodils
are a pop band, the Poppy
describes their music,
I see the Grass
and at once I’m reminded
that it’s April 22
and two days past 4-20…
and Earth Day, too…
I’ll bang my head against something
if I think about this long enough.
If I were to bang my head against something
it would be a wall, not a rock.
Not even a rock wall.
Something made of sheetrock,
paneled in faux wood grain, or covered in earth tone paint…

Anyway, in that movie there would be a scene
where a young woman, not an American,
asks one of the soldiers what he calls
the flower with the pansy face in his country. 
“My ma used ta call ’em Johnny-jump-ups,” he’d say.
“She used ta say they meant spring.  She loved ’em.
She died in the spring a coupla years ago…
seems like a long time ago, now.” 

A little later the same guy,
not James Coburn,
someone younger
but like James Coburn,
would hear the Germans coming,
and light a cigar.  Then a fuse,
lit from the cigar.  Then he’d fling
the dynamite.  Big explosion!

He’d come up shooting,
all Tommy gun and cigar,
take a bullet
and fall into the flowers,
close his grimy lids as he died
with them under his head
and all around his face.

“You know,
every line on my face
is a dry riverbed of hate.

I hated myself,
others, life and death,
money, problems, solutions.

I lifted my eyes unto the Whatchamacallit
and asked for it all to be taken away
and nothing changed.  So I hated

the Great Answerer for not
answering me.  There were moments
where that hatred

took me over, and the displeasure
of the Lord washed down my cheeks
and washed me out.  Now, I live

like a hobo in the landscape
I have despised, trying to drag
a living from it that doesn’t hurt,

and I am lost, the arroyos
of my skin are dry and lead back
to the heights that have been arid

for many years, and I wish I knew
how to love, how to fill and flood them
until my whole face seemed as smooth

as the surface of a lake, still and calm
in the light of day, reflecting back
love I never allowed myself.”