Admit that we are stopped cold
Say that and acknowledge the pain of cessation

Turn away from one another and into ourselves
Resist the longing to touch and hold

Fall to your knees and demand something from above
Speak as if nothing was needed except a bluff to survive

Run with the smallest beings in pursuit
Act bewildered with the first cough, fever, moment of fear

Ask and ask for certainty from fog
Dismiss fog as a hoax from behind a bitter mask

Hold a gun and imagine it will be enough just to hold it
Put it down to take a shovel and lay an elder to rest

Roll dice any number of times and boast of your glad numbers
Pretend snake eyes are not as powerful as boxcars these days

Remember scenarios with strangers, historical figures, family
Demand of your mirror that it say something unexpected

Stand at the window crying for the ten thousandth time 
Turn from the window and square your shoulders again

Forget and remember and forget and become aged
Spring up new but then again still be your old failed self

Hold your breath
Hold on to your breath for as long as it takes

Loosen your tongue
Loosen your tongue until this hard moment breaks

Getting to tomorrow
from where we are now
is like preparing to take
an overseas trip on
a small old ship 
in hurricane season;

we don’t know
a thing about sailing,
it’s been so long since we
had to leave our country
to seek safety
we can’t imagine
it’s more than
an afternoon away,
and we certainly
aren’t dressed
for the journey,
but we’re going anyway

since staying here
in yesterday 
is terrifying 
and impossible

and the only shot at joy
we may left
is, possibly,
over there on 
the storm-crushed
far shore.

It’s not from a fear
of death; I’ve been in love
with the line between 
for decades now and 
to finally step over would be 
a relaxation more than
a terror. 

It’s not from
a fear of the dark itself
as I know there’s light
beyond it, even if I never
see it again myself. 

It’s not from something
bodied within, no clock
or silent alarm
that burns through me
till I sit upright in the night. 

I can’t name what awakens me
in the dark almost every night,
but it feels new and ancient at once;

the scent of a tomb
that has just been opened;

that old stench
on a new wind.

Can’t explain
what we long for
beyond the shrug that says, 
“Everything not here.” 

The presence of 
having company and of how
we used to long for them
to go home.

The joy of going out to eat
and saying afterward,
“next time, let’s just
stay home.”

Frenzied sex followed by
falling asleep, waking up
late for work, deciding to be
naughty and stay right there
in bed all day at home.

Home sick, home
with a sick child, home
exhausted after a road trip,
boring Sunday afternoon
at home. 

Can’t describe it completely —
for some it was hell,
for some it was peace, 
for some it was just a place
to sleep, to eat, to fuck or yearn to fuck;
a laundry room, a tub and shower,
a toilet bowl wobbling on a bad floor;
landlord making false promises,
off-street parking, garage, good yard,
curb appeal, transient housing
on the path to a dream palace.

What we long for:
pastel light in bay window home;
view of the ocean mountain desert home;
proximity to the hot new neighborhood home;
childhood rhyme home — 
home again home again jiggetty-jig.

Home is where you end up,
that place to stay that feels like home
after you are done being elsewhere;
anywhere but here because
call here whatever you like but

we’re done with here.

He’s standing in the dead middle
of the meat section at Price Chopper
screaming “HOW CAN THERE NOT BE
ANY FUCKING STEAK?” 

Someone comes out bearing chicken
from behind the steel clad gates
of the backroom where they cut meat
and stage the cases.

“Hey, you got any steak back there?”
“Steak? No sir. None.”
“How is that fucking even possible?”
“Sorry, sir.”

Both men talking and everyone watching
has a mask on, at least; everybody’s standing
two carts apart. Looks like the last scene
of a spaghetti western right before the last shootout.

The man with no steak turns his back on
the man with no name in a black mask
to start putting out the chicken. Spell’s broken —
it would never happen that way in a movie,

after all; no one would turn their backs
on anyone else, then all would pull
their stoic triggers, just business really, and 
someone would fall. That’s the way

it goes. No one would get any steak, of course,
but the steak is beside the point
in those films. What matters there is
the satisfaction of killing, of existential affirmation

through virtual elimination. It’s all
just a reason for the squint, for the stone
shine of focused gaze. For art, not for life  —
for now at least; but maybe tomorrow…

“How is that even fucking 
possible?”  “Sorry, sir.
There’s nothing. No sir, none.”
“I don’t believe you.

Liar.
Fake news.”
Then, gun.
Then, done. 

We were all bone-tired
before this
exaltation of humility
came upon us.

We may have looked
more madcap, more animated
from a distance, but
if you’d looked into 
our eyes, you would have seen
years of restless sleep

and no true relaxation,
regardless of what 
yoga magazines told us
we’d gained.

Scoff as you want.
Had we been truly mindful,
we would have forsaken
our lifestyles of abandon
decades ago.

Now, we have 
deep dreams 
in our sleep and they
drive us mad. Now,
we sit at home all day
chafing behind the ears
and in the center of our chests.
Now, we try to see a way forward
back to that manic past

when half of us 
walked around pretending
we weren’t waiting
for a crash into hell

and the other half
walked around pretending
this was just the ramp up
to some temple of gold where,
at last, we’d truly
get a chance to rest.

Meanwhile,
nature
(or something like it)
made other plans.

Once upon a time,
before this real exhaustion
set in, we were all bone-tired
but we invented a phrase
to cover it up: “and they lived happily
ever after.” Something
to which we aspired. Something
that kept these dreams at bay.

A phrase where every word
now needs to be redefined.

Get some rest.
This is where
our Great Work begins.

but not in the way 
some folks mean it
with all color slipping off of others
and all sexuality of others draining away
All accents homogenized
All devolving into shapeless 
and nameless love targets to shoot at
and miss and miss again
because they have become
invisible 

We are all in this together

but not in the way 
some folks mean it
with a nod and a banged up
pot and spoon put to use every night
promptly at the same time to turn the heads
of the weary endangered folks
dying in droves to keep 
some folks
from dying in hordes

All in this together

though there are some folks who want
more of us together than seems reasonable right now
but they’ve got the right skin to make them
more audible and the perfect copper-jacketed
megaphones to amplify themselves in front of
the perfect places to be heard that some other folks
can’t even get near on a good day

and these are not good days

I don’t know who this “we” is
that is supposed to be in this together
No “we” I’ve ever seen 
No “we” I know of that is different from
the “we” someone has always insisted “we”
need to think of
whenever “they”
need us

slippery
as a day getting away
from you

you look up and
it’s 3:30 PM

how did this happen
when there’s so much time available
just to watch the clock

it is possible that
the clock is dreaming you
and it’s the same time all the time

always 3:30 PM
and the day isn’t slippery at all
instead it sticks

is stuck and 
that means no one’s
getting away with anything

except for memory
which is sliding down
the road away from you

all you’re going to recall
of this is how 3:30 PM
keeps trying to kill you

staking you to a dull moment
and making you believe
there will be a tomorrow

different from today
less sticky 
you’ll seize that moment

and though it will wriggle
like an eel to escape
you will win and 3:30 PM

will do your bidding evermore
never again sneak up on you
never again offer such dread

you swear you will never be unproductive
at 3:30 PM ever again
once you get past today

I command my mind
to dream me into a country
where I can love
and be loved
less casually than people
typically do in America,
land of the quick in and out;

a place of no backstories needed,
a place where I could walk barefoot
in good soil or even mud and anyone
who finds the tracks will know
who has passed by.

In daylight my reputation’s
like a story tied to my heels,
trailing in the dirt behind me
to change my actual tracks
to indistinct traces, leaves
all passers-by asking 
if I’ve been here or not. 

You know I have a tale for them 
if it comes up, a tale for everything 
that might come up.

If someone could love me
as I want to be loved,
I wouldn’t need all these fables…
now that it has 
stopped mattering, though,
strangely I’ve begun to care
about the difference between
dreaming and not dreaming, 
or about my stories 
versus my truths;

I command myself to weld them
together, now that all has stopped;
to give me a dream and a life beyond 
the American one, the quick in and out,
the get it and be on your way — after all,

there’s nowhere to go.