It will be full, no room for air.
It will call out every offense I’ve suffered
as if all were equal.  It will offer
no image not in the public domain.
It will taste bitter until I spit it out
and then it will taste like triumph.
It will be loud as a windstorm
on an already-scoured plain.
It will connect invisible dots
wherever I can find them.  It will have
moments that make you swallow
other moments that are inedible.
It will be musical and disjointed
with leaps across ages and countries.
It will focus a floodlight on a broad area.
It will call up recognizable names.
It will follow sense with nonsense
and mix the two.  It will insist
and cajole and exhort and define
and coax and seduce and by the time
it’s complete it will deconstruct
and exhaust and reject
and stick with you for minutes and
you are going to love it in the moment
and never think about it again
but it will be printed on a T-shirt you can buy
and the letters will flake off early
so it ends up as a shadow in your wash
and you’ll give the shirt to Goodwill
and that’s my distribution network.
It is going to be something,
I promise you that.  It’ll be done soon
and you’ll see.  You’ll see.

Supermarket china patterns
show up on the shards
we are always finding
in the dirt next to the walkway
where no grass ever grows
despite our best efforts.

Still, there’s always a big sunflower there
looming over the stupid fairy statue
some previous tenant left behind,
and it always sports blooms as big
as dinner plates.  Maybe
someone knew something
about this weird mystic horticulture
and they get that big
because of the platters
under their roots? The birds
seem to understand the logic
because they start to feast on it
the second the seeds are ready,
so maybe the shards
feed the welcoming flowers
and the sacrifice of cheap plates
had a purpose after all.

Think I’ll buy a few dishes tomorrow,
smash them and lay them
below the soil on the other side
of the house,
just to see what happens next year.
Think I’ll scrap my plan
to move that statue to the basement
and let it be for another winter, spring,
and summer; it’s not hurting anything,
and that cheesy concrete smile
is kind of growing on me.

Woke up wanting to prove a point
about the way people think,

did it by realizing
that needing to prove that point

(that too much self-esteem is a problem,
that those of us empowered to feel so special
are in fact less connected to the needs of others
and in fact hurt the world)

is a symptom of the problem
because I believed that people would listen to the point
if only I would say it, and only
if I said it.

So,
I made waffles instead —

and they were the best waffles
anyone has ever made.