“like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going”
— b springsteen

somewhere in
pennsylvania
there’s a narrow road
that forks and
a sign that explains
where each branch goes:

one arrow pointing
right says “WEST.”
the other pointing
left says “SOUTH.”

i got there the other day
and i went north.
though where i was going
was everywhere i’d been
i couldn’t help going.
the radio
was no help —
same old verses, same
old themes,
same old / young pop stars. there hasn’t been
a moving song on the radio
in how many years?

as many years as i’ve been bored with driving.

i’d always hoped that someday
i’d be able to recall
the time i drove
down a road i’d never seen.
instead
i see
the same curbs
and the same
signs telling me things
I don’t even need to read anymore
to understand
because i am always headed home.

next time
i’m in pennsylvania
i will turn off the radio
before i get to that sign.

i will plow through it.
i will knock it down
and then i’m going east
until there’s no east left.

a woman i know
once told me about
hatefucking

rolling and tumbling
in toothsome anger
with a richly despised partner

i am not sure
i could do that
i have never hated a partner enough

to want to lay hands upon them
once their poison
took effect

all this is to say
i’m the wrong man for that job
if you want to make love again

you’re going to have
to treat me
much much worse

He hates his dreams,
not because they are horrible
but because they are exotic.

He sees his dreams as creatures
from endangered species
who can’t be killed
because the punishment for hunting them
far outweighs the reward.

He wants to let the gate to the dream pasture
stand open all night so the wolves can get in.

He tries to lure out the dreams
by placing salt licks under
his tight-closed eyes so that the dreams may be
drawn into the open and driven away.

He builds a blind, sets traps,
and one night snares one still alive.

He offers the yowling dream upon
a smoking altar.

He wakes up and wonders
if even that was a dream.

He asks his neighbors next morning
if they heard
strange howls
last night.

He is amused when they shun him,
turning away
with blood still fresh on their own hands.

the gargoyles in notre dame’s niches
were put there to keep away demons.

the church of santa maria formosa in venice
has a monster’s face over the side entry.

dragons bring luck
in china and japan.

in my sleep i kill dragons.
i keep gargoyles in my garden as curiosities,

bring out the monster mask
once a year, and then only in the dark.

i am pretending when i say
i do not understand

why i will have to
die someday.

back then, whenever i could
i’d run to the woods
and pretend i was homeless.
as long as i wasn’t within sight
of ranches, raised ranches, bungalows,
and cape cod cottages, i knew something
like calm.

it was like my guts were saying,
“gimme a .22 and a morning off of school.
i wanna kill pigeons, i wanna kill squirrels,
but most of all, i wanna kill these houses
as if they were wounded racehorses
that never got anywhere and spent their last moments
looking at the finish line from far far away.”

if i have learned anything from my childhood
it is to trust my guts and
keep a .22 handy. some day i may see
the perfect house for me and mine, something
with closet space and a clear message of what i’ve become,

and i’ll want to shoot something or someone, i’m sure.

Walking around the block,
I get a whiff of my cigarette-tainted
fingers, and once again the phrase
“the left hand of God”
appears before me.

God’s left hand
doesn’t smell of anything.
It’s as if all traces of creation
had been deodorized in the eons since.

And when I’m in something
that feels like God’s grasp
I squirm pleasantly the way I squirm
before I come: something transcendent
is on the way.

I think of music as God’s finger
tracing the pulse in my neck
long enough to stop my heart
in time with a larger orchestra.

I do not understand
why I am obsessed
with God’s hands. I do not think of God
as man, woman, animal, anything
with hands really. I am not even sure
if God is sentient as we understand that;
still, the ideas of grip and touch
bring God to me the way a stream
unsteadily carries the leaf to its resting place.

I prepare to toss a cigarette into the street
after the last drag and I can smell
it on my hands as I draw the smoke into me.
This is divine if anything is: the power
to use, eliminate, discard. If it leaves a touch
of itself on me, it is by design. God’s hands
know the difference between me
and the evidence of my acts.

I do not see God’s body or face
in these moments. Hands, gnarled and
calloused, appear in the grey sky
or come out of the stars. If God has arms
they are not the extensions of these hands.
If God sees and directs these hands then God
does it without the use of sinew and nerve.

God may be hands alone.
God the utility.
God the tool.
God the fingerprints of faith.

The thumbs, the pointers, the middle fingers,
the rings, the humble pinkies. The palms cupped to carry
with the meat of the heels buffering the contents.
Whose hands are these I see before me?
I do not know what it is that I am feeling.

Ask us about heroes
and you may see us smile
a bit differently than you do.

Your drinks are just drinks.
Your bets are just bets, at least
if they make us happy.

When we smoke now
it’s no more a ritual
than when you do.

A sweat lodge
is still our place. You come in
as naked tourists.

Long hair and leather
is lovely on some people,
childish on others.

Your spirit animals
live in a zoo, and ours
watch them from outside the bars.

There’s a gap
between a dream
and a dreamcatcher.

Owning a dreamcatcher
does not mean
you have a dream.

it begins when he looks up at the ceiling
of his porch and notices seven cords stretched
tightly from one end to the other. too high to be
clotheslines, why are they there? he thinks, if there
was one more i could tune the porch like a mandolin
and play it.

he’s in shorts, just shorts, and it’s cold out,
rainy, he thinks back to running from the campus cops
dressed like this while the night turned into fireworks.
it was just one tab, he thought, just one, who knew
such things could happen? if this porch was a mandolin
i’d write a song about that.

a cruiser slips down the street below and he turns his face.
who knows what craggy guy, close to retirement, formerly
bright-eyed rookie on the college force, who knows
how long a memory can drive a guy like that? he thinks,
if i were a cop i’d be relentless. i’d give chase to me
all over again.

if i could play the mandolin i’d stay on the porch
and make up songs i would hang from the ceiling
so no one could ever see me among the melodies
and that damn cop would drive on by everytime
like he just did by luck. he tells himself
to go buy another cord tomorrow.

I
the poisoner
I
the orchard tender
I
the waystation
I
the playful deluge

I am
resolutely damaged
I am
splintered soft handed sleep
I am
diamond needle obsolete and elegant
I am
sound as a red cent

I
the slink and strut
I
the blink of a snake
I
the train where there are no rails
I
the licker of boots and saucers

I will
trickle like a milk stream
I will
quarter the blood of the pure blood man
I will
draw the demons out of the legionnaire
I will
fasten the buttons on the cadaver’s coat

I
the question of the daylight
I
the shrug of the night
I
the shawl the grandmother tangled and fell upon
I
the dilute sweat of the worker sliced in two by the work

I can
look like eyes to whoever sees me
I can
caution the child and comfort the killer
I can
be the resort on the horizon for a starved woman
I can
not rest until everything evolves toward me

barking crazy
he is, wrangling a snootful
of wasps, spilling his
wrong-showing guts
all over the linoleum,
showing his ass
to the children
of the local baboon
and scaring them,
barking crazy gut showing
ass showing man,
all of him hanging out
the window trying to reach
the flowers below,
the bees snarling up onto him,
welts popping up everywhere
there’s a bare inch of skin and
there’s so much skin showing,
even with his guts and ass showing he’s
half noble in his undignified reach
toward the flowers, the tulips and
lilacs, the weeds attempting
to become our joy, and the man,
the barking crazy man with visible stains
and sore hands, the naked dear man falling
just now from the window, he is pointing
at the dandelions and crying as he falls
toward them — not from fear for himself,
but for fear
of crushing them
before we understand.