Why do you think your savior 
came to you under cover
of the night, under sentence
of death? You will say he came

in darkness to show us
the Light. I will tell you in response
that he came to you in darkness
because he was most comfortable

there.  After all, he himself
was dark, his parents were
dark — the ones you could see
as well as the One you could not.

What we know of his life
is mostly nothing — think
of all those missing years:
dark rooms in which he matured.

He was at the end taken 
by soldiers in the dark
and on the day he died,
they say the sky itself

went black to welcome him.
All this talk of him
as light of the world
is misinformed:

he was dark embodied,
yet in the name of easy vision
you’ve made Dark Evil 
and Light, Good. You put his birthday

near to your shortest day
and claimed it was
to recognize the coming of light,
but what if he came at Solstice

to celebrate darkness and your longest night?
You’ve ridden for years against
the dark peoples of the world
claiming you were bringing them

Light, but we didn’t need more Light.
Before you came we mostly
had the balance right, yet you hanged us
like lanterns and set us ablaze

and called it salvation when we
fell to our knees and balled ourselves up
like black stones as protection against it all. 
You think your savior set this path

for you.  You think he’s out there
at the blinding white end of it.
No. If he’s anywhere,
he’s back here with us,

with living and dead
holding us tight to himself and each other
in the warm embrace
of the much maligned night. 

If at the end of 
a long enough life you find
that there are still stories
you’d rather not tell yourself,

that would be the time
to sit down with your choice
of writing tools and put them
into someone else’s
imaginary mouth.

The storyteller you create
might look like you or not.
Might sound like you
or not. Might have every detail
perfectly recorded for playback,
might not. But the gist of 
what you’ve never said
should come through and
it had damn well better be
true, true enough

that when you listen
to the telling you can say
in utter peace
that you’re free of those tales and

you can feel something charitable for them
now that they’re loosed from prison.
Their new freedom adorns them
the way a cape laid upon
the shoulders of a hero endows them
with a certain energy. 

Listen: there’s so much
that gets left over in each life,
so much that goes to waste.
Do you really want to be a party to that,
to hold inside
what has stunted you and deformed you
until you pass on and it escapes,
snarling, into the dark to grow 
into something beyond all our worst fears?

Let them out.
Prepare to die empty.
Give those rotten fables a voice,
see who they might save.

If nothing else you might find room
for better tales within
before you go.

In Austin
someone I know once threw me
a small bag of weed
as I stood in a hotel elevator
surrounded by 
cops on vacation.

I’ve been to some
cracked moments
while on the Journey.

In Venice
I stared down 
rapacious gondoliers
and watched
from an unsafe distance
as students
in Piazza San Marco
rioted for lower tuition.

I’ve been close
to the fur-gloved hands
of Fate often enough.

Sat at a university president’s desk
during an occupation of 
the administration building
in Amherst. Was in the rush of bodies
that broke the glass doors when we 
stormed it. Was one of the last ones
to leave next day at sunrise,
weary and jubilant all the way
back to the dorm; cannot for the life of me
recall why we were there.

I have forgotten more of my life
than I have lived, I think. Forgotten,
I think, how close to the front lines
I’ve come without ever engaging,
how clueless I have sometimes been
about the breath of history and disaster
on my neck.

I watched the Towers fall from less
than two hundred miles away and watched
friends die on television as they fell
and sat in an empty office for hours after
breaking the news by phone to other friends,
some of whom could see the smoke
from their rooftops, some of whom
were thanking their stars
for the blessing of escape
until they heard from me. 

I have been the Angel Of Death,
posting open letters to the dimming light
in beloved eyes,
all in the name of holding on
to whatever I could
when so much else 
has slipped.

When I was a boy
we had a washing machine
too small for the loads
we stuffed it with and by the side
of the washing machine

we kept a maple stick
cut from a tree we’d cut before that
to heat the house

and when we washed clothes
we’d come back into the basement
after it started and use that stick
to push the dry clothes down
into the water and the suds.

Over time it became smooth
and was bleached white and all
the bark was worn away as if it had
been whittled. It may sit there
in my parent’s home
next to the machine still as far as
I know,

but I am certain that I have become
like that stick that I have suddenly recalled
out of nowhere for no apparent
reason. Maybe I feel whittled
by the constant wash of living like this,
living a life too small
for the loads it’s been asked to handle,
stuffed with them over and over and yes,
I’ve been worn to a splinter trying to cope,

but I’m still here, 
a bleach-sanded artifact
of what was once 
a grown-up, cut down
and sectioned out
and plunged over and over into 
agitation, but somehow
useful still, and perfected
for my purpose, and good
to the touch;

how can anyone say
neither the stick nor I
have not fulfilled
our destiny?

A small thudding
in the room. One of
the cats is staring
at the window.

One of the daily woodpeckers
is on the feeder and it’s quiet enough
to hear the bird — can’t tell if it’s
the male or the female — slamming 
its beak through the grid into the suet
over and over again.
I get close enough to see it’s the 
male and his partner’s out on the
farther feeder doing the same.

I don’t know much of them for certain, of course.
I know their colors and what the books
tell me they mean. I know there’s one
of each human-gendered example out there
and they come every day like this to feed.
I don’t know if they are a mating pair
or even if it might be different pairs
switching off all season long.  
I know both cats are fascinated by them
and I might be too.  I don’t know
why it matters or why I become anxious
on the rare days they do not visit. 

I know that even when I’m dead broke
I keep suet and seed cakes in full supply.

I don’t know where the money to pay the bills
is coming from 
but I know two cats and two birds
who stay satisfied 
and entertained
and when the fat gets low outside,
I know how fast I step into the snow and cold
to fill it up again.

As matter-of-factly as could be,
they announced the Closure

everyone had been seeking
would be here very soon,

on a yet to be determined date.
No one had really ever thought

they’d get there in this lifetime,
but here it was, officially, with fanfare,

paper rain, and balloons. Closure
at last. The Emotional 

End Game would be played
to a stop on a big field, nationally and 

globally broadcast, and no 
ties would be allowed. There would be

clear winners and obvious losers,
appropriate prizes and genuine remorse.

We got ready. Cleaned out
the closets and pulled strings of lights

from the basements, tried to cobble
up some festivity for this once in a lifetime

festival of Closure. We sat the kids down
and told them back stories to explain

why Closure was so important. We had
threads and comments running 

for days, so much so that social media
shut down frequently, and we scrambled 

off to cafes and bars to keep the dialogue
going. Some tried to squeeze in

complicated developments of ongoing
dramas to get them included in what was coming;

some dug up the past, some projected
into the future. Truth be told,

none of us knew what to expect
until yesterday when with great ceremony

they came forward and told us Closure would happen
a week from Thursday after the sun

goes down, after the lights come on;
then we’ll see a show.  

For now we’re all just sitting 
tight. No one’s fighting,

sighing or grieving much. We hold
tight to those we love in a semblance

of peace and harmony. Nod to each other
on the street. Make love as needed

and agreed upon, step into solitude
whenever we desire.  Closure is

on the way. We don’t know how it will feel
but we are practicing, and uneasy lie the heads

that must shut all these open, creaking doors
one week from Thursday, once and for all.

In a strong moment
I burn an old bridge

but find myself on the side
of that from which

I was trying to get free
and now the only choice

is to leap from a bluff
and fall into a cold river

at the bottom of a chasm
If all that doesn’t kill me

then I’ll have to get across
and climb what seems like

miles to the side
when I might be free

unless that which I’m escaping
surrounds me and already

has gotten there and 
escape was always an illusion

so in fact I have two choices
or rather one choice and a

modification
I could die in the fall 

and be free that way
or if Magick exists

I could without warning
fly up and over and land

wherever I please
and in fact never land again

until I starve and fall 
dead to the hard earth

Whichever I choose
it will start with a leap

I toss my torch into the gorge
ahead of me

bend my knees
and look up