I have been 
possessed by golden
hearts and owned but

let free to roam and
I have been a mistake and
a good try.  Left alone

I may have been empty
and dirty, a bottle
in the gutter.  But thanks

to those, worthy of
all my praise and thanks,
who lifted me.  Even when

I was of no obvious value
to anyone I was picked up 
and held and now

I am the mistake that worked out
and am not wrong for existing.
Even when I seemed

most evil.  Even when
I stank of wrong, I was 
held as all should be held

as capable of redemption
and golden as any who held me.
Lift me, my saviors.  When I land

I will do you proud.
I will shine, light the dark,
be your hope incarnate.  I will 

offer you a place
to mount your pride
and let it stand.

From ten miles out of town to here
I pass a half-dozen donut shops,
two smoke shops, one
liquor store. You get what
you pay for and clearly
there are those ready to pay for
some form of altered state
just to enter this town,
never mind to stay here,
to live here.  

As for me? My mind is clear.
I do not need a cloud 
of sugar or fat,
of smoke or drink,
to be here. 

I admit to stopping
at one or more of those
stores, but only now and then
is it anything more than
a small enhancement 
that I chase,

for here’s a view from my porch
of nothing but more porches,
a view from my back door
of nothing but more back doors.

There are times when I long to see
tree or stream with no one near them,
or hear surf, the smash of sea
on shore or rock — of course,
I’m human, there are moments
like that when I want to climb
back through the past to 
primacy.

But the view from here
is people and more people
and all the variety sings to me
and all the street sound is symphony
and I cannot want to blunt that
when so much worth knowing
is there within my reach.

Keep the donuts, the vapes
and pipes, the sips and nips
and bottles in need of draining.
Drunk and stoned
and stuffed on the city,
I am at peace.

Your upbringing has you convinced
that when angels come at last to visit you,
they will be immense and will dominate
all your senses and being. It’s hype —

they’re tiny,
house pet scaled nuisances,
unnerving 
at their worst.

This morning
I woke to one perched
on the bedside table
and at first, I thought it was one of the cats.

Once I knew better, recognized it by its gray wings and
solemn demeanor, I said: how come, angel,
your resemble a cheap gargoyle from a garden shop? How come
you aren’t robed in storm, an elemental force?

I’m only mildly put out to see you here.
You picked the wrong bed to sit by. Get out.
Go scare a sick kid or comfort an old man, take
your burst of petulance at my lack of fear

and put it where it matters. Take
your European constraint, your
European deity feather-bound by committee,
and go. Go tell those that want me

to send tornado hearted eyeless giants, send 
thunderbird riders, send the deep green-red sky itself
to hover over me if they must; something
I can bow my head before and rise into 

with honor and agreement. Angel,
archangel, seraph: go. You’re not
worthy. I smell that book on you.
I read it once. I don’t care to read it again

and I’m not leaving till the earth itself
deems me ready to go and holds
all the continents and oceans up, 
like a robe, to wrap me in as I go.

As if every melody
is being played at once
and you have to sing along
unerringly to one from that 
swarm of sound and if you don’t
you lose, you fail, you die.

As if every movie
must be watched at the same time
and you must answer questions
about the credits for all of them
and get all of them correct 
or you die, you lose, you fail.

As if you were clutching  
a lifetime’s worth of photographs 
of you family, friends, lovers, haters
and told you must reduce the pile
to the one picture that holds all for you,
you have an hour to choose that one
and memorize the rest as best you can
or you fail, you lose, you die.

As if for a decade or more
you’d woken up and stretched
and reached for the phone at the bedside,
dreading the blinking light that says
you have mail and news and messages 
and you were about to be inundated
with urgency and insistence and importance
and no matter how you stand against it
you must fail to stay upright,
you shall lose your footing,
to stop it from hurting you must die.

You forget
I was born
and raised
as the always wrong
forever 
apology. It can’t
be helped that

I default a 
thousand
times a day
to regret and 
guilt. Not to say
shame because

with shame I might
correct the 
always wrong and
close the forever
apology but

this way I can 
boast of my unashamed
malfunctions. I can
be right by always 
being wrong. You

forget how potent
such contradictions
can be. The forever
apology as 

article of faith, the 
always wrong as 
myth or miracle, 
parable of the guilty
conscience for no
reason. You forget

how long I’ve lived
on this, what a religion
it has been. How large
its god looms. How difficult
apostasy can be to achieve —

how satisfying
the guilt involved in that 
might be.

Here I am in the morning
with a head full of ricochet
and fragments tearing through.
Or so I imagine because this morning

there was a gun in the news 
and all I can do after hearing that
is choose where on my head 
I’d put the muzzle if I had one. If tomorrow 

there’s a bomb, I’ll be thinking
of putting a bomb in my own belly; if
there’s a knife, I’ll be sticking
myself full of little cuts.  

Some people say: Stop watching,
do better. Stop putting yourself
into other people’s skin.
Let them have their own hides

and all that goes with them.
Leave them their space.
Do you, do only you.
Keep to your own lane.

My own lane is a mess
and when I watch the news I seem to end up
somewhere else 
that is somehow also my own lane

and I can’t turn off this road
even if I turn off the TV.
I can’t be more sorry
for feeling me and only me:

I only know
two ways to stop it.
One is by writing what you’re reading.
The other is to do what you’re reading about.

Stop making it 
about you.
Stop centering yourself
in the narrative — believe me, I understand.

All I’m trying to do
is put enough into the center
to cut myself
out of the target for good.