There is a floor in a house with a spot in the corner.
There is a story about the spot that no one is willing to share.
There is a loneliness in the house that manifests in the spot.
There is a story about the loneliness that no one is willing to tell.
There is a tree outside a window that casts a shadow on the spot.
There is a story about the tree that no one is able to translate from its original tongue.
There is furniture in the attic that may or may not be stained as the spot is stained.
There is a story of the stains that no one is willing to affirm.

Every building is a metaphor, of course it is;
the floors, the basement, the furniture, of course they are;
the stains on the floors, the whispering creak of the settling joists,
the tight fits of seams loosening with age; of course they are.
Every house isn’t just home but also prison and memory sink,
gallows, refrigerator gallery, slaughterhouse and hideaway,
of course it is, of course;

but it also is a place
where people live. Where people
want to live or at least have to
stay while they get past the metaphor
into simply getting by.

There is a story about how someone does such a thing.

It was hope
that kept me here

long after
I should have fled.

Hope, soft monster,
makes light work

of final plans
and end games.

Not to suggest
that things were easy

after hope had sunk its teeth
into my skin

but once bitten
I was diseased immediately

and sick with it,
I stayed put.

Now, weary, unable
to move on, 

I sleep cuddled in fever
with hope and 

long for an end
to symptoms:

obstinate survival,
longing for dawn,

sporadic optimism,
slight joy at odd moments

when I feel like
perhaps all of this

is worth
all this trouble.

This little swamp
I’m standing in
is called the Belief.

That rock sticking up
above the dark, rooty water
is, I think, called the Truth.
I’m afraid of stepping onto it
as I might slip
and drown.

But I’m a man,
or so I’ve been told, and
should be utterly unafraid
to get dirty and wet when crossing
from Belief to Truth. So
what’s my story:

I’m happy in Belief
and threatened by Truth?
Or maybe 

I’ve got the labels
crossed, and I’m sinking 

in Truth and am reasonably avoiding
putting my trust in Belief?
Or do I not Believe
there is such a thing as Truth
and that’s not 
a good foothold I’m seeing
but instead is
a Lie? Or is it that

the little swamp
is a little swamp,
and the rock is a rock,
and all the dirty water
I am standing in is filth
and stink, all the names
I give them are the script 
for how I pretend to thrive,
and this dithering on and on
about changing where I stand
is the national anthem
of my country of birth?

Originally posted 10-12-2016.

If a window opens in a wall 
where there has never been a window

and you are standing there at that moment 
to see it open.

If a second or so
of your memory is lost,

and afterward
you cannot describe how it happened.

If no bricks appear to have been displaced
by the appearance of the window,

and no sound accompanied
the appearance of the window.

If you do not show amazement
or fear upon the opening of the new window,

and the opening seems to you
as perfect as the breathing of a newborn.

If you hold your own newborn up to the window
to let them see the moon,

and you look out the window
into a maze of walls, windows, and light from other moons.

If you recognize that none of the walls and windows
look anything like your own,

and the light from the other moons
changes you.

If you choose at that moment to call yourself
Mother of Moons,

though you have always been this;
if you are naming this for the first time,

then go out 
to seek other windowless walls

and stand in front of them 
until they change;

as every examined wall
becomes a window, 

as all the windows 
spring open at once,

you will know then how much turned
upon you taking hold of that given secret name.

So.

An odd moment: the transition
from fearing for the world
and all I know of it

to being obsessed with
the numbness in my hand
and why it hasn’t ended
with a good night’s sleep
and how hard it’s going to be 
to function until it’s gone…
if it goes…
if it goes…
at all.

Like a buzzard 
who has been wheeling
and seeking

the dead,

like a buzzard
spiraling in
slowly from a great height,

certain only of 
the fact of there being
something down there
that requires

greater attention;

how interesting,
this matter of 
how the fear 
that a short day ago
sang within me
in broad strokes

has shifted
to this small
humming

without missing
a note: the

same buzzard song
in a different arrangement.

If you had asked me
when I was young,
I would have said
(upon the end of my first
and what I thought would be
my last and only love)
that my broken heart at least
gave me shards to throw
against every wall in town.

They made splendid noise
when hitting brick and stone,
even better when
I walked upon the crumbs
and crunched them into 
a clay-red dust with which
I stained every bar and
temporary bed I could find
for weeks and months after.

I got a little over it soon enough 
and said back then that I was
healed when I wasn’t at all,
but it was the right thing to say,
and it came true in time.

I must tell you
that it is different now, now
it has happened again and
I cannot say those foolish words
“broken heart” because now
my heart is so much weaker
than metaphor,
an aged and damaged muscle
full of scars and fat and bad motion.
I will not insult or weaken it by adding
this new desolation to its burden. Instead

I will call this a long howl of wind
as I try to move forward,
like the cry of a ghost
in my shirt pockets that appears
when I fumble past slips pf paper
that feel like they might have been
in her hands at some point;

I will call this a dimming of light
so subtle and so profound
that I re-imagine the color of pain,
seeing now instead of red everywhere
a gray fog that further blurs the dark
that’s already shoved its thumbs into my eyes
and leaves me sharply terrified
that I’ll never see a way past this,
that I am too old to do more
than grind it out from here,
day upon night upon day;

only letting go when,
spent at last,
spoiled for the future,
I am only left with her face,
voice, name, touch, and breath,

and nothing of myself,
nothing.

When they ask

what do you do for a living

it is understood that the question
is about money
and that they say

what do you do for a living
instead of saying 
justify to me how you stay above ground

They never intend the sentence
to be heard 
with a word like
God or 
glow or 
love
at the end

Imagine if the sterile greeting
instead customarily meant

what do you do for a living glow
or
what do you do for a living connection to all other beings
or
what do you do for a living love

Or if it became known
as a traditional absurdity
meant strictly to break the ice at gatherings

as in

what do you do for a living lobster
or 
what do you do for a living return
to those thrilling days of yesteryear

In your head now
is the germ of an idea

To respond now and then

What do you do for a living…what?

They will laugh and seem 
nonplussed but

one day it may be
that one will look into your eyes
at the close of the odd exchange
and nod and say

indeed…that is a good question indeed…

and you watch
I promise it will happen
You watch

Both of you will feel at once
the world shaking
as it waits for the answer