Here is a relaxation
exercise to keep you from
becoming way too intense
when faced with the dinosaur thump
of how to get through a day in America 
when nothing that opposes you
relents at any point:

first place both thumbs into 
the corners of your eyes and 
push out the balls until there’s room
to fill the sockets with blue soap 
that will foam when tears
fall into it as the eyeballs slide out
into the greasy air;

once that is complete
lean forward and let it all fall to the ground
where suds and tears will bloom
slick flowers from the cleansed pain and 
ask those nearby to describe them to you
while your eyes are settling back
into sight.

You will find yourself rising: no one
goes through this sort of thing
and remains close to the earth
for very long. Tensions that have been
your anchors will be unleashed and
so you will levitate and then soar, your eyes
still wet enough that all will be blurred
and dazzled with the new light.

You ask if the pain
and blindness are necessary?

Without them
you would find yourself
seeing things the same as ever.
You would not fly. 

You ask why you could not
simply meditate as they do
in other places
and as you’ve been taught?

This is America and
without the willingness
to lose all and see it all again
differently when you
come back to Earth, 
relaxation is just another word
for a huckster
to hang a dollar bill upon.

One star.
Red spearpoint.
Lily, gladiolus.
Seaberry, yew.

You stitch
culture from 
whatever pieces 
you are given.

Make your world
under a star
you call a god.
Preach of it riding on 

your spear tip.
Lay flowers on 
warrior graves.
Drink acid from 

a berry,
build a bow
from a sacred tree.
Isn’t this easy?

Tell me
you can’t remake
a world given
these parts

and I will show you
a mirror and a 
smoked fish on a plate
and say: eat, coward,

grow strong on
fire, then I will show you
red and brown stone
sealed in white ice

nested in volcanic soil;
ancient seeds,
a ruptured flute,
an intact oud;

all those once enslaved, 
all those once displaced,
all those ripped from their thrones,
all those standing with fists

full of bloody skin. 
I will say: there.
There’s a new thing
to be made from these

while a song for planting
and release will be sung
by grateful millions.
You can bend to work

with them. You can 
tear your palaces apart
and offer your gems
to whatever star

you choose.  You can
bury those dead
who have longed for
comfort in good earth

knowing they have fed
new life. You can say:
here is my spear,
here is my bow,

then give them
to these now living among
lily and gladiolus,
seaberry and yew.

Lay your old tools down
under your 
demoted star’s light
and fall silent.

Those millions need not
build for you
as you did not
build for them.

Those millions
need not build
with you;
if you forget that

you become a piece
to be chosen or not
when they begin a new 
world under some

star or no star, with
your flowers
and tools,
or their own.

In a box
I made I keep
the work of 
my whole life: how
to be this divided
self, how to speak of it,
how to stay alive
this way. I keep
my races and my bad
brain in there and
the sticky moods and
how I don’t want to look
at any of it very often.

In my self-made box
I keep stars and 
scars and every ink-bitten
mistake and triumph and
triumph over a mistake.
Sometimes I have to
crush down what I put in 
before but it’s all in there,
I promise. Well, 

someone kicked it
and a side split. Someone
kicked my self-box and
now it’s not holding

and when I come
out of it, when I spill
out of that opened
corner, what may come

might be the new stuff
up top or maybe the 
very oldest, that which has been
crushed down and down and
compacted for long years

and some of those triumphs
look now like mistakes
or are so pressed into
one another that 
they might ignite when exposed
to the new light and
I can’t tell you what
is going to happen, 

other than that 
what’s spilling out
is possibly ugly and 
if it burns it may burn
toxic and if the box
goes too we’ll both
see me for real
in the open at last.

Inside my self-box
late at night, early
in the morning, I stare
into the world through
the now-fractured corner
and it looks like
a slot canyon, a space
between walls or bars.
It looks straight
and narrow. Surely
it’s better in here
than out there.

After all these years
thrashing my way through
every possible situation
and screaming at the floors, walls,
doors, and windows
when I couldn’t do
what was needed,

you’d think I would
understand how little 
I’ve done that worked
when done at top volume 
and frantic action, yet when given
one more chance to be still and
possibly effective for once in my
increasingly mockable life

I fucked up and broke 
more than silence with clumsy
blows and motions.

Now, I could sit back
from the wreckage and 
excuse and stammer and 
point at how I got here and 
what I was trying to do,
what I intended to do, but

to be honest, 
it doesn’t matter
and never did.

So what now? 

Shelving for now
my overarching fantasy of becoming
a mastermind of some esoteric
discipline to be held in secret
until it becomes necessary
for survival; mothballing

my own need
to be of some use and
turning instead to
pupation ahead of
a destined transformation 
that may or may not happen: after all
cocoons and pupae may still die;
even at that penultimate moment
of incipient lives, nothing
promised is ever certain. Stepping

back from the personal edge
in this moment of grand, worldwide edge
to consider the folly 
of my belief in my own indispensability
and to marvel at how final 
it all feels and yet,
even so, I long
to break out and get free

of those larval virtues and vices
of my past; hoping that instead
when I do emerge, all those old marbles
will tumble out of my once-child hands
and all these games will end and then
whatever I am in that real instant
will be adequate at the least, more 
than enough at the most, ready to be
valued, to extend time, to ground
a future where before there had been
only a flight, a vision
of improbably perfect wings.

This darkness
has pushed me to sing

because if I do not
it will drown me.

So I gurgling
sing the murk,

the murder,
thick burdens

laid upon
head and lungs.

I strangling sing
my fight to get above it

though I feel 
no hope

of light there and anticipate
no whisper beyond my own

to offer me
harmony. No, I am

Golem and I
don’t know who

raised me or why,
or how against all lore

and odds I am singing
when there seem

to be so few
to listen and by law

and story I should be
silent by now. I am

not, though. I am
not though it is dark

and these words
carry not even feeble light.

Still, I am  — and I flop about
and sing this glug of mud.

I must have been made
for some cause. Nothing

could be so cruel
as to have drawn me

thus forth
for nothing.

I wrote a bouquet of lies
and handed them out
at intersections.  People
seem to like them, so
I’m making more. 

People seem to like them.
I’m making more of that
than I should, perhaps. Perhaps I’m
made for this. Perhaps I’m
just a born liar.

A born liar, but perhaps
people like a born liar.
Better than a made one,
perhaps? Who gets made
into a liar, anyway?

Whoever gets made as a liar
ought to stop lying and
get away from what made them
lie. No one’s born to it; ask
any kid about anything. You’ll see.

You’ll see: if you ask a little kid
a question, they will tell the truth
with simple brutality.  We teach them
how to lie — first by polite silence,
then by lying to them all the time.

Then we lie there, all the time, 
knowing what we’ve done to our kids.
No wonder everyone seems to love
getting blooms from the bouquet of lies. 
It’s funereal out there. Here is something

to take the edge off. To make you feel
perhaps better, by knowing you aren’t alone
in the lying business. Here’s another
pretty one. I see you smiling as you 
take it from me. We know what’s at stake.

Engaged, enraged, and exhausted:
the first gets me out of bed;

the second keeps me upright and moving; 
the third lays me down

and also reminds me that
there will be an end to this someday.