1.
Dreamed I stole 
an exquisitely tattooed horse —
a dappled palomino inked
to resemble Belleek china — 
saddled it and rode it expertly
from the city of Worcester north
to the city of Fitchburg
and arrived at a coffeehouse
which was somehow
attached to a stable
empty but for old straw and
an ancient radio tuned
to play only the songs
it played when it was new,
to which the horse and I 
performed dressage and
poetry for no one as
the coffee house had closed
hours before, leaving me
to realize at the end
that I had miles to ride
down unlit roads
and had forgotten
all the expertise I had used
to dream my way there.

2.
Dreamed I carried 
a lucky coin stamped
with a face I could not name;
although a name floated
upon my tongue
whenever I rubbed the coin
between my fingers
in my pocket, I knew
that either it was
the wrong name,
or it was
the right name and 
once I pronounced it,
the face on the coin
would change.

3.
Dreamed of standing
by an unlit roadside — 
the road south,
the road home.
No horse to ride,
no knowledge
of how to ride.
No jukebox
in which to plug
my lucky coin for
a proper song to make it
better.

4.
Awake.

First step home,
taken in silence.

Second step home,
an unaccompanied dance.

Third step?

Currently, all I have
is a dream of riding
a decorated horse
as far as it is willing to go.

the locations 
of certain political signs

on homes and businesses
to avoid

the placement 
of ads on certain sites

so that I will not 
patronize those places

the garages of pickup trucks
with giant American flags and

or giant 
Confederate flags

so that I may hide
from them

the stores that sell
certain products

I will not purchase
now or ever

the comments of people
I thought I knew

so that I may
un-know them

Filing

all of this
for now and the future

What I do with the information now
will be predicated upon the now and

what will happen in the future
will happen 

A Friday night
at home, my head
sore and full,
my heart empty,
collapsing
on its hollow core.

As the known world
is bathed anew
in harsh light
and the shadows
become deeper,

I look at the walls
around me.  Tonight
they are cocoon, tomorrow
they may be prison or
casket  —

or barricade. If so I may
become a warrior tomorrow

so I’ll take tonight for peace
and sleep well, even if I must keep 
one eye open; hold love close
in case thieves come for it in the night

as they’ve always come in the past,
a past many of us have grown too soft
to remember.

We are remembering it now,
have taken night after night
to do so, to get ready, to toughen
up — tonight, though,

I at least will be
at peace before
looming war.

I can’t refuse this heart
this moment of calm tonight

as I cannot say
when or whether
I will find one
again.

to the co-worker
who got into my face
thirty five years ago
and called me selfish 
for having no children,
planning to have none,
and refusing to explain why;

to the dentist who looked over
my prescription listing, saw
Lithium and Seroquel,
then asked me if I lived 
in a group home
as he picked at potential cavities
in my blood filled mouth;

to the supposed buddy
who suggested,
none too gently,
that I was too “addicted to 
recreational arguing”
when I pushed back
with passion upon
her dismissal of
my rising fears;

to the manager who chided me
for not being a leader, 
for being too moody,
for wearing my sorrow
too openly,
for exuberance beyond measure
in strange moments,
for in general
not fitting the mold;

to all the friends who set me aside
for my toxicity and disturbances
of our social fabric, to all the friends
who stepped away and turned away
because I was difficult, to all the friends
who laughed it off and said I needed
Jesus or sleep or exercise or smudging
or less of one food and more of another,
less of one drug and more of another,
less of my headspace and more of theirs;

to the therapists who didn’t listen
or did and misheard 
or did and heard right but
cared only for the text book answers
and the end of the fifty minutes
couldn’t come fast enough
until there I was, standing outside
yet another door.

Thanks due to all
for those rides along this road
that got me here 
on this December night — broke 
and broken, old and
in the way, terrified of 
real demons afoot in the land
and not just in my head.
Because of them

I know how to bite a bullet
and not chamber it.
I know how to
look pity
in its jaundiced eye
and spit
the same way I spit
into clueless
dismissals and clumsy attempts
at comfort.

I may be 
all messed up,
but damned
if I don’t suspect
that I’m better equipped 
for what this
messed up country
is about to do
than some of my 
well-adjusted 
friends and acquaintances
will ever be.

You laugh at me, say it’s not 
the apocalypse, say it’s not good 
that I should be this worried.

I know it’s not the apocalypse. 
That’s your word. I have my own word 
for this. I call it the Unveiling —

which is, by the way, what your word
originally meant. You’ve turned the thought
of secrets revealed into the end of the world

and I think that’s right for you, but not for me,
and not for so many of us who see this world
the way we always have, though now

your secrets are out in the open and 
that might indeed be the end of your world
and the beginning of ours. It’s going 

to hurt like childbirth. It’s going to be
soaked in blood.  It might take a long time
but we know that your future is in apocalypse

as ours is in unveiling. Revealed:
in coming years you will be in eclipse
and we will be in ascent. Revealed:

that you are bold today means little
to those who have always known
what you hid from yourself. Revealed:

what’s coming at us today
is a hard kick from a frantic leg
on a dying beast.  Revealed:

we know you better
than you have allowed yourself
to know. Revealed, unveiled, exposed:

your backlash is just the same old violence
it ever was, only grown more savage because
it knows how short its time truly is. 

Chasing a memory tonight

of driving in the Catskills
among thousands of trees
and thousands of whitetail deer
under the infinite cloud of stars
called the Milky Way

Top speed on the narrow roads
was reduced to
as slow as possible

Over half the houses were empty
Many abandoned and neglected
Others shuttered but well kept

and the Milky Way
as bright as it should always be
out there
so far from the city 

broadly strung horizon to horizon
thick and visible enough to reinforce
how empty the woods were
of everything but trees and deer

who did not move 
when headlights hit them
their numbers giving them
the certainty and the confidence
to stand their ground

Counted 40 while I was stopped
by just one road-clogging herd

Creeping through close enough
to open a window
and (perhaps) touch one then
finding 15 around the next bend
and the next until
before I could reach my destination
I simply stopped counting 
in the low hundreds

I learned the next day from a local resident
that this was all dairy country once

Hundreds of farms in its heyday
now down to 35 in all of the county
Most of the rest were simply abandoned
and those pastures gone wild
were perfect habitat
for the whitetails
who had become so numerous
that there were fears
of a die-off coming soon
on the way to regaining 
balance

I am thinking of this tonight

while sitting here
dreading the morning news
because I have to try as well 
to recall a time when I saw
what it might be like if America
abandoned the land it liked to think of 
as its tamed birthright

and let that land re-invent itself
healing into a new balance
under a free and inviolate sky