dear
me,
mr
brown — oh

shut up
shut up
shut up
shut up. you are

so full of noise.
of course we are
coming back
around to you as subject.

god. shut up.
why it’s always about you
and your loud, pale reaction
is a mystery. why is it so rarely

a dark red action,
full of your own blood
and justified ire? why is it so 
rarely original,  

rarely worth our time,
rarely worth
anyone’s ears or
eyes — 

shut up
shut up
shut up
shut up.

dear me
mr brown — enough
of your same old
same old same old empty.

shut up
shut up
shut up
shut up.

oh, sorry. not entirely empty.
inside you is a key to
a locked box and inside
that locked box

is a switch
that turns you off
(although you are
apparently more turned on by

such yapping than
by silence so all this
is likely futile) but find that
and shut up shut up shut up

shut up —
for yourself if not
for us — dear me
mr brown.  dear me

you must get so tired in there.
so tired having to speak
all the time even in your
sleep — must be — how could 

any of this
have been done
by a conscious mind?
tell that yapper within

to shut up
shut up
shut up
shut up. 

dear me mr brown —
shhhhhhhh.
that’s enough.
enough. trust 

that it can’t hurt and
how has
the yapping
ever helped? 

shhhh.
shhut.
shut.
shut up.

there is a place of
silence where you
could be better served.
shhh.  enough.

enough.

Born to all 
possibility, then
narrowed
and channeled toward
this.

Delimited by
no plan, in fact — more by
a machine running over all
who are caught in its own
delimited track,

reforming all through
plain force
of weight 
and inexorable 
progress. 

I push back up
towards full height on 
these smashed
legs, pushing up with
these broken arms;

I fail, I keep falling but
more and more often 
I am at least able
to land
on my back:

my eyes
wide open; my face
not crushed
into mud;
in pain but awake

and aware
of a rumbling
as that machine
turns back. I struggle
to stand again

and face it, to fall
again but this time
with full knowledge 
of what has
felled me.

It may be
enough to say after that
that I did not die
in my sleep, that I knew
what crushed me.

In flames,
but
no one notices.

So seared, so
charred; 
no one sees.

Supports are
crumbling, walls
bend inward

toward eventual
collapse; all
apparently invisible.

This is how
we sing
our American song:

with eyes closed to
red glare, shouting
from atop

the lungs;
blind, in full
strained voice

as if killing heat
could be deflected
by enough noise,

as if it won’t
fall in upon itself
soon enough, as if

its caving scream
could be drowned
with a loud enough

anthem — in flames,
singing; tumbling
to a full chorus of

oh, say,
can you
see now?

To be startled awake,

to become suddenly aware of 
ancestral animals
coiled within you,
dreaming —

to forget your name,
your income and
your furniture, all your
trappings; 

to get up and dress and step outside

and stand
in the chill
under full moon and

let its light stir
all those inner beasts, let them
open their eyes
and see through your eyes and
feel them wondering where they are
as they turn and stretch and then
resettle into their long sleep
with reset dreams,

is to be forced to choose

whether
you should go back
into the cluttered house
and sleep

or sit down on the sidewalk,
your back pressed
to the stone wall that frames
your tiny yard, looking up with 

yawns and whimpers vibrating
in your bones, shivering
in delight as you wait
for dawn and whatever
comes after dawn.

A full grown gryphon
has come out of the woods
near your apartment complex
and now perches upon your car,
staring at you as you prepare
to walk to your spot and leave 
for work.  This is going to be 
a problem, obviously — 
how to explain this
to your boss, how to explain this 
on the clearly soon to be necessary
insurance claim, how to explain 
the fierce power of the real world
to this beast in such a way 
that he slinks,
embarrassed, 
back into fantasy. Fortunately,
you were born and bred
American, thus having had long experience
with grand and august mythology 
bumping against dirty facts,
so you square up your shoulders,
step to the gryphon,
and get it done.

Radio preacher, how you do talk —

lips looser than Lucifer’s,
forever spitting hate
from a so-called Christian face.

Did your God forget
to put a muzzle on your judgment
when He laid His manly paw
upon you to make you,
or are you insisting 
He was perfect at the craft
and this is — YOU are– 
are as good as it can get?
Are you really your God’s
best marketer, making claims
for your own humility
before Him
even as you
aggrandize yourself 
and scrape
another layer of patience
off of me?

Radio preacher, get you gone — 

you sticky fingered priest,  
you knife tongue pastor,
you pope of the nighttime rope,
you saint of the burning necklace,
you deacon of past prejudice and future petrified heart,
you congregant in the church of bending love
into daggers and handcuffs,
you bishop of murder under the high altar:

your game is
looser than Lucifer,
who at least
did not hide his dark hatreds
behind a Cross,
who at least
owned his pride
at not being in the slightest way
anything like God.

Once more
down the old tracks
we go speeding into the dark,
a massive weight
carrying us along,
a rumble in our guts
from the journey.

Once more
charging into the dark
with our heads down and
no sense of where
we might end up, clatter
of steel drowning out any talk
of getting off before it 
crashes. 

Once more
aimed into the dark — 
most deliberately, most directly,
most certainly aimed 
at a moment where we will look up
and say we are utterly lost,
starving, with no time left
to turn around
and head back up the track
toward what we used to call
home.

Not feeling much of anything;
my face hovers, detached,
no light from within it.

If I were to float back up — get up there again
where the sun shines hot and then
track with it around the planet,

I would surely shine. It wouldn’t matter
that it was not my own light. I recall 
the heat, remember what it was like.

Instead, I’m bobbing along down here
with a seared, dimmed face, loosed
from my moorings, trying to illuminate

this thick night with all I have,
though I can’t feel what good it will do.
Not feeling much of anything, in fact, 

beside fear of the dark.

Sometimes I wish
we lived in the woods and 
things were quieter and nominally 
safer; but then

Next Door Up The Hill Lourdes
brings over unexpected
baked fish, rice and beans
in a reused cold-cut container,

asks to borrow ten dollars
till Tuesday. It’s a pretty good deal
as she always pays up on time
and the food, fish or chicken or 

steak tips well seasoned and
always with rice and beans,
is always at least good
and sometimes far better. 

It’s not anything more 
than a city neighborhood
— rarely too quiet,
sometimes too loud, but overall

not terrible — a little too tightly packed perhaps; 
in winter we shovel our own driveways before helping
each other, but we do help each other;
we don’t call the cops, handle our own shit — 

barely look up anymore
when I do see them, guns drawn, arguing 
over who covers the back and who 
covers the front when they go in

across the street and come out 
disgusted, shooting me
nothing but a dirty look when I smile and wave
as they drive off empty handed again — 

maybe next time, guys, maybe next time,
though the person they seek moved away 
months ago and we don’t know where he is,
really, not a clue — 

it’s a city neighborhood, the low end of town
hanging on the side of a hill that’s never plowed in winter,
a place where we plant backyard gardens
in one small patch of sun — we make do, we get by, we make it work.

Right now for instance,
I’m sitting outside enjoying this baked fish
as Next Door Up The Hill Lourdes sways,
a little tipsy, up the street to buy

more sweet red wine and then home to her TV before bed. 
I think she watches game shows, the volume turned way, way up.
From my steps I can hear the applause, I can hear the shrieks
of someone, somewhere else, winning.