Ceramic plaque
hung with care
upon a cubicle wall — 
sun and moon kissing.

Alongside the monitor
photos of a blonde boy 
and two younger blonde girls
in baseball uniforms, all
squint-grinning
into the camera.

A sign on the wall
next to the sun and moon
says,

“Livin’ The Dream.”

It’s
almost as if
someone 

lives here.

1.
Which supremacies
should we choose
to honor?

2.
Water covers earth,
earth covers my arm.

My arm covers a blindness.  
A beat covers silence

and my own overall supremacy
has it all over English, which of course

is the language of the supremacy
that is most often noticed.

3.
It is possible that silence
has beaten beats.
Is it possible?

If so, what
will become
of dancing?

4.
If I cut my arm,
if I self-harm,

what supremacy do I honor
when I spill, for a change, my own blood?

5.
Water is to earth
as blindness is
to English

as I am to the heart of the matter
as the heart is
to the remainder, the leftover;

all of it under the rule of the arm, 
reaching without being
certain of its grasp.

6.
At night when we are all supposed
to be at rest,

we are troubled by the sound of many wings,
wings of moths, bats, strange birds;

the supremacy here
is that of darkness.

7.
Welcome to a way of life
that’s become as greasy with mistakes and shoddy care
as a poorly washed cup in a sink;

greasy as news photos of con artists
telling lies with wide eyes to children
to keep them quiet and get them to sleep.

Welcome to a way of life
that could leave a slick
on the cleanest water; 

a way of life that could make a street cat
lose its way in an alley where it had lived
its whole ragged time.

8.
What supremacies are honored
by the simple fact of you being allowed
to be whatever you want

no matter how often you try
to be something
you are not?

What supremacies does your existence
reinforce? What are you allowed
to be supreme over? 

What does it say about us all
that such allowances have been made
for you?

9.
There is a spell that need not be spoken,
about which nothing need be said;

it is by its nature
made to be left unspoken:

one thing
to rule them all

one thing
to find them

one thing
to bring them all

in whiteness
shall we bind them

10.
We sink into the topsoil
as all things do and lie there
somewhat dreaming

of what supremacies 
we may honor when we rise
again — what spells,

what blood we should spill
in ritual; dreaming of what language
we should chant, on whose arm

we should lean, in what blindness
we should willingly stand
when tomorrow comes for us at last.

now I know
how much of the holy I know
was made
by devils

feels like I’m supposed to
burn my church and
love the ash resulting
unconditionally without mourning

while I can light it all up 
I cannot smile while I do 
I’m sorry
I’m sorry

feels like
there’s nothing
shining now
under the sun

whatever I have known
and have loved
whatever made me
whatever I have made my own

is problematic
is wrong and
everyone has
made it so

my whole world’s
turned into
a forest full
of shock

felled trees
row upon row
without anyone knowing
or hearing a thing

I should have known
should have heard
should have been listening
all along

for the sound of clear cutting
Evil disguised itself
as birdsong and brook and 
hymns to the betrayed sun

it’s on my watch
it’s on my head that
all the holy I know is
devils’ work

is upon me now
falling with a roar
like a deadfall
a broken tree

I’m sorry to mourn it
as it falls upon me
I’m sorry I’m sorry
for mourning at all

but I do mourn even as I see
the need for this reckoning
even as I join in a call for it
I do still mourn

those problematic
once-honored voices
who failed so miserably
at being their professed truth

are part of what I am
and the dread of how I loved them
and that I may have become them
crushes me as I fall 

In your eyes
a ghost river:

mist settled in hollows along
its tree-dense banks;

steady current riffling by
in near silence;

on the far shore,
a banshee — its cry

a sudden breach
of night’s peace,

a horror song
proclaiming you.

Driving home tonight, and just before I get to my final turn
the streetlight turns a couple kissing on the corner
into the silhouette of a bear.

I arrive and exit the car to see the back yard teeming
with moving shadows as headlights shift the darkness
back and forth across the grass and between the trees.

A moth flies into my face as I come to the front door.
It’s not so cold here tonight though
there is snow north of here; still, in late October, 

any insect still moving is a shock in the dark.

How can I dare trust anything I see, anything at all? 
I ask for nothing except certainty on the smallest scale,
and I’m about ready to pull out my eyes to get it.

This is the story, this is the news, this is the editorial
no one wants to read; no one wants to admit we’re all longing
to fall into a blind moment, to stop seeing the world as it is,

to stop the shadows from moving back and forth across our paths,
to stop our people from changing into beasts before our eyes,
to stop before we have to admit

that nothing we’ve ever known is still safe and sure.

A man
in an apartment bathroom,
stabbed,
dead.

A man
in a store backroom,
six hundred miles away
from the first man,
shot and also
dead. 

There is no connection
between them
beyond the narrative thread
the producers spin here and stretch
between these bodies as if 
randomly chosen deaths
may develop a meaning
when described together,
something to touch those of us
untouched beyond
the present moment’s discomfort
at hearing their loved ones wailing 
at the revelation of these murders

that at some distance
make up our afternoons,
fill our empty hours.

So: two men.
Both dead; 
one Black, one 
Mexican. Both
between the ages of 
twenty-five and forty.
Each mourned now onscreen
by relatives
unwilling to talk

to the police, who also now
serve our entertainment as well as
our social order.
They appear weary from playing
the roles, but do not

relent or walk away until
someone suggests
a mundane plot twist:
a robbery,
a drug deal,
love stories gone
spontaneously wrong, personal 
revenge:

these victims never die
for esoteric reasons, for cult
sacrifice, for conspiracies; 

the murderers,
when found,
are just as mundane
and often
break down under interrogation
that calls upon
Jesus and rationalization
to explain it all

and they often
cry and the cops

high-five or thank each other
before heading home to 
loved ones, weary but
vindicated.

We change the channel,
weary but vindicated:

fear and entertainment
are best found
out there, not in here;
out there among those others
is a world of one
casual and boring murder
after another and so
we swear anew
to love our police
and honor them 
in one series marathon

after another.

From birth they feel like
a picture framed crookedly —

everything is correctly sized,
but has been assembled
so it shows up to public view
as being a tad off center.
They are told it can be fixed with
a little effort on their part,
but has no idea where to begin
and no one will tell them a thing.

When they first discover
an urge to make and explain
worlds, they are told
that others’ perception
comes first.  They are told

not to take in anything
or push out anything
without considering its utility
to others; don’t give a new world life
without a corresponding nod
to an old one; better in fact
to justify and glorify
older worlds because new ones
take so long to establish
and who really has time
for that?

All they see are possible worlds,
new lands, mistake and evils
in this world and these lands
to which they could offer
correction; but because they want
to feel more or less straightened out
in his assigned frame,

they begin to starve themselves
of their own vision,
as if they were in training.
They build wrong muscles.
They consume little
beyond secret glasses
of their own exhalations
hoping these might nourish them;
are caught, are punished for doing so,

thus adding social insult to
self-inflicted injury.

They keep at it 

long enough to waste away,
at which point 
they are lightly rewarded
for their cautionary
appearance.

Their last thought:

the others do not like you
very much whether or not
you are healthy,
apparently; the others
do not love you at all
until you are dead
and can be immortalized
for dying right and 
thus proving well-established
points.

I am the fragile man again.  

I thought
I had changed,
clothed myself
in thick, real confidence
and genuine certainty

but all it took
was one small choice —
I opened a door, found a dim corridor,
walked its length and emerged
into a courtyard of thorns
where I stopped, afraid to move
for all the possible pain.
I turned to go back
to the last place, the good place; no,
that door and hallway
were nowhere to be seen

but there were
my worn bed and my sad desk
covered in endless pages
of vague directions,
my dried flower dust catchers,
my wrong-facing windows
as unchanged and dirty
as the last time I’d seen them,
I could hear the rain of stones
not far away and
coming nearer.

I slumped down at the desk,
the fragile man again;
again unsheltered, waiting for 
another shatter season
to begin.

Originally posted April, 2010.

A little cup of coffee now —
hot, black and unadorned,
not sweetened at all.
I like it bitter. I like the heat.
I like the way it stains my teeth
so my smile’s not so bright;
I like how it opens my eyes
to the day as it has been made.
God’s gonna trouble the waters yet,
I’ll have to wade them;
that little cup of coffee
will help me not to drown.
A little cup of coffee now,
another later, and another —
depending on how deep
and swift the water goes.