This face, exemplar
of no remorse — its
pale nerve-laced skin
twitching, its stare, 
its thin, sharp nose; 

that fear
in those hollow eyes
brimming over,
spilling onto those lips,
flavoring each word they spill 
with hate
because 
fear becomes hate 
when exposed
to open air,

and once fear
flowers into hate
it cannot easily unbloom
and furl back toward
innocence
from that urgent, ugly
canker-state:

fear
turned to hate dares 
not regret anything
as doing so may expose
how little it ever had to fear
from the beginning — hence

this face, exemplar
of no remorse with unrelenting
stare, almost as if a mirror
were before you unblinking,
but that isn’t your face
in the news — 

it’s something
at once more unsettled
and unsettling:
a face that could be
any face, a face grown
so commonplace
you almost don’t give it
a second glance.

any open door
that can be closed and locked is
a good advisor

in the moment when
it snugs into its frame
I learn what I need

about safety and peace
achieved through insulation
from the other side

(no matter where I
make my stand I stand behind
or before a door)

Where I am
is standing still,
facing forward.

A seeming windowpane
separates me from 
the next place I should be:

I poke it with a single finger
then press on it with first one
and then both hands.

It bends, does not break,
warps and distorts but
will not allow me 
entrance

but I keep pushing…
it’s sad, or it feels
sad. It’s not sad
in fact, it is just a matter of
fact that

it takes a long time
for such a barrier to yield
and one must push
and push and sometimes 

kick 
to break it. To break it
and step through

to the new life that I think
will seem not much different
at first — it looks much the same
over there, but that light…

imagine
how my familiar things
may look in that light:

some dingy,
some more lovely, some
likely revealed as utterly
not what they once seemed.

For all that may be possible
over there

I keep pressing, poking,
gently, strongly; I keep 
pressing forward.

In rain-light morning,
sitting with all that’s inside me
before day’s rush-time steals away
all my intentions, I come to conclusions

and thus also to beginnings.

Some conclusions are best seen
as escapes from
a grudging obligation to care
about what has passed,
about closing books upon
now-spoiled, once well-ripened
moments;

it dawns upon me also
that beginnings
are often about noticing
those small bumps,
swellings on blooms
on fruit trees, that promise
eventual nourishment
if cared for well enough;

sitting now in rain-light morning,
in fall, long before such beginnings
become obvious again, in a season
of fallen leaf and fruit and emptied
gardens now littered with remains
of past harvest and growth;

sitting here knowing
this moment of clarity will pass
and never ripen, but also knowing
that another will come and pass again;

knowing that one day
I shall be able to conclude
that in each conclusion
is the next beginning,
that ripeness is always at hand,
is in my eyes, is always there
in my choosing.

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.