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.

Originally posted June 10, 2015.  Revised, 9/30/2015.

More than boards and nails
will be needed 
when the ashes cool
and it’s time to start over.

I must not relent
from my dutiful masonry,
the bricking of word
upon word.

When we’re all weary
from the work of rebuilding,
people will call for something
preserved from the past 
to freshen the present
and speed the future,
to remind us all 
of fragrances
that preceded
smoke and ruin:

scents
of roses,
clean earth,
unpoisoned rain,
infant hair,
a lover’s neck;

flavors
of what we had once,
what we’re again
building toward — 

the stuff of poetry.