Originally posted 2/17/2009. Original title, “How To Become A Phoenix.”

first, the right lighter. 
a plain steel zippo 
that’ll stay lit
when you let it
roll off
your fingers.

start with something
unwanted and shabby —
the roof
of your daddy’s shed, 
the rotted corner 
on an abandoned house.

stay away from occupied dwellings
unless you’re sure 
the occupants want to escape 
and have 
the skills and access 
to do so.

lift the lighter,
snap the cover
and the wheel
and hold that dear flame
against your choice
until it catches. 

once it’s rolling,
run like hell
then sit and watch.

do this
more than once. 
do it hundreds of times.
you will be interrupted, 
caught and tried,
convicted, caged, and freed.

a thousand years will pass 
until you are at last ready. you’ll be
in your home and the lighter 
will roll off your fingers
as casually 
as a basketball — and then,

o player, you will attempt to dance
a pick and roll
around your red opponent;
screaming for assistance, scheming paths
of fading resistance
until you can do no more.

then, perhaps,
you will rise, 
or maybe not.
it’s all
up to the fire
as to how this ends.

this myth didn’t originate 
in a human hand.
fire wrote this one, and when fire tells it
it’s not about rebirth — 
it’s a story
of the random one who got away.

Originally posted on 11/09/2012.

Open your story with

shrunken tap dancer,
resting camel,
unstable carousel,
parched fingers, shellfish, 
bored gardeners,
a longhouse converted 
from dwelling to storage
and filled to the ceiling 
with duck feathers.

Where is this happening?
Write in a map
of the small roads
somewhere near Barrington, Rhode Island.

Enter now the central conflict
between a socialite and a meteor.
In a subplot that tap dancer
shall struggle to understand her fate,
her sudden and strange deficiency.

A real woman you love enters the room
shaking her dark hair out from under a hat
after coming in from a storm.
She looks at you staring at the laptop
and says, “Are you done playing?”

Are you done playing?
You set the dancer
on the camel
in the longhouse
before closing the computer lid.

Yes,
you say.  
Yes, I am done playing,
though this felt so serious 
while you were raising it to life
that the words feel like a betrayal.
You swear to come back to it later 
to see if it has continued on its own
and if so, to write in some hope
if the story will have it:

all the threads knit together under a night sky
with the meteor as wish-star
and the miniature dancer stretching her hand
to seize it.

Originally posted 3/21/2014.

If I had been born a house,
I would have liked to have had
a family live inside me.  
I’d have enjoyed my traditional interior
and thrilled to secrets and confidences
shared among loving members.
If by chance I’d been afflicted
with a family of abusers, perhaps a light
through one of my windows
might have illuminated a moment of pain
and changed a moment of rage
into one of remorse.

If I’d been born a workshop,
a small factory or a personal craft studio,
I’d have enjoyed the daily industry within,
the making of well-tooled items
by hand or with complex and elegant
machines.  At night after all the workers 
had returned to their homes
light from the moon would enter and caress
the worn surfaces, the works in progress,
the waiting benches yearning to be filled.

But I’m a man.
My interior is crowded with guts and stench.
I can’t take what goes on in there — 
war and self-hatred, spilled bile
souring the slow flow
of my sludgy, sugary blood.
I want to believe
that there is a light in there —
something different,
something handy,
something skilled,
something like family — 

but the evidence suggests
otherwise so
I daydream
of better lives
that could have sprung
from those
very different
birthdays.

Originally posted 10/28/2005.

you say she keeps turning up in your life 
like a bad penny,
forgetting that

if a bad penny
has been beaten
by time and trauma,

it will pull your fingers
to your pocket
far faster than a good one will and

if your bad penny
is made of something other than copper
it will be warmer to the touch so

you will guard it
far longer than you would
any good penny;

you’ll keep it, show it off,
dream of it, cry if you lose it,
die with it on your mind.

Previous revision posted 4/5/2013.  

On Facebook, there is a man
who has 1500 friends,
approximately 800 of whom
he has met personally.

Of those he’s met
he’s had more than passing conversations
with maybe 200,
had longer and more confidential conversations
with perhaps 40,
and perhaps 15 have the qualities
of “friends” 
in the sense of the word
that existed prior to the year 2006.

1500 friends —
800 he’s seen,
400 he’s spoken with in meatspace,
200 he’s connected with,
40 he would tell this story to,
15 who would agree with him
but for the fact
that they are vanishing
into a cloud.

The man one day decides to read
a three volume unfinished novel
titled “A Man Without Qualities.”

He opens the first book,
closes it, opens it again,
closes it…a book,
three volumes long 
and still unfinished,
about a man who is nothing
but what he is given to be
by others.

The book will sit on his bedside table
unopened for long spells
as he talks to 1500 friends online.

If there is a Quality
to “friendship”
it is being absorbed into a cloud.

If someday the man wants to speak
to those 15 friends
after they’ve vanished,

he will have to learn a new word
with which to summon them.

Never before posted.  Originally written in 2010 or so as part of a suite of poems I was planning to use to accompany some music Faro (the bass player for Duende Project) had written.  I ended up discarding most of it, but found a bad recording of this while cleaning up my hard drive.  Never titled.

We have
a problem here
that has many strong legs
and stony little eyes,
mistakes and poisoned prongs
wound round it
like barbed wire.  It’s bringing
the brine with it:
that flavor of soiled ocean,
that smell of sweat
on ancient bronze.
It’s going to be
one dirty night if it makes it
over the threshold,
and it’s coming in hard and fast.

Naming it won’t stop it.  
Connecting it
to something already named
won’t stop it.  
Shooting it, stabbing it,
gassing it, loving it — everything 
we usually do
to solve a problem
is doomed to fail.  

Strong legs.
Stony eyes.
A stink pulsing in the air before it
as it rides its rotten wave.

Our only hope may be
to tear down this house 
it was born to infest,
do it fast enough
to save ourselves,
and learn
how to live rough.

Originally posted 3/2/2012.

You exhort me to know and love
the natural world
of orcas and eagles
polar bears and honeybees

but tonight I must put in a word
for silverfish
spiders flies and
centipedes

who speed around
our feet and food
hang suspended in corners
behind the dryer

nearly impossible to
catch or kill and who
always have
the cellar as a retreat

Those are
the beasts for me
Unlovely
and universally reviled

yet thriving
So perfect
for the modern
broke household

I’m getting
tattoos upon me
one for each
shudder-making pest

I live among them
have learned
their habits
have prayed to become

good enough
to fake my way into
their good graces
as this world is ending

I know
the natural world
You don’t survive just by being
picturesque

Originally posted 12/19/2004.

My mother has always said
that when I was born,
I yelled like kindling
crying for a match,

but I have never yearned
for the fires I’ve started
as much as I have longed
to be soothed by their quenching.

My deepest hope is that 
one can of gasoline away 
from wherever I am, 

there’s a world
that forever smells
of approaching rain.

Originally posted 9/23/2013; originally titled “Lie Of A Brother.”

Wake up at midnight to find
my daytime mask gone from the nightstand.

I can hear one of my fictional characters
typing somewhere.  I’ll bet he has it on

and I’ll bet he’s working
on another fictional character.

I can tell by the tempo —
it’s my tempo. He’s killing those keys.

It’s OK with me that someone I made up
handles my day-face so well he can make up another.

My myth is taking over my life
and my bastard is better at being me than I am.

I built him well, it seems.
He’s caught my spark for creating 

so I think I’ll roll over, go back to sleep, 
maybe skip living altogether tomorrow.

Let him and his creation handle it.  
I like it better here — dozing off 

while listening to my betters
laboring in the dark.

Originally posted 6/27/2008 — original title, “Mass Pike Moment, June 2008.”

The pond by the side of the road
is obscured in a green-brown mist.
If I wasn’t stuck in traffic
I might never have seen that color
that may be the result of the sunlight
pouring through the green leaves behind it,
or perhaps it is caused by the oak pollen
so thick in the air
that it clearly has changed
more than my breathing.

It is something I would not likely have seen
if I had gone whizzing by
intent on my eventual destination,
or if I had noticed it
I might have missed its hue,
and if it showed up again
in my thoughts
I might have decided
to say it was mist colored,
the default silver-gray that shows up in every poem.
I might then have turned it into a metaphor
for something else
instead of letting it stand on its own.

Perhaps all morning fog
carries a shade worth noting, a shade
only visible when the viewer
is halted in his progress toward importance
long enough to see it,
long enough
to be content in the viewing
and the knowledge
that everything that is known and believed
has a loophole in it somewhere
that is large enough to drive through.