Good world,
I will today
not force myself
to look down on you
from rage or sadness.
I will not manufacture
excuses not to marvel
at the light
and the dark of you.

When I cannot control
a storm within me,
I will today remember
to close my eyes
and hold that cyclone
in, let it whirl and bash me
and not you, good world;
neither you nor your people
shall suffer because of it.

Neither you nor your people,
good world, will today feel
what disease and
the crippling coping
with disease
have done to me — good world,
I know you’re good even if
I am blind to that now and then.

Some tell me
to open my eyes
and let you heal me,
good world; some claim
your Buddha
or your Jesus all alone
could make it so; some say
your skin and your nature
are enough — and good world,
I believe that may be true 
for some; 

but oh, we’ve been around,
you and I.  Tried so much
and failed to change the inside
storms.  Better still,
I think, to say: 

Good world,
I will today let you be good
and not malign or slander you
if I cannot stop the storm
from seizing me; I will not
forget the difference
between what I am
and where I am.

the cat is again
in horse mode,
rearing up on two legs
and prancing the house
as if it were
her paddock…

perhaps she is 
a horse reborn?

I don’t care about
orthodox ladders of rebirth.
it is not a question of learning a dogma.
I am just idly asking:
if this is a sign of reincarnation,
is horse to cat
a step up or
a step back? 

I seek to understand my role
in her karmic cart wheeling.
I seek to know hers in mine.  

if she has
nine lives do they all
return at once?

that would explain a few things —
how it seems there always are
a lot of souls in her
asking for food.
a lot of souls in her
pushing hard enough 
on my old legs
to often make me
almost fall.

she is crashing about the place again.
she’s no saddle broken nag, 
this one.  

whatever the reason she’s here,
whatever the lesson she needs,
it’s one not to be learned through
obedience, lap sitting, purring.

neither, perhaps, is mine.

There’s not enough time —
we have to start now —
everyone, quick — 

each of us
has got to find common ground
at once with a fish — AT ONCE! and

it won’t be enough to say
“I have affinity with all living things” —
I’d call bullshit on that if it didn’t insult the bull —

one fish, two fish, redfish, bluefish: pick
a single fin-buddy and get cracking — learning
language, meeting the family —

it’s not been enough — the abstraction, the symbolism —
it’s not been enough — the fact of extinction and the stink
of oil balls in the sand — maybe

if we actually thought of
a few of these guys as neighbors
and friends it might be different —

not just for breakfast anymore — now
a tornado goes through their school
everyday — we eat the holocaust — soon

perhaps we’ll be the survivors
or the remnants and we’ll need
our friends — all the potential friends

we’ve been killing — dunno; maybe
it’s grasping at straws full of death
but we have to start somewhere and soon —

If I could be the 1990s,
I’d be
the O. J. Simpson trial.

You would go through me
certain
of certain things.

I would put on
airs and gloves
demonstrating that nothing fits.

Someone would notice
that the narrative
fails at key points,

and someone
would raise a fatal,
reasonable doubt…

then all hell would break loose
and you’d swear never to forgive me
for raising your prurient hopes. 

If I were the 1990s,
if I were the Simpson trial,
would you revisit me now?

Would you whisper 
“maybe I got it wrong?”
when you saw me again?

Would you take
all the factors into account
and reassess and realign?

If I were the 1990s
would you be willing 
to relive me

even if you could never be sure
that I was not the dark stain
you have always thought me to be?

hey Brown
yer dying here
of weight
and waiting
of fat and facts

hey you
no shit 
I’m dying here cuz
education and art demand
sacrifices — I give you me

Nothing on my mind tonght
except my delicious engagement
with the world and the taste of it
that is not at all ashes on my lips.
The breath of it, tornadic
or whisper-easy.  How like
the first post-virginal ecstatic sleep
each night might feel, and how like
the morning a death sentence is stayed
each awakening might feel.
If only I can remain forever ready to receive
and then either decode, or allow for, a mystery.

Ask the question “what do you want
from life?” often enough and the answer
becomes an obvious, delighted hysteria
that anyone could feel a need to ask.
Of course, what I want from life
is to be alive until it’s more right
that I be dead, at which point
I will be dead.  That’s not tragic at all;
that’s just good planning on the part
of the universe — sensible rotation,
making room.

So then: deep into the delicious,
another long night of pain translated
into driven, careful craft and effort.
Right now, I could make love
or war or art or create
great silliness to mask profundity,
might even be (best of all)
profound
and dead serious, or (best of all)
might end up laughing
with comrades on my arms — or (best of all)
fall back asleep and exhausted
after accomplishing nothing of value
but a good attempt
with nothing except
the taste
of that delicious engagement
to share with the world.

There is only one correct response
to the demand, “Tell me a story,”

and it should begin with the words,
“Once upon a time.”

So: 
tell me a story.

~~

I am waiting.  I know
this pause will not last.  Think, recall, feel

how you left home or first fell 
into a lover’s eyes;

how you first came
to know fear, ecstatic trembling, rain.

It’s there.  Even if it’s familiar
to all, it’s what is asked of you.

~~

“Once upon a time…” Why only once?
Explain just that and it will do. For now.

A story remains the sweetest way 
to go from here to there.

“Once upon a time…” Begin, and the end will appear.
Launch or tumble, the end will appear.

“Tell me a story.”  You’re sitting
and nothing comes to you?  What — are you a log?

Even a log has cuts and splits.
Even a log has rings and burls. 

“Tell me a story.”  You’re sitting
as if a sword was about to be pulled from a stone.

Yes, that’s momentous, but you could speak of the grip.
You could tell us what the weather is like there.

~~

“Tell me a story.”  “Once upon a time.”
There to ensure we never stop talking.

Once upon a time there was an annoyance
only curable by the application of narratives.

If I tell you that story,
will you fall back to sleep until morning?

~~

Note, finally, that there has been
no mention of “ever after.”

This is because it’s of no importance
to the Journey.  You may disagree.

If you tell me a story and can prove me wrong,
I will love you ever after.

You will know
a million things
by the time you are
twelve, a million more
by eighteen, another
half million by thirty.

By the time
you are fifty,
you’ll have boiled that pile
of things you’ve known
down to near nothing
and kept from that only
a small heap.

Trust me on this:
what I have known
hasn’t helped much.
What I have felt
has mattered more:

that I am
mostly ego, sick ego,
one hardly ever fit enough
to call myself sane;

that I need to be alone
to feel complete,
but I do need One
to be close by.

Also:
when I speak like this of myself,
it’s called “art” by some
and “foolishness” by others.

You can hide
a lot of yourself
in either of those.

All the townsfolk here
look like words.  
On Sundays
in the park, it’s a novel;
late nights
bring out taut verses,
and at noon time
Main Street
is a run-on sentence.

My friend John
looks exactly like
the word
“egret” —

not like
the bird but like 
the name of the bird:
he’s short and similar
to “regret” but not quite
that, though

John often pouts that
he’d rather be “buffalo”
or “wolf.”  Even “python”
would be preferable, he says.

I say, ” Hey c’mon, John,
you’re elegant, a flyer,
a perfect and delightful cool startle
from the river’s edge
when we pass.”

“Easy for you to say,
‘ghost,’ ”
is his retort.
 
I fade before that.
Incorporeality
is no match in the moment
for a wounded
male ego, though I know
in the long run,
I will win.  Right now, though,
I’ll let the machismo slide.
We live in a dictionary,
we didn’t write the definitions,
and we’re each of us a little hot
under the syllable —
it’s not even clear to many of us
that we were born
to speak this tongue.

Two bald eagles
fell out of the sky
onto the runway in Duluth
and wouldn’t stop fighting
even then, so tangled
were their talons…

someone took a picture,
someone put it in the paper, 
someone put it on the Web,
someone made a
Congressional joke, and another
an Executive joke, and another made it
a metaphor for the state of the Union,
and another used it to speak of 
the follies of masculinity…

The eagles were taken away
in a pickup truck. On the way
to rehab one, apparently uninjured,
lifted off and flew away while the other
stayed behind and will be healed
and will be released again,
and no one has made that
into anything other than a wonderment
at what it must have been like 
to see that eagle rising from the bed 
of a pickup ahead of you
in traffic on the interstate…

somehow,
were I to choose bend
an eagle’s condition
to my own purposes,
I think 
that moment
would far outshine
anything I might feel
about them crashing,
angry, to the tarmac. 

““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““““`

— the eagles in question

Once upon a time
there was a basket

and there were
hats in the basket.
A blue cap, a black beret,
a red beret.  Tight fit,
three hats
in a basket.  

All day long
a man living in the apartment
where the basket also lived
changed hats:
blue cap for the world,
black beret for family,
red beret for his lover. 
It was tight, tight to
manage the time, the
elbow room, the sequence.
But he changed hats

all day long.  After dark
he sat on the fire escape
hatless, city wind
snaking through
the brick and mortar,
whipping past other bachelor nests
to end up in his hair, 
fingers tousling through
as if the wind were yet another lover
with a ingrained disdain for hats.

There was a basket full of hats,
a man who changed them
all day long, a wind longing
to become a thief, a vandal: blue cap
to be left on the waterfront.  Black beret
to be flung into an alley.  Red beret
to be hung on a fence out of reach.

Go away wind, said the man one day.
I love your fingers and the way you seem
to end up here instead of with other men
but more than that, I love my hats.
If ever I give them up,
it won’t be because
you’ve taken them from me.

Go away yourself, said the wind.
I love your hair a bit, but more than that
I love thinking of your hats disappearing,
escaping, ending up in disguises, 
in the trash,
anywhere but on your head.
I want you without a hat.
I will do hurricane things to make that happen.

Go away both of you,
said the basket.
Each of you 
is narrow and stubborn
and unchanging. 
My hats are the only thing
that makes either of you
interesting. All your talk
of some imaginary
bare-headed realness
is wasting my time,

and when you’re both quiet,
when it’s just me and the finally
unsymbolic hats in the dark,
that feels like the start 
of the happy part
of the ever after.