I am afraid to consume any food
for fear of offending someone.
I am afraid to join any organization
for fear of offending someone.
I am afraid of agreeing with anything
in case I must someday disagree with its corollary.
I am afraid of my face for not being
the face of utter kindness all the time.
I am afraid to support any cause
for fear that it doesn’t go far enough,
unless it goes too far.

I am afraid to admit to being in love
in case it is an outmoded love.
In fact to love at all seems pointless, as I can never
love broadly enough.  All or nothing, they say,
all or nothing — adore afar as you adore nearby
or it’s the same as letting those afar die,
you killer, you monster, you drone.

While I was out
they slew all the bees.
While I was out
I should have stopped the slaughter.

He’s one bad President, or maybe two.
He’s my fault, I should have voted for…
but I didn’t vote for…I voted for…
not that it mattered, not that voting matters,
what a damn fool for voting, say some,
what a damn fool for disarming, say others,
what a damn fool for being in that skin

and while
we are at it,
what a criminal fatness is mine, right?
Right back to the food.  It all comes back to the food
I should eat or not eat
and the votes I make by eating or not eating…

no wonder then why
I raise my hands to my ears
and, still chewing,
turn my partnered, comfortable back
on the world.

Inside the old seer,
landscapes. Still life upon
still life.  Portraits,
abstractions, sketches,
doodles that once
meant something.

Impoverished, malnourished, ravaged;
he lies on a twin bed
in the attic of his sister’s house,
the last place he is allowed,
the last place he has permission to be.

Everything inside him
thrums like a factory.
What’s being made here? Will it be
like the rest of his life, something
only others can use?  For him

“future” has always been just a banner
hung to let them know
where to find him, and
it’s also the last place
anyone will ever look for him.

A heart like a trout
Cold and simple
Efficient

Only ever move forward
Might turn around
and re-cover old ground
but only by moving
a sort of forward
Backtracking but
Never backing up

Never getting caught

The moment 
that freezes the room
is the moment of choice.

The moment
when the weapon appears
is the whole point of having
the weapon at all.  

The moment
of using the weapon
is beside the point.

It’s the slowness, the enveloping
freezing of the moment
when the weapon is produced, as it
is seen, reacted to, feared —

as if the moment
was all there was,
no one moving before or since. 

You say that’s a fantasy,
the frozen moment, the no-blood
coolness ot the scene.
You say it’s not like that.

You say in fact that
that it sounds like too 
many movies, that it only
happens that way in a movie. 

Exactly —
at that moment,
the weapon makes a movie

and the hand
on the weapon
is the hand of a star.  

Radio man
is saying he grew up
in Brooklyn, son of
Holocaust survivors;

brought up to fear
a second Holocaust,
he and his sister played a game called
“who will hide you?”

Talking about it, laughing
a little, laughing just a little
but insisting to the interviewer
it was deadly serious.

Sitting at the railroad crossing
listening to him,  
I look up
at the train and see

real swastikas 
sprayed on
real brown cars
in white, in silver. 

Hadn’t ever thought about this —
I would hide you.  I do not know
how long I’d be able to keep you secret,
but — yes.  I would.

This sky I think
is slowly getting
brighter

Most people think that means
it’s slowly getting better

How they long to break the night
Disrespect it from its fall
to its retirement at dawn

Crack it open
with lamps
Turn it away
and into day

Well

not for me
the day
but also not for me
the full blanket of dark

Fall with me into the in between
and you shall know so much
of both night and day

you shall never choose one over the other again

on a train
through the snow
in the dark

through the snow
on a train
in the dark

in the dark
through the snow
on a train

which is it
does it matter
who chooses

the dark
the snow
the train

I’ve begun to speculate
on how I will react
to the news
of your passing;

will I, as is customary
for my age and gender and tribe,
stoically free but a single tear after
a deep longing sigh? No —

I think, instead,
the air will fill with stones
so that breathing and bruising
become the same thing;

I think, instead,
that stones will cover my path
and I will stumble for miles
no matter which direction I choose;

I think, instead,
that my eyes will become stones 
and I will not see anything I fall upon,
will never know everything that has broken me.

when orchids
grow wild
among forgotten land mines

when children sing of enemy mutilation
as sweet stuffed bears sit
on their neat beds

when nice ladies at the restaurant
whisper stinkhearted
about those people at the next table

when at least one of those nice ladies
owns a pink revolver and dreams now and then
of a home invasion that will give her an excuse

when that lovely blue sea
hides brown sea bed and red blood
hides terminally blue whales

when outrage easily tagged for sale
is easily diverted and easily unfocused
till it’s time to put us to bed

we are trained for contradiction
for losing the last truth in the next lie
how are we still surprised

when wherever we go
evil perches bloodied and unruffled 
upon the left hand of good

I built the Pyramids 
from the thick skin of my dead parents

carved into stones of great size
which I broke myself lifting 

then outgrew my
sexy eyebrows

and gave up alternate
mushrooms

I gave you this screed
instead of my open arms

sold off our entire
collection of hope

stopped sneering
for Lent 

bargained away
all our divinity remnants

for mumbled
and cheap prayers

to address the masses
when I should have been sleeping

and now butchered
and open

what is left but the meat
and essence of my faith

My arm, darker
than the tip of the candle,
cooling like the dead wick.
I was meant to give light —
but see the curl of last smoke
from the end?  Call that
the last will, or the last
bit of my will, at least
for the moment. It tells you
what I want done with me
now:  I want to rise away.

My arm, stark little twig black
against the garish night,
holding nothing, pointing.
See that distance it indicates?
I’ll never get close to the end
of the ourney. Call me the forever
step-aside on the path.  My arm
tells the story: over there’s where
I’m going, I need to go,
but I’ve been standing here 
for a very long time now.

Do this long enough…right,
it’s never long enough.  Never
the grip needed, never a long enough
fire.  Always the knowledge
of the destination ahead; never
the attainment of such a thing.
So perhaps I am meant to be
the One Who Does Not Arrive.
The one who tells his story
to the traveler who has made it 
this far.  The old one 
without so much
as a dead symbolic bird
to fall back on
as his arm drops,
at last, in surrender.