Your furniture’s breathing
has just pushed you awake
and all at once 
you find yourself sitting up in bed.

You tiny mouse, you;
it’s as if your pink nose
is sticking out from under a chair
while you try to decide if it’s safe
out here in the big, bad world.

Cowering at the sound
you realize that like so much else
it must always be going on

but is rarely noticed
until all other distractions
are put aside.  Then, it hits you:

what if
it’s all alive, even
the brick wall in the kitchen?  
What if
the moonlight has a feeling about you?
What if
the floors are fed up
with being untidy?  
Should you be worried
about the complaints
of the dust bunnies?  
Where exactly does one hide
if the world is all lung and 
sentience?

Go back to sleep, 
little mouse, at least for now;
you’re finally asking
the right questions,
and that is most of
the battle.

I’ve folded, unfolded,
refolded myself so often
that I’m starting to break
along stressed lines.

Look closely,
I’m now less single page
and more stack of fragments.
I don’t blame the world for that.

I tried to fit everywhere. The result:
I am a bit of frayed news.  A story
forced into a pocket, into different pockets,
too many times.

I never quite learned
that in order to be read
and truly understood,
I had to stay open.

I should have spread myself early
and then stayed spread
and available to others who might have wished
to add their lines to mine.

Now, though?  Here I am, a wad
in a pocket.  A mess held close
out of habit, something that really
ought to be thrown away.

Start critical projects,
at least ones critical to others —
don’t let anyone down, ever;

set appointments
far out, far in advance, kill to keep them —
don’t let anyone down
ever;

promise people you’re fine, don’t
let anyone down ever;

keep your misgivings within
and don’t let anyone know, or let anyone down
ever;

agree to dates and marriages and children
and don’t let anyone down ever, especially not 
a partner or spouse or child, and your parents
should be on that special list too;

accept everything
people want for you — you wouldn’t want to let them 
down, of course;

get one of those jobs where you can’t
let anyone down; 

find a decent enough God to believe in
and never let that God down, ever, that’s the worst
thing you can do, letting God down;

butterfly walk
and panther dance
and smile smile smile
in the mirrored windows of the downtown stores
as you walk by in just-right-clothes and shoes
and tight strides
and never let your hands fly up awkwardly —
don’t let the passers-by down,
don’t shake them up
with a failure out there;
it’s one thing to do it
at home alone early AM
if no one can see you
in a private, dimlit space, or perhaps
in the same space at midday
in sunshine kept thin by old blinds,
failing alone with no one to see,

but letting everyone down in public even if only
in the company of one or two?  Never.  Ever.
Don’t do that.  

Go now.
You’ll survive a pretty long time like this.
It won’t be forever.

Don’t worry.
It won’t be forever. 

Today,
in and out,
around and around — chasing
the American chase.  Chasing
The Story Of
Us.  

Listening to
how we are, how we
got here, how we
got to
today.  

Learning from this
why I put my teeth
together
and hum/holler
scream/grind
every time
We congratulate Us on
doing good,
even when I know it’s good 
being done:

it’s because I know
there’s always a catch
and a pool of blood
somewhere
that no one ever
cleans up.

On a physical search for God or angel
or Satan or devil or some other entity
good or bad or indifferent to us.  

Looking
for transcendence
in an abandoned liquor store
behind the wasp-ruled chest cooler.  

Sitting
behind it, not caring for stings one bit, sucking
a pipe full of our last kind bud.  

Searching for God or angel
devil Satan Green Man
or just Not-A-Narc today, someone
just as smooth stony as the pipeful.  

Seek
and ye shall find — was that the Bible or was that
our school librarian who said that?

Spark it up, at any rate.
Looking for something deep,
for certain, in these ruins.

If the TV alien hunters are remotely
not crazy or greedhead hucksters
when they do the same
among mounds and pyramids,

who would say there might not be
extraordinary beings
here in Sully’s Wreck And Carry.  

Maybe the wasps are little
demigods.  

Maybe there’s a snake in the cracked walk-in,
the way there was in Eden, the way there was in the vacant house
on Gutter Road, the way there was

when sex was the way we were seeking the Beyond
before we got this weed.  

Maybe we ought to try that again.  Fuck our way
past the wasps and the crap on the floor
because God’s a squatter too, I bet.

I bet God and the Devil prefer ruins to churches
and sticky floors to clean holy beds.

I’m telling you, God’s got a pipe in his mouth, baby;
whatchoo got for mine so we can pray?

These days I live among pretty children
who own a small part of the world
and confidently call it Universe.

I was a happy chef here once. Now I mostly cook
small bowls of rice for myself and a few people
in Universe who like my rice, or say they do.

I’m still happy. I have always made
good, good rice but the pretty children
call me out looking for my former meals.  

Where are all the old flavors,
they say?  Why
just the rice?  We like the rice

but we like other things and you
ought to make those things.  Failure, has been —
what kind of cook are you?

Pretty children of the Universe,
I’m a man who likes his rice —
sometimes with olive oil, sometimes

with chili paste, sometimes 
with butter and cheese,
or with beans and a lot of spice.

Maybe it’s not as 
banquet worthy as you might like, but 
it satisfies, it sustains, it pleases

those who like things kept simple,
aromatic, focused,
thick with life and taste. 

I’m going to have a bowl now
and I’m going to think about you
missing out.  I’m going to remember

how you used
to come running
for the fancy stuff.

I’m going to make extra rice
tonight, pretty children, rulers
of the Universe — do you want to share?

If you don’t, no matter.
It’s a big world out there.  Bigger
than your Universe, and always hungry.

I’m eating a bowl of good cereal
in the kitchen of a house with a model
of Stonehenge on the coffee table
in the living room.

In the back bedroom,
a tired but tender woman feeds a fawn
whose mother was killed by an 18-wheeler
this morning before dawn.

Outside and for miles around
the frozen ground assumes the role
of moat for this sanctuary.  Inside,
the air feels old, and careful.

If any were to appear here now
from Stonehenge’s stock, I think
they would recognize this light
as something they’d once seen through the pillars.

TO BUY:

noose
gun + bullet(s)
pills/booze
knife
razor blade
plastic bag + duct tape
hose for exhaust  (too complicated/no garage)

don’t get worried
not doing anything dumb
just wanna arrange them all
in a semicircle
stand in the middle of it
point a finger at them
each of them for a long time
and laugh the whole time
and laugh 
and laugh
and laugh
and 
that’s how I walk
the edge 

This planet of ours
rolls so consistently
through its appointed rounds
we can easily forget
it is not itself
immortal
but will have an end date
long after our own.

When we realize
how little will likely be left
to remember us
on that day
we set upon it
tooth and nail, desperate
to make a permanent mark
of some sort.

Heh,
and really,
and oh please,
the earth responds.

By the time I’m old enough
to welcome my end
I will have smoothed you 
forever away.

Actual question from a test designed to assess creativity:  “Just suppose we had the power to transport ourselves anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye.  What would some benefits, problems, etc. of this power be?  You have three minutes to answer.”

first,

I would move
six inches away from here
and rewrite all my poems
as if I had always been
six inches away from here.

next,

I would move back to where I had been
and rewrite them again.
but they’d be so unlike
the originals
that it would be like starting over.

they’d likely all become haiku
and again I’d move
six inches away
to see how they looked after all that.

I’d think I’d end up
just moving swiftly
around the house.  desk to bed
to kitchen to shitter
to shower to desk to bed.
in every spare minute
I’d  be rewriting poems.

I think I’d end up crying a lot,
flashing to the bathroom for tissue
to weep into, then back to the desk.

I might burn the damn poems
then go buy some expensive paper in venice
and write them all again
even shorter.
one word
per pricey page.

six inches away from the desk.
back at the desk.
six inches away from the desk.
back at the desk.

not really sure how different it would be.

________________

note:  poem originally posted in July of 2010.  heavily revised here. 

once upon a time

there lived a great brooding rock of a man
who cracked when he rolled down a slope
to reach the valley of water below his desert origin 

there lived a horseboy named skull
who drank and leaked through his open bones
all the way round his course

there lived a sheepgirl on fire
grateful to be warm
even as she bubbled and screamed 

we felt better about ourselves
because they were self-sacrificial
or something mythical like that

we asked them carefully
if they understood the words
happily ever after

that’s the wrong language for me
each of them said in turn
they all lived a bit more then hollered and died

we use stories about them
to be happy
now and then and ever after

too much respect
for inside voice 
in places where
the outside voice
should be required
too much tolerance
of outside voice 
where inside voice
would work better

the swollen tissue
we call
money

entirely too much
unearned
self-esteem

the inability to see
complexity
patiently

the notion that 
any “_____ism”
isn’t holding steady

a lack of real eagles
married to 
a preference for symbolic ones

armored intensities
squared off

an insistence upon
picture perfection

laughter wrung
from the deadly misfortune
of others being other

its standing in red-soaked earth
kept wet through clumsy inattention
and skillful market research

its clowned remarkability
and
its durable packaging

the red hot dash down the library steps

the furtive skirting of the street —
back driveways
alleys
the railroad tracks

the slipping into the woods
the meeting by the old foundation
the mossbed

the shirt lifted over her head and put aside
the mutual enveloping
the mutual shedding of all else

the moment
and then the moment
after the moment

the wondering if and when 
the moment will come again

and then the last moment 
weeks later —

what’s next

except the start of
the repetiton of this sequence
more public and more cynical
for years to come

until the moment itself

is corrupted as a source
of pure hope and joy — 

so then in monogamy we say
what’s next
and in polyamory we say
what’s next
and in celibacy we say
what’s next

missing the newness and raw fear
that lived in the center of joy
that drove us to bed down on moss
under the afternoon sun
after school
praying for no one to see