in the hospital by the slow drip
flooding her with various
psychotropic and medicinal fluids
that keep her
silent

by the arguments
of those he respects so much
that even when he thinks they are
dangerously wrong he
remains mute

by himself
distributing his anxieties
throughout his opinions
until they are so soggy with his doubt
that they choke

Suppression is everywhere
and it needs no jackboots
to spread
It can come softly or even 
sprout and cover us from within

Do the work.
Put in
time and discretion. 

Keep things simple,
but do not be afraid
to complicate things

if complication
is demanded;
create no less

or more
than is necessary.
Hold the work up

as a form of prayer
and if you have no God,
make the work a message

to the future — here’s
what I was, how
I saw things, maybe

it will help you. 
Or maybe you don’t
want to know?  Then

do with it what you will.
Let it wash over you
that all your making

may end up in a trashcan
some day.  Do your work
without regard for the result.  

Maybe you’re ready now;
maybe not.  Either way, snap to it.
It’s afoot, this game, this making.

Allow yourself to sink into it
and let go a bit, working with it.
It’s not up to you anymore. 

consider all of the people
currently in coffee shops
staring at white screens
waiting for their browsers to engage

as if those screens were horizons
concealed by fog
that will soon blow away
revealing adventures and destiny

ever notice how few of the people
staring at screens in coffee shops
ever look like they’ve found
their destiny

right now I am staring at a coffee shop
full of such seekers
and filling a white screen 
with my thoughts about them

I know I am thus
fulfilling my destiny though
I suspect I do not appear ecstatic
to anyone watching me

everyone quick — stare at others 
staring at others
try to discern their happiness
judge them if you don’t see it

and thus fulfill
at least a piece of your destiny
by assuming your perceptions
are an absolute truth

If only new people 
would stop being born
I could truly
abandon all hope,

but there they are —
everywhere I look,  
bomblets of possibility.
It seems a form of evil

to despair in their presence.
Damn their soft heads,
damn the time stretched out
before them, time I used to have.

Babies are contradiction
and affirmation at the same time.
If they’d stop being born, 
I could finally settle for darkness. 

Where’s the cat?
In the closet, plotting.

Her food, untouched. 
Her toys, chewed and discarded.
If a mouse walked by
drenched in tuna sauce,
she’d ignore it.   

I’m going to walk by the closet door
in seven minutes on my way to bed
and she’s going to charge and paw
my right foot, then stand there
looking up at me as if to say,

“yo, bright boy,
figure out why I did it.” 

I will sit with it
and sit with it.

I will sit with it
and sit with it.

I will sit with it
and sit with it

because I’m a bright boy
and I can’t help but wonder
about something as petty
as the cat
attacking my foot.

I don’t have any
unanalyzed fun, 
so why
would she?

Poems, poets, poetry!
I’m calling you out.
We’ve got a whole skeleton to pick.

Sick of your lessons and morals,
your loud slogans
about changing the world.

All I want from a poem now
is a shy approach; let it tug
on my hem.

All I want from poets is for them
to let their poems off the leash
and let them go where they want —

not every dog needs to hunt or herd.
All I want from poetry —
to feel against my hand

the nuzzling of an absolute,
necessary companion
who neither barks nor whimpers

but who would save my life
without question if I was drowning,
burning, falling, gone.

I thank whatever is wrong with me
for teaching me how to take
whatever goes right for me.

When I tunnel
the darkness
it heightens the light,

and I mourn so routinely
I explode with joy
at any unexpected grace.

I know how I appear to some,
how clumsy my stumbling life 
must seem to some;  laugh or rage

as you wish at that, as you see fit.
But all that poison you wouldn’t imbibe
I’ve drained and gulped,

and I dare say that because of that,
when the agony lifts now and again
I roar and grin and grin and win

where you might only smile.
I thank whatever’s wrong with me
for how I praise whatever goes right.

What have we ever needed weapons for?
Are we not dangers?  Are we not risks?

When we hear children laugh as they rape —
what have we ever needed weapons for?

Are we not dangers? Are we not risks?
When we weep at some of our murders, proclaim others —

are we not dangers? Are we not risks?
When we allow every flame its right to char and grill —

what have we ever needed weapons for?
When we creep for fun and shoot for bloodsport,

are we not dangers, are we not risks?
Once we admit we are weapons, massed for destruction,

what need will there be for weapons at all? May we just bow and end it there?
May we surrender our natures without danger, and thus end all risk?

what I would not give 
for some Provolone right now

smoky or not
sharp or mild

the only flavors that can take me
either to my grandmother’s Boston kitchen

or to a seat at a table
outdoors in Castello, in Venezia

depending on whether
I am feeling

wild or tamed 
when I crave it

depending whether 
I am yearning to be

wild or 
tamed

Let us start by saying
that it may not be true

that a famous poet
once committed
psychological torture
upon a graduate student
in order to observe her behavior
and derive content
for a book of poems;

and it may not be true
that he was not alone in his effort,
having enlisted other graduate students
to assist him and observe and report
on their comrade.

But it is is true
that as an undergrad
I once sat in a dorm room
hearing this story
from the woman who had been abused
or claimed to have been abused,
and I believed it,

and in outrage
I told this story
to many people
for many years
as if it were certainly true.

At first, I named names.

When the book in question
was published
to no acclaim
and general bewilderment
(what had
happened? where
had the famous poet’s talent gone?)

I kept telling the story.

The famous poet
later redeemed himself
with better books,
and I began to choose my listeners
and hedge the details
and withhold names,
and soon I stopped telling the story altogether.

What I tell you now is also true:

I have read the work of the famous poet
and wondered,
and thought about it,
and looked for clues,
and I have written a lot of my own poems since then
and wondered, and looked for clues,
and thought about truth
and redemption through poems.

Nothing disguises the facts:
I am no famous poet.
I believe in poetry,
I believe in fame, and am often
amazed and ashamed of what poets will do
in the pursuit of of both —

I wrote
this.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations

The last note?
Still ringing.  The last voice?
Still singing.  It’s likely
the last time
we will all be here together,
and somehow,
no matter how we try,
the moment will not
end, dammit…

But it’s so pretty,
so perfect, so exactly
what we want,

someone says,  

why shouldn’t it
go on as long
as it can?

Because
for a thing
to be complete
and perfect
it ought to have 
a beginning, 
a middle,
an end.  When 
it will not end
beauty cloys
and perfection
rusts and
exactly what we want
ends up being
what we most yearn
to change.

I like it, sort of.
It’s a way of owning
your space, crowding it
with things. A way of
embracing chaos, depending on
how much order you impose
upon it.  

Comes a day, though,
when a pile of papers
avalanches or a stack
of random items
built by convenience
collapses to the floor,
perhaps pushed by
a frustrated cat.

I like it, sort of;
it replicates untidiness
I see outside, makes it easier
to pretend that I am 
OK like this, to pretend I am
living in the wild
by living like this.  

From the place I buried it, uncovered now but still a deep hole,
I shall pull up the cocaine and the late night breakfasts
that never stayed with me for longer than it took
to get in the car and get moving, drunk and wired,
toward whatever couch was that morning’s home;

pull up the little empty gun I got in trade
for all that acid, pull up the skinny tie
and the hospital scrubs, the songs I wrote
when bored, my awful awesome poetry I believed in
so hard I sprained my ego on it, even when there was

no evidence for its quality, no reason for it to exist at all.
Pull up the arrogant, the know it all, the callous junior playboy
up to screw whoever was up for it, and pull up as well
any scrap any of those partners left behind, that I might kiss
those remnants and recall a time when I was at least superficially

loveable. What’s left in there when all that’s come up to the light?
A boy, still a skinny boy though tending toward heft.  A stupid young man
with a bad car and a jammed tapedeck and damaged visions
of a swift escape from this earth.  A boiled, burned, wasted chump
of the suburbs…I pull them up, pull it all up, the way you’d yank a weed

that won’t die, frantically hoping I’ve got it all this time:
every bit of what keeps sprouting in my life
when I least desire it, now that it’s inconvenient
and no one thinks it’s cute or charming
or melancholy-artist-appropriate anymore.

I want it poisoned.  I want it gone.
I will pull it up and burn it all from the leftovers
to the memories to the new shoots that tell it all —
that what I was is what I am,
that no matter how I pull, I fail.

I don’t know if I can say this with full certainty
but I believe there are crows taking cautious steps
across my rear threshhold into my house.

I could get up and look, of course,
but then they might step back just as cautiously
upon hearing me stir, and then I’d be forever unsure.

If they are there, there are certainly three of them.
If they are there, they are surely bright eyed
and have a specific mission to accomplish.

No one knows who sends crows on their missions
or why they enter houses silently on foot.
Few notice they’ve been there

except when a shiny
thing, a needed thing, a thing
worth living for has disappeared.

Even then, few blame the crows —
put it down as being the fruit of a bad memory
or just the way things go — but eventually,

after it’s happened more than once,
after we’ve awakened more than once
to their talons on the linoleum,

we understand
that it’s crows
that take such things away.

When we see them on the street
we try to stare them down and see
if they’ll admit to the thefts.

Have you ever looked into their eyes?
You know how hard it is to see past that blackness.
But facing them down is our job and worth doing;

that’s how we win, how we learn
that what we thought was stolen
was taken as a down payment

for a journey we had forgotten
we had booked.  And then, gently,
they lift us, and we fly.

So I’ll sit here and listen.  There’s a step now.
And another, or is there? I’m staying put.
That seems,  for now, to be the best strategy.