You are composed
of how many stories?

If your answer is six or more,
I despair for you.

If your answer is three to six,
I worry for you.

If you say two,
I will remember you.

If you say one,
I will embrace you.

If you say you do not know,
if you say you are made of none,

I will tell you: you are One.
I will turn you to your First Blank Page

and say, write it here.
Somehow tell that One

as soon as you can,
as clearly as you can,

something depends on it,
something close and dark and dear.

Once in a while 
I have blood in my mouth
upon awakening.
It’s good for you, I tell myself.
Full of iron.  

And once in a while
I have a blocked right ear upon
awakening.  It’s good for you,
I tell myself, it’s telling you
to focus more on what your heart
has to say.  

Now and then
the left side of my left foot 
has no feeling.  Now and then
I have a long lasting pain
across my upper lungs.  Now and then
I roll out of bed in the middle of the night
four or five times to piss; it’s not even an event 
worht noting anymore.

It’s good for you, good for you, good for you,
I tell myself,  it means your body is getting too old
to fuss over and fix.  Pretty soon you’ll be Pure Mind
and ready to let go.  Think of these disturbances
as the clarions
of a new path.  

Now and then, I ask myself
who I’m talking to.
It’s good for you, I respond,
not to be completely sure
of the sources the little voices call upon. 
Not to know what’s a truth and what’s a 
delusion.  Which pains are killing pains
and which are the clarions of a new path
or how many are both.  

I tell myself
relax, it’s natural;

it’s all good for you,
it’s all good.

Inside, something shouts
Awake!  
You rise,

run to the bathroom
without stepping on the cat.
Then, feed the cat.  Then back to bed.

Good job brain and all
associated organs!  But let’s be
honest:  how lovely

was that sudden moment of first waking
where you didn’t know your own name
or recall your own limits?  Where

instead of peeing and serving
you might have flown, or vanished —
but then you knew who you were

and what was expected of you
and you did just fine.  You got
shit done.  Good job, brain.

In last night’s
only remembered dream
my left foot was nailed to the driveway. 

There was curiously no pain or blood
and this morning all I notice is a residual numbness
in the little and next-to-little toes.  That’s all —

that, and a despair that comes
from walking in a small circle
for long cold hours in the dark.

If other things happened,
if I had better dreams, 
of them I am unaware;

every time I am in this dream 
I go around myself all day afterward
trying to understand it.

I.
Stop his body
in mid leap.
Hang it
where it can be seen.

Let a thousand doctors poke it,
let ten thousand vials be filled from it,
let one hundred thousand opinions be offered about it.

Leave him hanging a long, long time.
Pick low hanging fruit and pelt him with it,
laugh at him, censure him, 
explain him in front of strangers
with terms like oncology and prognosis.
Neither should sound good.  Make references 
to habits and lifestyle and such
as if he was the font of all
and suggest kids might need to speak to him
as a cautionary tale.

II.
You’re gone almost, and thank God
for that — I ask if you need anything,
you ask for it, you ask for me
to cut you down and clean you up —

I wish I had the arms to do this.
I suppose I could try.  
I’m not keen on leaving you up there
like some pinata
when God is roaming the streets.

III.
If anyone asks, 
I was in another dimension
all night.

Once a rich man now not so much.
He fell over his own feet into a rock.
Can’t get out.  Can’t even see how.

How did he fall into the rock, you say?
He lost his money and so was made porous
to tragedy.  

He fell onto the rock assuming
it would pass through
and instead he was absorbed.

So now he’s a poor man in a rock.  He’s not alone
in there and he feels a little trapped
but he’s making do until he dies which he has determined

will be his only way out.  But he’s OK with that.
He won’t be rich but he’s OK with that now too
now that the granite walls are feeling more homey. 

He’s glad he’s not alone mostly.  He remembers
being rich.  It was good but there were horrors too
based on the money being such a big armor and cushion

that he felt under attack all the time.  No more.  He’s in the rock
because of how soft and transparent the money had made him.
He thinks he’s more rock himself now.

Better this way around than the other
way around.  He might have become a jerk
if he’d come into the money late.  

Better to have entered the rock
poor and soft at his age  
so being with these people became a community.

You say he might be a jerk now because of his memory
of being rich and having a certain power.  Maybe.
But would he have these friends and family now?

He thinks sometimes he’d like to be rich again
but when he thinks of how soft and invisible he once was 
to others, he smacks his hand in joy upon his wall.

It’s broken;
I only do it in shards,
leave them on the pillow
repeatedly.  I get up
and do other, cannot
do it, not often, not for long,

and I miss it.  Miss its long form.
Miss oblivion, miss utter blankness —
miss upon waking
the recollection of how
upon its beginning
the dimming blue
deepened into…

how the blue deepens into nothing;
too often now I’m left
trying to recall that.

What’s that on my tongue,
what’s that on my fingers?
What can’t I feel?  
What am I missing?

Soon enough, I fear,
I will abandon sleep altogether;

when I do,
I shall miss this life.

The biggest question
for many of my friends
as they slice and dice
and chat and scat
and tweet and skeet
the news from war zones
round the world
under all their other questions
is

who are you rooting for

I’m sure they would
deny that
claiming instead
to hate all war
and wishing it was
all gone away
but
I have to ask

who are you rooting for

I think what they truly want
is for the prettier flag bar graph or table to win
the only war they actually care about
being the war to shut adversaries up
through superior use of graphics
invocation of Godwin’s Law
well turned meme
well framed news story comment

who are you rooting for
 
Buddy
you are rooting of course for yourself
You’ll be sad when that other war is over because
it’s a messy one indeed that never seems nailed down

and without an accurate body count at the end
your charts will suffer 

It’s a ten showers day
though you are not visibly
more unclean
today;  some days
you take ten showers,
though ten showers
are not enough on those days
when you cannot forget
you were born
into your family,
and your family was
a stewpot of blood.

Take a hundred showers, take a thousand,
spend all day under the stream
or in the steam, it won’t be enough.
Even when you sleep you sleep dirty
remembering the reddened people,
their hands upon you, sick satisfaction
and ogrish comfort you took there
in the midst of soil and stink.  

No,
neither ten
nor one hundred
nor ten thousand
showers shall be enough.

Better off, now, to do one of two things:
drown yourself
getting fantastically
and falsely clean,

or move on.  Admit
to the blood in your teeth and
the clots under your nails.
Admit that it feels good
to have survived.   You must have done it right
and there’s no need
to hide it and never go back
to the stewpot again,

no matter how strongly the blood-stink pulls you
because it is bitter and iron-rich
and smells unforgettably like home. 

I do not know what or where paradise is.
I just know I’ve always sought it
and it’s never been where I thought
it was going to be when I settled
here, there, everywhere. 

If I were there, I’d certainly stay there.
Rain, fire, earthquake, war.
I would own or rent or squat,
be loose and unhoused on the streets,
I would never leave.

Unless of course the place itself
shook me off like a flea from its coat…
I’d find another paradise then, or something 
close to it.  Declare it the same, name it
New Paradise.  Lie to myself

that I was ever certain of just what it was
until I’d found and lost it.  Every quest
requires a rediscovery; you’ve got to lose one
to win one, etc.  I’ve never known paradise
but I’m sure that this is how it is.