It’s easy to look back
and say life was rough,
and everything that happened
was like being dragged over
sandpaper. 

If I could
do it again,
I’d like to dive down
under the grit
and get to the backside
that’s always smooth.

Smooth —
that would have been
good enough.

Don’t tell me
it was better this way —
I’d gladly have settled
for less.

They say
every PT Cruiser’s
haunted by the ghost
of a car designer
who didn’t get credit for it
and died alone and drunk,
mangled in the wreckage of a Sebring.

They say
if you stare into the neck
of a bottle of Coke long enough,
you’ll see the spirits of glass makers
driven from their jobs by the advent of plastic
(they’re in the bubbles, silly).

They say if you spin a quarter
and can say the name “Alexander Hamilton”
ten times before it stops and falls,
the federal deficit will right itself.

It’s been said that the wind
off the east end of Long Island
carries the voices of waitstaff
who died longing to be swept off their feet
by Papa Legba or the shade
of Jay Gatsby’s doppelganger.

Electronic drums bear the weight of stars
who died in gas stations,
who failed to make hits, who cried foul
in trashed dressing rooms full of roaches.

They say things about you
and your family too:  how you were
the offspring of fabulous wealth
and were deposited with those cretins
after a coup in your home country.
If you sleep long enough
in the shadow of the flag,
you’ll be lost to your fortune forever

and left with only a vague longing
to read the signs of your squandered past
and discern the truth from little things:
the sneakers on phone lines, the symbols
on a shampoo bottle, the lyrics
of a hideous pop hit. 

They say the world’s a scary place
and every interaction’s got a whiff
of the Hoax of Hoaxes in it. 
They say a lot of things,
and all of them don’t need to be true
to fill you with a lust
for conspiracy.

Maze in the center.
No entrance visible
but the journey requires me
to seek it,
so I seek it.

I am circling,
looking for the gate,
listening for a creak,
feeling for chinks and seams.

Push hard, whisper
old spells, light fires,
burn herbs; nothing
is revealed.

Turn and look behind me
and there is the open gate
that has been outside of me
this whole time.

I walk through and there I am
now, inside the center, having no clue
as to the physics or geometry
involved.  But there is the first turn,
and I move deep into the labyrinth,
turn upon turn. 

A book on the ground
now: I turn to a passage:

“There is a road that is not
visible.  You walk it here on earth
not knowing all the dimensions
you pass through, and once at the end,
you will not have a way back.”

How familiar it is, this puzzle
now, the walls that hold my old photographs
and scribblings, my struggle
laid out before I arrived this time. 

At the center of the maze,
a stone.  A mouth in the stone
and a rose in the mouth in the stone.
A hawk above that will not light,
a wind blowing up out of the earth.

I have been inside and outside myself
and found past embedded in present and future,
and how will I get back now
that there is no difference?

I greet you
in the doorway
of the plain house
of your ancestors,

where you are standing
even though you’re not
yet born:  you pass through
the door and do not look back,

walk the yard ignoring the feel
of grass below your bare and tender feet,
you will not remember this later, you will be
surprised by it, the folding of it underfoot,

the soft staining of your heels and soles,
you will forget it and the house so warm
and comfortable, sparely furnished with only
necessities, you will clutter your own homes

with toys and gadgets and huge furniture, beds
the size of entire rooms, closets larger than the kitchen
and its smells, its deep banquets and crowded feasts,
you will forget this pyramid of family crowned with living

as well as possible in a hard world, you will forget it all
until a day comes when you seek out the source of the longing
you suddenly feel as you look around at the clogged rooms
of your own monster homes, your interconnected empty relations

with those a thousand miles away with whom you share
only one common interest, you will recall this when you can’t stand
the rage you feel at the empty lawn out front, the gray cars, the roads
lined with similar homes as full of inchoate anger and sadness and

unfamiliar faces, the ones you pass in the morning and at night
and do not acknowledge; that day you will begin to claim
a true life of your own.  I greet you coming out into the forgetting
that is the world.   Welcome: I greet you knowing that you will not remember me ever,

for I am the forgettable man who knows what will happen to you,
to whom it has already happened and who will watch
as you flail through, living toward a thing called contentment, a thing
I wasn’t made for because someone has to stand aside from it, greet you,

turn away shaking my head and thinking hard about how I was never able
to forget a thing and thus rediscover it.  I greet you knowing
how separate we always will be from one another.  Welcome to a world
denied to me, such an enviable place, such a good place to lose and recapture, to be in exile from.

Close your frightened eyes
if you’re on fire;
you’ll still burn
but you’ll be able to pretend
you’re not damaged
for a little while.

Close your burned eyes
if you are blind;
you’ll have
a moment of hope
that a miracle may happen
once you open them again.

Close your lying eyes
before you dig them out
with your bare hands
and imagine that they are gems
you did not expect to ever hold
in your ruined hands in this life;

then put them in your pockets
and pray they’ll be able to see
in that darkness you carry around
in there all the time,
in the emptiness once meant to hold
valuable things.

Stalled
motionless
in sudden awareness
of the dirty rug
and cat-furred blankets,

I turn down the music
and think:  what should I do
next?

A chore’s a way of arresting
entropy toward
an inescapable fate:
things will get dirty
with our traces and fragments.

What shall I do next?
Sit down and return to the work
of poetry?
Isn’t that just creating
more dirt, or at least
pushing the dirt that’s already there
into pleasing patterns?

What shall I do next?
Sit and think some more,
let the dirt pile up,
plan to mold it later
as if I were the successor
to Picasso, only to see the work
covered in another layer
of remains and leftovers?

What shall I do next?

The vacuum in the next room
is defense against the vacuum
in this one,

and that one
marvelously
turns on and off
with a switch.

Blurry Southern Rock night
at the town beach. 
Scent of weed
and sound of horseplay
out by the drainpipe.

Pit’s beating the crap out of Russell again,
Nancy and Linda are screaming,
and I can’t get the front seat of the Celica
back to an upright position
so I can get out of here. 

Sirens
coming closer, closer, then they fade
away.

“How come they turned off?”

Next day we hear that
while we were pissing our pants,
Wally was stabbing Marc two miles away
at the pits.  Argument over two rotten
little brothers and a botched B & E,
two older brothers
messing each other up over honor
and family, which little brother
ratted out the other —

and then Marc died and they caught Wally,
so that’s it.

“So that’s why they turned off.
They went down there.  Damn.
Lucky, huh? Sucks for Marc, though,
and Wally too…” 

Russell chops out a couple of lines for each of us,
and Pit’s the first to bend to the mirror.
“Here’s to Marc!” 

Friendship’s a great thing
at times like these.  We’re gonna go all night again,
play some cards,
boogie down as always to the Brothers
and pretend we’re outlaws,
forever outlaws.

In an instant from now
a woman will start to tell someone
her life story,
not starting at the beginning
but with a carefully chosen anecdote
she has used many times before
to set the stage for all her other stories
she has to tell
but which will have to wait
for another night.

In an instant from then
the person she has chosen to speak to
will tune out and focus on
something else, perhaps because
it is uncomfortable to sit and listen
to such things, perhaps because the story
is unbelievable, perhaps because
there is another person that makes more sense,
or because the tattoos on the teller are silly
and distracting, and the storytelling
will seem all for naught.

but in an instant from then
another person listening
as she tells the story to someone else
is going to realize how empty
this life has been
and make a silent promise
to begin to fill it
as soon as this is over.

Every instance,
a connection.  Every following instance,
a connection.  Every connection,
intended or unintended,

the destined connection.

When they come for you,
when they take you down
or in, put you in the cage
or on the ground, slap you
or tase you or gas you,
call you their names
and steal your own —

when the consequences
come down at last
it may not be comfortable
or sweet, it will not be easy,
but you must recall

that they are slaves
to something — fear or safety,
anguish or tradition,
a past or a promised future.

It will not be easy
but it is the only thing
that may save you
from doing the same to them
when the wheel finally turns.

Luck and love to those of us
who sweep the corners of our rooms
to catch the leavings and the discards
and make them into something new.

Love and luck to those who see
a moment as an eon in miniature
and then pull history from its passing
to capture what we all would otherwise forget.

Love and luck to those
swept up in words,
who know how difficult it may be
to step aside from the rushing day

and work to hold on to all that which happens
so swiftly that without love and luck
it would vanish unremarked: each morning’s small miracles,
each evening’s resignation to the fall of night.

Born already fucked
as if the poke and stroke
that begat him
had imprinted him

Born a lot of things already
Broken
and maybe evil
Perpetually behind the curve

Grown crooked
Cursed into a bad shape
His better angels locked down
Straining and failing to break out

And proud
So proud of his standing
That their straining was hidden in his ramrod posture
No sign of the struggle within

No one ever touched him
the way the angels could have
He didn’t care
and stood glowering at the doors of the church

Ready to walk in
But needing a moment to pose
before surrendering
to a knowledge

that even if this was not
to be his last stop
it was a step he needed to take
and evil-clothed as he was

he needed to take it dressed
as he had always dressed
Frightened and frightening as always
but mad proud that he had made it here

in spite of having been
born fucked
and perpetually
behind the curve

Let’s start this by saying
she’s cute in that
wow-before-all-the-alcohol-you-musta-been-something
kinda way.

She’s ranting at Mrs. Bell
who’s doing her
good-natured-suffering-because-this-one-is-going-to-buy-something-eventually bit
from behind the counter.

The Ghost Of Cutie Past is agitated,
proclaims
“I’m French, German, Indian, Irish and
Russian.  I rule this earth.
I need my vodka. I have a princess suit —
I’m sensitive!  I could be
on Oprah!  I mean, I need my vodka,
why would they do that to me?”

Mrs. Bell rolls her eyes in my direction.

All I want to do is pay my cable bill
so I can have uninterrupted access to the Internet
and all the good shows on TV,
but right now
I’m beginning to reconsider
what I call a need.

As I leave, Mrs. Bell is saying,

“I know you’re angry, honey,
but honestly, they’re a business,
what did you think they’d do?”

The answer’s lost behind me
as I walk out the door
to my car and head for home.

I’m not drunk or stoned,
not too cold,
was never pretty so I’ve lost no looks to age
and wear,
don’t have a princess suit though I bet
I could get one,
and this is one sensitive half-breed
who knows he’ll never rule the earth —
but I’ve been there, friends,
I’ve been where she was, and
I’ve been where Mrs. Bell was, too.
I’ve asked the same questions,
and given myself the same answer:

How could they do that to me?

Why won’t Oprah call me, or someone
who’ll let me talk it out
and make everything better?

What, exactly, did you expect them to do?

Maybe I should have stuck around
just a minute or two longer
and found out.
Maybe I should have handed over
one moment of sympathy for these neighbors
bound to the eternal questions —

but the TV’s waiting,
and there’s a whole world of unmet friends
waiting on this
critical message
I was born to share.

1.
In a world of six billion people,
your soul mate will be right next door.

2.
War, while horrible in the macro,
brings forth the most delicate emotions from men.

3.
The addict, finally aware of her problem,
will cry as she swallows the pills.

4.
Loved ones with cancer
ennoble all around them.

5.
Nature exists
as a foil for hubris.

6.
Things beyond this world
conform to strict rules.

7.
When love finds you,
you will be unready for it.

8.
Animals are smarter than us
in all the important ways.

9.
The force of a bullet or a bomb
can bestow the power of flight.

10.
The rich are rarely as happy
as the poor, but you will be an exception.

11.
A neat ending is to be expected,
as is a lesson.  Things don’t simply happen.