a stumbling father
trying to be a savior
falls behind his daughter
as she rolls away
down the slope

stones at the bottom are avoided
as much by chance
as by control
and at the bottom
both rise laughing through tears
and forget the previous hazards
move onto the next ordinary thing

each moment on each of our paths
seems precious and set
when examined in hindsight —
such lies we tell ourselves —

did you know that moon
would give so much light
on the night you were willing
to step away from the fight
and turn your back on threat
feeling that if death
came grinning after you
you’d be good with that

and that light kept the killer
from pursuing the battle
he turned and put away
the knife
you did not die
and now
you look back
and say yes it was ordained
that this was how you would come
to find peace

fool

peace is a deceiver
it comes as it comes
no respecter of zazen
or prayer
is shuffling monk of nature
nurture
timing
and pure luck

random is
all

predestined is
nothing

acceptance is
peace

Woke smelling
fried eggs in a pan
but discovered it was just
my brain on drugs

Pissed me off
I was hungry

Woke thinking
I heard a superball
bouncing crazy in the room
but it was just
my brain on drugs

Pissed me off
I wanted to play

My brain on drugs
fucks me up and over
but without the drugs
I’m left with just my brain
and that’s worse

like the night
I woke up
hearing nothing at all
no sound
not even my breathing
It was as if
I’d stopped being
as if I’d been dead
for a very long time

then I discovered

that was my brain
not on drugs
I was hearing

and so I took some drugs
and
almost immediately
I was right back
where I belonged

it’s a mysterious grain of sand
in your shoe one day
coming home from work

it’s the resultant blister
water leaking onto your sock
skin coming off
in your hand

you have to walk slowly now

you hear whispers
on every corner

they don’t care if you know
because you’re not important
and it’s gone too far to stop

everyone’s in on it

they aren’t covering up something that’s already happened
it’s an operation in progress

you’ve bent one slat on the living room blind
because you watch the street all the time
every truck and skateboard a lure to the window

it’s secret squirrel stuff
and you’re wounded
and one step behind

but you know
they know you know
you know they know you know

you’re buying a gun
off the grid
you’re stocking up on ramen
and peanut butter
you’re not talking to anyone for very long

you suspect you’re part of it

it’s not all that bad
to be so aware of your surroundings
that you can hear
codes in the crickets
saying
the key to all this
when you find it
will have to be turned
in a lock you haven’t found either

everyone is talking about it
and your bleeding foot
you’re leaving a lot of tracks
it’s a race against time
and you’re slowing down

hurry

Is the man who learns from swallowed stones less a learned man
than he who sits up and begs for easy knowledge
dispensed like treats to a trick dog, taking in whatever is offered
regardless of effort expended or potential for poisoning?
At least the stone eater knows how his teeth will crack
as he chews the hard lessons and struggle them down.
At least if he is cut by his own broken teeth
he knows the pain is immediate and if it scars him
he will have the scars to remind him of what he learned.

Is the woman who climbs the sheer wall of her prison
less a climber than the one who rides a proffered elevator
or ladder, giving up a piece of herself to gain escape
and then to walk the world with a piece of herself left behind?
At least the climber who attempts to summit the prison wall
owns the chance of falling and shattering, and if
she is broken into shards they will lie close together
in the landing, no need to search for what’s been lost there;
if she succeeds with her ragged nails still on her hands
she will always know what she can do once they grow back.

If we fail and fail again, struggling with every fall,
standing up on telescoped legs, swallowing our own blood
raised to our mouths by biting through our own tongues
in an effort to stop repeating the wrong words again;

if we stagger, if we stumble, if to be ourselves we try on
mask after mask to see what fits and then finally with irritation
toss the false face into a battered can and call out
that we will face the world now without disguise,

will we be less worthy of love and honor
than those who smiled, nodded, bent their backs as directed
to bear the traditional loads of straw and brick —
those who did not understand and turned and sneered at us
and gave us the backs of their heads in response to our cries
for help in a time of need?  Or will we spit stones at them
from the tops of their walls?  Will we then teach them to live
as we were taught to live, or will we say
we understand so much they do not know that a lifetime
is not enough time for the learning, and turn our backs on them
to build anew?

by loving that tree
on my wall

the tree outside the window
becomes a metaphor

the metaphor
becomes a conviction

the conviction
becomes a prejudice

the prejudice
becomes a work of art

the work of art
becomes a metaphor

the metaphor
becomes a moving target

the moving target
becomes a religion

the religion
becomes a bloodsport

the bloodsport
becomes a conviction

the conviction
becomes a cause

the cause becomes a tree
outside the window

the window framing
a religion

that has become a cause for bloodsport
aimed at moving targets

a work of art
made from a prejudice

and grown from roots of arsenic
and love

Tags: poetry, poems, meditations

Go without me
and take with you
all the green stones
and gold you can grab.

When I’m here alone
I’ll have no need of them.
No one to flatter,
no one with whom to trade —

some will from afar call it heaven
and call me the luckiest man
alive.  But I won’t be lucky,
or alive.  No face to lie to,

no back to stab, no handshake
to pull away from — the bad man
is not lucky when there’s no one
to steal luck from.

Go without me, let me stay
here, dead as I should be,
that highest penalty paid
through my deserved loneliness.

Take the pilfered wealth
and go.   Leave me here, poor
and starving for a mark.
Wave good bye and turn your backs —

that’s what I’ve always cared most for:
your exposed wallets, your undefended spines.
Leave me that memory to work with
as I play myself, the only mark left in the house.

All it takes
is the fan going on
when triggered by the thermostat

A breeze on my legs
A paper lifting off from the table
and ending up on the floor
after a lazy fall

Startled
I take a moment
to ignore the hard work before me

It turns into an hour of
nothing
No words for the time spent

When the fan turns itself off
I sit some more

wondering how hot it has to get
before I begin to work

especially knowing that the hot days
are almost at an end

Under the pilot light,
under the stove,
under the linoleum,
there is something
that’s been there a while.

I don’t know what it is.
I’ve never seen it or smelled it.
I couldn’t describe it to you.
But it’s there, something dropped
by someone who lived here before me.

It’s an old house, built
in 1900, and maybe the thing
under the pilot, stove, etc.
is something that old too:
a coin, an earring, a scrap
of paper with half a letter
or word missing and no chance
of figuring out what it might have said.

I know it’s there,
sopping with grease and meaning,
kept warm by that small flame.

It has to be there. There’s no way
I can live here without having something
of those who also lived here
remain in my space
that was there space.  It’s luck
or curse or just remnant, relic
trash.  Nothing disappears
and nothing stops affecting me,
ever. 

One of these days I might fix the floor
and you bet I’ll dig it out and hold it
in my hand.  I’ll put it back before I’m done,
and I won’t bother adding something of my own —

better my own addition
be accidental as well, the perfect piece
of my life left behind for the next tenant
to puzzle on late at night;

though he or she
might never understand
what that feeling means,
it’ll be good to be alive
and present here
for a long, long time.

A good friend
spends his weekends
liberally applying
bacon grease to his arms
and drawing swirls in it.

He stinks.  He plays with the patterns
constantly.  He leaves stains
on everything.  He’s always happy.
He calls himself
the pig tattoo king.

Yes,
it’s odd.  But I’ve met
people
who swill money
like chocolate, coat themselves
in dirty metals pulled from the ground,
smell like rare flowers
crippled with salt,
build small honesty into huge lies
to keep people guessing
and off balance.

What you see is what you get with him.
That’s more than you can say about a lot of folks.

I never liked Seattle.
Too many of the homeless
looked like my father.

In Southern California,
there are seventeen faces
shared by everyone
and I couldn’t tell them apart.

Albuquerque and Gallup
filled up my rearview
with insistent new ghosts
who claimed they were relations.

Austin and Dallas
made me lonely
for those I’d never known
and I knew I’d find them
if I stayed too long.

Kansas City has a bad neighborhood
or two or three, they told me at the hotel.
They all felt bad to me.

Chicago laid itself at my feet
and then swept my leg.
I left my bags on an El platform
in December, in rain,
and never went back to get them.

I was robbed in New York City,
by New York City, of all I had left,
so I went home.

Then I was home,
one haunted room full of avalanche drums
and a slim face pinched in the closet door.
I couldn’t wait to go again.

I know my tribe
is waiting for me in bus stations
and airport bars.

We don’t talk much
and we like it just fine that way.

A nod and a flick of the eyelid
is enough to make a stool or a bench
home,
which is where we are
when only we are there.