Once he dared to think
he could be delivered from this,
but it has always pulled him back.

The neighbors stare at his car
all the way to the parking space out front.
One gives a perfunctory wave.

In his childhood home
the air is thick and sugary.  Old songs
cling to his new shoes.

His mother is still waving food
at him and Dad’s still
outside

waiting for the obligatory
visit to discuss the tractor and
the shed.

A quick sandwich to keep the peace,
then back to the car.  He waits
until the turn off from Main Street,

into the back roads leading back to the highway,
to roll down the window,
turn up the radio, and scream.

A woman sees a dragonfly.

She creates a dragonfly oracle
from it as it rises, hovers
where she can point at it.
Says, “It’s a sign.”

A child, bandaged
and slightly broken,
takes his crutch to be a sword
and slays the dragonfly,
acting as its name recommends he act.

A man sees the dead dragonfly
on the sand. Sees the beach as
a long gravel road heading south
and knows he will reach the end of it
one day, alone, no one by his side.

These three
will carry what they saw with them
for as long as they live,
dragonfly oracle, adversary,
and talisman each moving, flying,
carrying them forward.

The dragonflies see it differently.
In the Dragonflies’ Great Vision,
everything is broken out, held in a facet
and each facet shares its truth with the others.

A dead brother
is just scrap. Its brothers brush
its existence to one side
as just another moment that has ended.

And the woman, child,
and man are just moments who have ended.
What they mean is irrelevant
to the dragonflies.  Their wings
are always spread.  They already
know how to fly.

The apparently uncaring
Great Being
(named God by some)

is resting unconscious
among the peas
and the snails in the side garden,

never letting the trouble
of any one person
intrude.

All those books
and churches
that say we are important
mock
this divine sleep

which tells of a faith
that all will work out
without prayer or salvation
if it is allowed to continue.

The Great Being
wishes we’d shut up

so that the silent burst
of the leaves from the soil,
the patient searches outlined
in silver among them,

can testify to the perfection
of a totality
of all things taken
as they are.

If you are an animal
at night,

you are an animal.

Because that is
unacceptable,
you call yourself as animal
a dream.

But you had fur
or scales, you were beaked
and open-mouthed
hunting then,

or you were prey.

Enter the nature
of yourself, slipping
your ties to humanity,

and say it, honoring
the truth:

I was tiger
or turtle, pelican
or slug.  I am

not always separate.
There are times when I am whole.

Someone I know
always says
“the darkness is habitable.”

I don’t think we know
the same darkness,
or at least

his monsters
must be more tamable
than mine. 

My monsters
say that they love me,
but I think this is a statement

that is more like
my own lip smacking
at a good menu.

There are nights
when I can smell
the hunger, others

when I can feel
the teeth.  There are nights
when I feel masticated.

I think my friend’s darkness
is full of monsters
he doesn’t know.  He assumes

any of them might
turn from predator
to pal if he welcomes them.

He might be right.
When I try to see beyond
my circle of weak firelight,

I know everyone who’s waiting there.
They whisper, “Remember that time
when you…you know…and you liked it?

You wouldn’t tell a soul how much
it jazzed you, but we know.”  They
rip at the fringe of the shadow

with sweeping arms, as much
welcome as threat. I know
my darkness is terrible and

full of monsters, that no one
could possibly live there,
because if pressed, I could.

I wish I was a rocket
opening the next frontier.

Wish I was oil
conquering the ocean.

If I were to become a microchip
I’d be inserted under perfect skin
and ride there tracking the travels
of flawlessness.

Wish I had
superpowers — how could I not
considering the way they’re drawn?

Maybe I could take on
the anima of a tiger
and slink my power
through forests seeking
to change lives.

Longing to have some effect
leads me away from wanting to be
human.

If I could talk to animals
would they tell me
they wanted to be me?

If I could be a rocket
or a computer, if I could
ride the waves as oil,
would I feel my being?

I desire technology
or shamanism
for myself, want to erase
the big old man I am
who can’t make anything happen.

Would I still care
that things were changing
around me and because of me
then?

All in now,
admitting

to being a big bad
boomer with a
bawdy voice,

callout captain,
dwelling dimmer,
electric eel tongue
flung free,
gagging on the gape
of my own mouth…

sharp and flat
applied as necessary…

They didn’t give me
this name for nothing —

bastard.
Bastard!

I didn’t know my father,
my mother never knew me,
so I’ve made myself up as I went along —
music to my own ears,
note on my note,
strung up and burning open or closed,
roar of child fantasy of power in my vein,

you’d better hope I never come into my own
interrupted passions
and longing —

my head rolling off my shoulders,
my body caked with sweat and dirt like fur,
no longer quite human but geographic,
my own country, my own continent,

and pray that you don’t live here when that happens…

for I’m hungry,
I sing my hunger,

and you look like nothing but a meal.

What I most desire

is the meat of a lion
and a fork smeared with hemlock
to spear it with,

to raise courage
and a hint of poison
to my lips
at once.

But with what shall I wash it down?

There is currently
the juice of an artist’s suicide
in my cup.

If I want that certainty,
I am a fool —
and I am no fool.

There is water,
but I don’t want water.
There is beer,
but I don’t want beer.

Perhaps I shall choke down the meal
with no drink at all,
feel it roughen my throat
and sicken me slightly
even as I grow strong
and brave.

Perhaps the lion
died feelingthat way,
the spear that killed him
erupting through his middle
even as he turned to fight
that which had hunted him
even as he hunted,

becoming (even as he ceased)
fully
lion.

I would not call this being awake.

I can see the trash on the curb where I stacked it last night,
the fanblades are coating me in hot but moving air,
I’m hungry, the coffee came out pretty decent for once,
but I’m still not sure anyone would say
this is waking life

for I’m not yet free of last night’s dreams,
or even the ones from the day before;
I still feel the laughter of the circle of flashing men,
hear the vulgar songs, the blade of the guillotine
whistling down along its path of rough wood.
The silver warrior birds and the dolls with cracked faces
may not be visible, but I feel them in the room.

If this is being awake,
conscious
in this world and of this world,

I will return to sleep at once
and face what waits there,
get it truly over with

or learn that world
and live there.

Something must happen soon
to hook me into the present,

or I will not leave the shadows
today.

People
who want to change the world
but can’t change
a diaper
a flat tire
or their underwear

have my grudging respect

for being unskilled
but still willing to dream

The daily
isn’t going to go away
because we ignore it

but it takes a special sort of monkey
to believe
that enough of them gathered together
will make a masterpiece

After all
it has happened a few times before

and there are always people to pick up
what they’ve let fall

right?

I made beautiful things
and they fell apart
like so much overcooked food,
crumbling into fibers and mush
as I set them before you;

so I made harder, uglier things
and they curdled into leather
and hard wood, making them
impossible to chew,
and you turned away.

Then I made an effort to balance
the beauty and the ugly
and couldn’t get it right.
You looked at me perplexed
and said, “It’s…interesting…”

Now I simply order out
and provide the plates.
You seem happy.  You seem
to like this better.  It strikes me
that I’m unnecessary now

and that nourishment for you
is impersonal, unrelated
to me and my attempts
to be a master of all you desire.
I am trying to consider this a blessing.

The best thing about a hot day in spring
is driving at night with the window down
and feeling cold.  Humid air rushing over
a bare arm hanging over the outside
of the door.  Taking the long way home
to keep it going.  Hoping the house
will have cooled by the time you get there.

The best thing about not owning a gun
is thinking about owning one.  Thinking
about understanding the nature of safety
and risk without having to practice
their balance.  Fantasy of capture
and defense and an easy Wild West answer
to the dread of getting out of the car
and walking to your door unbothered
by shadows waiting to do you harm.

The best thing about a key is how it promises
that you will be able to get in and out
with little trouble.  The plain and singular
permission that is granted to you and only you
to come and go as needed or desired, to occupy
and refashion your own space as your castle
or womb or tomb, and only you will live there
and allow entrance or egress at your whim.

The best thing about the Holy Grail
is the Knights Templar.  The legend of
protectorate and secrecy, possible heresy
in the face of a disaster lurking outside
their castles and strongholds.  The romance
of a single artifact that holds salvation,
a climate that holds true to a promise
of eventual peace.  The need for war
in service to that.  The myth of something
precious that solves the world.

The flickering silhouette of a dancer —
unfeatured, solid and flat against
the brick wall.

Long nights staring at this.

To fill a space with imagination
and make it perfect in your mind
is natural.

To know that there is something
alive and breathing
creating that blank space
that you do not care to investigate —

 a man must be doing this,
I must be a man.

That I am nothing.

That as nothing, I am exalted
to be nothing. Deliciously
inconsequential, a part of the Machine
of Stars/Necklace on
Neck of Creation.

That I
mean so little anything is free
to hold me.

That I am peer
of leopard and dysentery,
of coconut palm and stray wrapper.

That the pattern of rejection/containment
is the warp of my woof.  Woolly headed
and slubby as a pilled cardigan
on a grandfather’s back, only here
for the warmth.

That I am song
under shower breath.

That I will be
forgotten and this gladdens the non-ego
that fights my stick-wielding caveman heart.

That love and robbery holler equally
in the alley of my elbows as I grasp
the always coming always receding days
I bore through in anger and dread and joy.

That joy itself is movie written by another
but I imagine myself as grip and gaffer at once
upon its set.

That the skin I’ve stretched
and the blood I’ve pressurized
will look awful
when I go, bowels a roaring ghost
of past indiscretion, face a sagged charlie horse
in a leg of a loved one long after my burial,
putting a hitch in their walk.

That every barking tree limb in a forest
laden with ice knows its place better than I do
and I am happy to listen and learn.

That a man’s
no more human than a tin can on a heap of worms
and that the whine of a bomb is a natural song
of the city of God.

That I am happy
and nothing, all is nothing, since all is everything
and nothing at once

it must be so that nothing is important and
nothing stands out, importance itself
is the Ganges of my fierce greed
and I will burn myself to ash and crackle
in the consummation of The Wheel
as the last thing I say to another
is swallowed in the Great River
and I am lost to the sun and the voice
and the Necklace that hangs upon the neck of Creation
will be my shade against the long night
of what comes after this life,

the night of knowing how small I was
and how much I offered to Completion
by simply being what I was:
a petty, magnificent animal.

The curtains
that fall across the light

when we try to explain to each other
how we put our fingers
on the mercury
in the language
that we use

are damask
and metal-threaded
and heavy

and they block the window
from which enough light
would come in
to make the slippery little domes
shine enough
for us to catch them

We all understand
how the words refuse to be corralled
easily
at our mere command

but cannot explain the methods of the chase
other than to say

it is difficult
and it requires an openness
to seizing them on their terms
as if they had minds of their own
and lives they seek to lead
independently of us

Some will invoke
a muse as the keeper
of their skill at the hunt
and others will speak
of rules and skill and craft

but in the end
we all know
if we let the light in
and scramble enough
we catch
what we need

and those damn curtains
just get in our way