I think you should call me
by some other name.
The one I bear’s too much.
The one I wear is hard to say
in public.  I can feel everyone
looking for me when it’s spoken.

I think you should call me
by some other name.
The face I wear doesn’t add up.
The arms and belly are awkward
and sit too far out from my core.
I know I’m taking up too much space.

I think you should call me
far less often.
I hate how often I’m conjured.
I hate the feeling of obligation
it creates.  I want to slip into
some floor crack and lie below you.

I think I’m going to disappear
and reappear somewhere else.
The new place will not have heard of me.
I’ll raise bees and never wear a hood
or suit against them.  I’ll be stung
so often my face will change and change.

I think the name I’ve got
is a bad one. 
I think a name does more
than signify your being.
The one I’ve got made me what I am.
I dislike that.  I want to hear me called new.

I can make it work, I swear.
I’ve seen others do it.
There’s no formula.
There’s not a reason in the world for me to fail.
Talent’s just a word for ambition easily realized.
Work is the balm for the wounded ambition.
I can make it happen.
Everyone does something well.
The oak tree makes great acorns.
The octopus is the ink master.
The dimples on the golf ball are its perfect expression.
I can be the best of what I am.
The work will make it stick out.
The blank page is the best prod to capture the fullness.
A single word well placed is smarter than a key.
There are inherent risks in being a master.
Stalling is the crucifixion of the divine nature.
Denial of the passion of the art is blasphemy to the Godhead.
A work of art is the gruff shovel that opens the grave of the revenant.
I can be the digger of movement.
I can sweat the devil’s coat seams.
I can do this.
Talent is a word for the blood of a prophet.
Denial is a misdirected nut fallen on bare stone.
Divinity is just an excuse for the acceptance of failure.
I can’t do this.
There’s no formula.
There’s a reversal spell that could be written.
I can’t imagine the dialect of such a wizard.
I can’t make work of what is best explained through talent.
I have no talent in the face of my demon inkmaster.
I have no answer for why the pen breaks.
I am no master
and no teacher
and no student of the way
and I park the ass that Mirabai refused to ride
in front of my house at night
to await the slog to the failure mines tomorrow.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations

Rocking back
on his heels
the boy watched her
do a split on the rec room floor
and thought about things
he’d never thought before:

in a split second, then,
history he’d been learning
and biology he’d not known
began to kick in, and he manned up
in exactly the manner expected
of a boy his age.

Do you recall
your own split second,
that instant when the switch flipped on
and you were switched on
so that a current flew through you
from someone standing across a room or a yard?

Did it flash upon you as expected
by all around you, or were you suddenly alive
and confused at once because
it didn’t mesh with what you’d been told
would happen?  And – how are you now —
is that a good memory?  Have you

told anyone?  Met anyone who shared it?
Go ahead and speak of it.  You weren’t wrong to feel it.
Wrong is a label we apply too easily.
It keeps us from speaking up, looking
for the source.  From finding the outlet
that will light us. 

A guy in mid-limbo.  He’s poker chip thin,
a rejected toothpick.  A sapling, really, full of those fruit,
the ones in the song.  A swamp full of teeth, dams broken,
shirt worn inside out in haste, shoes tied loose-bowed.

A sassy fire in a clearing on the riverbank.
A woman not quite girl anymore.  A class-aware
stumbling block.  Her hair’s cinnamon and brass,
a rebellion. A murmur of sticks and speeding.

A woman’s baby rolling home. It’s not yet
a button. A corrugation in a stellar bridge.
A missed apprehension. A face darklit, shadowed fur,
a broken comb. A broken cloth. A break.

It cannot be done
without the proper language;

without the vanes,
the dart cannot strike home.

It cannot be perfect,
must hold a flaw, must fray
the sensible. 

The heart of it
must beat insanely fast
even as its hand is steady.

There shall be a moment of damage
in its center.
A diamond bird in flight
shall see it, fall upon it,
cut through. 

All around it, the sex of ghosts,
and crudely painted jugs holding rain
that was caught in a desert
years ago.

Now, there’s nothing to do
but drink and live.

The chocolate Easter Bunnies
appear to lose their ears gladly
and gladly lose their heads.
They were made
for mutilation.

Some say the bunnies
are a Pagan overlay
on a Christian tradition;
me,
I’m not so sure.

I was born with it
so it’s not entirely my fault
that it has always attracted certain prey
with its deep, salty tang.

It will wait for hours
to shoot something, then
field dress it
in nothing flat
and eat the still-beating
heart.

While it works
it is always silent, but
soon enough,
it returns to its regular burbling,
soon to include
the most recent death
in its ongoing narrative.

What a brave hunter, its undertones
seem to say.  It crows,
I am unafraid
of blood.

I don’t know what to do
about its craving
and the apparent ease with which
it is satisfied.  I just where it goes,
following trails to hunting grounds
that look different at first
but end up being pretty much the same.

Its tales of the gun
are admittedly compelling.
Whatever it fells, it seems, it owns.
Thus I am endlessly fed on raw meat
and sawed bones.

Thus I seem
to savor what it feeds me,
though there are moments like this
where I long for it
to become vegan and tire
of killing.

A Jimson weed
in revolt against its bad reputation
refused to give me
visions.  A mushroom
turned its pouty ball head away
and would not allow me
access to the Outer World.
Even my marijuana tossed
her crumbly curls and denied me
her comfort.

So I played the guitar
and remembered how to feel the strings
under my fingers.  It was so hard at first
to see the music, but if I squinted
it was still there, laid out before me,
a faint carpet runner down a long hall
which led Outside
and there were dragons there still,
still there were drums in the unknown hills above the fields,
I could still smell still the warm funk of the tunnels
as I dug for them in the courtyard outside.

I have no time now to reminisce
about the old ways, how theatrical
the shamanic journey
used to be.
It’s just work now, still a spirit chase
but I run it under my own power.
I follow the dragon where it flies,
capture its fire as it burns,
carry it home in my bare hands
and cool it in the plain air
unassisted — and when I’m done,
I can remember everything.

Candy, the woman
who walks the gigantic pitbull
down Mitchell Street twice a day,
stopped to speak to Ruben
last night
and the pitbull
(whose name remains a mystery to me)
sniffed at Ruben’s leg
then gently tore the pants open
at the seam.

Ruben yelled as if he’d been
ripped himself
and Candy pulled the dog back
so hard it reared like a horse.
It looked confused as Ruben
delivered a potent cockfight kick
to its ribs. 

That yelp
sounded like just another day
in progress, Ruben’s high voice
imploring something untranslatable
to the sky merely adding a flavor to the mix.

I wish I knew these people well enough
to name the dog and know what Ruben said,

but I’m not close enough to the ground here
to understand my people’s pain, how awful
and familiar such incidents are.  Instead I cower
inside when Candy walks the pitbull by
and will not speak to Ruben though I’ve heard his voice
in such an intimate way.  I avert my eyes, in fact,
when I go by his house;
though there was no permanent damage
to him, I’ve learned a little something
about fear, about lashing out,
about the risks of simply living and speaking here.

The principal product of my hometown
is people who want to be elsewhere.
The principal product of where I live now
is chips to be worn on shoulders.

I took a job as a packaging designer
for these products of town and city.
I’d wrap them up in shroud cloth
and wait for ideas.

I’d gather my bitter friends
and we’d brainstorm.  We’d use
the same buzzwords you always hear —
let’s throw stuff on the wall to see what sticks,

or let’s run this up the flagpole and see who salutes.
We’d bore ourselves silly.  We’d smoke cigarettes outside
in rainstorms and then come in to sit glumly
over our half-finished cups of coffee.

We were really stuck for concepts.  How can we sell
ennui and hostility, we’d ask?  Everyone’s already got all
they need of both.  And we’d try again and again, to no avail.
Soon we lost the account.  We retired to a bar

and tried to figure out what went wrong. 
We certainly knew the market.
We certainly knew the product.   Maybe
a change of scene would help?

Jesus,
it is said,
will kill thousands
in the last battle
with a sword that issues
from his mouth.
This is why I’m not
a Christian anymore:
I’ve heard this sort of thing
my whole life
from the dry-honed lips
of my peers and this Jesus
sound too much like a poet
to be trusted. 
If there’s an Armageddon
some day
I suspect words will be
secondary
at the least,
superfluous
at the most, and God
will find a way to do the work
without intercession
from one of these
metaphor-slinging
cats with a vision of
how dangerous
his words are. 

Hey —
are you
vessel
or conduit?
Do you contain
or channel?

Are you
content or process?
Are you intention
or execution?

Don’t even try to push me —
don’t care if you’re black or white —

are you, instead,
colonizer or colonized?
Oppression or resistance?

If you answer,
I could be any
and am all,

we can speak further;

but if you choose,
you choose
alone.

feather
head, floating

a little this way,
a little that;

one current lifts,
another drives down;

no matter how I prop it up
with breath it will drop

at some point to the floor
where it will stir a little

now and then
but mostly will lie still

having found its lowest level.
at last, I don’t care.

the drift was movement
and what I needed to do.

that feather, my head
on the floor full of dust,

that’s my truth and my real face.
hollow, almost weightless,

a discard.  you can’t look at it
and tell where it’s been.  you know

it was made for flight and it’s not
flying now.  that’s all you and I know.

don’t say
you cannot believe
you’re in love again.

say instead you are pleased
that the cup on the shelf
is battered metal
but still holds water,
or wine, or paper clips,
that it remains fillable.

don’t say you’re afraid,

say instead that the cat
is unaccustomed to sleeping
on the back of the couch
and is striving to seem at ease
but looks like he knows he may fall.

don’t say
you are sure of failure.

say instead that when the nut falls
from its branch,
two scars always remain: one on the tree,
one on the nut.  say instead
that breakage precedes growth.

the world offers you
agreement upon agreement.
take what help is offered,
no matter whence it comes.

While daydreaming
another installment
in the series
titled, “What I Do Not Care About,”
I went completely blank.

I woke myself up
and left the house
to sit in soft mud
among early leaves.
My ass got filthy

and I shivered a lot
for the fifteen minutes
I could stand it.  Then
I stood up and realized
the kids across the street

were laughing at me.
I waved back, went inside,
showered, made coffee,
toast, sat down to resume
the daydream with no shortage

of material to work with.