Welcome, words
that I love more than
sense, more than butter on a radish
or two bagels full of cream cheese and silky lox.

I eat you in the moments
I’ve lifted from the day.
You go down quick as fireflies.
(Were you real?  Oh, there you are, inside.)

I’m hungry all the time,
panting, mouth running with water
for rinsing them down. You are health
morselized:  get enough of you, even just a few

of the most substantial ones, and
I’m sated for a while.  You can’t call me
a glutton or a satyr for wanting you so much:
there’s no deadly sin

related to the desire for words.
They’re better than barbecue and beer,
escargots and white bread balls full of
cheese, pudding on a stick

and ginger crystallized in a plastic tub.
Each syllable a bite of time and essence,
I gobble freely, sit back silent only when
you connect within and fill me up

until I find a way to bake, fry,
roast what’s in me and feed others
with you.  A feast within, a feast without,
welcoming, welcomed, breakfast lunch and dinner

and snacks in between, I grow fat
upon you, my sustenance, my provision
in the famine years, my generosity when I am flush.
Words, crumbs of words even, words.

Worshipful
of the elsewhere,
fully subservient
to the pervading otherness
of being here
and not
where I say I want to be,
I seek my safety
in being absent from
the life I imagine I want.

If I had what I desire,
I’d have to live up to
my own expectations.
Instead
I play rogue, renegade,
proud
in my sloth, blaming fate
for my inability
to achieve.

“Be Here Now,”
the sage admonishes me.
“Here, Now,” I reply,
“is not where I am best suited
to Be.”   “Be Here Now,”
he says again.  This time I refuse to
answer, my eyes fixed
on the horizon, not seeing that my feet
already have long, gnarled roots
that reach down for miles into
this dry, much-reviled soil.

Oh, you American dogs —
barking, loving, tongue dangling
boys, sweet mongrel girls
at our feet:

you don’t care who we vote for,
our politics, our positions
on abortion
or limited government;

you do care if we don’t come home
from a war, or if we don’t feed you
well and let you become gaunt,
even homeless when the money falls short;

yet even then you will leap at us
when we call and love us without reservation
on this stolen, damaged land we call
our own.  We call you “our own” too,

but truly, you are your own tribe
and your rites are observed wherever
you find yourself: the chasing of tails,
the lying down anywhere,

the inappropriate things that are eaten,
the public sex, the loudness, the happy
earthy stink of you being yourselves without
any thought…oh, it’s no real wonder you love us,
you American dogs; no wonder at all.

In denial
of the wet
shine of ice
on the steps.
Been thinking
it’s warmer than
it actually is. I slip
and fall before I can
prepare myself for the
hazardous surface underfoot.

When my head
cracks into the porch floor
I see stars, midday stars
that are only in my eyes.  Novas
of sick bust out in my throat.
I am suddenly a universe born
of my mistake and my arrogance. 

Does the internal possession
of a galaxy or two
of pain and derangement
make me a god?  No —

I’m just flat on my back
on the stairs, my bleeding head
resting on the floor of my porch.
And I rent, so I don’t even own these —
small and pitiable here,
broken up and maybe even
seriously hurt, yet I fantasize
about power and glory,
the constellation of injury
provoking delusions.

Inside, comets and violet
energy. Outside, blood congealing
in the sharpened air
of February.  Between them,
a foolish man.  I’d better get up
before I freeze this way.

You say

shame’s like a cracked tooth.
It keeps you wincing delicately
at odd times, but then
you move, you pass
through. You pull
the pain
and leave a hole.

Other feelings, other definitions
float by.  You seize the most
arresting ones for yourself:
happiness, you say, is a dark
choice made in
sunlight; grief an infant
left too long alone
on a quilt in a bare room;
anger a rare bird
of cracked leather
flying blind; love
a ridiculous suit. 

It’s delicious to some
that you are so swift
with this.

You are passing through
and throwing no shadow,
only a description of a shadow.
Solidity offends you. You mold
your boundaries as if they were
fresh from the clay bank,
never to be fired. 

Tomorrow, you’ll say
shame’s a donkey, grief’s
an egg on a ship’s deck, love’s
a new ribbon on an old flag.
And happiness? Happiness
is anger, is happiness. For you,

emotion itself is
simply a blanket you hem and re-hem
so it doesn’t unravel when you pull it
up over your head. 

Horror
is seeing
or being
a man with a pen
in his chest
where he should have
a racing heart.

House
is a radiotuner

brings in signals
from elsewhere
like the saxophonist
on the second floor
who moved in
with his snakeinsomniac solos

or the oftenplanemistaken rumble
of the furnace

occasional voices
of somethingcatdisturbing
in back and front halls

runningon
slurringwords
or in stac-
cato
bursts

near to meaning something
but not
quite

House
is no presets
no hanger antenna

brings in anyway
beams of connected tones
almostnotquite audible
maybe there’s a story here

or maybe it’s in me
and it’s
interpreting

Courage
is a ruffle
on a suit
at a funeral,
a puffy sleeve
in a sports bar.

The bravest people I know
are not the instantly, drop a hint and it happens
nude ones.
They are the grandmothers
in huge hats
perched on shrunken heads
and turkey necks,
the old men with the hiked up pants
and flat asses.  Sweatpanted
chunky moms, dads
with the weekend beers
thrust out over the belt.

Anyone who says
this clothing
is mine, I chose it,
I reveal myself through it.
Then, if you want the real me
to get naked for you,
take this hot but honest mess
as is
and prove you’re worthy
of seeing my history
uncovered.

That’s a beautiful place
you’ve got there

As intricate as
a sand castle

It’s so
lovely
With such fragile materials
and such a fickle base

You’ll excuse me
if I prefer to walk around it
and ooh and aah
rather than move in

Do not hesitate to spill
your gasoline blood
near an open flame.
Do not fear to approach
the angel of justice
when its sharp wings are open.

Don’t imagine the world is safe.
Do what you need to,
shiv the guard before the gate
or bed the devil who carries
the keys to the kingdom.

Just don’t expect to come away
with your prize without a scar,
because claiming to honor
the impulse to danger
and then insult it
by attempting to render it
impotent
is to die indeed.

They are before you now, the teeth of the Hydra
waiting to fall from the jaw
you swear you want to bust open
and grow into a army arrayed against you.
Are you truly ready to fight?

It’s on? We
all over that shit? Got it covered,
you got my back, I got yours, we got this?

Yeah, I’m with you,
down for it,
I’m your boy.

They got nothing
for us.  Nothing.
We’re on top of it. They

got nothing for us.
They
ain’t shit.

Let’s go.  Bring it
if you got it.  You ain’t got shit
and you know it.  Big talk,

all you got’s talk,
bring it, let’s
go.  Let’s see

what you got.

Choosing not to know
something millions know
is a luxury

Whether it’s the nature
of oppression
or the story of the hot game

to choose to ignore
what’s in front of you
is an easy way

to segregate yourself
from your brothers
and sisters

and raise yourself
onto a pedestal so high
you can see

only the long view
of the ants below
while you pat yourself on the back

for your superior
vision
and grasp

Held it in my arms
as it decayed
to charcoal, as pieces of it
scaled off and crumbled
and fell at my feet.

This is of course
why I picked it up
in the first place:
I only hold tight to my chest
what will fail me
most visibly.

I love the sound
that rises from the ground
when I tread upon it
as I walk away,
and the stains on my arms
that offer evidence
of my martyrdom.

When the last word
of English is spoken,
when it finally dies
and is forgotten,

everything we know
will disappear into the forest
where the ghost languages
recall their recounting

of feasts, lovers, wars
and memory, descriptions
of mountains and oceans,
specific words for snow,

sand, arrow, child,
mother, warrior, wine, bread,
chill, dawn, night, embrace,
holy, evil, baker, poet, song.

It will not matter. Someone from the next
dominant species will begin again,
trying to snare fact in the wind.
It’s always been thus: one voice fails

but the world itself remains to stimulate
the next voice to falter, gain strength,
describe the truth before it. The silence
breaks and then washes back into place.