Don’t set off any earthquakes
or supervolcanoes tonight.

If the world is going to end,
I want to be awake when it happens.

There will be something to see
in those last seconds

before the curtain tumbles around us
laden with stone and flame,

and I just know I’ll be the one
compelled to capture it

and cram what little sense
could be made of it into words

no one will read, but dammit,
I’ll try, and I would like

a good night’s sleep before I face that,
thinking of good things to do in my future.

It’s not much to ask, I think,
to want to be at my best when the worst happens.

Such a dark and common
moment of purely human
triumph: to forget

a section of your life,
tell yourself in its place
a lie you can live with,

a lie you then come to believe
with all your heart,
one from which you take

your impetus to action,
a lie growing proud as a demon
to set you aflame

with a fading sense of its falsehood
and subsequent absolute conviction —
a lie like that is as good as Scripture,

a Gospel rock on which to build
a fortress, a slaughterhouse,
a beautiful tomb.

In the forest of your life,
you fell a tree and block your ears.
This clearing has always been here,

you tell everyone.  Always a barren spot.
See how the light glares here.
Maybe there was a fire here long ago —

in fact, you are sure of it.  You insist you were there.
Show off your burns. Use the scars
to chart your course out of the woods.

End up somewhere you never expected
as someone you aren’t, feeling
the gray rain on your ashen skin.

First thing to catch my eye
in the living room this morning
is the plastic Halloween glass
with the whimsical skeletal girls
in pigtails, shaking
Jack o’ lantern maracas
as they dance.
Two weeks after Christmas,
and not the least bit out of place.

When the Tasmanian wolf —
said to be extinct but, well,
there it certainly is, at least this morning
in the living room —
wanders in, I’m not at all
fearful.  Spider legs
and stripes, jaws like a car crusher
in this salvage yard of an apartment;
its presence make sense on first glance,

since my place is full of discards,
second hands, re-purposed items
finding new lives.  The animal
must have spun in here by chance
when the earth
passed through its dimension,
and decided to stick around.
I can do something
with anything I get my hands on;
maybe that appeals to it.

I decide to name the beast Johnny
and it looks up when I call it,
comes over, as confident in its power
as a myth.  There’s still some water in the glass
so I offer it a drink and it begins to lap,
the long pale tongue flickering,
not caring that the water comes
from an off-season source, or that
it’s going to become a metaphor for something
as soon as it blinks back into its usual state
of not being.  It’s safe here,
here in the room of taking something
that looks wrong on first glance
and making it right.

Walking at night in winter.

Looking into parked cars —
unlocked cars.

There is a backseat
in this car with
a coat on it. 

If there is
a pocket in this coat
there may be a candy
in the pocket.  If there is a candy
in the pocket it may have
melted.  If the candy
in the pocket has melted
it will have refrozen.
If the candy has been refrozen
it will be misshapen. 

The deformed sweet
is my favorite kind.  If it seems
that it should be discarded,
I want it that much more.

Walking at night in winter
wanting the sweets others have tossed.
It’s cold outdoors
but only if you spend too much time
indoors.  Walking and trying doors
toughens you.  If you harden enough,
you don’t mind after a while.
Things are sweeter, even the garbage
is desirable.

To not be
iguana
is to be able to stand outside
iguana
and know iguana
somewhat

but it is not the same as
being iguana

to be within the scale
and spines
looking out

no iguana
is able to fully know iguana
himself, a dinosaur
writ small

doesn’t understand evolution

does understand
lettuce
aggression
a snappy tail

is enough
for iguana
to say upon seeing another iguana

grey green
yellow black

that’s war or sex
an iguana union in iguana-
ness
is enough
and silly human need
for classification
is not
iguana necessary

nod the head of the iguana in question
up down
up down
threat display

leave me alone!
I’m iguana
that’s all

Watching a show
on terraforming Mars
and wondering

what Crazy Horse would think.

An astrobiologist says,
“To me, it’s about Mars being like
the vacant lot next door.  It’s about bringing life
to where there is no life,
and that’s inherently good.  If the lot
is vacant,
why not plant a garden?”

I’m going to drop
the resurrection plant
I bought in the Phoenix airport
into a glass of water
and think about this
while it unfolds.

Crazy Horse,
if you’re listening,
please accept my apologies
for bringing it here, and
for the moment when I become bored
and take the plant out of the bowl
to watch it dry up again
until the next whim.

I see how it goes with us,
how we scheme for order
while the earth makes us scramble
for it. 

All that blank red dust…
a beacon for something inside…

all the things we’ve learned
about the way we are,
yet we still think we know best.

They’re working on race cars
in Charlotte, baseball bats in Louisville,
beer in breweries coast to coast
and logo T-shirts in Singapore.
It’s snowing in Massachusetts,
icefishers set their tilts on far lakes.
Couples are planning to screw
tonight.  It’s the day of New Year’s Eve
and the strange and typical rituals of hope
abound among people. 

Dead cold in the north,
high summer down south, the tropics bake
and rain as always, the planet
holds its events without thinking
as it always does…no calendar required
to bring life through death and back again.

We seem to think we matter to the planet
and that we wrote the music
time plays for its parade…someday a hibernating bear
is going to wake up, we’ll be gone,
and it won’t notice anything different except
an increased freedom to be itself.
No engines will roar, no baseballs will soar,
and the only drunkenness will come
when wasps suck the fermented sap from fallen pears.

We’ll be regretted, if at all,
only as much
as any other extinction.

Desperately seeking
sexiness, she
had done cumulative damage
to her animal heart
by lunging after acceptance
from unworthy men.
Donned imaginary
lures and fished.  There was
something baitlike
about her, a hook hidden
within that was not
well-disguised, was easily avoided,
and those who bit
took at least
a little piece of her, some
a big piece of her, with them,
and what was left wriggled
with volition that
did not seem
to be her own.

a man
became a critter

creeping
over land

he sat on rocks
turned em over for moral guidance

he’s a cemetery
of thinking —

left over
animal

reptile brained
chunk of reaction

fight and bite
sleep where it’s warm at night

stay out of the cold
of opinion

screw a little
when needed

no need for a lot of breath
to tell this story

it’s so common
you might be forgiven

for pretending it’s not true
just another legend

until you cross paths with him
while trying to fall in love

Swear
that you can lose yourself
easily
in something
if you want to be
close to me,

for the best friends I have
thrive
on a passion
outside themselves,

live as if they are constantly
writing letters to others
that begin with “To Whom
It May Concern,”

and go on for pages
of detail, obsession
writ tight and careful,
no detail left behind,

certain that whoever receives
the letter will be
concerned as they are concerned,

ending them always with,
“Love” or “I eagerly await
your response,” forgetting
(or perhaps omitting with intent)

their names, the least important
detail, not worthy of note
in the presence of the greater topic.

These are the people I love most:
the ones who can forget themselves in something
as I have forgotten myself.

We find each other
without worrying about who we are
because from the start,
from first contact,
we understood that we had it right:
we are incidental chips bobbing
in the wake of our love
for the torrents of this world.