soon enough
a pair of Malinois
will come into view

holding a banner between them
that will bear
an illegible word

you will squat before them
and from that vulnerable position
attempt to decipher it

as the dogs approach they shall veer
slightly to the left of where you are
and the banner will become 

impossible to read
so whatever the message the dogs have
is either not meant for you or 

you will miss it
and you shall rise
from the squatting position

look back at the place
from which the dogs came
and see only a sunset

you will tell yourself
as you veer away from the view
turning slightly to the right

this how it has been
for all your time 
messages seemingly meant for you

narrowly undelivered
from ferocious mouths
leaving you in their wake

to marvel and wonder
where to look
for an explanation

The word of the day:
“froideur.” On loan
from French, it describes

“a coolness or distance
between people.” As in
how we develop rote answers to

“how’s the family, friend?”
No one actually cares,
do they?

As in, “what’s up
for the weekend?
Got any plans?” comes to sound

like reconnaissance for assault.
You don’t respond with the truth,
which is, “I’m going to spend it either

coiled and nasty, or curled and
weepy, either way don’t come by
if you don’t want a share of the pain.”

You think I’m sick for saying this.
I think you are right.
I don’t care what you think.

I think I’m not alone.
Others don’t care what I think,
or that I’m even here.

Calling it froideur
offers hope that it is not
who we truly are.

We don’t have a word for it. 
We had to go take one
from elsewhere to speak of it.

Using one word to explain it
leaves so much more time
for silence.

Imagined body: 
pensive, fat-assed,
sweaty with compassion

for all. Real body?
Cold layers like
Damascus steel,

cold eye when turned 
toward others’ pain,
cold and round and dry-eyed.

He tells himself
he is nearly one 
to his aspiration.

He tells himself 
he loves, he is 
kind and as free

as his imagined body
imagines itself to be.
He stands in his imagined

place in the world
and tries to occupy it:
stiff, sharp, cold to the touch.

Wherever the edge was 
a decade ago, a year ago?
It’s just ahead, almost
underfoot now. 

I was born for the edge
of the edge, to hang my toes
over the great fall
to the bottom, and look down.

My friends say it’s dangerous
to be here. They are afraid
I’m still who I was a decade ago,
a year ago. No fear that I’ll jump;

they just know how much I love
the edge of the edge. Love the stage
it provides. To tumble in the last act
would be just my way, they think,

but I’m not the being
they think I am, not even the one I was
a year ago, a decade ago. I know 
if I fall into that, I’ll just float

and no one, not even my friends,
is ready to see me hovering like
the peregrine falcons on Stone Mountain
updrafts, not plunging to earth.

I know who I am now. I don’t
stumble over the edges where I find myself.
I sit there in mid air high above disasters
and catastrophe. Maybe someday. Not today,

not a decade, not a year hence.
I’m not done with the earth yet.
I’m not ready yet to fall, to fail. 
I’m too light to know how close death is. 

For the love of the wall of darkness
in the mouth of the bedroom
that is the door to the bedroom

that has been created by the light in the kitchen
that will soon be turned off leaving only
one small nightlight left on to make it easier

not to trip over the black cat if there is
(as there always is)
a need to walk from bedroom to bathroom

in the few small hours between
my late bedtime and early rising
that have become my old-age norm

I offer praise for what lies 
beyond that wall of darkness 
in the mouth of the bedroom

as I stagger with my old knees
and dead-nerve feet from bathroom
back into the bedroom

so warm and easeful
after fitting my CPAP mask 
and settling in for the few hours between

falling asleep now and then rising
into the insatiable orders 
of dawn and food and work

This is for love of the darkness
that promises a little forgetfulness 
if only I will come in and stay 

and now I realize that here is the black cat
sleeping on the bed itself 
so I needn’t have worried

I could have done all this
in darkness had I wished
without nightlight at all

It’s not far from here to there
An easy walk easily completed
if I only had had faith in my own steps

I tell myself next time to listen
for the purring in here
before I step out into dim and useless light

When the end comes 
will you be able to sit with it

and keep telling yourself
it is all going to be OK? 

Are you willing to find a park bench
upon which to sit by yourself

in the last green grove on earth
and tell yourself this too shall pass?

Think about how you are trying
to make the best of this, of how

everything you’ve known till now
is coming to a point:

all existence squeezed into a dot now,
a pencil mark

on a dirty scrap of paper;
the world compressed to a period

at the end of
a sentence fragment,

and it’s harder that ever to recall
what that sentence was.

It made sense.
That’s all you know. 

It was uttered by someone
you loved, or could have loved. 

All you’ve got to go on
is one faded period and 

an illegible word
to puzzle over. Same as it has been

for most of existence: broken puzzles
are offered with great authority

and finality. No answer, no clues.
All you have to do is figure it out

and speak it for it to be real. Are you willing?
Are you ready to have this be the way it ends? 

When you look outside
expecting trumpets and fire
and all you hear is the drone
of photo opps legions seeking 
clicks and likes and affirmations
from the devils or angels they prefer

Peeking past the blinds
into a gray morning with no
distinguishing features beyond 
unseasonable weather and more 
humans signing on the street these days
jerking drug dances for survival

When you turn with a headshake back around
to the relative warmth of shabby rooms and rugs
and your yet to fail walls and aged thin pipes
it all doesn’t seem as bad as the trumpets
and fires you expected at this point
since you are warm and for the moment aecure

You raise a shout and toss a dance move
A wipe of the forehead and a raised glass
A song to whatever lord you think has saved you
from the trumpets and the fire and the nights in the cold
Forgetting the imminent snuffing of all candles and lanterns
You exhale in uneasy and unwarranted relief

Having a big bowl of mythology
as the first act of the day
is better than taking a shower,
better than anything one can do
except for having sex and 
because the bowl of mythology
contains enough sex
to choke Dionysius or lay
Thor low, it is not as if
you can’t get that too, slurping
legends down in the kitchen
where all you have to go by
is window light. Forget the news,
forget checking e-mails until after
you are full. The old gods know
what’s good for you and they say,
fill yourself with the good news
of how we ran amok once
in our time
and still kept the world spinning.
It will give you hope and then,
your belly full, you can take on chaos
secure in the knowledge that 
given enough stories, enough examples
of randy and bloody and now and then
noble tragedy, you can get up
and be a god yourself — randomly
screwing, assuming perfect disguises,
pressing nuclear buttons
if that’s your thing; the taste of Valhalla
on your lips, the image of the Cross
throwing its redemption shadow over all.
You’ve got big shoes to fill,
a landscape to change, lightning in your belt
waiting to be hurled. It’s the breakfast of
champions: a bowl of mythology
in one of so many flavors you’ll want 
to try them all. Now
in Mixed Indigenous Berry
and East Asian Crunch!
Available for a limited time.

Think about
all the bodies you’ve seen,
human
and otherwise.

Think beyond the human bodies
in funeral homes
or hospitals, perhaps
on battlefields or in 

car wrecks or other accidental carnage;
maybe in family homes if you grew up
in the right part of the world for folks
to die in their homes at peace or in war.

If that’s hard to grasp consider  
that you must have seen
hundreds of flies and wasps on windowsills;
chickens laid out in stores;

roadkill of all species;
the neighbor’s cat
upon a sparrow
under your feeder;

your own cat
upon a mouse
under your
kitchen table.

Have you fished?
Have you hunted?
Those are lovely shoes you are wearing —
isn’t that fine Italian leather? 

Isn’t this lovely, understanding at last
how death has surrounded you and kept you?
All life is sacred, some say.
Few of us say all death is too. It’s a shame;

we love to demonize it, saying we give
our killers the ultimate punishment
when we sentence them to the inevitable,
then sit down to a steak after the deed is done.