Listening to space
for secret messages, David
simply is, and that’s enough. 

Asking a tree
for directions home, Sheila
simply listens. This is plenty.

Big Stan is an ear and 
an eye who points out
the other two are “nuts”

when he leans into your car
to tell you you’re alright,
not like those two.

You give everyone
a dollar. Everyone
gets a dollar. It won’t help

but it’s something. God Bless,
they tell you. God Bless.
Which god, you wonder — 

the one in space, the one
hiding under the bark
of the tree? Or maybe

Big Stan’s a god,
or the God, or
there’s no gods at all.

That seems like bullshit.
Even if they are nuts,
all of them, something’s

talking to them
from somewhere else.
We are all nuts,

Big Stan. David’s
disdainful of the tree
Sheila talks to, and Sheils

has been to space
and knows David’s 
hearing nothing.

I give everyone
a dollar. I do what I can.
David’s closest to the truth.

Big Stan is only half right,
and I wish I knew how
to get the tree to tell Sheila

how to go home.

I used to be
such a goober
when it came to
how I acted around
someone I was drawn to
(although it was I gather at least
somewhat endearing to most except when 
it became clear that I did not understand
how far off I was in my estimate
of the level of interest the other person had
in my attentions) — regardless of the reason
for my interest — hero worship, attraction, 
a desire to learn,  general admiration seizing hold —
I used to be such a goober, stumbling through
conversations, asking all the wrong questions 
in even more wrong ways — touching subjects
that should have been left untouched, oddly breaching
spaces personal, professional, social, cultural, even now and then
spiritual — I used to be such a goober, addicted to the excitement
of finding someone who sparked me until after years  of corrections
and shaming I became silent before the mystery of such attractions
and now, now I’m not; I have become calmer, stiller, socially acceptable,
and far more numb within. 

Waking in darkness
to do…what?

Walk around the house
thinking daytime’s near?

Pretend this
was intentional

and go sit on the couch
in the living room

where all the light comes
from electronics

and think about yesterday,
all you did and didn’t do.

Daylight is a long way off,
it seems.

Mark this as night, still,
not early morning.

Rectification
for what was badly done

and what was undone
will have to wait until sunrise;

any wisdom that comes 
from the struggle

needs time to be born,
and this is not that time.

To sleep now, with a spoonful
of honey on your tongue.

Morning will offer
a ghost of that sweetness.

As always, you should begin again then:
lay the ghost to rest, grant it 

passage from dark to light
in tandem with your own.

The big cat in the window
with a little bowl of catnip
poured from the bottle that sits
next to the bottle of Jameson’s.

In the next room the big man
sits next to an emptied glass.
He’s used to big Scotch whisky.
Irish whiskey barely touches him.

The big cat comes in, sits down,
stares at the big man. “You looking
for more?” he asks her. She walks away.
He knows she’s not. She knows when to stop

but it gives him the excuse he needs
to go back to the kitchen and pour
something into his, something into hers.
“Don’t mind if I do.” The big cat is gone,

probably to the bed.
He should do the same.
But now, a second glass
as the first barely touched him

and he wants to be touched.
“Here’s hoping,” he says.
It comes out somewhere
between a purr and a hiss.

Like a bite of lettuce 
drenched in oil
on a salad plate
that’s about to be taken away,
or an irregular corner torn
from some unknown paper
blowing through the yard
fast enough
you can’t catch it so
you don’t bother
to try. Not to mention
those people
on your supermarket corner
for whom you feel
twinges of regret
that it’s so difficult
to rescue or clean up
after them. Must have had
a purpose once. Must have
been good. Or at the least
shouldn’t have been left behind
to litter the place.

Long night recalled
only in fragments.

Yellow apple skins glimpsed
in a refrigerator drawer.

A voice as clear
as cirrus clouds in sunset.

A remnant lust
fading into regret. 

What needs to be
retold for a different world.

Instructions on
how to be old. 

Sickness and health
interchangeable. 

Hard words: love,
damage, porcelain. 

The same old “used to be” 
shifting: is memory

credible, imagination
no more than a broken cup?

The pattern on the tablecloth.
The tablecloth on the floor

and whose eyes are those
watching from the pantry?

Fatigue in the form
of question marks.

I had better get home
before answering any of this.

Want to lie down
silently and let doubt

slide away like a kid giggling
in a downward mountain stream,

all the way into an icy pool
then coming up for air. 

A yellow apple for breakfast.
Afterward, cleaning up

the broken cup. Afterward,
memory kissing me back

to just after childhood
and the eyes of an early lover. 

be sweet with yourself
while donning your arms and armor
for the day.

drink fruits newly juiced
from a cup fashioned from
the skullcap of yesterday’s enemies.

be fierce as a broken daisy
not yet browning
as it droops toward decay.

ask yourself: if you are not
a warrior, 
how are you still here?

in your shelter
as night, whether ripped tent
or bungalow, dim tenement

or high glitz studio:
are they all not 
battlements? lay your hands

upon your sleeping beloved
and swear the only oath
a warrior should take:

here is what I am, here
is what I love. may I not let
this coarse need for war today

grind away my words 
and my deeds. may I
recall the sweet even as I 

traffic in the bitter.
may I come home. may I
sleep there. may I not be alone.

I’m dying I say
and you say I’m going to be fine
and I’m dying I say and you say
fine. You’re going to be fine. We’re all
going to be fine. You’re dying
and I’m dying and that’s fine.
Nothing that inevitable
can ever be anything but fine. 

I’m scared I say and you say
I’m going to be fine and 
you are going to be safe. I’m scared
I say and you say there’s no reason 
to be scared. I’m dying I say 
and you say fine. I’m fine, you’re fine.
It used to mean fuckable, now it means
dark is the night and cold is the ground
no matter how fine you are so you can’t be
anything but fine.

I’m cold I say
and you say I’m going to be fine
and I’m dying though and scared and now
I’m cold and you say fine. You’re fine
and are going to be fine. I told you
the ground would be cold and 
look how fine you are even on the ground
coming up to hold you. Your planet
longs to take you in. You can’t be
anything but fine.

1.
Imagine your sins were laid out upon
a buffet table.  Where would you begin?

Would you save the best for last
or plunge your face and slobber it up

first thing? You know if you do the rest
will pale in comparison and you

will lose your appetite. Then what? 
You’d likely sit there wondering

if you missed out on subtleties 
by falling into such gluttony. 

2.
Imagine your sins have been laid out
upon a table short but wide. The dishes

holding them are few but they are vast.
You’ve sampled throughout your life 

but the rib-sticking ones, the ones
upon which you based your diet

and sustenance, are in deep bowls
covered with drip. Where to begin

is the big question. How to finish
is without question. You will finish

eyes open and unable to swallow
one more bite.

3.
Imagine your sins had never fed you.
You still wouldn’t have lived forever.

You’d have sat there wasting away
without one smile on your skinny little face.

You’d have been one clean bag of bones
but you still would have no clue about 

how to eat right. How to digest
the hard stuff. How to add spices,

how to know all the differences between
evils and indulgences,

how to thrive
in the gap.

It’s been enough
to have been here.

Built my home
on this lot you offered.

Moved here from
a busted shack.

This made me work.
This made me wider.

Gave me more rooms
and all outdoors.

The home is not
a spacious place.

Neither great in width
nor wild in depth.

Either one’s
too grand for me.

It’s been enough
to live this place

and call it home
as I am called

so many things,
though none that simple.

As far as I can know
I’ve been completed. 

It’s been enough
to have gotten this far.

Time to light the lamps
on the end tables
in the clean, dated living room
and welcome expected guests
to your home for sitting time
where all will talk to each other
in awkward tones as they’ve not sat
together this way for a few years. 

Now to the kitchen to unwrap
the gifted food and the soft drinks.
A few from the other room come in
to offer help and together you move
the food around, the plastic glasses,
the napkins, the paper plates. 
Everyone’s so careful not to spill
a thing and in fact nothing spills.
All remains perfectly placed as if
that’s how the rest of the world
stays intact.

After, you speak out loud
to the remaining guest:
the invisible, the unspoken,
the one they came for.

“It was nice, wasn’t it?”