In my heart 
(although it’s been years
since my last smoke)

I’m still ending
most conversations
with the thought of the arc
of a flicked spark
— cherry on the end of a butt — 
into a nearby puddle 

which means most of the time
in my heart it’s been raining
and the notion
that such an action is harmful
is less important
that the joy
of the cool it used to represent

whenever I perfectly centered the toss
into the puddle so that it hissed
punctuating the completion
of my every pithy thought

now I’m just
cancerous and failed
wheezing out platitudes

still
that Marlboro scent can
give me heaven
with a death punch
and I miss 
the hiss
the rain
the time when my heart
could hold things

The flavor of how far you have fallen 
is smoky and full, coating the cheeks, 
sticking to the lining of the throat. 

All you can eat turns into what you can stomach,
but you are so unwilling to starve 
that regardless of the rotten tang of it,

you belly up any time you are
the least bit hungry and take in
what you can stand. It is enough

to keep you some sort of alive without
offering any sort of true nourishment.
It’s a taste, a foul taste, but it’s all you have.

A wailing child somewhere
in the neighborhood. How powerful
that sound becomes when it goes on 
for such a long time.

You would think by now
I’d be immune to the slight panic
it induces, it happens so often.
It’s the kid next door, one house

down the hill from my own. Weather’s
been warm enough these days
that with windows open,
what’s been inside all winter is leaking out.

With my windows open as well?
I wonder if I’ve spread any panic
in the neighborhood with my own 
noisy pain? Even a twinge of nervousness

out there might be validating if I knew of it.
When I look out on the street I can’t see
anyone looking back, cocking one ear to
any sound — even the baby’s gone silent.

We are all exhausted
from avoiding 
teeth. Teeth in how
we live, how we watch
for death. The car stalls
at the intersection, 
teeth loom on both sides.
The bills sever us from
a sense of security the way teeth
tear into flesh. Stained teeth glimpsed
behind apparently sweet lips
warn of duplicity. How we fear 
being bitten, how everything 
appears suspiciously vampiric
in this dimming light.

From past the dark edge,
a cold road back to safety.
No brakes; little fuel.
Go straight out for home,
full throttle for home.

How to live through that,
unclear as I am
as to the meaning of home?
I go straight for home;
nonetheless, for home.

You can’t go home, fool,
or so the old saying goes,
but I will be trying.
As long as I breathe,
I will aim for home.

I love you old friend
with your bag of 
deflated balloons
and stale cake
and in your back pocket
coins for tossing around
at parties

Here you come jingling
and jangling 
all fancy
and Renaissance-y
speaking rapidly about
the last Faire you attended
in some beach town where
no one blinked at such garb
You make me want 
to go there and see for myself

I love this dancing you sweep before you
I thought there was a doom ahead
but maybe in your lovely universe
no such thing can happen

You don’t even carry a sword
and the plague mask I expected
to see you wearing now
you proclaim
is inauthentic
and you will not be party
to such things

and I want to believe you
because joy is perhaps
a mistake but
in your hands perhaps not

You inflate a few balloons
and make a few animals
and toss a few coins

and when
I ask about the cake 
you say one should always carry something sweet
for as long as it retains its essence

and to argue with that
seems to diminish more than just
the thought of such a possibility

and this is not the place
or the time
for that

An event is taking place. 
An incident happens during the event.

People run toward it from their seats. 
People see what they see,

react to the incident,
then react to the reactions.

The reactions add layers to incident and event. 
It all thickens and gets lumpy with all that’s being added. 

History adds its own layers
as people refer to history

and then there are reactions
to the event as it also becomes history.

People rip the incident out of the event
and turn it into a plank for whatever floor

they will walk on from now on.
It doesn’t fit as smoothly in some as it does in others.

But there was only one incident in one event —
how can so many people install it in their flooring?

Maybe they were all watching different events
and there were many different incidents,

or perhaps reaction and history created 
the multiplicity of planks people use to build their homes.

They walk the floor from now on
and other people who come by now

stumble on that plank because
it never is quite smooth enough

not to stick up a little. It’s not like it is
in their house, where to them the floor

is as smooth
as a good story.

All planks stick up a little to someone.
Everyone’s tripping on a different plank.

No one walks a straight line anywhere. 
Every last one of us

tripping, stumbling,
falling into one another.

This young couple
holding hands,
walking over the bridge 
toward Walmart.

Her knee-ripped jeans, 
his puberty-popped beard;
heads down, talking
with apparent intensity

about something we
won’t ever know and maybe 
they won’t even know if
you ask them about it tomorrow.

It’s early April in the city 
and the city spring, wearing its con-artist smile,
promises so much future to these two
they can’t see more than two steps

ahead of them. Cross your fingers
for them, friends;
cross your hearts
and hope they thrive. 

Living unclowned 
by others sounds
wholesome
until the day
you are taking
a principled stand
and the mockery starts

Your wishing well becomes  
clogged with bad laughter
so you retrench and imagine 
things are already different
and the clowns have been silenced

You imagine that
on the other side of the clowning
there will be the grace of 
the trapeze artist flying
high above the astonished 
and grateful crowd 
so you take a deep drink
from the well and get up
and take your stand again

I do not
much like
my head being 
on fire.

My head is
always on fire. Therefore
I do not much like
“always.”

“Always”
never stops, by definition.
It may cool down occasionally
but is always throwing sparks.

You think this is 
a metaphor (as it is)
but real people come by me
sniffing the air, asking

“do you smell smoke?”
even when I am
standing in the rain
or when it is obvious

that I am in deep water,
in over my head by choice.
They ask me to come up
for air and ask if I can

smell the smoke. I say,
why do you think
I am in the water? why do
you think I am trying

to stay under? how is it
that you are not ablaze
as I am? I am
always surprised

that they are always asking about
smoke they can smell
and never about a fire that by now
they should be able to see. 

These cats won’t eat 
what I give them.
They come to bed, 
sit on the dresser

and night stand, staring me awake.
Sitting right behind them?
Ghost cats who will eat
and are also demanding food.

What does one feed
a ghost cat? They’re so thin,
so ornery. Maybe ghost fish,
fresh from the docks?

I get up, walk to a harbor
not far from here
full of boats
but devoid of docks;

fog on the water, the boats
and their catch
rotting in the fog,
the exorcised demon fishermen

of twenty centuries
wailing to come
back to shore. 
I flee. Is there a market

somewhere near here
that might have canned food
for ghost cats? I left the house
with no money, though.

I don’t have money in general,
but no matter: all the markets
are closed for a holiday. No chance
of filling my needs that way

so I head for home through
streets full of paraders, naked,
brandishing willow wands,
striking each other across

the thighs, everyone squealing.
I pass apparently unseen by anyone;
re-enter my house, throngs of ghosts
around my feet, their eyes glinting

like swords. If I go back to bed,
no matter; all that hunger will slosh
around the room and there will be
no sleep. Let me sit here for a while

with you instead. We can imagine
a better world where neither live nor dead
shall feel want. Where the boats 
come back to port, where the willows

grow green in spring, where the naked
can wear what they want if they want,
where I don’t need ghost money to feed
my ghosts, where what I don’t have

doesn’t rouse me
from sleep to try and do
impossible things
to achieve peace of mind.