first we say now
then we say then.
once we know how
we say now is when. 

we say this
with one mouth
while still
of two minds.

so say we both
as we lose faith
and hope and
all the rest.

on a day 
in fall float
above the body
watching the body

open the capsules
and pour bitter
tranquilizers
into a green glass

of water until
it is half sleep sludge
and the rest is
not at all clear.

we say now and then
we say no. we say
now and then we say no
and then we fall away

into yes and yes again
and then no. and no.
and then no
thing at all until

awakening, bitter.
the mouth tastes it
when it is of one mind
at last again. sick

unto death but not
close enough. shove
the glass into
a black corner. close

our mouth and pretend
we are whole. we are
fifteen and already
a failure. we say that.

For one long moment 
before October ends
in cooling November
after bursting
from September’s fire,

we stopped under trees,
thinking about
dark ways home
from here. 

One day.
Here, now.
A long time coming.
A long time still ahead
(even if how long
remains undetermined,
even if still shorter
than what’s come and 
gone).

A month
like this one just passed
was not promised.
No September
ever has been.

But October?
October,
threatened October,
is a different matter.

Put our clothes back on,
our jewelry. Walked out of
the woods
to the car.

Found a dark way home
to wait for winter.

Drive fifteen miles north
into the forest between here
and the next place people
are bound to be, leave the car
with the keys still in it
in a rest area, walk some distance
across the leaf beds below
the huge old trees until
you cannot be seen from the road;

take off everything — poor clothes, 
random adornments, your long-inadequate
glasses, the bandage on your left arm;
lie on your back and stare up along the trunks
toward the sky that’s a rare shade
of black-tinged blue between the crown-shy
upper limbs of — what are these, oaks
or maples? You lift up a leaf to your eyes
and try to define and decide
but without glasses it’s all you can do 
not to close your eyes and say, enough
with naming things. Any other day
you’d have known without thinking.
Today, thinking is forbidden. No more
definitions, only one more decision
to be made — and the former wound
is already bleeding so even that 
seems to be complete.

What a sky to be under.
What a bed to enjoy.
What a time to be alive. 

On Sunday morning
you discover you are not
who you were 
the night before.
You were a mistake,
you’ve been corrected,
and it hurts but still you try
to maintain a facade of 
used to be
for the sake of
those you love.

Sadly, your hair
betrays you,
its random gray
and consistent wispiness
whispering, casting
your purification as 
perfidy. You plead 
that it’s not true,
but you can’t explain it 
well enough, and you are cast out
of the castle you’ve built
with all the ones you have loved — 
but the question remains:
if you have been purified,
if you are better off now
than you were
when you fell asleep
last night,
were you betrayed at all?

The air or the light?
Something’s red.
The green house looks red —
what’s tinting it? Maybe
it’s neither air or light — 
instead it could be that
my eyes are bad, full of rosewater
or fruit punch. Or the sun
is blushing from
being caught out
this early — a rise of shame, 
tiptoeing up the sky
until it can brazen it out.
I’m haven’t mentioned the air again
because it’s everywhere and it might
hear me and then who knows
what would happen. The air
might choke me or it might be
indifferent. Or perhaps it might say
“well done, that was a test just for you,”
and for a change the air
won’t depress or oppress me today
and all I will have to contend with
is the red light or the 
paint in my eyes which of course
might be blood, I just don’t want
to say that too loudly, it never pays
to acknowledge that the bleeding
you see in the world is all you.

Am not amused by
the condensation between
the panes of the allegedly sealed
double paned living room window,
which is supposed to 

be impermeable to moisture 
yet there the moisture is,
a small cloud dampening the glass
in the space, an oval stain
there slightly off center; 
what am I supposed to

do about such a thing, what does it
mean now in these broke moments
that the windows themselves that offer
the only reliable view of what’s beyond me
are failing in the failing walls
of the house that’s failing
as I’m failing?

A good reason to stand in the rain
is so you can watch a bus driving away
for as long as it takes to disappear
and then if you like you can either go inside
or stand there a while longer, wondering
if it will by some strange reversal of your fortunes
and those of everyone on board
come back and restart all your lives
in dramatic or subtle ways
and forever after make the sensation 
of cold-soaked clothing clinging to your skin 
the greatest feeling you could ever imagine.

A good reason to stand in the rain
is when the air has gotten
so sharp inside that to breathe there
is to bleed there or to burn from within
so intensely that as the heat begins to dissolve you
from inside out you can look up openmouthed
into the dark nimbus above
and let the drowning of your pain commence 
as the downpour enters your core. 

A good reason to stand in the rain
is to feel something again
after you’ve been so numbed down 
by attempting to live in the light 
that thoughts of dawn and daylight
have come to mean nothing
and then you hear the water in the sky
coming for you and at last something
corresponds to the wild ocean
you’ve been holding within 
for fear of the shaking heads of those 
who just love you more when you’re on 
their dry and sunny shores. 

A good reason to stand in the rain
is how perfect you feel at last out there
even as the crowd inside waves at you
to get you to come in
and gestures with coats and umbrellas
to get you to come in 
and eventually turns their back on you
forgetting about even wanting you
to come in and be as warm and dry
as they are, even as the rain continues
uncaring for them while it bathes you
as you wish to be bathed,
as you have always wished to be bathed.

Don’t,
he said.

Don’t take hold of
this suffering,
this blanket of sorrow,
and pull it up over 
your shoulders
like a cape before you go out
to face the blue-gray world.

It’s heavy, has lead in its hem,
and if you fall off into
the deep water below us
I won’t be able
to pull you up and out.

No matter how I might try,
he said,

the cape
is too heavy;

you have always been a superhero
to me, we both know I am not
and have never been;

the water down there
is deep and cold and if you sink
away from me, I shall follow you
down to the bottom and together 
we’ll drown when there’s
no need for that, we’re not
superheroes;

heroics
won’t solve a thing here.
We just have to take care,
watch where we step.

We’ll be alright,

he said. 

Your living room couch
a blank hole.

Your affectless grin 
in the face of televised chatter.

Your bedeviled yard, filthy from
socialization you didn’t attend.

Half the community mourning
the departure of the sun,

half ecstatic in full plastic ghost worship
under the moon.

Your slow blinking apprehension
when you turn away from

this season of cooling and
finale; if ever there will be

rebirth, it seems mythically far off now,
a prophecy like any other:

affirmed only in retrospect,
long after you miss your chance

to prepare for it
and reap its joy when it comes.

You tell yourself there’s so much to do
before the snow, all those things

to be picked up and stowed 
before the first snow, before

the first snow. But
the living room couch is

a blank hole and there’s so much
chatter it’s hard to even think.

Instead you sit with the prophecies,
eyes shut tight, affectless grin in place.

Calling the lone white pine
in the neighbor’s yard 
white pine, but also calling it
lightning haired star;

naming the nightly skunks
Lucius, Stripe Priest, and
the Defiant One;

pleading with
the omnipresent sparrows
to step back from
the young cardinals 
on the old feeder. 

We pray on Wednesdays
to the garbage truck,
the recycling truck, call them  
thunder servants
carrying the worst of us away. 
(When there is actual thunder
we misunderstand and think it is
a train. We say, is that a train?
Where is it going, and why is it  
empty handed?)

In the suburbs or
the richer neighborhoods
call us desolate and poor 
if you must speak of us at all,
scorn us for living here
in our dense little enclaves.

We know better. Close as we are
to each other without knowing 
each other by name, but we know enough.
We call the neighbors
the slow walking people up the hill next door
or green house baby girl’s mom
or stay away from that one.

This morning Lucius 
was dead on the street. We 
call for the city workers 
to come pick him up before 
the day’s heat takes his scent
to new levels, although they
won’t come soon enough,
we know.

We watch as the father of 
the slow walking people up the hill next door
comes out with a shovel,
scrapes Lucius up from the pavement,
and puts him in the ground
at the base of the lightning haired star.

Stands there for a bit afterward, staring up,
leaning on the shovel.

Goes, slowly,
back into the house. 

Someone
has to stare back from the dark.

Someone
has to volunteer
to hold the keys.

Someone 
has to open the door and look in
now and then to check on
what’s in there.

Someone 
has to describe it for us
although the nature 
of what’s within is, allegedly, 
well known. 

Someone
has to be there 
in case someone else
stumbles into the dark
while the door is open
and can’t find their way out.

Someone
has to go to war
when now and then someone else
calls the dark terrible
and tries to pretend it’s not worthy
of consideration and suggests
we seal the door to it permanently.

Someone
has to become what’s within
and the keeper of what’s within
and the guide to what’s within
and the fortress of what’s within
and now and then the caretaker of those within
when someone else needs to stay there
and make a forever home in the dark.

To think that all this
could be described as
what happens when
a stoned guitarist
plugs in every pedal available
stomps them all at once
and starts banging away
to create such glorious mud
that no one can hear 
a song within this 
so they invent one 
like a boat on a sea of meaning
waiting to be brought to shore
and toward that end we stand around
looking for the Player so we can ask
for this profundity to be opened
and plumbed in public and help us 
see the revelation therein
when in fact the meaning of it all
is that a stoned guitarist 
just wanted to see
what happens
when everything
happens at once
in a bleeding cacophony and the illusion
of this being a song 
is one imposed by those
hungry for the sound of
one clean line
buried under all
a boat seeking port
while a good old jazz standard
or ancient folk tune plays
somewhere under the storm
but in truth the guitarist
has struck one last blast chord
and walked away
across the water 
to find another place 
to play while
the crude wash of sustain
hangs on and on
and the feedback
is killing us

Inside a box
where I am fated
to punch the walls

for this lifetime.
I can’t see through the walls I punch
because they’re walls

and I’m weak; been punching
so long and the holes I’ve made
look small. Like mouse holes

from old cartoons. Inside
the holes mice lived
comfortable lives till

they went outside
but then again
what was out there

was spacious and they had
plenty of room to run
from death by cat.

Outside these walls are more walls
I won’t punch through
in this lifetime, I’d bet.

I’m too weak to run
from anything if I did
break through. So

back to punching
weakly at the walls
before the walls. 

It’s all I know
of all there is. 
I’m no mouse;

there’s so little
in here
that comforts me.