Today is January 11
and I woke up before 6
with little to do but
accept that I’m not a man

I know it’s not true 
and that even the words
“I’m not a man” are suspect
and reek of Whitestench

except that when I look at
myself and all the failures
that even I call failures
it’s hard to argue that the ‘Stench

is just covering up a good person
instead of adding its flavor to 
the general reek of my 
utter incompetence at being alive

I mean of course I’m breathing and
excreting and God knows I eat
but how will I escape the way
I fail to prosper and no

it’s not just the lack of money
it’s the utter insignificance of 
my work when I think I’m 
doing so well and it’s brushed aside

without so much as a thought
It’s the reduction of my once-keen edge
to a pinprick the barely draws blood
It’s the shame of slowly recognizing

the mistakes and looming disasters
have not gone away overnight
as they rise to the top like old bodies
in the pool of darkness in my brain

as I wake up daily before six
slightly happy until I see them
and drag myself out of bed into
the cloud of chores that each day brings

And at last it’s the knowledge
that in a better world built
without Whitestench or Manstench
or Moneystench it might have been 

different but in the long run
I’m here now on January 11
already up and regardless of society
it’s still my fault that I was and am unable

to get away from all that smell
breathe some fresh air 
take one deep breath and plunge
back in to do what I can and must do

on January 12 and beyond

Did you imagine any of this correctly
back when you lay in your room
before dawn and school and first love
and tried to foresee your life? If you did,
did you get the background right as well,
never mind the foreground and the bad business
offstage that clouded the formal dialogue 
and gave it a layer of unease you could taste —
if you did, if you got any or all of it right, why
are you here now trying to survive all of this?
Unless you thought it would fade by the time
you got here, or perhaps that you’d be among those
who would vanquish all the awfulness? Maybe you are
still at it, still making it better on center stage;
maybe you’re part of the problem; maybe
you never believed it would happen at all
and you trusted your childhood vision was going to be
wrong. Maybe you can’t even say why you pushed on
and persevered but now that you’re here 
and the decay and rot of the world is so evident,
you look back and imagine how it should have been
so clear, considering how far you’ve come from 
dawn and school and first love
and how none of any of that
came to be or stayed true.

It has been more than a few days 
when I come back with some reluctance 
to the dance from the outer room, 
stopping for a moment
on the threshold to watch others
whirl around like teacups
on a theme park ride.

I stand there wondering
if it’s worth it to begin again,
to pay the fare and join in;

then I recall the joys 
of uncertainty, the worry
and the planning
for where things might go
if the ride breaks down 
at the height of the swirling;

I think of the dancers,
of the dance itself
leaping and careening
into a stomp from a waltz,
the orchestra shifting gears
from decorum to abandon.

How can I not join in
when it seems
that all I have resisted 
has begun to change
and who I am
and what I have been
will settle at last into
the music yet to come?

This is a message
from oatmeal and cinnamon

From blueberries and
dark amber agave nectar

It reads
You keep hope alive sport

All this will be worth it
one of these days

And then there’s a message
from a walk through the swamp

From trash below the boardwalk
and the sight of a fox not far off

It reads
Nothing is easy but restoration is possible

and what is worth restoring
is wary — but it is nearby

Finally a message
from the bed you so want to replace

full of lumps and bad springs
that eclipse all the wholesome memories

It reads
Get your rest while you can sport

You will need it 
in the coming good times

if indeed
they come in their own good time

In cars drivers 
clothed for mistakes
they made years before
grip steering wheels
they barely need as
the cars work
those same routes
every workday.

After years of 
dressing and driving
like this, they 
know in their 
bones that to imagine
different roads
would tear them
to shreds.

They clench
the steering wheels,
their teeth; they clench
their buttocks
as their cars go 
where they always go.

There by the roadside,
a steering wheel.
The sound of 
someone screaming,
or cheering.

When you are uncertain
about where that nearby
car alarm is going off

and your own car is out of sight
and you can’t say for certain
what your alarm sounds like

you might want to pull
some pants on before
stepping into the cold

to see if you are responsible
for your own awakening
and any others out there

When you are sure that
it’s not you but
the silver Acura parked

across the street and up
the block in the driveway
of the only single family home

around here 
The one whose occupants
you’ve never even seen

you step back into the foyer
and wait to see who comes out
but no one does

You cannot go back to sleep
wondering if it shut off by itself
after what seemed like an hour

or did it get shut off
by someone inside using
a remote 

Someone remote and
unseen who lives among us
putting forth disruptions

like small bombs that will trouble
our sleep until the day
we no longer hear them at all

and thus will be destroyed

On the rug
I see a quarter
that flew from my watch pocket
when I peeled off the jeans
to put them in the wash

And I at once regret that it’s lying there
when I could have put it in the hand
of the bundled up houseless person
on the corner 
but found it too much work
to dig it out of that constricted pocket
while seated in the warm car
I had no folding money to offer
but I could have passed it on

I regret that I’m no longer the sort
to wait to toss it into
the collection plate 
of a church I no longer attend
and do not trust

So full of regret 
for it still being here 
when it might have been doing 
something else more worthy
or less worthy
At least would have
been doing something

I take it outside
and fling it at the sky

I do not hear it
come down

Could it have become
a star for someone
to follow

or am I just 
so full of regret
for all the good
I haven’t done
and all the faith
I do not have

that all I have left tonight
is a dim hope
for this absurdity
to open someone’s eyes 
to a brighter hope
of doing

May my wasted coin burn
in the night sky
above something out there
just as absurd
and worthy as
the last time
this happened

To call a place home
it must have a door that 
will swing both ways:
one to let you out
if you want to go out
and one to let you back in
if you want to come back in.

Every door into and out
of this place appears to be both
but is neither. It doesn’t matter
what you want. It doesn’t care
either. It’s not the place
you first thought it was
when you first entered and
when you left after learning that
it turned into a different place again. 

Home becomes graveyard. Graveyard
becomes garden; garden
becomes train station; train station
becomes a corner shop; corner shop
becomes a stereotype, a seedy foreign port
from a movie you find one night
while searching for a new place to call home
or a map back to the old place
you once called home
that never was but at least
you could see doors there
if you squinted.

Standing on the steps;
friends and people you know within,
glimpsed through familiar curtains.
If there’s family they must be
in the interior, hidden from view.
It all looks like Christmas
or a casual visitation after
a formal wake. In your hand,
suddenly, is a key you half hope
will break off in the lock
and keep you safe out here.