Toward the end he put his past
into a jar and closed it tight.
Put his drama and affection
away in glass reasoning that
if it fell and broke
from his aged clumsiness
it would get everywhere and 
he might cut himself on it,
so best to tuck it far away 
in the back of a corner cabinet
in his basement, a brokedown box
of shelves left by the former owner,
now deceased. 

Now that he was free of that
he could sit all day and not do
a damn thing. Not even
barely breathe. Not hang out
with friends. Maybe once in a while
touch a cat, pick his skin. He did not
imagine anything. Mice ran around his feet
and edged closer to climbing all over him.
It became clear that he didn’t care.

His flesh hardened 
to gray wood. His eyes
marbled into dull stone.
Got in and out of bed
like a log rolled off a truck
until the day he saw no reason
to get out of bed and stopped.

The jar in his basement
might still be there. If you can find it
among all the jars of old nails
and slips of folded paper
holding dried tomato seeds
kept for a spring that didn’t came,
if you can find it among the spiders,
please discard it as you are all the rest

as that was how
he would have wanted it
if he could have remembered
what wanting was.

what you recall about
the last time
someone said

“just be yourself
and you’ll be fine”
is that your first reaction was

“if I am myself
I am by definition
not at all fine;”

this was followed by 
a recognition
of how hard it was

to be someone
you didn’t know
all that well.

that said,
how do you know
that being yourself wouldn’t work

to heal you?
to bring you to life?
to tell yourself the truth?

I’m going to assume
that somewhere a couple
is making love tonight 
in spite of all the ways
the world is ending;
going to assume

that they have been and will be
tangled and drenched
and strenuous and motionless
as befits their moods and desires,
and although they know how few days
are left for any chance
at such a night again,
they are fully present now;

assume that past and future
are just hard words
for harder times
behind and before them;

assume in my weary 
know-it-all core
that I’ve missed something
they have found,

and it’s there as well
for me to find
if I choose to seek it.

I heave the suitcase from the hatch
to the sidewalk
outside the rehab center.

My rider thanks me 
and shakes my hand.
I wish him luck on wherever

his journey takes him next.
He wheels the heavy bag toward
the glass doors. 

This place is located
deep among broad fields
on an unmarked road.

Dark institutions in the near distance
might be hospitals, might be prisons,
might be something else again.

I drive out in the dark. No streetlights.
Find I can’t trust my eyes;
what is road, what is not? 

I must not be alone
in my confusion as to
the location of the road:

here is a sign:
“Vehicles must stay on pavement.
Violators subject to arrest.”

They don’t make it easy.
You’d think there would be
lights everywhere out here

but maybe no one voluntarily
comes to this place
at night, and the dark

is allowed
to swallow those
who lose their way.

Behind me,
the lighted lobby
of the one secluded building.

Ahead, my good headlights
and my memory: how
I got here, how to get home.

I don’t remember it
Ninety percent of it
Has fallen from me

How I was born
How I was nursed
How I started to walk and talk

I’m told my first word was “apple”
not “mama”
but I don’t recall it myself

That memory
might be on the ground or
might have found its way
into a waterway and floated
into the sea and now is part
of something bigger

Important clues are lost
So I make them up

I think of rose lions
darting through purple grasslands after me
Imagine darling swords
swallowed by lean women dressed
as medieval fish from the margins 
of old maps
who then hummed strangled songs
to me as they bounced me on 
their rough knees

and taught me how to grow up

I force myself to believe
these myths of who I am because
ninety percent of all I am
is as unremarkable as it is forgotten

Somewhere someone’s found what I lost
and holds it up to the light on a beach
far from here
closes their fist around it then
relaxes the grip
and tosses it back to the sand
to walk on without a second thought
about that crummy little trash-nugget

Meanwhile I choose to say 
I was a dragon
before I could walk

Smell the burning applewood
Taste it always on my tongue

will not do this for a week
or a month

or a remainder
of life or so. turning away

to practice instead
my eating skills.

find a way to feed
on less (as there will be less.)

writing’s a bad food,
anyway. texture too papery,

mouthfeel, pure ashes.
adds fat in subtle places.

it doesn’t show
but oh, the weight.

when I stop
some will scoff and some

will wave hands and flutter
and some, some will insist:

hey, you owe me. you owe me
all your gifts. 

you call this agony
of process on display

a gift. I never understood
that. I’m hungry. I’m starved.

look at what I’m giving you.
this is what I owe? you want this?

such a poor menu
I have been offering.

none of this
is good for any of us.

It doesn’t matter
how many times
you’ve told yourself
not to share yourself
so easily 
and so often;

you cannot help opening
your barn door mouth,
letting the horses out
to trample the fields.

It’s too late to call them back.

The sunset, at least,
is perfect: red layers,
pink layers, fire glow low
to the west.

It’s too late to call your words
back from their wild run,
but at least it’s warm
where you are
for at least
a few moments more,

before night’s cold sets in
and you have to sit there
silent and alone with regret,
listening to them
galloping far away
without you.

A man burning paper in a dish,
waiting for magic solutions. 

The smoke sets off an alarm.
An entity snickers behind the kitchen door.

Damn, the man says, flapping his hands,
grabbing the broom to reset the detector

with the end of the handle. 
Damn it all to hell, he says, everyone’s

going to wake up and know
I was pursuing such foolishness.

The entity in the corner
whispers to him that he should open a window.

He thinks it’s a good idea.  He thinks
he came up with it. He opens the window.

Out with the bad, in with the good, he mutters.
It’s as much an incantation as “damn it all to hell”

and he doesn’t realize that the whole cascade
of what is about to follow is his fault

for listening uncritically to whatever sounds
like a good idea at the time. 

The good comes in
and the bad goes out into the world.

The entity easily absorbs the good.
The man eventually closes the window.

Now he’s got so much complexity
to deal with, and nowhere to go. 

Magic, he mutters;
pointless, perhaps non-existent.

It’s too late for that, though,
and he doesn’t even know it.

Old saying: cheaters
never prosper.
In fact they do.
They always do.

I don’t know how to trust.
I don’t know why I should.

To ask for help 
is to open my chest
and show all the knives
I’ve stored there —

not in boxes
or sheaths but bare-bladed.
Over time, nicks
have become open wounds
and I won’t show them
to just anyone.

I dream of canyons
the way some folks
dream of oceans:
I want to sit beside them,
stare out over them 
for a long time,
then plunge in. 

I don’t know why I think.
I don’t know why I’ve bothered.

Old saying: what goes around
comes around. If that’s so,
it takes too long. 

What I know of desertion
would empty a book. I know this,
I have seen the library
where they are kept.

It isn’t cheating 
till it comes around
and fills a book
with knives then
tosses the book
into a canyon
and calls it a day.

How does one prosper,
you ask.
One doesn’t,
I respond, all the way
down.

Seeking my place
in this new body, 
opening doors to some rooms
I’ve seen before
and some that are new to me,

a few that were locked away
from me by design or mistake, 

and some that I thought I knew well
that have been altered in some way;
small unclear changes that somehow
have broken my unearned sense
of security, my trust in my able grasp.

Here’s a cracked cup lying
where it has fallen from my numb hand.

There, my guitar with its bloody neck
that I long to play but fear to pick up.

Everything 
fraught with the small dangers
of life — 

I might have a moment later
where I am comfortable here
but right now, all I can do

is keep trying the locks,
turning the handles,
seeking.

Your head
wants to know what to do next,
and you can’t tell it
anything.

You can’t even tell it
who is listening to its questions,
if it is not the head itself. Maybe
it’s one of those old distinctions
at work — heart, head, hands.

Perhaps your hands are talking to your head,
or perhaps the heart has its own voice
and that is what is bugging the head for action.

The bigger question: where are you, exactly,
in the mix? Do we need to pull
the soul into the inquiry? Or perhaps this is
a case of ego, id, superego at play;
anima or animus goading the persona 
to action while the shadow sits aside chuckling.

All this speculation gets you is panic,
is a spur of the moment step out the door
in a T-shirt and pajama pants
in mid-January. You have no idea 
who’s doing what inside your shell;
maybe, just maybe, you’re just plain nuts;

but look: a coyote
trotting down the sidewalk
on the other side of the street,
much to your mild surprise.

It does not look back at you as it passes. 
As if it should. As if in any space
where Coyote runs
you, you hero, 
you man of the hour,
could mean a thing —

you go back inside
shivering and 
brimful of silence.