At the drop of this season’s
first red leaf

I was no longer
what I had always been

and appeared
to those looking on

as something other than
surely human,

a figure obscured,
backlit by evening-slant glow.

Dear friends, fellow citizens
of this hard-changed world,

know how far we have come
and how far is left to travel;

know as well that I see you as
more or less the same way.

I assume we are still
the same as we were before

but, tempered now by isolation,
shifting light and cooling air,

we have somehow
moved closer to becoming

implacable, pure spirit; humans still
but now grimly enhanced

by a sense of how little time
we have left

before all around us
grows terminally cold.

I am not a fancy man
Just a man bound
in service to
necessity

To stay there
I drink
a pot of coffee by sunrise

and by this I mean
neither a pot
of French press
nor a pot of artisanal brew
poured from some new invention designed to extract
the floral flavor from some ancient strain
of mountain grown wildcat shit bean

I mean instead
that I drink a pot of coffee
made in a Mr. Coffee using
whatever decently farmed bean
is on sale in whatever market
I went to on my way home last night
from whatever
last rideshare I gave
or long return commute I made
from some far too far away
per diem contract job
I just completed

I drink a pot of whatever coffee I can get
that will pull me awake before sunrise
after too little sleep

then sit down to steal some time
for trying to tell the truth
about beauty and justice
and all the good abstractions
we live for
before heading into the concrete

terror at unpaid rent
nagging pain in my teeth
worry about every stranger
I let into my car
who might carry not one
but every virus
the memory of
every sugar shock
that laid me out
for lost days unplanned

I drink a pot of coffee
not for its flavor but its effect
and ritual
I can’t afford flavor
I can afford effect
and can make some comforting routine
out of the gurgle and hiss
of the old machine

All I look for from each day
is not to curl into a ball
or end up laid out
on a cold bed
to never write again
or work again
or love again

Flavor is a luxury I can’t afford
to seek

though I do remember it

Behind Mr. Coffee on the counter
is my grandmother’s stove top
Bialetti moka pot
and behind my regular drip grind
is a can of Lavazza espresso grind

for someday
some afternoon respite
with a blank screen
and a free from worry hour or two

When I see these things I tell myself

Soon

The junk drawer in the kitchen.

Behind the microwave cart.

Under-the-counter, in the cabinet
where you store your mother’s
battered stockpot.

In the roots of that immense oak tree
near the high school — not the old one,
the new one where there used to be a sandpit
where you partied, where you learned to fuck
without killing yourself on the stick shift.

In the depths of a pond
where you think someone must have drowned;
it’s so dark, so cold; keep diving, resurfacing.

In a group photo on a travel brochure
for a place you may have passed through
on your way to a conference for some job
or another back when you were working.

As you search, if you find little
to give you hope of success, go non-linear:

is there a sitar in your name? A
giant zither, a sidewinder’s hiss on sand?
Were you ever in a Cave
where the shadows looked like home?

Start at someone else’s beginning and try on
all their varied history of names. If any of them
resonate, perhaps yours rhymed with theirs
at some point; sit up all night practicing,
interrogating your tongue as to what feels familiar.

You were somewhere once.
You might still be there. Retrace
your breath. Your first atoms, long ago
shed, have not disintegrated. Someone’s
got them. Look in someone else
for yourself. Tear them apart
until you are satisfied you aren’t there.

Are you certain
you are not in the junk drawer?
Look again.

Did you move the razor blades
in the medicine cabinet
to see what’s back there?

because to go there
is to put your bare hand
on a contaminated doorknob
and yank on it till you fall backwards
into pig shit then lie there exposed
to whatever comes through
from the other side.

because to go there is to get naked
and take a huge swing
at a hornet’s nest the size of
your own ego.

because to go there
is to eat a bowl of sorrow
twice a day for weeks and then
open a circus in your belly
for all to attend.

how do you not see this?
it’s so obvious.
it’s not good there.
I was born there
and have lived there
off and on
for my whole life.
I am intimate with this need
to be cursed
with ferocious curiosity
about the adventure of
disastrous judgement
and I am telling you,
begging you: let’s not.
let’s not go there.

don’t twist that key.
let go of that handle.
the teeth around the doorframe
will rip you
before you even get through
and tear you
if you manage to come back out.

there are so many better things
here. the wind can be strong
but it is always fresh.
when it rains here, it cleanses.
when the sun rises, it strengthens you
long before it can burn you.
believe me when I say
you do not want to know the forecast
for what’s on the other side
of that door.

in spite of all this I know
your hand is still reaching
for it. I know because
mine always has. so I’m begging
again:

let’s not. to go there
is to suffer. is to starve
on a meat pile. is to drown
in dank urine and thick old blood.
is to never die completely.
is to warn warn and warn
and never be heard.

The strangest moment
I’ve ever had: there was
a party going on. A woman
in a white dress sat on my lap.
It was likely obvious
what we were doing — you know
what I mean. But people
were oblivious to it.
We were there and not there at once
in some way. We had made a shell
out of our indulgence, a wall so thick no one
could see through — or they could see,
and the wall was between us
and their awareness of us.
It doesn’t matter. It was so long ago.
It could never happen to me again,
and I don’t recall her name. I can barely
recall mine some days, let alone
any memory of how we managed to become
so invisible we could make love in public
without fear of discovery
or failure to perform. It doesn’t matter,
it was so long ago, it could never happen
again, and I refuse to tear myself open
recalling her name.

You hold tightly to the belief
that there is only one being inside you.
How you will survive?

Your fear strangles you
whenever you hear a voice
that comes from within you,

a voice you do not recognize
that seems to know you. You say
it is just self-distortion, a mad memory.

Learned books have long said
it is vital to bring all beings within us
together under one name. Bah —

do not surrender your life
to learned books. Suppose instead
that you are a shell, a community,

and you long ago locked your doors
to the others. You’ve become the hermit
on the edge of their town,

the one they tell stories about.
Have you heard any of them? Maybe they
are curious or furious, as frightened of you

as you are of them? You should at least
crack open your door and listen. Ask them
to tell you their names and what they know

of you. Offer them a small meal
if they agree to come sit before the fire
in your hermitage. Don’t talk. Don’t

argue with them. Call them by their
names as you thank them
each in turn for what you learn.

Once they leave, not long before dawn,
you will sit by the coals until you fall well-asleep
for the first time in a long, long time.

Days ago, a wren flew into my parents’ house
when my dad left the front door open.

The bird flew confused from room to room
and never once sang.

I chased it down, caught it under a towel
on top of the living room curtains

and took it back outdoors where it sat
for a second on the front walk railing

before flying away. Today
I saw one outside the dining room window there

and it sang, over and over. Neither
my snoozing father nor my deaf mother heard.

I do not know if this was
the same bird, but I hope it was.

I will imagine it was
until the last of our days in that house

when the rooms will be emptied
of the aged furniture

and those curtains will come down;
until the carpets are gone as they are both gone

and I lock the door behind me;
until all that will be left

will be memories of myths
of birdsong, gratitude, and escape.

If I were the last postal worker on earth
there would be too much left to deliver. Instead
I’d make a deep pile of all the unread letters
and bury myself in its dead center.

I’d find a way to breathe through mounds of junk.
I’d go tearing through the backlog trying to find
enough food and clothing to survive
in the packages. Of course,

someone out there would be waiting for me
to bring them what they wanted, what they needed,
what they’d been waiting for; longing to hear
from someone, yearning for the sound
of the lid coming down hard on the box
or the sight of the red flag raised upon its side.
I’d have no choice. No room for any of that.

Call me selfish or insane, but if I were
the last postal worker on earth
I’d have to stop being a postal worker at once
in the face of the mountain of need
that had fallen upon me. I know
I’d have to revert to relying on myself
for the most basic needs,
ones I’m not sure I can meet even now

as I wait for the mail carrier to come
and bring me, with no malice of their own,
nothing but dread, temptation,
and the searing murder of, once again,
not one damn love letter.

Start the day by greeting
all the creatures in the house: the people, cats,
ferret, fish; the ones in the walls
and the ones in the cracks;

the ones who come out at night
and the ones who sometimes scurry past
at daybreak; the ones we do not even know
are there who would chill us into screaming
if we could see them.

This day brings so much to deal with.
Every day brings so much to deal with.

Start with acknowledgement of all the good and terror
that lives within our walls. Take that as your banner
when facing the burning world beyond them.