If any lines 
are addressed to
“you” it is likely
that I’m talking
to myself

unless I’m thinking of 
a specific “you”
in which case
it’s not likely that
I’m thinking of 
or speaking to you,

in which case you should
also know that “I” is never 
completely me but is some
part; perhaps an aspiration
or a cringe, but not “me”
as a “me” whole and
imperfectly human
as I write and live and 
eventually die;
unlike, I hope,
the “me” I will
leave behind.

I’d rather not
have to tell you
any of this,
of course,
but there are times
when I need
to be reminded 
myself. 

leave what creates alone.
tend to its home
but not to it except
to stay out of its way
and listen to it.

you may at first mistake its voice
for that of an illness or a deity.
call it what you like,
a Muse even, but don’t
imagine it’s a separate entity
or anything but a mundane
part of you. it does its best work
if you ignore it. leave it
to its chores.

one day you’ll awake 
to a gift shining casually
from your seat
on the worn out couch:

freely given, left to you
by you, in your name,
to make your own. 

Try to start,
it says, 
from something 
outside of yourself.

Find a way into
the edge of the picture
once you understand 
how you fit, fill in
an empty place, tell us
what you see and hear.

You fit somewhere
in the everything 
out there, one with the 
orcas, one with the squirrels
and the sphinx moth
clinging to the wall
inside the front porch.

It’s simple, really,
it says.
All you need 
is to become
part of everything
and the whole
of everything 
will become obvious.

Nothing, I retort,
is obvious
and never has been.
I’ve been looking outside
since I was too young 
to truly see the difference 
between outside and inside
and now, now that all
is on fire no matter whether I look
within or without,
what is supposed to become clear
through all this smoke
now that I am also smoke?

Wake up
bathroom
cats fed
coffee on
write
coffee

or

bathroom 
cats fed
coffee on
garden
write
coffee

or

wake up 
crack open
coffee on
bathroom
cats fed
shatter
assess damage
stop
coffee
write

or

write
wake up
sleep
wake up
iced coffee
coffee on
write
coffee
write
sleep
coffee
write
coffee
sleep

or

sleep
write
sleep

or

sleep
coffee on
garden
cats fed
coffee

how did I forget
the litter box? the 
opening of blinds
to daylight? the 
cursing of the bills? the
running of the 
mouth inside about 
what is read and unread
on the bedside table? how
did I forget to say
I am not alone enough
and lonely more than not?
how did I forget to say 
that I am churning with questions:
how are my mother, my sister,
my lover, all my tragicomic
friends, all the deadly Senators,
all the fucking style prisoners, the morning
becoming sexually awake, the spiritual
evening of entire mountains, the
timezones and islands and
orphans and smugglers of orphans,
the smiles of how many better equipped
than I am to take on what I’ve got to
wrestle?

or

wake up
lie there
imagine
what I must write
lose it before
the first cat is fed
coffee on
die a little
grieve the loss
write

Only a fool would say that:
a fool, or a writer trying
to make you notice them.
To make you think
they were deep,
or at least that the work
was deep. Something
the writer could claim was
channeled from a deep source,
not entirely their own. 
That it was nonsense,
but contrary nonsense, 
something the world
had forgotten. Selling
bullshit as wisdom is
the perfect skill, after all.
Anyone can go far in any field
with that, not just writers.
You can eat and drink for free
damn near forever on one
foolish bit everyone thinks
is brilliant. That you longed
for brilliance is immaterial.
That you struggled and failed
for brilliance is of no consequence
to anyone but you, if you are
so inclined to care, once you are done
eating and drinking off your failure.
Are you done?

Remarkable —
the sunflower leaf 
holding water
after a night
without rain.

Remarkable — 
all I need to do
is describe it this simply

and someone
will call this description
art, someone
who never notices
remarkable things
happening so routinely,

who might have been
profoundly changed
if they had just looked up
from a book
and seen it for themselves.

up by five am daily unless there’s
illness or rare refusal. the Work begins 
before coffee, breakfast, or inspiration.

first it’s just me and a shimmer, a pang.
then it’s just me, my pang and/or shimmer,
and blank space, waiting.

inspiration is for amateurs.
the pang is the pain of not writing,
the shimmer? anticipation, joy.

then the poem comes up out of the Work.
no effort is needed until it shows up.
our work only begins after the words punch in.

we wrestle and chip. we form and reform,
seeking the poem the poem insists
on becoming. seeking the writer the poem demands.

do this long enough, often enough, and you become 
immeasurable to others unless you are measured
against your last poem. it has not been long enough

for me. tomorrow it’s back to sunrise
and no inspiration; just
shimmer, pang, and blank space. 

as for satisfaction in the Work? an artist’s statement?
ask me later. ask me later tomorrow, in fact.
prepare yourself for a lie. assume everything said

that is not in the Work
is somehow a lie, just one of those things
left behind after the Work is done.

this is a collection of words
with broken hips.

it sits in front of you
squirming.

it is trying to rise and greet
you and the day but has been stuck

waiting for revisions
for what has felt like forever.

it is uncomfortable with how much
you expect it to fly

when it eventually does rise,
changed, to its feet.

you are eager for it to take flight,
but that is not its nature.

it would prefer to stay close
to the ground. it longs for you

to stay with it and peer into
the dirt around the roots of grasses,

all the kinds of grasses. it wants to
be anything but one of those poems

that soars high above all.
its bones have been unknit for so long

it has learned to just be here,
close to the ground.

all it wants is to get out of the chair
and take a knee and stare into the earth

around grass roots, learn the names
of what grows there, and help you do the same.