In this sullen practice
of mine is the root of
happiness.

If you must ask
why it is therefore called
a sullen art,
understand that I practice it
knowing that any happiness
that may grow from it 
will only rarely
be my own

yet I sit myself down
and work at it daily,
pounding on dark metals
to make brightwork
from them
that others will look at
and rejoice in
after I’m gone.

No, there’s no why beyond
how much it needs doing; no,
there’s no explaining how it chooses
its apprentices; no, there’s not much 
to recommend it as a lifestyle
beyond that potential for 
making joy for others and 
slight immortality.  No,

there’s no reason to become 
a brightworker in words,

other than the impossibility
of becoming anything else.

Listening to 
young poets

whose work
does not itself hold my interest

but whose joy in the work nonetheless
raises in me

my near dead longing
to be 

transported again
by words

first by the words of others
renewing enchantment

and then by my own
finally reminding me

that indeed I still 
have within me the spells

I once cast 
with ease 

releasing from my chest
hurricanes and after

soaking downpours
followed by sun

Listening to young poets
whose work does not itself hold me

yet I honor and thank them
and those who honor and nurture them

for being water and sun
in these parched days

reminding me
that I may still live and grow

All day yesterday
words flowed and then a spring
rose from below me —
not from within me.  I was
a pipe, a pump,
a pool as clear as light.

Today, there’s nothing.
Dry well, rusted works,
old lines so worn out
they leak dust. I’m a mistake,
a fraud, a blown well,
a drowned lamp.

Tonight I’ll pray for rain.
Whether it comes tomorrow
or the day after that
it will soak into my ground.
What may come bubbling
then is unknown,

but it will come
someday, even if
I myself die before it does.
You cannot stop a rising spring —
neither the water itself nor the words
that draw the water from the earth.

some are in
joyful denial,
saying there can be

no more space for metaphor.
no more mystery play in the words.
that we must say it all plain,
not in riddle or picture
or otherwise carried
on a sensate back —
that we must
stay in the head
when we talk heart,
live by the slogan
and the obvious. it is

a joyful denial

of what it once meant
to do this — to be this;

a joyful denial

that there is a music 
to be made along with the
a meaning to find, that one
can do the latter better
through the former.

the joyful denial is

a stone in my shoe
as I walk this walk
of talk, forcing me
to worry and wonder:
am I

an extant mistake
or a cooling discarded body?

then the most
joyful denial:

that any of this

is worth doing. is worth
living. that regardless of

how, why
matters. so —

blade of grass
in mouth, pen

near my hand.

a different joy.

Whosoever is born to
the pain of being a poet

let them sooner rather than later
be dissolved in their own tears, let them

ape their monstrous peers
until they fade into them,

let them be eaten by 
appetites for language

made duplex, false incentives,
a rogue belief in themselves

as beings of consequence.
Let those who call themselves poet

escape it however they can.
Let those who call themselves poet

live to fail their own tongues
and thus become,

if less complete, more
at peace if only in the short term;

if they are sometimes troubled
by the verses they have not written, 

let that pain be transitory as they sink into
the dull comfort of routine and simple life.

Let all of them find their way clear
to the moment of freedom

even if the only way out
is with gun, noose, or pills;

a quiet death in the arms
of a life unsullied by that calling

is the best
they can hope for.

I own a full house
of chores and problems —

some mistakes, some missteps,
some mysteries — unstarted projects,
unopened boxes. Doors with misplaced
keys, others that won’t stay locked
and closed.

I ought to be working on them
as I always do, in a fever to get
something on paper, some vital truth;
ought to be rising with a poem in my fingers
like a key to one of those dusty locks; 

right now, though, I’m doing nothing —
rock-still amid it all, an oyster on ice, 
a stone full of joy, full of juice 
and slippery salt waiting to be 
opened and savored, 
though it will cause my death, and 
why not?
Every day I write though it kills 
because I can’t write a thing anymore
that I haven’t already written
every day forever, and no one
reads any of it though they love
having me around to bring out
in front of company, 
to say of me:

Remember?
This one used to be a feast, 
now is a delicacy 
not to be missed
though his best days are over: 
cherish him
for what he was.

C’mon.  

Stick that blunt little blade in deep
and split me, spill me,
drink me, put me aside when done.
It’s nothing unexpected.
I long ago accepted
that I’ll never be anything
but a means
to someone else’s end,
and that’s fine.
I’m good stuff; don’t feel
bad when you toss my shell —

if I’ve learned anything in life,
it’s that I was built
to be shucked.

1.

What raises a brush to a canvas —

the hand, the heart, or the head?  Or

do you think the brush
is instead held by Another,
by God or Muse or Trauma?

See that statue of the war hero? 
Who is it for —

the single viewer wondering
at the craft that led to
the smoothness of the stone, or
the entire village where it dominates
and shades the central square?

2.

Another poem
that is nothing but questions — 
lazy as a dog in August, lazy
as a good old dirty rug
on a shack floor.  

3.

Who is this for?
Who am I to think
I can write it?

Is this a product
of my arm
or does my sweat
come from trembling
whenever I think 

it’s all been simply a mercy
shown by the cosmos
to a bad little man?

4.

Another reader,
another patron,
another mouth
to feed —

5.

and what do you do
when you know

that no matter what you do
or how you get it in front of them

your poem or sculpture or painting
is once more a failure
in some important way,

mostly because
you are?

when beginning 
do not start with “I”

even if this is about you

hesitate to start with “He” or “She”
as you don’t know enough to stand behind
the choice

you could start with “They”
but wouldn’t that be presumptuous
speaking for them
with no confidence that this
will speak for them

you could look away from human experience
entirely

and boldly
open with the voice of

a horse
a flatworm or fish
a rose ready to begin its petal-molt

no one will question you
as no one can question any of those
to ask if it’s indeed their truth

you could always just start and see where it goes
take a risk and do something
new and othered

such impudence on your part

best to remain seated
on your block of marble
safe
ready to begin
swearing you will
as soon as it’s safe to do so

I was born
sitting at a table
I knew was not
my true place.

I learned to speak, then to
speak poems,
and the first time
I made a promise
to use all that
on behalf of One True Voice
I felt myself ascending
to the moment of balance
when you tip a chair back 
on two legs and it doesn’t quite
fall but you’re hanging there
waiting.  The first time 
I was able to deliver 
upon such a promise,
I felt myself falling

and though I knew
the end would cause pain
and blood would be shed
it was alright
because I also knew
it would not kill me
and after that I would never
have to sit at that table again.

Did we bow down, crushed, when told we would lose our heads
for uttering our few precious, fiery words?

No. We stood upright, put our backs to the wall, 
said our last words:

“Come toward us, swing those swords, impose the sentence:
we will hold you to your corrupt words. 

“Take our heads from us as we stand upright to face you.
We will not speak again. You deserve no more of our words.”