How I hate you,
anchorman, you
of the salt and pepper perfection
and the analgesic voice.
You’re the tool of liars
and the wedge for division.

I find, to my delight, that my hate
has given me powers —
I close my eyes 
and play his Teleprompter
from my living room,
focusing on how I might disrupt
the world through the music
of the nightly news.

I blow a sequence onto the screen
from miles away and lo, he is reading
a story of a crop circle
on the White House lawn, confirmed
by the press secretary.  His face betrays
a touch of panic…I play on:

trilling into his mouth
a tale of dolphins in the Hudson River
doing tail stands and backflips
near the rising Freedom Tower;

laying down fat tracks regarding
Illuminati child slavery plans
hidden in the plots of sitcoms;

improvising like mad to make him 
rise from his authoritative chair
and dance while proclaiming 
the return of St. John the Conqueror
to the West…I’ve never seen the man

less enamored of his voice and presence.
I stop.  He stops.  He falls
sobbing and sopping wet to the floor.
I set aside my control of the screen.
I watch him closely for signs of relapse,

but no.  I think he’s done.  I think you’re done,
anchorman, spokesman for the dumbing down.
Given the right musical instrument, anything can happen
and often does.  I don’t know what will happen to him now
but I’m warming up for his replacement, making his screen say

“stop…
no…
enough…
what…
no…enough.”

Mom, I never trusted you.
Seems like I had good reason.
Seems like something
was telling me you were lying
about something big.

The Monte Carlo?  I recall
the black car and the white roof.
I don’t recall the face of the man
who owned it.  You say, now,
he was my vanished father,

and not Keith, that rubber-faced twerp,
drunken little man I’ve called my father
since spit was wet.  You ended up
with him versus what I recall
of the loud and flashy and wire wheeled

Chevrolet and its plaid coated driver.
What was his name, I asked you.  All you did
was cry and ask how this could matter
when life has been so good and plain
and quiet.  With him, you sobbed, it would have been

all noise all the time, Fourth of July
every night.  Well, maybe I would have liked that,
I shouted.  Maybe a few explosions
might have helped around here.  Maybe not,
you said. Maybe not for you, I said — and stopped to think.

The Tunnel opens inside me, shows its end-light to all.
A cup is flung, shatters on the far kitchen wall.
Salt shaker stands mute, is showered with the shards.
The microwave bears up, shoulders off the pieces to the floor.

The noise in the Tunnel? A lost train, speeding outward.
The light in the Tunnel? Flame, infamy, loosely-strummed rock guitar.
The Tunnel itself? Built for years, open for a few red seconds.
The chest where it lives? A cave-in blasted open.

My chest hangs open, the far light increasing within…
something’s coming fast, roaring, charging out to this side… 
the chef’s knife holds itself very still, waiting its turn…
and I push my chest closed and hope against hope that it heals.

Been sitting here in the chamber
a while now, looking down the barrel so
while I saw this coming,

that does NOT make it easier,
trust me.

Him finally putting the barrel to his head —
fuck no. I was not meant for this, so

when he at last squeezes that trigger
and the pin hits me in the ass,
I flat out refuse to fly;
I stop when I kiss his temple.
I just sit there.

He turns the barrel to his eye
and stares at me.
Bursts into tears,
shakes me free.

I’m lying on the carpet
twenty, thirty minutes
when the sumbitch decides
to try again…and I’m thinking,

ah fuck,
Tommy’s next,
I bet he don’t give
a shit how this guy
ends up —

and he doesn’t.

I never knew the name
“Tom Delaney”
but I’m sure there was a “Tom Delaney”
who did something for me I should know about,

just as I’m sure there’s a “Diego Sandoval”
in history who provided me with something
I need to be here, and a “Shamara Patel”
who saved an ancestor through some incidental effort,

a “Obiwahi” whose atoms still course my lungs,
a “Maria The Seer” who gave some great-great-great-
great-great-great grandmother a glimmer of hope
for a good love match, a “Thog Arm-Carrier”

who defended his genes and therefore mine
against some depradation or raid.  I don’t know most names
of those who got me here.  I have my short list
of family and friends, the longer list the teachers

insisted I should know, the odd names of those
who have popped up in varied reading and listening.
When it comes to it, at last, I ought to know
the names of everyone who has ever lived —

but I can’t.  I call them, instead, nothing
at all.  I call them “Anonymous.”  I call them 
namelessly, and shamelessly, every time I take credit
for simply being here by stating the name I carry

when asked, “Who are you?” as if it was enough to say
“Tony Brown.”  I ought to see them in the three syllables
that proclaim my survival.  I ought
to fall to my knees crying out for them in praise.

Tomorrow, I’ll drop Serenity freely. Instead I’ll court her sister
Discord, who sweeps all before her. Offering her
my life in portions, giving up a third at a time until I’m gone,
details I’ve cherished will fly from me, dirty and disembodied.

For counterbalance I’ll hold to this thought: once I’m licked
I’ll be nothing but a tight core. Then, I can rebuild, can craft myself,
tools gripped tight in hand. This is how one paves the path to a New Self.
One allows oneself to fall apart; then, the small remainder —

no larger, perhaps, than the pit of and apricot or cherry —
will recall Serenity and will glow again, first feebly yellow
then strong, hard, hot white. And I will then let Discord go
but let her down gently, in case we may have need to love again.

“Whose woods these are” — whose woods?
This is a God-damn parking lot.
If there were ever woods here,
it must have been a while ago.

This is a God-damn parking lot,
and a dull little patch of asphalt too.
It must have been a while ago
when this was forest. Just a mall now,

and a dull little patch of asphalt, too
trimmed and flat to make it easy to recall
when this was forest.  Just — a mall, y’know?
I’m not saying it’s better, but sometimes

trimmed and flat makes it easier.  Recall
the woods where tough decisions were made?
I’m not saying it’s better.  Sometimes
it was life or death

in the woods where tough decisions were made.
Now, in the mall, it’s pink or black, linen or cotton.
We ought to think about it.  Life and death
are still important thouugh we don’t decide that as obviously everyday

as we do with pink or black, linen or cotton, in the mall.
In the woods the choice was wolf or bear, get home or get eaten.
It’s still important.  We don’t choose that everyday, obviously;
still feels like the woods sometimes, that’s certain,

so we make everything a wolf or bear.  Get home, get eaten;
office full of sharks, city full of teeth, kill or be killed.
It’s still.  It’s important.  We choose, every God-damn day,
whose woods these are.