I am relieved to
think about this, to say
out loud

that killing myself
trying to survive
while doing the work

might be the greatest service
I could offer the world, and while
I have thought it before

with a hint of self-pity
and bizarre hope of help
from others who somehow

understood me better than 
I knew myself without my saying
a word, tonight I say it

feeling the shortness of time
in this dimming world, the urgency
of the need to push myself 

by wish and will into danger
and depth — and if only the 
work survives the plunge,

so be it. Let there be
an end to me in service
to seeking the good 

and drawing it to the surface
from the cold wrong
we are drowning in today.

Let me sink away if what rises
from where I sink floats,
high and bright, above the tides.

Worked close to the ocean
all week, but had
not one glimpse of it —

my days spent a scant few miles 
from where the Pilgrims 
staggered ashore,
yet I caught not one whiff
of who they were and
what they brought with them — 

or so I thought until I saw
the blasted, early winter land,
the new office buildings
built next to the sand and gravel pits
that seemed out of place and
mistaken, felt how cold it was here
with the East Wind coming in
from unseen water

and pulled my long black coat
tighter around me.

There is a person somewhere
who lives and breathes only sunlit air
and views any storms that come
to soak or drown or bury them
in snow and ice and isolation
as fickle hiccups in the general
benevolence of our corner of the world. 

There is a person somewhere
who looks at love, justice, and connection,
sees the teeth in their smiles,
and sneers at how obvious the evil is
lurking behind any sweet impact
of the random benevolence
of our corner of the world.

There is a person somewhere
who thinks it all balances out, 
or will at the End. They would take 
the sunny one and the dark one and have them talk
as if it might work to smooth the crags
and spice up the bland plains of this
varied stage set of a world.

Neither joy nor despair seem worthwhile
to some. They grit their teeth and say
it’s a round ball and the only truth
of how it rolls is that it rolls and only luck
shifts its juggernaut beauty away
from crushing any one of us riding
this inconvenient marble of a world.

A fourth way, out there somewhere,
is found perhaps on a lover’s transient face,
the skin of a maple or palm, the fur
of a mouse or the cool of a stone in hand;
found when sinking into storm and sun as One;
found in watching as the complications of ecstasy
and sorrow spell the secret Name of the World.

Here is a relaxation
exercise to keep you from
becoming way too intense
when faced with the dinosaur thump
of how to get through a day in America 
when nothing that opposes you
relents at any point:

first place both thumbs into 
the corners of your eyes and 
push out the balls until there’s room
to fill the sockets with blue soap 
that will foam when tears
fall into it as the eyeballs slide out
into the greasy air;

once that is complete
lean forward and let it all fall to the ground
where suds and tears will bloom
slick flowers from the cleansed pain and 
ask those nearby to describe them to you
while your eyes are settling back
into sight.

You will find yourself rising: no one
goes through this sort of thing
and remains close to the earth
for very long. Tensions that have been
your anchors will be unleashed and
so you will levitate and then soar, your eyes
still wet enough that all will be blurred
and dazzled with the new light.

You ask if the pain
and blindness are necessary?

Without them
you would find yourself
seeing things the same as ever.
You would not fly. 

You ask why you could not
simply meditate as they do
in other places
and as you’ve been taught?

This is America and
without the willingness
to lose all and see it all again
differently when you
come back to Earth, 
relaxation is just another word
for a huckster
to hang a dollar bill upon.

One star.
Red spearpoint.
Lily, gladiolus.
Seaberry, yew.

You stitch
culture from 
whatever pieces 
you are given.

Make your world
under a star
you call a god.
Preach of it riding on 

your spear tip.
Lay flowers on 
warrior graves.
Drink acid from 

a berry,
build a bow
from a sacred tree.
Isn’t this easy?

Tell me
you can’t remake
a world given
these parts

and I will show you
a mirror and a 
smoked fish on a plate
and say: eat, coward,

grow strong on
fire, then I will show you
red and brown stone
sealed in white ice

nested in volcanic soil;
ancient seeds,
a ruptured flute,
an intact oud;

all those once enslaved, 
all those once displaced,
all those ripped from their thrones,
all those standing with fists

full of bloody skin. 
I will say: there.
There’s a new thing
to be made from these

while a song for planting
and release will be sung
by grateful millions.
You can bend to work

with them. You can 
tear your palaces apart
and offer your gems
to whatever star

you choose.  You can
bury those dead
who have longed for
comfort in good earth

knowing they have fed
new life. You can say:
here is my spear,
here is my bow,

then give them
to these now living among
lily and gladiolus,
seaberry and yew.

Lay your old tools down
under your 
demoted star’s light
and fall silent.

Those millions need not
build for you
as you did not
build for them.

Those millions
need not build
with you;
if you forget that

you become a piece
to be chosen or not
when they begin a new 
world under some

star or no star, with
your flowers
and tools,
or their own.

In a box
I made I keep
the work of 
my whole life: how
to be this divided
self, how to speak of it,
how to stay alive
this way. I keep
my races and my bad
brain in there and
the sticky moods and
how I don’t want to look
at any of it very often.

In my self-made box
I keep stars and 
scars and every ink-bitten
mistake and triumph and
triumph over a mistake.
Sometimes I have to
crush down what I put in 
before but it’s all in there,
I promise. Well, 

someone kicked it
and a side split. Someone
kicked my self-box and
now it’s not holding

and when I come
out of it, when I spill
out of that opened
corner, what may come

might be the new stuff
up top or maybe the 
very oldest, that which has been
crushed down and down and
compacted for long years

and some of those triumphs
look now like mistakes
or are so pressed into
one another that 
they might ignite when exposed
to the new light and
I can’t tell you what
is going to happen, 

other than that 
what’s spilling out
is possibly ugly and 
if it burns it may burn
toxic and if the box
goes too we’ll both
see me for real
in the open at last.

Inside my self-box
late at night, early
in the morning, I stare
into the world through
the now-fractured corner
and it looks like
a slot canyon, a space
between walls or bars.
It looks straight
and narrow. Surely
it’s better in here
than out there.