Originally posted 11/17/2009; originally titled “Three Men And A Shadow.”

I can see the kid I used to hate,
his arrogance, his secret shame
in lying about something
he’d done or not done,
thinking of girls,
of pills stolen
from the medicine drawer
and choked down
as he sweated grades,
expectations, failure;

it only takes
a head turn
to see the young husband
I used to scorn,
shuffling off ill-dressed to jobs
he thought beneath him,
finding ways
to smile at people
he thought neglected
his genius, avoiding evidence
of his own lazy thought.
I remember him
pacing off long nights
as the house piled higher
with things, things, things…

then face on, direct now,
to see the fat man:
gray and bloated,
reeking of smoke and disappointment,
imagining that what has worked in the past
will work again (even though
it never worked at all),
pretending all his choices
were the right ones;
staring at small screens
hoping the magic of certainty
will return, light up his fingers,
and illuminate the slowly dimming remainder
he knows is lessening
as he stares ahead,
stuck in his backstory.

Behind the mirror,
behind them all,
a shadow I always called
the Real Me:

a perfect fanatic,
holding fast
to the game of words
as his sole treasure
and source meaning.

Was it worth it
to go that route,
I wonder,
to turn away
and focus on
a vision
of a body of work
to be left behind
in the space I perhaps
should have been?

I should have
taken better care of these three.
The shadow I thought was the real me
would have been a better man
if I’d been better
to the men I pretended
I never was.

I can’t speak ill of
any of them.
Stroke their heads,
let them go,
think about what I am now:

a net loss,
bankrupt at the general business of living.
Regardless of what
I have claimed to be,
I have always been

a shadow
of my self.

Originally posted 2/21/2012; originally titled “Political Poem For Monster Movie Fans.”

That’s one bad reptile
standing between us
and the way out.

We’re going to have to walk
under his belly
to escape.
We’re going to have do it
consumed by fear
of him dropping lazily down
to crush us
or deciding to wheel down and about
and lap us into his mouth.

It’s going to smell.
It’s going to be dark.
We’re going to have to walk,
not run, for fear of him feeling us
galloping through.  

He’s so big, so swollen,
might even be venomous though 
he doesn’t need poison to take us;
our biggest threat may be
that he won’t even know we’re there
and our demise will be accidental,
a side effect of him
shifting his bulk. We’ll be 

a clutch of pointless, unremarked deaths.
When the case is laid out like this
the possibility
of us getting through
shrinks to not a prayer in this hell —

but then,
this is Hell,
already.  And 

Hell has never
stopped us from acting
on our desperate prayers — hell,
when has Hell
ever stopped anyone
who has nothing to lose?

Originally posted 7/6/2013.

I salute the Earth
this morning,
every morning,

longing to do it
as it should be done —
in community, with others,
with tamboura,
horns, drums, finger cymbals,
and flutes;

knowing it should be done
with dancing, with
heels never touching,
a toe-tip reel grounded
but striving upward;
it deserves no less.

But I am alone,
have no instruments,
and cannot move
as I once did, so
I can only do it
with nerve and
a celebratory shiver
in my stiffening limbs.
I can only do it
with hard-found words
sung poorly
in the one language
I manage to speak.

Not to salute the earth
feels to me as though
I am breaking
a commandment
that was somehow left out:

“Salute this earth
with whatever you have.
Keep it holy through all the days
as if each day were a Sabbath.”

Thus, I salute the earth
in the morning
every morning
and am still waiting to see
what if anything
our customary God
will do about it —
so far, nothing,
but this sunrise suggests
there is no displeasure
on high.

Originally posted 7/29/2008.

People have lately
developed a bad habit
of walking into churches
to kill other people,
which (I suppose)
is the natural evolution
of several thousand years
of people walking out of churches
to kill other people.

Killing for any reason is so common
that no special wringing of hands
is strictly necessary, although
(as is true of the killing)
we’ll do it anyway, even though
we get into that “us vs. them” thing
when we do, with our sad fingers
pointing outward while our trigger fingers
itch in sympathy, if not
(at least to our hopeful minds)
solidarity.

You have to wonder (or at least I do)
if the problem is really
in the churches 
or in us
when people
(not all people, of course,
it’s never “all people” when we talk of this)
put so much faith in the ability of
the God of the gun to bring peace
that the God of the hymns is relegated to
providing the soundtrack to the crusade.

In one of those violated churches
they have a song that goes,
“come down peace, come down peace,
let peace come down and surround us.”
On the news this morning a man,
survivor of the latest killing,
wipes his eyes and says, “It’s gonna be hard
to sing that now.”

Of course it’s always been hard
to sing that, to wish for Something
to come down and bring a blanket to smother
our fire as it consumes us.
(I know, I know how hard it is myself,
for I have wanted more times than I should count
to bring my own pain
upon those who bring me pain.)
It’s harder now to sing it
as people (not our people, we know
it’s never our people) are reloading,
adding fuel to pyres,
blaming people (other people,
not our people, it’s always other people)
for bringing the fire upon themselves
in the first place because God (our God,
or perhaps some other God, we can never quite
put our fingers on that God) isn’t in the church
where the fire came down in place of the desired peace.

When the fire came down this time people were singing,
“the sun will come out tomorrow, tomorrow…”
and maybe it will, we hope it will; a sun
to cover all of us (all people, all people
who walk beneath that sun) in something that
resembles peace.

Until it does we’ve got
just three things to remind us
of what we claim to want:

we’ve got churches,
we’ve got people,
we’ve got a God who may not live
in any church
(if the death toll that comes from churches is any
indication, although I’m sure God stops in there
from time to time just as we do),
a God who sometimes appears deaf and blind, who
may not know much of peace at all
(if we are the measure of peace),
who holds the blanket high above us
(perhaps to block the view of all this)
and waits for us to call for it
before letting it fall.

We are so hoarse from shouting at people
(other people, all the other people)
who seem to feel
that the road through death
is the only path we truly share
that when we sing
(why must we sing so hard?
why is it so hard for us to just sing?)
we don’t believe it’s singing (but it is).
Let peace
come down and surround us.
Tomorrow,
tomorrow
(if not today).

Originally posted 7/13/2006; original title “Spiritus Mundi.”  
The thrust of this piece has changed pretty dramatically in the revision process.

This is the desk
where I claim to work
but it’s so cluttered
nothing big can happen here,

so I work on the porch instead
where there’s an ashtray
large enough to dump
only once every couple of days
next to a pair of chairs
set up knee to knee
where the laptop can sit 
and the notebook can sit
while I sit pretending
to type as I smoke,
pretending the work goes on. 

The ghost in the kitchen
never comes out here, the ghost
that is audible from every other
place in the apartment, the ghost
that won’t leave me alone
unless I’m out here
trying to work.  When I’m not
the ghost rattles the pans
and runs across the linoleum,
tattling on someone unknown 
who ended a long time ago.
The doors swing open and shut 
without anyone touching them. 

My neighbors come and go as well,
swinging doors open and shut 
without anyone touching them
or me touching them either,
or so it seems from the porch
where the ghost never comes, 
where the things that ought to get done 
never get done, where the smoking
is good and the sitting is easy. 

I have no fear of the ghost. In fact,
if I could I’d let the ghost
open and shut my notebook at will.
I’d let that ghost
write it all for me.
I’d let the ghost make sense 
of the miscues
and odd placements, let it
take over my life; I would 
put it in better hands,
hands that can pass though walls
to get big things done

in this place
where I’ve come to rest,
where the desk is so cluttered
and the porch and I
are both so empty
that the big things
never seem
to get done.

Originally posted on 7/5/2005, without a title, as a section of a larger essay.

I ride this world as if Ganesh himself
had plucked me up and placed me upon his back.
I am grateful, but did not seek this. Eventually
I will surely fall just as I have risen.
I will be content.

If I were nothing again,
the nothing before something,
just my parent’s desire, strong enough 
to come forth, too weak to do more; if I were
that nothing, I would still be content.

Some of you understand how a tree falls
when the elephant straightens. A leaf falls,
and the tree lifts itself higher.  
What will happen if I fall? Nothing at all.
I would be content.

Originally posted 7/12/2013.  

Section One:

Explain intersectionality
as it relates to
systemic oppression.
Include in your essay
the following terms:

blood dugout. 
pitted bone.
rape shop.
sharpened stone.

Section Two:

If you are assigned 
the role of scapegoat,
how will you survive
your turn in the wilderness?

Show your work.

Section Three:

What five words
ought to be erased or respelled
in order to lift their magic?  
Defend your choices

without attacking others.

Section Four:

Define a process
for removing
the history
in your own eye.

Section Five:

Will there be any room for any mercy
in the next world
that has not already been shown
in the present one?

Discuss.  

Originally posted 1/11/2010.

Please, no earthquakes
or supervolcanoes tonight.

If the world is going to end in my lifetime
I want to be awake when it happens.

There will be something to see
in those last seconds

before the curtain tumbles around us
laden with stone and flame

and I’ll surely be one of those 
compelled to capture it

and cram what little sense
can be made of it

into words 
no one will read.

I would like a good night’s sleep 
before I face that, a good night

thinking of good things
to do in my good future.

So please, no asteroid collision,
no planetary conflagration tonight.

It’s not much to ask,
I think,

to want to be awake and at my best
when the worst happens.

Originally posted 4/3/2014.  

If you choose 
to remake yourself 
as a dead man, 
bull-boy,

when you have done yourself in,
whether you do it yourself
with a tool or weapon
or whether you do it yourself
with food or drug or antic mistake,
everyone will know it was you

and you will learn
(while you are newly disembodied 
but still able to hear everything 
they’re saying about you)
that your people
will get as angry as picadors
when a bull escapes 
its obvious fate. 
They will rage on about it
for a time,
wanting to stick that dead bull
till it bleeds anew. Bull-boy,
they’ll be really angry with you
at first

but after a time
you will be forgotten.

People prefer their bulls to live or die
by the hand of 
a matador
who stands and fights
with a bull who stands and fights.
No matter who wins 
the winner is loved,
no matter who dies fighting
the loser is loved.
He who does not die fighting 
is always forgotten,
win or lose.
Just another animal,
another meal,
another heap to be carted offstage
amid cheers.

Bull-boy, it’s time: 
time for that cape, 
that suit of arrogant and foolish lights;
those darts in your hide, 
the blood running down;
the lusty crowd calling for your charge.
Time for your best, or your worst.
Time to trample time underfoot,
to render it flat, to trap it
by crushing it forever 
under some body
that will never move again.

Originally posted on 3/2/2010.

Your opinion
seemed right to you.
Then
shit started. Soon,
it happened:

Nazi,

says the anonymous poster,
you’re a
Nazi
for suggesting
such a thing.

By now, you’ve forgotten
what you actually said so 

Nazi,

you respond,
you’re the
Nazi
for bringing
Nazis
into this. 
Trying to scare me
into shutting up
by invoking
Nazis,
that’s a
Nazi
thing to do.

Nazi Nazi!
chimes in a
supporter of your enemy.
What was this about again?

Nazi!
Nazi Nazi Nazi!
NAZI!

Damn, doesn’t it feel good
to bring them up in connection
with anything at all?
Baseball card futures, Area 51,
that Palin woman, hairstyles,
the latest incarnation
of garage rock?

It feels good
to hear that marching
in the world outside, 
as if your blood
demands it from you,

as if it doesn’t matter
where you were headed
as long as you eventually
get to a point

where that word
can roll off
your outstretched fingers.

Originally posted 1/17/2013.

In late spring,
almost at the solstice,
far outside
my own home city,

I sit alone and eat a bowl of oatmeal
in the kitchen of a house
with a model of Stonehenge
on the coffee table in the living room.

In the back bedroom
a tired, tender woman feeds a fawn
whose mother was killed by an 18-wheeler
this morning before dawn.

If any of those who built Stonehenge
were to appear here right now
they would at once recognize this light
as what they’d once seen through the pillars.