What I’m here for I’m sure
is to be the guy who doesn’t dance

Not the guy who wants to but can’t
Who can’t get out of his seat

But the guy who could but won’t
because it’s not the right moment

When it is the right moment
I have no problem dancing

Get my ass up and swing it
Stomp a mudhole in rhythm’s ass

But it’s gotta be right and righteous
Gotta make the move special when I move

Because not every juxtaposition
of time and song and mood is perfect

I prefer to wait until all three are close
and have some faith that I can only add to it

Not every poem is beautiful
except in the larger sense that all human effort

is beautiful — not every song
is worth hearing except to honor the singer

for trying — I have learned to only dance
when I feel the honest need to honor

what I’m hearing and feeling so
if you see me dancing (and let’s be sure

to say that I do not care
who sees me dancing)

that’s saying something
about something

I am on earth to be the guy
who shocks you when he dances

Make a moment of it
Tell someone you saw it

no matter how bad it was
The magic is in retelling

It won’t be magic
unless someone makes a spell of it

It’s a Saturday night fight outside a bar
and let’s name the participants,
let’s call out

PIPEWIELDER:
going back to Beowulf
to explain how he is swinging 
the black iron like honor
at the head of the 

DOMINO:
this guy falls
cracked open,
looks like fatality

So much else
is left to happen to both

The death of 
DOMINO 
almost seems unavoidable if
PIPEWIELDER
is to have the future
he deserves

o, bright light of the bar
flowing over the scene
from the open door

o, bright blood of the wounded
flowing into the sidewalk

o, is he really down? down
for good? has the new day
already thus begun?

PIPEWIELDER has tossed aside
his stout arm and is being held
by patrons and maybe there’s a kick applied
by some worthy friend of DOMINO
to PIPEWIELDER’s treasure sack

o, the sirens call
DOMINOOOOOOOOO

to romanticize
what happens in dirt and drunk crazing

Oh
doodle-ghosts,
made up imps,
personal polterjerks,
stop haunting me.
Now.

When I created you to explain
broken locks, jammed signals,
all the damaged et ceteras
of living, I was mostly joking.

I doodled you on a pad, 
left it where it could be found,
said it was a self portrait,
and she thought
I was pretty funny.

Doodle-ghosts,
I’m sorry I blamed you for 
anything at all.  For my tardiness,
my forgetfulness.  For my 
clumsiness and small rages
and lingering traces of war-thirst
I tried to drown now and again…
tried to make a joke out of them,
blame them on you…

too many years of that and
as she said as she left,
it wasn’t you,
it certainly wasn’t her,
it was me.  

Now I’m alone,
and the house is knocking
like a furnace.  I gave you life
and I know you’re behind the noise,
doodle-ghosts, though
if it burns tonight
I will blame only myself
for being
driven crazy
by you.

On Facebook,
there is a man
who has 1500 friends.

When he
counts his friends he has to use
everyone’s hands to do it.

Of the 1500 people this man calls friends
there are approximately 800
who he has met personally.

Of those 800,
he’s had more than passing conversations
with maybe 200.

Of those 200,
he’s had longer
and more confidential conversations
with perhaps 40.

Of those 40, there are perhaps 15
who are “friends”
in the sense of the word
that existed prior to the year 2006.

1500 friends —
800 he’s seen,
400 he’s spoken with in meatspace,
200 he’s connected with,
40 he would tell this story to,
15 who would agree with him
but for the fact
that they are vanishing.

The man one day
decides to read
a three volume unfinished novel
titled “A Man Without Qualities.”
He opens the first book,
closes it,
opens it again.  He
is trying to understand

a book, three volumes long
and still unfinished
about a man
who is nothing but what
he is given to be by others.

The book will sit on his bedside table
unopened for long spells
as he talks to 1500 friends online.

If there is a Quality
to “friendship”
it shall be absorbed into
a cloud.
It shall be absorbed.

If he wants to speak
to those 15 vanished friends,
he will have to learn a new word
with which to summon them.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations

Morning, the 
moment, the thinking,
the trying to decide
what foot hits the floor first —

the grounded one that clings to earth
as strongly as a root, or
the air-walking one, the one that climbs
any offered cloud or sunbeam.

When I choose instead to hover
an inch above the bed,
close to a surface but not upon it,
defying the expected authority of gravity,

my feet twitch, 
but only for the time it takes
to accept the delay
and return with me to sleep.

I’ve thought about this 
for a long time and decided
that utopias are mostly a fantasy
of putting a god’s powers
in the hands of someone 
with mere human self-control. 

Were I to have the powers and
the self-control of a god,
I suspect that 
all I would decree would be
a levelling, a balancing. 

Things might end up looking
much as they do now, and
all of us would be
disappointed in me,

much as we are now. 

Let us take a vow
not to speak
of the flower in the field
and its growth
from emerald spot on brown dirt
to full yellow explosion — no
No speaking of this
It was a chance spark
No one’s likely to see it again
Why bother
Let’s keep them guessing

They’ll never suspect
that simple dandelion’s
perseverance
is what leads us on

What was it like
to die
on Good Friday?  
Well,
back then,
it wasn’t called that — I still
don’t call it that.

I was crucified
that same day
in a town in Gaul,
and the soldiers let
the crows pick my eyes
even before I was
all the way gone…

just another day
in the Empire.

I know
there are stories about
what else happened
that day, how another
managed to get around fate
with help, maybe a sorcerer’s help,
maybe a father’s help —

I don’t know.  I’m just
a ghost of a crucified man
and when you say Good Friday
I’m clueless as to why…

so many others died that day, or before,
or after, who do not understand —
after all,
we’ve never met The Man.

Having been in his shoes
I’m skeptical,

but willing to be convinced
if it’ll get me off this vaporous cross
and give me a chance to rest.

I was a kid what did I know
only what imagination offered

a blue disk in a blue sky
was a spider biscuit resonating
was a concert hall in sections rising
was a myth as good as a country in resolve
was a story about where I lived
was noble rot on a hoped for harvest

hand me the chance anyway
I screamed for it
reached for it

a blue disk in a white sky
was a heartless monkey of change
was a blank slate falling and shattering
was ridiculous, really — really ridiculously dumb
was the most savvy rocktosser outfit ever
was not me and that was the best thing ever

but not for long as I could sense
how amusing the change was becoming
so I called it out again

a blue disk in a red sky
was a meteor of shift
was a big clown nose on a garbage can
was a tease and a poke and a hand on my bum
was the wrong drug on the wrong night
was hopelessly in love with throwing up 
was glad I was no one
was no one
was a drug
was a blue disk in a blue sky after all

invisible
what did I know I was a kid when it happened
I grew up
I miss it

I was a blue disk wrecked in a desert
was picked over
was a myth after all to most
but was the one who had to live on
knowing I wasn’t supposed to be from here
knowing I was a belonging
discarded
fallen
from
high

in the street
amid conventional people
and everyday happenings

the blue whale passes
through the air behind me
all but unnoticed

I turn
once the whale has gone
and see only

conventional people and
everyday happenings
but I know something

I have been missing for decades
has just brushed me
and I want to weep

but only with someone else
who felt it as well
I cannot weep alone

because one man
weeping alone
is no way to offer praise

to whatever has made it so
that such things exist
unseen but deeply known

Get out, Michael,
butcher of God;

get rolling, Azrael,
librarian,
census monkey;

get gone,
jazz doctor Gabriel;

get missing, Raphael,
sculptor of bodies
and pimp to the stars.

Do not think
we have forgotten you,
Lucifer, big boy Apoplectic;

you either, the One
Jehovah in all your forms
and figures;

get moving,
host of Heaven,
lords of Earth, 
all the named, 
all the unnamed — 

somewhere in your midst
a nuclear bomb
is suckling a fatality teat,
Man is standing on 
Woman’s neck, and 
the grass and sea
are withering all around… 

yes.  We blame you.
We blame the stewardship
you claimed, the honor and glory
you brayed, the exaltation
you craved over all things
natural and unnatural,

and now after too long
we say

get going, get gone,
get missing, get lost, 
get thee out of the way of those
ready to bend a knee
only to the vast work needed
to rebuild from your ruin.

Maybe you can come back some day — 
humbler, less certain of every thing.
Maybe we will trust you then

but until then, if indeed
you have wings, 

you damn well
better straighten up
and fly.