Facing the Fibonacci spiral
in the heart of the sunflower,
in the armor of the nautilus:

call it what you will,
accident or design, something
stirs when we see it.
It’s a sensible pattern, sure,

as are the hexagon
in the honeycomb
and the concentric circles
in the rain-pocked pond.
It’s a beautiful pattern, sure,

and when we have to say “beautiful”
or “inspirational” in the face of something,
when we have no choice,

(except of course as poets
we have to choose and change those words
but that’s
a different theology for another day)

when we have no choice but to gasp
and there’s nothing adaptive indicated
for gasping like this —

it’s a difficult thing, sure,
but what does it matter
what we call it?  It’s math
made flesh, an accounting
under our skin.

In the white soup
that is my usual view of things
there is a voice — god or worm,
sluice or wind — I repeat 
whatever it says.

When the white soup clears
now and then a different voice
I somewhat recognize tells me
different things and I repeat those as well,
unconcerned with contradiction.

What sloshes around in me?
I’m damp inside and out, never 
dry and warm, always shivering.
The wet noises resolve and revolve
into pronouncements or lies,

or maybe not.  Maybe every voice
is real.  Maybe I am the evidence
for polytheism and its best argument.
Maybe I should listen to everything said
and call it all true,

and if I’m paralyzed by that
then I am 
right where I’m supposed to be —
and the rest of you
wearing those strained smiles in my presence

should conduct yourself according to your fashion
when in the presence of a vessel of the gods,
or a crazy person. Whichever
makes more sense for you
as I stand here thinking out loud.

I don’t look like
what I feel like

Wasn’t raised like
what I look like

Look like one
and not the other

Feel like both
and feel like neither

It sometimes leaves me
stumbling on speech

and unfamiliar
with how to get by —

but what I do with this
is up to me

You don’t get
to decide

Fourth of July, I’m alone
and no fireworks of any kind
will console me.  

Today I want to forget my usual hobby
of arguing about issues of race
and class and gender and ability
and identity and struggle and stigma.

I want to desperately prefer
the Sox, rage about trading Youk
without any fear of triviality —
I want
to be in a bar right now
having an incoherent conversation
about all this
with a fan of a local team.

No discussing the country as it is.
I don’t care what it is, not today.
I simply don’t care.
Rocket’s red glare
is a party right now
when I’m this close
to screaming alone.

Let me get drunk, then,
let me get hammered and happy 
so I can love where I’m at.
I’ll wave a flag big enough to hide me
from the neighbors.  Big enough
to wrap up in, sleep it off in,
big enough to make a mummy for
my hangover tomorrow, big enough
to stuff my ears against the bombs
bursting,
etc.
 

Do right by you,
gonna do right by you,

 insists the reggae singer
at the street fair.  

Before him
a dozen tie-died swayers,
uniformly beautiful, dreadlocked,
smiling, swirling; all around them 
couples walking, mothers, fathers,
children, bobbing a bit to the music
as they stroll. 

He seems sincere
but based on the numbers
I think he’s straight up lying 
or kidding himself
because no one’s gonna do right
by everyone at once, no matter

how pretty their voice, no matter
how tight their groove.  

Do right by you,
gonna do right by you…

gotta get used to it,
learn to dance to it,
understand the promise lasts
only as long as the music does
and groove
will end, someday, so you better
do right by you, we better do right
by each other —

even after the fair, 
when the music stops,
when the clean up is all that’s left.

You and the progressive rock airplane that is your love 
are making the crazy leap to stratosphere
when something comes knocking on the hatch door.

It is the object of your affection,  wearing a jet pack.
She’s holding the ring you gave her in her hand.
She hurls it into the plane and swoops away.

Your crew secures the hatch behind her.
They turn to look at you,
stoic in the pilot’s seat.

How did she get up so high as to get to you?
Some questions are meant to be unanswered,
or to be incomprehensible

without a life change, or to be aged into
before answering.  It rarely matters which 
of these is true.  What matters is what the pilot does 

with the progressive rock airplane of his love 
after a rejection.  Does the pilot choose
to settle into an awkwardly worded power ballad nose dive,

or surge higher on waves of bass triplets
and Mixolydian modal guitar runs until the plane
reaches its structural limits and explodes?

You push a tear back into its duct 
through sheer strength of will.  As if in 
a coda, you head back to base.

Dawn halo behind the wind turbine
on Holy Name Hill — and 
a young buck in the fringe of the woods,
just back from the road, staring at you
seated behind the wheel.

Go home and
go back to bed, old man.
You’ve been around long enough
to know a day’s highlight
when you see it.

Taking a leaf from a new book
he will clean out his closets
and simplify his life —
take charge of his clutter 
and follow his bliss —
birth the new him
and embrace the old him —

he will end up pooled 
in the center of his bedroom floor
yet again,

clutching 
her old T-shirt

and weeping into
the definition
of his bliss.

Jonah on the blanket on the sidewalk
yelling at the passers-by
to look at his paintings and sculptures

calls them philistines
confident that few will know
what it means

however the biker
who just kicked his face does
or knows at least he doesn’t like hearing it

Jonah sobs 
as the biker picks up a painting
from the blanket

loudly admires its composition
tosses a greasy twenty at Jonah
exits laughing

Jonah wipes
his mouth
with the bill

straightens the blanket
and his wares
goes back to work

keeping an eye out
for more bikers
(just in case)

Tell me
for the love of this song
what’s this floor
we are dancing on
I thought
when I stepped into the room
it might
be a trap and I’d be falling 
through to
the basement or worse
but it’s solid
and the music makes it more so 

Tell me
for the love of this night
what the clock
is trying to say
I thought
when I took off my watch
it would
stop the night from advancing
but now
I suspect dawn’s found us
and the night
is a lamb waiting to be slain

Tell me
for the love of my love
what mister
she is trying on now
I thought
when I turned my back
she would
by her very nature follow me
but now
she’s dancing with everyone
and everyone
looks happier than me

Tell me
for the love of my name
what man
I am supposed to be now
I thought
when I got here
it all would
clear up the last questions
but now
I am forgetting eveything
and everything
looks like something I’d long ago forgotten

When presented with evidence
of an apparently effortless genius
at your chosen expertise
often you see it and fall
to your figurative knees
with what is either scream
or prayer caught
in your throat

Though you know in fact
there’s hard work behind it
you can’t see it and 
you unworthy fall to 
a state of worship and
envy

Pyramids for tens of centuries
have done this to us too
We argue about what it took
Some talk of magic or space
Others of physics and slaves
In truth we only ever
think we understand
and any view of them at all
raises mostly awe we can’t contain

Coming across a talent you can’t fathom
(as if you’d come across a pyramid
balanced on its broken tip) leads you
to supplicate and call at least within
from anger or envy upon
Deity, Nature
or Nurture
Magic
or Muse
a plea as to 
why it was not 
why it is not 
why not
you