Man, you wanna know
what’s wrong?
She’s gone and I’m
just figuring out I
was in love with her,
I swear —

Krystle,
Krystle was a cashier
at
the Walmart, 
at the Walmart
on 16, out by the new 
Ford dealership,
the one that used to be
farther out on 16 but
moved closer to town — 
yes, that one  — anyway
Krystle,

Krystle,

Krystle — 

listen, man,
stop laughing,
stop laugh-interrupting me, people
got to eat, got to work, and yeah
I’ve seen the damn website —

what you’re saying by laughing is
that you hate the people there
along with the store —

listen,
Krystle
was a friend from high school 
and I was in love with her all these years
and I just figured it out
and she just died.

I can’t tell her as something
she wasn’t.  Maybe —

no.
Man, I don’t even fucking know 
you.  
Don’t want to.
Go.

they all step away
from recent effort
saying “isn’t that the greatest thing”

a portion
then look back and say
“isn’t that the worst thing ever”

even fewer 
say “hmmm…”
and get back to work on it

how few indeed of that last fragment
look at it when they’ve finished
say “it IS the greatest thing”

and then discard it
knowing that to have perfected it
is to have reached a dead end

those few drunk on growth
are the ones whose feet
I bend to kiss

Sourdough,
good ham,
codeine.
 
A sandwich,
a sip or two…
tang on tongue;
then, relief in head.

Hanging 
in a hammock, at rest,
reluctant
to let go all my awareness
and slip under the
surface, but
I say it’s time
and vanish into
flavor, music,
thought, 
worship.

Yes,
worship:
why do you care how I get to my God?
How is my path more false than yours? 
I also break bread, sip syrup, am redeemed.
The only difference
is in the distance
to my Paradise.

Today
more than one
person (dog, cat, bird)
will leave home and
not return.  

Tomorrow,
more than one husband or wife (or lover,
mother, father, or owner) will sit
nervously on a couch, twisting its hands
in its lap, turning them over and over
in a motion not unlike that of
a kitten tumbling with a ball of yarn
in happy ignorance of how the world
kills and takes away casually, every day,

as if it were nothing —
and it is nothing,
but do not speak of that
to the nervous ones.

Today, tomorrow, or
on the day after some number
of the missing will return, and joy
and recriminations will begin,
or joy alone,
or recriminations alone, 

and some will grieve and among them
will be some of the returned
people, dogs, cats, birds
who only wanted a moment apart;

and there will be some who will not come back,
not at all,
not ever, 
because some of them will have no doubt died

while others will have stretched their moment apart
into new lives far from former lovers, spouses,
parents, or other owners.

It will be impossible for the ones left behind
to tell the difference,
impossible to explain it’s not a certain tragedy
for all concerned,
impossible to recall that the words 
“happy ignorance”
existed right up to the moment
the person 
(dog, cat, bird)
slipped away.

I am boredom, drugs
and virtual killing.  
Maybe, occasionally,
I toss in
boning for shits
and giggles.  

At least, that’s
the impression
I think I give off —

but I have so much love to give
I’m certain I work at odds to my needs,
and maybe I’m another altogether?
Not that it matters —

you’ll be dead soon and with either bad or good luck
so will I, if we can’t get past what you did
to the planet.  Fuck you, I say,

and this time you deserve that,
all of that.

Wishing that the room
had more than four walls —
indeed, I wish it had walls at all — 

what?  If there are no walls
how is the door staying up and open?
How is it I can’t see the house next door?
How does the whole world exist at all
if there are no barriers?  

Oh, there are walls — trust me on this.
I know my lies when I see them.
This is why
I scream metaphorically, if at all,
about the trap I’m in —

it’s my making
that makes it so, that makes it
look open and inviting when in fact
it is nothing but.  This world is all
about walls — I put them there and
pretend they aren’t there while knowing
they are there and so we merrily
roll in circles, avoiding the walls
that aren’t there but are there,

thinking about the pictures hanging on them,
ooohing and ahhhhing over them,
occasionally pretending we are free to go.

Hair, shot with gray.
Cut, less than good;
at least the scalp’s not flaking
with the new shampoo.

Face,
starting to furrow, starting to line,
starting to bag and sag in wrong places
and much fuller than it was, much
rounder.

Beard, uneven,
post-trendy, stubbornly
present for thirty years in this form —
the only thing the same from when I was,
arguably, at my peak of flavor.

Neck, undistinguished.
(In fact, let us use that word
as a whole body descriptor,
let us say that as a whole
I am undistiguished except as
noted.)  Shoulders the same.
Here and there a skin tag
which some claim
is proof of heart disease
as if shape and diet were not clues
enough — I assume I have
heart disease, it is one of the few things
I am sure of and as such it makes me
undistinguished as an overweight American
male.

Chest, furry.  Bigger tits
than I should have.  Currently,
I have some great and knifing pains
in my right upper chest, strong enough
to take away my breath, pains that slice
from front to back, from nipple to blade.
Right side argues against heart attack;
I go instead with pulled muscle, or strain
from sleeping wrong; part of me
hopes I’m wrong as it will add to the value
of this poem in my Body Of Work
if I die after writing this — don’t you agree?

Arms, undistinguished. Hands
weirdly lined, a palmist’s wet dream;
joints just recently stiff in the morning.

My eyes suck, barely catching light;
I gotta shout out my ears instead.
My ears support my hands in what they do —
writing, playing music, meddling
in others’ opinions and business.

I don’t know it happened,
but I have a voice that is far better
than undistinguished.

Brain?  Can’t we just
let the soup and stew up there
do for themselves?
Perhaps that can be
for another day?  It’s not
a chemistry to admire,
to emulate
or strive for.  It’s not like
I haven’t got enough documentation
already on that — look at the bottom shelf,
all those books I’ve written, all those
piles of poetry, all those lines.
There must be formulas somewhere.

Gut,
prodigious, not at all
undistinguished but in fact
a salient and unmistakable feature;
all in all, these days the most memorable
feature.   Bullet hole scars all over it
from surgeries, not injuries.  I have not
been well, not at all, not for a while.

Genitals?  Yes,
I have a partial set, a half empty
glass.  I will explain the next time
I’m drunk, if I remember, if
I’m in the mood, if you earn
the right to hear it,
if I want to.
What’s here works,
surprisingly.

Ass?  Undistinguished.

Thighs and knees and shins?
Chickenesque.
Feet?  Cracked
and horned and rimmed with callus;
they are
undistinguished if craggy.

All in all, not horror show,
not Chippendale’s.
Not at all the worst,
not at all the best; mostly
indistinguishable
from tens of millions of fat older men.

So asking me how I feel ought to be
superfluous…
I hope you are listening…

I feel insulted by the dumb young
even as I am exalted by myself.

Think of a slice of heaven
as you would like heaven to be.
I’m that.
For me, it is a dark bliss bubbling over, a pot
of warm molasses, a scrap on the stove
I forgot to clean or put away…
don’t you see how vain I still am?
In this I am indistinguishable from all others.

This body is being forgotten
by those too pleased with being young to understand
how an old body makes richer music.
They may think it plays like a poor heart song —
no.  Every mad note of it, scoffers,

every mad note
is still remarkable.

From here on the third floor I can tell he’s dead.
No neck bends like that
and keeps the head alive.
No leg twists like that
and doesn’t make a live one scream.

Was half asleep when it came —
the tornado of wheels and engine
into the corner, then the thud and 
the almost-slowing of the car
before it sped up again and rolled through.

Now the street’s a carnival of red and blue
with the roused crowd uneasy on the sidewalks
and in the windows.  Cops asking, did anyone 
see anything, and no we didn’t.
It was a metal song, not a movie, from here,

and not the first time we’ve heard it.  Mostly 
we’re a peaceful people but sometimes we get
ignorant and loud and fatal.  When that happens
we’re usually too late to the window to see it go down.
You’d think the cops would know this by now

but still they ask and poke and hope
that one of us might speak up.  And if we could
we might, or I might, or I would.  But I was late
to the window.  I try not to watch the neighbors
live and die — affording them the same courtesy

I hope they offer me if I’m the guy whose life
derails into alcohol or drugs, into just plain
screwy screaming one night, into walking out into traffic
praying someone else is as screwy as me
and will do the job I won’t with two wheels, four wheels,

or a gun.  Keep the other guy’s name out of it
if it’s ever me out there lying bent on the street.
If it’s ever me it was a long time coming, not
the accidental work of a moment. It will be
what was meant to be.  Don’t breathe a word to anyone. 

In a city square,
under the view of spy cameras,
a man reveals to onlookers
that he is preparing
to set himself on fire
to raise his despair as a battle flag,
a rally flag,
against an unjust ruler, thus shifting
from despair into rage and action —

and no one attempts to stop him,
to reason with him, to go and fetch
a fire extinguisher.

Some have asked why 
none of us moved to stop him, asked

how could we let someone self-immolate
before us, calmly, even announcing it 
before the deliberate sparking of the match?

Whatever choice we had in this
ended with his declaration.  As the choice
“to be or not to be” was transformed
into “death or freedom” we knew better
than to intervene — and really,

is that a choice at all?

In half my dreams I see a door
sacred to no two faced God Janus,
but instead
to a three faced unnamed god:
one face for out,
one face for in,
one face looking back to the world
that would have been
had I never seen this door. 
That’s the face that’s always
looking away. 

~~~~

I always wake up angrier than I was
when I went to sleep.

In the last dream of the night,
I am being beaten by a masked man.

How is it to be beaten,
he says?  I lie:
it is neither bad nor good, it has
no flavor.  

Let me spice it then for you
with more blows, different blows,
he says, slamming my hand 
in the door as I try to push through.

~~~~ 

Always aching when I wake,
always wishing I could
just go through the door into the day
happy, light and smiling.
It’s not likely to happen.

I live in this wrong world
of in or out, this or that.
I hate walking through that door.
Some days, I try not to

and those days my hands look like meat
from taking the beating
as I try to stand in between 
the rooms — clawed into the jams,
terrified of the unnamed benevolents
doing the banging.

Choose, friend, they say.
Crawl through or hang back,
but the door is here
and you have to choose
now that you know it’s here.

What of the promise of the third face,
I ask.  No one ever gets to look that god
in those eyes, they say. They die 
trying.

I feel productive, ready
for a day of work,
sweet tempered, sexy,
more than adequate…

then I wake up.

Some days, it holds.
Some days, it doesn’t…

Mondays
are why we invented God
and gave him the whole day before
for himself, 

figuring that he might be still in a good mood
the next day, a favor granting mood,
a prayer answering mood.

Mondays are most of why
I gave up on a personal God.
Mondays color everything atheist
no matter how long I spent in church
the day before.  
Mondays pinch hit for all the other days
some weeks…

yet I still am perfect
before I awaken
on Monday mornings,
and sometimes
for hours afterward,
and that’s why I still give up Sundays
to God:  it’s all for the hope of hope
and the fear of ultimate despair
that I still keep track of the days at all.

Your Current Wet Dream Of A Perfect Moment
likely includes
a Perfect Soundtrack
Costume
Set Design and
Casting

but
if you’ve actually had a Perfect Moment
and look back on it
do you see in it
anything you would have known or chosen
to have in it
ahead of time 
had you known it was coming?  

Or in fact
did you derive
your current conception of
The Perfect Moment 
from the one you’ve already had?

Is all you want in life
A Perfect Moment
that is either 
remake
or sequel?