Ah, you stupid
motherfucker — cold drunk crashing
right through the knee-high fence
in your own front yard and planting your face
among the weed-strangled old tulips!

Right throught the old weak fence
and right down on your old weak face 
in the front yard where the neighbors can see —

And you don’t seem to be getting up
and getting inside to hide the shame this time.
Not this time, not like you usually do.
You seem instead content to lie there ass up 
for all the neighbors to see — your grey old fatness
unmoving, and it’s been a while now.

You’ve been a stupid mother since you were a kid
and none of us can count how often
you’ve tripped over that fence when stupidly, completely
drunk.  Stupid and complete drunk, that’s what you are —
the object lesson, the model for everyone to point at;

but you appear to be taking the lesson
in a new direction today, with your face down
in the dead tuilps and and your ample ass sticking up.
You’ve been there a bit and it’s likely the best job
you’ve ever had, no real effort required, just lie there
and let the neighbors point and laugh and say things
to their kids about being drunk and a public spectacle.
You’re gonna feel stupid about this one day, motherfucker.
We’re never gonna let you live this one down,

especially now that a crow, a real live crow,
has landed next to you and is inspecting you
up close and personal.  Never gonna let you live
this one down, asshole.  Priceless.  I’m gonna see
if I can get close and snap a picture of this.

Leverage
and no desire to use it —

that is true enlightnment.
Well -armed

but has no idea where weapons
have been hidden? As blessed

as the peacemakers.  If a sharp tongue
is sheathed at all times,

and is never tugged into slashing battle —
to behold it at rest is to be among the mighty.

There are certain ignorances based on neglect
that are honorable;  think of the sword and shield

that must be rusting wherever they were laid,
and the warrior who laid them can’t recall where.

Certain baffled people carry more weight
simply by having forgotten

or been oblivious to more
than we should ever know.

Everything’s 
a holy book
looking for
a page turner.

Every day’s
a bookmark
rising to hold
a place in the book.

Every time
that spine is cracked
it’s the first time
it’s ever bent. 

Every now and then
someone comes with a crayon
and disgfigures a book
but it hardly matters.

Every ruined book
is a good book
for someone even if only
as a money maker.

Every mythology
needs a bound edition, 
even if it’s a dead faith
written off in a dead language.

Every time I think of this
I expect to be struck down
by childhood lightning
or at the very least a plague.

But then I realize
that any God I can believe in
has to be a librarian,
there are so many books

to see, and that God
would love them all,
and wouldn’t hate anyone
who can read.

If you wake up feeling dark-hollow
in pure full sun, the obvious answer
is that you should be kissing someone

Parent, child, sister or brother,
auntie, uncle, cousin or friend
Any of these will do — but of course

you’d rather kiss a lover
even if it’s not the one beside you
Even if the one you’d rather kiss

is dead so many years gone by
you cannot recall well anymore
the shape of their mouth

No matter 
Make of your mouth the mandala 
The holy O of contact

Look around for someone who
will welcome the laying on of that sweet wreath
Let it burst from you upon them

and the day shall fill for you both
with laughter at the least
with love at the most

did you know our cats are imaginary?
dogs too. and indians,
cowboys, unicorns.

what they have in common: we make them
into pets.  we negate their potential
to be real and dangerous and complicated. 

for example, it was no lolcat in the corner of the porch,
arching her back and openmouthed snarling
at me when I revealed the kittens next to her

by pulling back the cardboard that covered
the corner where the white cabinet provided
her birthing place and shelter.   

my overwhelming desire to reach out and cuddle
and pet them counteracted by the swiping claw
and the terrified look on the kittens’ faces, I resolved

to go inside and look up “feral cats” on the Web
and found a lot that made a lot of sense. so much more real
on the screen than in the corner.  

that’s how I learn
everything I need to tame the wilderness.  
to skin the unicorn.

host the cowboys.  
leash the dog.  gentle the
cats.  be the right kind of indian.   

Did a ripple in air or ether
give up some secret just now
when your head was turned
from the rest of the room?

It seems that you are different
than when you last were engaged with us
here at this terribly good party, as if you were now 
less one of us than before.

Did something happen?  Some hint of
a better existence, or at least
of how empty this one is?  Something
for an artist to chase and capture —

you used to paint, didn’t you?

A man approaches.
Looks like he has dirty arms.
Then I look closer and no.
Arms are inky-pictorial.
Some pictures there are dirty pictures, yes.
But arms themselves are clean arms.  
He spreads his arms out.  
Wants to give me a hug maybe?
Big arms with dirty pictures and he wants a hug.
Wants a hug or wants to give one and get one back.
Oh, big armed men with art full of sex on their arms!
I have known another like this.
He also wanted hugs and arms full of body.
Wanted to rub his dirty pictures on me or anyone really.
Man, man, man he was a dirty man even after a shower.
Man, man, man he had the grip of a roughneck.
Man, man, man he had the arms of a bear.
Man, man, man he had the appetites of a bear man.
Art on the skin, the teeth of Ursa Major, constellation man.
Can’t be out at night without thinking of him.
He led me to the North Star without my looking up.
I still recall he had a tattoo of the Bear King tearing flesh.
That was the old man I knew with arms and dirty art.
I don’t know this new man.
He might be lovely.
He might prefer Ursa Minor.
He might be less of a bear.
Might not even know the Bear King.
Might not even know I knew the Bear King.
He was walking toward me just now.
He turned into the arms of another, must be a lover.
He’s not the same, even with dirty pictured arms.
I knew there were other Bear Kings out here.
I knew I had only to wait to see one again.
This one might not be one for me to savor.
There will be another.
There will be another.
There will be another.

Breakfast, served at home
with streamed news, steamed
milk, screened comments;
or

breakfast, served in a diner
by the same woman every morning,
the owner’s sister; hot black and brown homefries,
eggs just this side of runny, bacon, coffee — cream only.

Lunch at a desk.  Something frozen
warmed in a microwave.  Taken late, 
taken quickly, taken light;
or

lunch from a box, thick sandwich,
pretzel sticks, hummus,
biryani rice,
empanadas.   

Dinner, served
raw, served slowly
to bored foodies, served ironically,
or 

dinner, hot and
foil-wrapped, eaten
between jobs, between tasks,
between errands.

Home is where our bellies are filled.
That city next door that doesn’t smell
much like a kitchen at all? Who could live
in such a place?

Suffocating within buried walls.
Don’t understand what has happened…
roads choked, towers broken, 
the gates stuffed tight with sand.
No one apparently gets into or out of 
the city that is my body:
the alleys of miserable contention,
the boulevards where I sold myself,
the buildings of candied mistakes,
the rare gardens, the more common weedlots;
here is the buried city that is my body
barely noticeable to those who might seek it;
they say “He used to be bigger, didn’t he? 
He used to have detail, used to be something.” 
Now I’m a burial mound, maybe there are artifacts,
maybe not, but nowadays who has time to dig?
I’d like to poke an arm out and scream, ‘When
did I get so weak and old that I can’t dig out?’
I think I’m going to sleep now, eyes full,
not a scratch on me but dead just the same.” 
In the city the streets are finally quiet.  A child
running for a minute longer, perhaps — then, nothing. 

Edgar, Edgar, it’s me.  
Did you see the news?  
I think that was Dad
they pulled from the river,
some dead, dead drunk —
it sure looked like
our father from that angle
and considering
the water running off him, well,
he looked just like
the last time I saw him, last week,
when I went to speak with him about
him getting help, maybe AA or something,
and he sprayed me
with the garden hose, 
and for the first time ever
I fought him, Edgar, I took the hose from him
and sprayed him with it, the two of us
screaming in the front yard — so, well,
I have some experience
in seeing my father soaked and drowned
and they said this body was unidentified
but dammit Edgar, it looked like him.
I know he won’t answer the phone if I call so
I am going to his building
to see if he’s there and then to the cops
if he’s not.  Call me,
Edgar; this is our dad, we need to get together on this.  
We have to stand together.  
I think it’s him.  I hope it’s not.
I swear if the old man’s still alive when I get there,
I’ll give him something to cry about.  

No matter how I coax
and stroke,
she will not reveal
truth tonight.
I’m sure it’s there.
I can hear it
hanging somewhere
between us,
but not with my ears. 

Bad guitar!
She knows
I’m no good,
knows I’m angry
and that putting the truth 
into my hands tonight
would serve war
more than music. 

I pull at her strings
trying to make her believe 
that if she gives me the truth
I can make one song serve both,

but bad guitar laughs at me
brokenly, cross-rippling splashes
of what I want across my face,
telling me
to snap out of it, saying

maybe someone can 
but tonight
you’re neither soldier enough
nor player enough
to do anything like that.

A boulder, it is said,
is turned into sand
by patient action of water,

but then,
what happens
to the sand?

There has to be
a longer story.
It can’t end there.

I don’t care
that I don’t know
the story,

but I care
to learn it
and tell it.

I don’t care
that you don’t know
the story;

I care
that you are among those
who don’t care to know the story,

who are content
to see beaches
of vanished boulders

as a perfect ending
to a long tale
of this world,

who are content
to tolerate the myth
that there are beginnings and endings.

Before it’s fully light,
I step outside in shorts
with my flute in my hand.
I might play a note or two,
something quick before dawn,
a bit of whimsy on my part.

No shirt, no shoes, not nervous.
No one to see me, or at least
can’t tell if anyone sees me.
No one can hear me yet.

No one sees me standing here
round and full and pale
in the last darkness.
If I want to be noticed,
I have to do something
outrageous. 

Neighbors, can you see me?  
The fat, pale man,
out-of-place moon
on my porch?  What am I holding
in my hand — a flute of some kind, or
a gun — is that a problem I’m holding,
something for public concern?

Playing this flute
this early, knowing it will likely disturb
someone if I do, knowing if I do
and someone calls the cops
I will likely at most get a talking to
because I am a round pale man
and I get to be whimsical
and have it called “whimsy”
and I won’t likely get shot if I do —

here is the definition
I have never understood completely
until now,
the one beyond the dictionary
and the dry arguments 
and the earnest explanations:  Privilege

is the fact
that I get to hold a flute in dim light
and think about playing it
half naked
on a weekday
in a working class neighborhood
because I can, no other reason,
only half-concerned about
consequences, which for me
might involve being an asshole
but probably not a criminal
or a dead man.

A huge limb torn off the tree?
More light comes in.

The wind and the rain
were as a hand sweeping hair

from where it had grown over
our eyes; we see now what’s important,

and the house shall be condemned
so a new house can be built.

You can make a disaster
into as many metaphors as you desire

but loss is loss.  Pain is pain.
I could give you images to describe it,

concrete and solid and sharp,
but all they would do is cut and crush and cut some more.

Get your pen out of the way
and pick up a hammer.  Put a blanket

on someone’s cold shaking shoulders,
and put a sock in it while you’re at it.