Woke thrashing,
seeking something.
Science, perhaps? It makes
no sense but yes I think
science.  Sleek and solid
object of desire 
that woke me from sleep
so sloshingly full
of the clear sense
that something was missing
that I suddenly felt
an urgent, sleep-depriving
need to seek something.

So — I ended up 
awake with this 
under my fingers, 
rising into the white screen
science offers me —
and now I crave sleep
and the getting lost in it,
as what I’m doing here
begins to fatigue me
away from itself.  

You can’t win.  You can’t
get away from it —
whatever time it is
it’ll always be the time
for the Other Thing.

But I’m thankful for how
poems will come at those times,

when they slip out from in between
the worlds of sleek Science
and rough Unconsciousness,

like buzzsaws opening wood
that was never meant to be opened.

1.
Re-reading
my previous night’s
scribblings, 
sinking again
into their deranged language,
their protest against
language’s power to
derange.

I’m calmer this morning
and the sky
has unsteeled
its war-grade gray.

I remember some trivial things
that I’d intended to say,
and jot down the raw specifics  
though I don’t yet know where they go
or if they go at all. 

2.
Insisting on coherence

is the white man’s way
of dismissing 
thousands of years
of deep brown knowledge.

I know, I know.

What I really meant to say was,
“don’t look for fair and balanced here.”

What I really meant to say was,

some things you know,
some things you know better.

Some things you know so well
you can tell right away 
who will understand them
if you speak of them.

3.
I know now
where yesterday’s trivial things belong,
and they are not trivial at all,
they’re of course the whole point
of yesterday’s scribblings.

The problem,
the eternal Problem
with these sorts of things,
is that there’s no one place
they fit best.  I don’t think
I even need to write them out.

In fact,
they might be better implied
or glimpsed in the cracks,
inferred from where they’ve been 
interred.

4.
As for the inflammatory
above:

my thumb’s sore,
but I stick it out anyway
to find passage
to wherever I’m going,

as I don’t trust
that my current ride
will get me there.

St. Teflon, patron saint
of bullet dodgers.

St. Tango,
source of comfort against
blind divergent storms.

St. Bullwhip,
defender against the wealthy.

St. Lifter, overseer
of the doomed in any case.

St. Angelcake, who strokes
the heads of the raped. St. Watchfob,
who picks fruit and cleans the poisons
from the flesh.  St. Linger,
warrior with no hard weapons.
St. Rollie Of The Bones,
bringer of square deals and luck.

Call up the old saints.
You’ll find them retired and
disinclined to help.  “Not our world,”
they say.  “Not our gospel.  You need

The Blessed Version, The Sherman
On The Mount, The Irascible
Conception, a new Bible written
by scribes drunk on the manic milk
of modern circumstance.  You need

St. Rattler of the found quarter,
St. Lobster of the century reboot,
St. Jack of the feast day
of unicorn meat.
Call that the long shot gospel
and hang on. They’ll make a saint
for you,
someday,
and maybe it’ll even be in time.”

All are, in fact, meaningless
in one sense, 
as long as there is
death
to snicker at them; still, there are times
when a branch grows just long enough
to scrape the wall when it comes down

and that scratch lasts a while,
at least till the next rain,
and everyone points at the mark and says,
“Remember that?  Remember 
when that fell and there was that crash
and we thought the whole house
was about to fall?  Man, we dodged a bullet
that day.”  

And then those people move, or die,
or lose their minds, and no one
mentions that branch again —

but somewhere the wood decays
or is burned and the vapors rise from it
and are inhaled by someone who says,
“Hmmm…I think I’ll go for it.  What have I
got to lose, at least for myself —
and it might mean something to someone,
after all.”

The branches over your head all began at a trunk
and grew out.  The trunk started from a hole in the ground
and grew up.  The meaningless goal
grew up and out and reached and failed, 
or left a transient mark, or lasted eons.  
It’s all the same, all as pointless as any other endeavor;
in the end, it’s the growing that counts,
and not the place where it all ended.

His fuel for today is
a short memory
of her hairbrush in motion
years ago.

Her hair silked in, stroke
upon stroke.
Her with back turned.
Her.
She’s how he goes around
and comes around today.
Not quite
inside, not quite out,
but moving.

A big dog woofing.
Chainsaws running all day.
Me?  I’m not smoking tonight,
too much to do in the morning.

God, sometimes a day
runs you over.  Sometimes
you’re killed almost by it.
That’s big dog’s fault;

gets loud and mean and then
chases the day right out of its yard
and into the street and over us.
Those chainsaws must rile him up —

right here in the city, all that northwoods noise.
Didn’t think there were that many trees here.
The big dog pissed on all of them
and now he can’t tell where his territory is

so he’s woofing and we’re all a little on edge.
Days like this you wanna curl up with a bowl
and fake dead for the daylight hours.  Can’t, 
though; too much to do, and the dog’ll be hunting

bright and early,
and that dog will hunt and bite,
and the day will crush us before he gets to us
if we don’t get a move on.

It had stopped being cool when I was a kid
and became cool again as soon as I was not.

The only thing I know for sure
is that as practiced now it is a kind of low flight.

I know that you can move by grinding
or by sliding.  That’s the same as when you’re an adult.

I think some trick is called “gleaming the cube.”
Or perhaps there isn’t.  Some things are meant to be

obscure or meaningless. and that’s the same
as when you’re an adult.

But to fly like that, to ride handrails and swoop
through bowls and off ramps and dry pools?

To be in love with the thick clack of deck
and truck on hard surfaces?

To fall, again and again, and still smile and see it all
as joy and fun and purpose despite the blood and fracture?

Somehow, the appeal of that last bit escapes me
as I sit here looking out the window

at them rocking out.  “Damn kids,” I say.
Damn them and their flying where all I can do is plod.

Ripple the age, dammit:
ripple it.  

Throw yourself in, not because you’ll be 
at the center of all those circles
for that instant, be a target, be a
bullseye; but because 
as others join you, the circles
will disappear, interlace,
turn to full disturbance,

and then what you’ll be
is all wet, immersed,
what you’ll be
is in it for the long swim,
part of the stream, the flow,
the flood. 

Sparse-framed, reticent, particular,
the old hippies come in to the market 
on odd weeks
for what they cannot grow
or raise.  

A friend sneers at them,
calls them un-American.

I hear they’ve got a sod roof on the house.
Life underground:
a few acres
and a 1978 Ford pickup.

Here on the grid we’ve got
fear, troubles,
and the grind.  We all 
talk too much.

Hey, hippie,
go hug a tree.  Go
bathe in the snow.
Get a job.  

Sparse,
quiet, 
don’t associate with us
unless they have to —

un-American
bastards, get in the trough with us
and bring some eggs or something else 
to eat.

Metallica’s “Blackened”
is playing: loud, loud…Then
the tree breaks out back,
louder even than that.

Half of a two hundred year old oak
comes down
across the whole yard
with snow-weighted limbs,
tears out cables,
and only gently grazes the house.

Barefoot in the wet
checking for damage,
and
other than the tree itself,
there’s none.  The power
has even stayed on.

Back into “Blackened”
once back inside.

“Callous frigid chill?”
Only outside.  Life doesn’t always
imitate art.  In here it’s warm,
blistering almost.  I lower the heat

and return to the music
of promised disaster.