Woke up thrashing,
throat on full choke,
hands throwing war shapes.
I ask the night,

if breathing were simpler
who would I be?  If nights
were easier and uninterrupted
who would I be?

Comes a voice:

Don’t blame
the blocked back of your throat
or the subsequent storm
in your enzymes

for the look on the front of your head:
that’s no mask.
There’s no other hiding
inside your illnesses.  By all the signs,

you’re a bastard.  
By your age
almost everyone who’s left
is.  All this sound and rage

is real, is impotent,
is yours.  Own it
and stop moaning for your other self:
there’s no one to be comforted there,

and you know it.  
You’re a complete bastard.
Embrace it, hold it tenderly to your
lard-gray chest — and if you are going to be up,

fold some clothes,
do some dishes, because
that warrior-sickbed persona of yours
won’t get the house clean.

wearing spare glasses —
slight adjustment to my sight
gives me a headache

wearing old glasses —
slight revision to my sight
gives me nostalgia

wearing bad glasses —
violets are up — even
the blind know it’s spring

blurry but happy
is how the world seems right now —
clarity can wait

This lie of ours
that holds us fast
is remarkable enough
to be admired on its own merits
even if it is a lie.  It’s
architectural, foundational;
it made a home for us inside.
It is grand and cozy as we need it to be
and even when we don’t believe,
it nags us into acting as if we do,
just in case.  Perhaps it was true once
and now it’s not?  In that case,
let’s give it its due and move on.
Let’s just say that Hell is dead,
and move out of its shadow
into the fields, away from
the crumbling walls.  Out there,
in the sunlight and the cool rain,
we can live publicly and openly,
thinking anew of sin and redemption —

and when the time is right,
we can talk then of the death
of Heaven, too.

All these people
seem more concerned
about others than I am.

I’m frantically searching my head
for a bump in the right place
that will explain this; some scar
on a crucial spot might be keeping me
from loving my fellow humans.  It all seems
so smooth up there, like I’ve never lived
and been hurt by anything or anyone.

I think I’ll take it out on someone.
Maybe they’ll hit me in the head
and break the numbness wide open.

Maybe they’ll forgive me
and I’ll feel the dam of concern
bursting within me.  

Maybe I’ll just tumble
and fall, get up cursing humanity.
Honestly, that seems the most likely outcome,
and frankly preferable to how I am now.
I’ve got to have a hole in my head
to feel so little.

M is for mescaline, for peace
of mind.

O is for opiates on my
hip, just for kicks.

D is for drink, drink
all over my lap and belly.

S is for smoke
the color of eyes.

L is for my life’s
that’s wrecked. Got no job,
no true home,
family’s a cipher,
love’s a horizon.

G is for the gold rush,
the hope of easy street, the fine wares
of gangster and greedyguts,
for groaning
under the weight of pretending
that I expect something to go well.

C is for cleaning up
the stains that are always on the floor
no matter how C for careful I am.

A is for absolution, absinthe,
how amazing the way I am when left
to my own devices.

Z is the place I end up
when I lose the thread. The last place
I remember to look. The place
as distant from a beginning as I can find.

If you enjoy cutting others

If you learned that early
and found you had a knack for it

If you get a kicky gut-gasm when you feel
soft pillow puncture or shock of bonestrike up your arm

If you love the weapons and own them by the dozens
carry them in pairs in boots in pockets and small of back

If you know how to use them
not from movie or video but from hard training

If your family taught you manhood
depended on hard skills like these

but if even beyond that you learned
that for you it was a pleasure and not grim need

and you ran from that 
and became a good boy and never hurt anyone

except that one time —
maybe two if you are being ruthless

and honestly
all you’ve cut since then has been yourself

and even then only a few times
and those were a while ago

if you are settled and urbane
and only taste the desire to cut now and then

and never do it with your knives
at all

tell me
are you still a monster

Salt in the wood
from hands on the handle
for many years of work;

leave it out on the lawn
after raking and you may see
the porcupine come and gnaw it up.

His long teeth carve and cut across the grain;
his back arches up against attack.
If you think of going out to stop him,

recognize that he will move slowly
if he does decide to leave the tool alone,
and that’s no given; he may instead choose

to do nothing, his steady assault
upon the handle certain and assured
in the knowledge that there’s really

nothing you can do about his appetites.
When he leaves, you’ll put the rake away.
The incident may change you. Maybe you’ll feel

the toothmarks under your hand next time you rake,
and think then of how your sweat
must have tasted.  Perhaps

you’ll lay your tongue to the wood
to find out for yourself what the attraction was.
In your dreams you’ll imagine you own a back

bristling with quills.  You’ll begin to move more slowly,
deliberately, confidently.  You’ll leave your home
and move to the woods, 

learning to love the feel of leaves
beneath your feet, start to wonder
why anyone would want them gone.

Obsessed this whole winter
with looking 
like I know what I’m doing,
I’ve clung to a persona.
Today
I whip off the mask,
break the spell,
and decide to plant.

In my dirty hand,
a clump of earth
full of pale bulbs.
Black under my fingernails,
shit-brown all over my knees
and shirt.  A streak of filth
on one cheekbone.

Do I look like
I know what I’m doing?
At last, it doesn’t matter.
Like any laborer,
any artist, 
any of us really,
I just lay my ghostly little balls
in that fresh grave
and hope for the best. 

What I say 
when I sense
Anima underfoot:

“Come up
and love me.”

What I say to Cecil Taylor:

“I wish I could scale cliffs
as nimbly as that.  How do you see
the micro-holds you move between
in such tiny increments of just-in-time?”

What I say
when the guitar
is horrible in my hands:

“Whether it is you or me,
I am sorry.”

What I say to my pen,
keyboard, paper, screen:

“God said so.  It’s so,
I am sure, even as I shiver
here with you.”

What I say to the air
on my front porch:

“Won’t you come in?  There’s
beer.  There’s song.  There’s 
air I’d like you to meet.”

What I say to myself,
always, when presence
seizes me, when I am alone
and caught in alone, when I am
clasped close to a chest
imbued with a Krupa pulse
or to the ribs of Indonesia
come East to present themselves
at the court of honor and understanding —
the kecak men whooshing and clattering
a charm of rope looped around
what I fail to understand:

“Yes.”

when the end comes
and is accepted
it’s almost always with resignation

if there’s relief it’s coupled with 
mild surprise

a gently exhaled “oh”

raised shoulders
falling back

eyes softening into peace

and the process in the brain
no longer well-described by the word
“thought”

becomes something better
an unanalyzed awareness
that swirls Sufi 
before it quite settles

Eventually,
I’ll get back to the narrative —
I do want to get home —

but for now,
I’m content with this fruit
before me, this peach.

It’s a story too.
Seed within both past and future.
But the flesh is present, so wetly present,

and it is all I want right now.
This moment free of nostalgia
and anticipation. This sweet

ball of interruption.
I reach for it
and let the narrative go.

Improvised
explosive devices, suicide
bombers, kamikaze pilots;

imagine, I say, there was a time
when no one had ever heard
each of those phrases. 

We should
try to forget them,
you say.

Try, I say.
Just try, and I will wait here
for your limbs

to rain down upon me
once the detonation
is complete.  Once a genie

comes when called,
it’s hard to uncall it.
Once a path’s been cut,

it never completely
grows over, no matter how narrow
and choked it seems.

You say
damn you cynic,
things change.  I say

bless you, naive one, I agree —
but not that much, and never
back to the original state of grace.

We just aren’t
built
for unknowing.