A river,
a bridge.
A hard faced hawk
over the water
as I passed.

A mountain-stone in Georgia.
Peregrines on updrafts
hovered six hundred feet above
the ground, ten feet off
the edge of the cliff
where I was standing.

Were those eagles, there
above me on a Portland street?
Were those buzzards above the field
down the road?

Do they ever touch down?
I only see them in trees and on
the wing.  Once, one carrying a snake
let it trail across my car’s hood
but if it came to ground I did not see.

And now the cries of this mated pair in the backyard —

will they come down?

Go ahead and impersonate
kings and queens. 
Assume air
bends for you. 
Claim blood
you only have ever scented from afar.
This is not a country
for unbalanced assumptions.
This place is as much
the Wobblies
as it is the Carnegies,
as much the Underground Railroad
as it is the Border Patrol,
and when you primp and stir
and expect so much, you
should stop and recall that nature
always restores balance.

What moments my face etches within itself
are not those of my choosing:
what lands upon me and inscribes itself
is not often recognized when it comes.

If the air were as acidic as these impressions suggest,
I’d have been liquid long ago
and would long ago have soaked invisibly away
into the earth, most likely leaving no trace.

Only a mirror away is an understanding
of this erosion and resculpting, yet rarely do I look
at one.  I keep myself rigid and blind,
stare ahead thinking of how much I’d love to melt away.

He’s
an interstitial zone.

He’s the littoral.
Either
in between dark and dawn
or
between day and dark.

How strong is your grasp?

He’s slick.
If he gets loose
he’ll not be
easy.  Might catch him
but might not know
we have. 
That’s the same
as failing to.

He’s fine this way, though.
Never thought of
incompleteness or
lack of definition
as his fate. 

Our failure to catch
is not problematic for him.
Our distress isn’t,
either. 

We wither
and, as stated,
he’s fine.
Fine enough
to slip between closed fingers.
Fine singing
“I Walk On Gilded Splinters”
to us.  Fine

watching, ow, ooh,
how we step wrong toward him
and contrive a blessing there.

Even using the word “him”
is our
contrivance.

to be humbled
by the unexpected gift
of a blessing

is to acknowledge
that the river of luck
is not a servant

as it carries its cargo on eddies
and whirlpools which will shove
crisis and generosity equally well

they weigh the same
and float perfectly in tandem
with each other

to be humbled when the current
gives you its best is to see
that you could easily have received the worst

and then cursing
could have drowned yourself
in the flood

and it would have meant the same
to the river
as the joy you feel right now

so you kneel by the riverside
in the mud on the bank
and say out loud

that you are neither worthy
nor undeserving
but accepting

When it is this dark, there’s no point
in leaving the house.  You’re hidden
from the world.  The blinds
are down and the lights
in here are on; what reason,
really, to go outside and face
a cold November night
looking for safety or peace?
Here, there’s coffee, chocolate,
sandwich makings — everything,
really, four dim walls can contain
to sustain an existence. 

The only thing
that might be out there is
a balm to the gnawing
inside you — the rat chewing
at your core with his perfect,
slide along the bone bites
that take so little, really,
only a small shred at a time,
and how do you measure that against
the cold outside? 

Maybe he’ll stop,
sometime soon;
maybe you will
get used to it
and him and the hole you can feel
even if it doesn’t show up
on any X-ray. 

Against the possibility
of freezing in the open air,
losing your way, running out of gas
in a lonelier place, ending dirty
and stiff in an alley or a grove
north of town somewhere close
to the long woods that stretch
into Canada,
the rat and the close walls
and the light that spills weakly
from the hand me down lamp
seem downright friendly. 

Your life
is contained so perfectly in this tight space
that the open arms of the night
can’t possibly compete.

Tags: poetry, poems, meditations

Willingly
suspended
on the pole

Blood-flushed
faux-sweet
like we all have
all the time
in the world

I was born with everything I need
for this Work

of putting self
in abeyance
Of body presented
as message and not
presence or identity

Letting myself
be seen
without betrayal
of who I am

I can be anything I want
in this place where they demand
that I be whatever works

I chose the name I use
for its clowning value

Not all of us have done this
the way I have
but some of us
know very well
what we’ve stripped off
and what remains intact

The money isn’t bad
as a way of keeping score
but it’s not great all the time

On the nights
when it’s bad
I play harder

What I offer
under the guise of sex
is a tug of war
between their power
and mine

where who’s winning is secondary
to the push and pull joy
of this Work

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations

Once upon a time

there was a stalk of wheat
that could speak. 
It had a story to tell.
It grew up whispering
of its future as bread,
and when it fell
before the reaper,
before the winnower
and the miller,
it carried its whisper
into the flour and the dough
and the bread
that was soon eaten
by a hungry child. 
The child grew up
with that spare voice inside,
listened to it whisper,
but never let anyone else know.

The child grew
to be an adult, aged,
then one day fell silent
before the gray press of age.

It so happened in those days
that a traveler stopped by the roadside
near where the wheat had once grown
and the once-child had just died.

The traveler
sat down to rest
beneath a tree. 

He grew hungry
for bread,
and approached a small house nearby
to offer a few coins for whatever
might be offered.

The house was abandoned,
but on a table in the kitchen
was a loaf of golden bread. A knife
lay beside it, and the traveler
took up the knife to slice the bread.

A thin voice spoke and said,
“Name this bread Isaac
before you cut.”

The traveler was not unlearned
and knew that voice, knew its story;
also knew that while there was a reprieve
at the end of the tale,
one could not count on that happening
twice. 

He picked up the knife
and shouted, “Isaac, I adore you!”
as he cut deep through the crust.

As he ate,
in a field
many miles away
a new stalk of wheat began
to whisper and grow,
and a weaning child
began to cry for bread.

Moral:

Stories have a way
of finding the thread
they most desire,
and someone will always arrive
at the right moment
to complete it, to change it
and carry it forward,
even when it seems
that the tale will be lost forever.

It may seem foreign to those who stay at home
and practice their bliss behind closed doors,
but not to you.  The Anaconda Priesthood welcomes you
behind its curtain of jewels and whole cloth

to the church of fascination and deceit
and imminent if not certain death. 
You may stare at each of them (it’s
expected, of course) but not for long,

and do not lock eyes with any one of them
for any length of time, as that will be seen
as an offer of self-sacrifice.  You’re used to that
of course, thinking that time spent

in your bargain basement occult gatherings
has been preparation enough.  Not even close,
novice — those teenagers didn’t have a clue as to
the nature of true menace.  These snakes

mean business, longing for meat
as fresh as they can get it, and you’re
looking sweet and fat.  But that’s what you
came for, of course; here’s the good danger

that you’ve only sniffed at from afar.
There before you, in sharp suits
and big, big bloodlust, sit the serpents
you’ve always wanted to be: their eyes,

their supple lies, their mechanical
calm and unhinging jaws. 
You think you’re ready?  You might be
if you can cool your blood and head

and keep them cold.  Look at them,
fat and ripe and old.  You believe
in every hiss and slither, and your own eyes
are narrowing as you smile back.