The ex-skateboarder
is a current cook,
thinks about cooking
a lot, cooks all the time,
in fact cooked his way
all the way
from Rhode Island
to Virginia
by way of Michigan.

Sometimes
he stops thinking
about the lead line
for two minutes
and wishes for a night listening
to New Model Army
after eating something good
someone else had prepared
in the fifty-first state
of the union,
the one that only exists
as the hypothetical next stop
on his road.

This,
he thinks,
is a good grind,
today is a good day,
or at least
it’s as good as it gets.
I can live with that
even if now I have to walk
where I used to glide
until I get there…

and eats what he cooks
because he knows where he’s been,
anyway.

A cross-fox
bears black bars
upon his shoulders
that demand attention.

One red squirrel
glimpsed at the park
means more
than all the gray ones.
Let a black one show up
and someone will call the news.

The white skunk
(not a scent of black
on him but for the eyes)
comes through the yard,
and it’s as if a yeti walks among
the trashcans and weeds.

When Maggie, the new girl,
raised her hands
on the first day of high school
and defiantly showed us
her twelve fingers,
we shuffled in our seats
and communally resolved at once
to shun her.

I am sure that in
the years since, at least one
of my classmates
has been deer hunting,
looking to to hang
a ten-point buck or better
on his wall.

You have no excuse
and there’s no absent Muse
to blame for it.  It’s either work
or waiting in this, no in between
and when you invoke
the Muse like that it tells me
you don’t understand the work
or how blood must be spilled
in every place we make meat
from life, for life.  This is not to say
there are no walls between you
and what you desire, but there are sledgehammers
too and that’s how
the walls come down
and the calves get dead. If you’ll
just turn around and pick up a hammer
you’ll note it is heavy enough
to break what stands before you.
Are you enough? The old question,
oldest one, the one Cain asked
even before he stooped for his own
tool.  Think of that:
we revile his literal take now,
but his moment still offers a lesson
that something has to go if it’s between you
and your target God.  Pick up the hammer
and stop waiting, we’re all
hungry here, and the excuse
you’ve named the Muse?
When she gets here
footsore and dusty, she’ll be
hungry too.

Likely high water mark
and I’m bereft.
Who’s going to answer
for this success? 
I got here on a back or two
and it hurts
me.  Hurts
more because I’ve been
lazy getting up off the mountain
now that I’m up.
Who were they?
Damned,
I can’t remember.

recent developments:
the sheets on the clothesline
speaking in soft thwaps

and weeds still pretty enough
to not annoy

old leaves now almost gone to soil

the first cigar in months feet stretched up on the stoop
no jacket

spent an hour thinking of this
not because of tension or struggle

but because it felt good

Smoke,
a lullaby
in the air,

curls around
the covers
of the Duino Elegies.

Feet up, coffee at hand,
the angelic explanations
laid before me

and a good cigar —
no,
a great cigar burning.

Thus, clarity
carries on.
Always.

Let go, he tells himself.

You don’t count at all.
You haven’t for a while.
Words count (the speaking
of words is an action and counts
no matter the proverb).

A lot of good people
have been bastards,
he tells himself.  Let go
the ties and be.  Cut
words loose: write or say
four, pull back two. Do not
neglect the rage,
let go of it. Free it.

Qualification,
he tells himself, is pure
falsehood.
Justification contains
too many syllables
to waste. Let go, sharpen,
make a blunt object,
poison a well. 

Let go, he tells himself.
You’re too old not to.
It’s expected now,
your job practically.
Customize at your risk —
words don’t demand
anything beyond utterance.
They will fail you,
of course.  Let go,
fall as they may fall.
How far your fate is
from the top is
uncertain.  Let go.
Find out.