So angry
a plant would cower,
but damned if I do not
hide it in savage feeding
on everything in the cabinet.
Keep it in — hold the line
against the fire.  Don’t think
of sharpening the knife —
which of the many I own
would I choose,
anyway? Which should
do the job I dread and desire?
I slash at the eggs to make them bleed
with common cutlery —
it’s not enough, but I will make do.

I’d love to drain myself
tonight.  Would adore the sight
of the pool forming in the tub around me
full of bile.  I would lose a little
weight, trim down, finally stop caring
how I look.  But instead
I stuff myself some more and think a while
on how deep I’ll have to cut
to let this out — put on enough fat and
it’ll be too much work to cut through it,
so I’ll be safe.
Safer but still angry.  Still hungry.
Something needs to be in danger from me.

Close your relentlessly
interpretive eyes
for now

and let it be
that what you might have seen
has vanished.

Let the seeming
become
the unconceived.

All is apparently gone.
You might be seen
but cannot return the favor.

You are
loose in unobserved
life.

Freedom
appears as red grains
cycling under your lids.

Press fingers to them
and see darkening.
Feel blindness.

Take one step forward
and blunder into something.
Stay strong and learn it

with your hands,
tongue, nose, chest
and shins.

Can you name it? 
Are you now in discovery?
This is what you wanted

when you closed your eyes.
Breaking new on familiar shores.  There’s pain.
Create a new word for its color.

Some problems
are small enough
to be solved
over bacon and eggs.
Get to the diner
after the rush and sit
in the fat person’s booth,
the one with the movable table.
Sit a bit stirring coffee.
Listen to the businessmen
who had to squeeze
into the normal booth
talk about
underwriting a risk.
Cover the whole table with the plates
when they come and
dig in to the comfortable
and familiar. Slowly,
carefully, acknowledge
the issues,
sort them,
eliminate distractions,
and come to a decision
just in time with the last chew
of the last bite
of oversized Italian toast.
Leave a big tip when you go
and light a cigarette upon leaving.
Walk to the car
feeling full and prepared,
taking your time.  Those homefries
were delicious, weren’t they?
The eggs were perfect, the coffee
strong but smooth.  It’s all
going well.  It’s all working
out.

You refuse to say
or read or listen to
anything negative,
only speak of God’s love
and the sun, place flowers
in all the corners of your house.

Lemme tell you something:

the cockroaches
say much the same
of the night, the filth,
and the stink,

and those flowers begin dying
from the moment you bend
to cut them loose
from the mulch they need
to live.

We came together
on a Wednesday night
to beat the ape
to death.

It was a warm night.
There were ribbons in the trees
and a firepit, wine and song,
and baseball bats.

The ape was strangely calm.
One by one she looked into our circled faces.
We do this out of compassion,
she is doomed already, the preacher intoned

as we raised the bats high.  None of us
wanted to strike the first blow.  Urged on
by our love, we swung all at once, she fell,
and then we finished the job.

Our arms were swinging, we crooked and twisted
away from each other to avoid being hit.
We threw the body on the fire and the fur
singed and ripped in out nostrils.

This was an ape, after all.  This is how
we started on the path.  From this
came the human, and from this came the war.
In killing our source, perhaps we could kill

the impulse to kill?  It was worth a try,
we had said before we began — and now,
spattered and at peace, we sat and looked into
the bones in the flames, hoping against hope

that this burning might be the future at last.

NOTE:  It’s been pointed out how much like a Russell Edson poem (“Killing The Ape”) this is…totally unconscious, I swear.  I’m a big Edson fan, and how I blanked on that particular poem, I have no idea.  I’ll leave it up, but definitely want to acknowledge the debt.

When we have crossed the line

When we have stopped being unhappy and can see happy
When our teeth stop traveling in search of substance

When we demand
When we no longer beg

When we are imagined fully by another
When the sense of otherness is tamed

When learning is the equivalent of living
When it stops being a big deal
When getting up for work is jazz and not techno

When the lovers blow hot always hot
When the cool is demonstrated by a hand in a fire unburned

When street is asphalt and not adjective
When prairie takes precedence
When river is clean fuel
When ocean slips pregnancy to us through our eyes

When bird and snake combine to make historical marker
When tumbledown prisons become flower mounds

When we are heroin to the officer
When we are free of the baggie and are vaporized like old contracts

When the last of the butchers falls meatless into our arms
When the last of the lightning squad sits at our tables
When a mean mumbling is sampled and made to rock
When prettiness is established and common as every face we see

When this means nothing
When this is quaint
When no one understands this at any emotional level
When it is clear to all

Then

I will not spill over.

I will lift my head up
and let my eyes brim.

Will hold still, and see through
to a wet-bright sky.

No matter if moon
or sun above, no matter
if none are here to see
my face if I fail in this;

I will this.  That I will not —
will hold my water
and keep my face raised —
will not.  And when

I have not, I will
remain fixed on
how clear the air is,
how full of gems
and the sharp arms
of their shine.