Ten people in a room,
drinking beer,
claiming to socialize.

Five open laptops,
seven cell phones in plain sight and frequent use,
long silences bubbling through the chatter.

How intolerable must we all be
that the means for escaping each other
must always be close at hand?

In order to survive
the changing climate,
I shall fight the natural order
and become the extinct dire wolf.
Six foot tall at the shoulder
and a stone match for anything that moves,
I’ll be regenerate tooth and claw
in a land of current rabbits.

Everyone will be taken by surprise.
People will demand proof of my existence
even as I lay waste to the countryside.
Experts will shake their heads and deny it,
victims will point at their wounds,
and while the debate rages
I’ll be licking my atavistic balls
in pleasure over it all
because I know better
than any of them do
how irrelevance itself can lead to
this kind of savage rebirth
Ignore some people long enough
and they die quietly; ignore others
and they come back as the monsters
you dimly recall  which you haven’t seen in years.

One day, after a distinguished history of rampage,
someone will shoot me
and won’t they all be amazed at my carcass:
the stiff fur,
the mange,
the blood on my jaws.
They’ll mount me somewhere public,
I’ll grow dusty again,
and schoolkids will point at me on field trips.

I’ll have a plaque at my feet
explaining the whole damn story…

and a neat little button
that when pressed
will let them hear my howl.

Silence at last.  I’m tired of speaking
and weary of responding.

People don’t understand that
in their voices I can perpetually hear

the deliberate roar of the pistol
through my own jaw;

or rather I could
until a few minutes ago, when

I got home and ran to the bedroom
to take the bullets out of my gun

and stuff them
into my ears.

I can put off my end
as long as I live in the quiet.

Every voice I heard tonight told me I was doomed.
Every deaf moment since I got home has kept that doom at bay.

No one knows I can hear the Scythe when they speak
unless I come out and confess it,

and then they want to tell me I’m lying about it
or that I have missed the joy of living.  No one understands

that I have known that joy,
and it’s that joy that makes me think of triggers and torn bones.

It’s knowing that I knew that all too well once
and that it seems more distant

every time a happy person breathes
or laughs in light of something

perfectly silly
or delightfully small.

I don’t hate them for their joy,
and begrudge them nothing.

It’s just safer for me here in the leaden comfort
of not hearing so many reminders of how distant pleasure is now.

I drill the bullets deeper into my head.
I do it without irony.  I know myself well enough

to know that if ever I decide to use them as they were designed,
it would be the hatred of their noise I’d have to overcome,

and not
of the silence to follow.

A Telecaster’s
what I need

a no-frills slab of easy
made to be played hard

Something venerable
that can sting and scream

Something born to run a straight line
from chicken-picking country

right up a stairway to heaven
(even though I don’t believe in such a thing)

I need a maple telephone
because I’ve got to call London back

I need to write a syrupy note
to all I’ve ever loved

and although my big blond dreadnought girl
is always at my side

I can’t write everything I want to say
with the same pen all the time

So give me the ancient quill
and let me do my thing

my Isley thing
my countless bar-band idol thing

let me lay my head back
in Leo’s arms

let me chop at the rhythm
and let that baby scream

sting
and sing

When a larva pupates
it has a past and a future
and is in neither and in both at once. 

We can’t know
what it knows of itself
as it hangs poised between appetite
and flight.

Those who knew it as caterpillar
and would embrace it
because they loved as it once was
are confused when
love
is unnecessary to it at that moment,
is likely even unknown to it.

All this is by way of saying
that I am sorry i haven’t written to you
in so long. 

I am
pupa:

I appear arrogant, perhaps,
suspended like this, but know that I am
aware of you
as something more
than just a reminder
of voracious days. 

If I do not find a way back to you
when I emerge,

it will not be without
regret that I have had to abandon
that world. 

My instinct tells me
my country doesn’t need bifocals.
America needs the long view only.
America knows reading rots the mind.
America loves kittens on chin-up bars
because the letters are big and spelling doesn’t matter.

My instinct speaks in a voice that sounds like
my mother’s wrinkled brow
over my crib. (How I love you, Mom, your
gray eyes like the storms of myth,
and how I love my father,
steering us toward the perfectly
integrated calm of promise.)
My instinct tells me
I am right to see America
as a present from nostalgia.

Love America, says my instinct.
Love the wordless ways by which all Americans assemble meaning,
America is a Rose Bowl
of equally loving machineries
opposed on principle
and battling it out
despite loose bolts and general disrepair.
It keeps going anyway
propelled by ruptured stream pipes
that burn off skin
while leaving the muscles intact.

My instinct speaks to me, saying
the muscles! The muscles are what matters!
That and the bones are all we need! Forget the skins
and all we’ve said about them! We’re cured!
We’re aglow with blisters and blisters hold
pure fresh water! America is a vast reservoir
and we swim in it every minute!

My instinct says cruelty is a television turned off
and a radio that plays requests while planting trees.
My instinct says a warmer planet leads to more housing starts
year round! It says the pocket of my jeans
will brim with honey without my asking for such sweet treasure.
How can I refuse such a pleasing God?

Instinct, I love you! Let us listen to each other always,
only forgoing our real dialogue on national holidays.
You want me to race ahead of it all and I shall!
Experiment in progress, Instinct!
We are the new imagination of the new century! I am as blind
as instinct is deaf to the rejects who tell us we are aiming
for a cliff above Babylon! I grow my hair out into locks
of clean red shimmer, bloody ground forgotten in favor of Valhalla,
streaming out behind me as I fly the course!
Flip me over, I’m done!
Show me the river!
Show me an America I believe I already inhabit!
Show me I am right to trust my gut
that laps over my belt
with the fat of a stolen birthright,
one I would never sell without your OK!
Is this it? Is this the OK?
If it is, say it! Instinct,
tell me what to charge!
I await your instructions
with all my intubated breath!

he was a secretly weepy man
whose life was overall easier than he let on
and at the same time fraught enough
with occasional tension that he allowed it to color
the good times, which were long enough
to make him feel guilty for being in pain.

he lived a long time in one place
and then again in another.  nothing felt like
home at all except once in a while
and he pushed that down right away
because he felt guilty about always feeling alone.
rootless old dog that he was
he kept secrets.  they were like home to him.

he used to say that the typical cynic
is just a clumsy romantic.
he knew the former worked better for him
because the latter needs more tending
and he let things spoil
through inattention all the time.

he worked too hard on easy things.
he never wore his heart on his sleeve
because it was too jumpy to be pinned down.
he slept too little.  he talked too much.
he walked away when it suited him
and he would have called you a sentimental fool
for bothering to call after him.

"When I was sixteen
I was hornier ‘n six minks in a mail sack.
At twenty-one I learned how to let ’em out one at a time
and make it last all night long.
‘Slammin’ Johnny,’ the women called me
and I bet you can guess why.
At thirty they started to die off.
At forty, I slept alone more often than not
with the bag just stirring now and then.
Now I’m old as the dirty dozen
and I wouldn’t know a mink if one bit me,
but a body next to mine keeps me warm
so I make the effort once in a while.
There are times when it’s enough
to know that if I wake up next morning,
it won’t be alone.  And if I don’t wake up,
maybe it’ll mean something to whoever’s
lying there.  Maybe they’ll remember me
for a week or two after they get over the shock.

"You know, ‘The Dirty Dozen’ was a great movie.  All those ugly guys
making people watch them.  I was ugly as any of them
but I wasn’t famous. I had to make do
with that bag of minks and a reputation
for taming them.  I can’t say I was ever in love
with that.  I always liked the idea of that movie more
than any other — ugly guys banging away
and getting it done when no one else could.
Maybe I should have watched more movies.
Maybe I missed something.

"Ah, you could spend all night listening to me say, ‘maybe.’
Maybe that’s what you want.  I dunno.
I can’t tell you shit about women.  I useta think
I could, but I can’t.  I useta think it was love
when it was just me jumping off and on till I was done,
and done felt good enough to make me think it was love,
but it never lasted.  But I ain’t complainin’. I’ve had it good.
Maybe that’s why I’m here tonight, and not cold in some grave
already.  Maybe that doesn’t cut it for everyone,
but it’s how it was, and how it is.  Now,
you wanna buy me a beer
and stop asking me so many questions?
I gotta bed upstairs that’s calling my name."

I have seen more sunrises
while falling asleep than I ever wanted,
closing my eyes to blood seeping back
into gray skin and charcoal sky.

I’ve held my own hand
just to know it still could grasp
another.

I lived so long
on a patch of cloth
on a worn couch
or in a cracking leather chair
that I forgot what eye level
was like.  I looked up at anyone
talking to me because down
is where I did my best work,
my only work.

I couldn’t say a good word
about myself
without imagining
how it would sound in
another person’s mouth,
and I couldn’t get it right.
My spit tasted
of dust bowls
and cedar splinters
driven into skulls
by tornadoes, and I couldn’t help
swallowing.

On the nights when
I did see the sunrise,
I never warmed up.
I welcomed
snow and rain in the morning, better still
if it rained into snow
and everything became deep slush.
That was the only time
I felt like I fit, when everyone was
as cold and sodden as I was,
when the steel shade of the outside world
looked like home.

I look at all that now
in the mornings when I rise
to the sun falling lukewarm
upon the ice outside,
and I can see
how water is still running down the street,
but now,
it’s from the melting.

the ferret
pours through holes so small
water could only seep through
if it found them. when it’s time to sleep,

she sleeps. when it’s time to eat, she eats.
every detail delights her just long enough
to send a shiver up her tuby body,
and then it passes.

she’s the perfect stoner’s pet
with a thousand ideas and urges
in the course of a minute.
you could watch one not-thinking for hours.

too many nips on my toe and she gets caged.
she always eats and drinks then.
I wonder if it’s strategy
and not punishment at work…

nah, she loves being out too much.
lots of things to do.
places to see. worlds to discover
and rediscover.

an exacting enactment
of life in the moment.
I sit on the couch
for hours, just watching her.

An ancient poem, and one we’re recording for the new CD.  I mentioned it a couple ofposts ago. 

I thought when I found it that it was written after Columbine, but it’s in files on the laptop that go back to 1999 or so.  So it’s an old piece; not super old for me, since I still routinely perform a couple of poems I wrote in the 1980s, but old enough.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

One aching
head, one steady eye;
one Glock, one sporting
rifle held in reserve, one combat stance —

two hands clenched, two
ears plugged to block the stun, two
hours before final dark, two faces
inside this boy facing off at last.

Three sirens, then more;
rising soundtrack for Three Fates dancing
around three bodies lying still
three stories below his stand.

Four times four makes sixteen
years that have passed
since his mother spent four times four hours in hard labor
bringing this young gunner out to see

this five fold world of land and sea and air
and daily rot and failing will.
He thinks: there are six sides to every story,
and six times six again if you add all of your own. He keeps calculating:

seven miles to the nearest hospital,
seven times seven rounds left;
eight doors from the lower floors out onto this roof;
eight bombs set to blow when the knobs are turned.

When the snipers finally find him
he lets the nine millimeter fall and
seizes hold of the long gun,
thrilled to be not yet dead, waiting for them to open the doors and die as they come for him,

twisting around
before the first door blows, casually aiming before smoke can obscure the target,
already knowing the end result: they will wait ten minutes
after their last shot is fired to be sure it’s safe to bring him down.

And then someone will tally the bodies and the reasons,
the number of hazardous songs that he knew,
all the things that someone should have noticed.
Someone will have the nerve to say it doesn’t add up.

He would say that it always adds up, but he would also remind us
that some learn to count by irrational numbers,
working their way through ragged sequences
until they’re sucked into a Fibonacci swirl that is already starting again somewhere,

the wheels turning click after click after click,
until it’s time to blow again,
until the sound of those counters
again finds its voice in another boy’s head: one, two, three …

I have this crazy dream
that haunts me from time to time
over a cup of tea in the late evening

when I’m watching the tube
or reading the news
I start to fear

that I’m gonna go
Unabomber
one of these days

Who needs the inconvenience
of a particular cause
when there’s so much to choose from

I’ll carve some intricate parts
Load up a box with tiny nails
Blow it up and laugh at the reporters

Maybe there will be deaths
Surely there will be maimings and investigations
and profiles that pin me down like a snake to water

I’ll only write my manifesto
after I’ve already begun
to make my mark

and when they finally take me down
I’ll go quietly with a leaden stare
into whatever hole they’ve got in store

for I’m committed to the plan
from conception through closure
doing my best to be an object lesson

on what happens when someone takes action
that doesn’t fit the mold of what’s expected
Everyone will stop

They’ll mostly deplore me
Some will adore me
And some will think me mad

But if it happens I should be forgiven
for my model behavior
These late nights have taught me

that someone will make themselves a scapegoat
at least once in any generation
that won’t acknowledge the extent of its sins

until the goat bearing them away explodes in the wilderness
It takes a pile of blood to make it happen
I’m afraid that one day if I offer my stinking back for the load

in my eyes you’ll see
just before you lock me away
the one truth that drove me to this

that a bad dream can happen to anyone
and in fact is happening to everyone
everywhere at once

There are people who think
we should all write more,
one poem a day,
one thousand poems a day,
five hundred fifty five thousand poems a day,
one for every thought
that slips along our nerves,
excepting only the poems about poetry;
the belly full of meaning
poetry offers
should be exorcised;
the places it lives should be cut out of us;
we should never write of it or speak of it.

Well, today
I’m ill informed and half asleep.
I haven’t watched the news for a week.
I’m alone for the night
with no one but the cat curled next to me
on the fleece blanket
while a documentary on Crohn’s Disease
plays unwatched in the next room.

I could get up,
or I could stay here until spring.

All I have tonight
is the poetry of poetry itself,
a right whale inside me,
dangerous, endangered, rising island
within my body reminding me of marvels
that could slip away and never return.

There may be something else to write about someday
and the poem I write then may be fibrous, luminous, may hold together
on its own and pass from me without pain,

but until then, I’ll write one poem about poetry,
write it over and over again,
one poem for the blessing of knowing
that poetry
still exists in me,
even if it’s hanging by a thread.

Even if it hurts.

I’m a lousy poet.
I don’t leak emotion.
I don’t fall into easy fits of anything.
Sometimes I sneer at those who do.
It’s mostly because I’m jealous.
Jealousy is my tiger pit.
There are spikes in it.
I wiggle them loose.
Maybe I can build a ladder.
Maybe I can dig a ramp and walk out.
I think up a lot of strategies for escape.
I think all the time.
All I do with all this spare time is think.
Nothing I’ve done so far has worked.
I am a bad engineer.
It is alleged that being trapped is frustrating.
I do not know if that is what I’m feeling.
I do know that there are times I want to cry.
I want to cry because I’m trapped.
It is forbidden to cry over being trapped.
I don’t know who forbade that.
I know I can hear his voice down here.
I try to get that down in words now and then.
Sometimes it is useful.
Then I recall that I am in a tiger pit.
I recall that my words are unheard.
I go back to thinking:
Bad engineer!
Lousy poet!

No boatman
No bridge
No hopping

Leap

Air and water below you
Cold fast spray reminding you
that there is something at stake

Hesitation
won’t work here
(You might even want to close your eyes)

No hopping on one foot
No testing for footing
No poking to see what shakes under your weight
No stopping
No time to think — thinking
is the death of leap

Leap
The worst that can happen
is that you’ll drown

but
oh in that moment
before you strike

you’ll know