The dishes in the sink are growing weeds
so I’m blogging about Gaza
The money’s falling out of my wallet
so here’s a little news about actors

The trees are full of longhorn beetles
and I swear I love the smell of my old socks
The smoke eater’s out of commission
and my head’s wearing headphones without me
The ferret needs to come out and play
so I’m sitting with a book near the window
and contemplating jazz as God-metaphor

I stick freeware in my ears
so I don’t hear the doorbell
There’s a lottery ticket lungfish crawling on the dirty kitchen floor
looking for the next pool to enter

There are a lot of global evils to vanquish today
They’re making me hungry for a perfect cheese
served with a microbrew
on an overdone gas bill
I’ll eat it with relish
while nodding off to classic rock
in an assuredly postmodern sort of way
while wading in shallows
deep enough to drown in

They say
the universe is still expanding.
I can’t always be bothered to check.

One of these days
I’ll sit down and say,
"That’s enough.

Let someone else find
the leading edge."
I should have said it by now,

I tell myself.  Something keeps
me watching the stars, trying
to detect their flight from me.

In one second, I think I see it,
in the next, I’m sure I can’t. 
I watch us dying for plots of holy land

real or imagined, for thoughts
triggered from visions of perfection.
I think we’re all beside the point.

We’re all just human, impossibly stupid
under the blown-out dome
of space. It’s improbable that we’re here,

insignificant that I try and tell my story
when it’s exactly like every other story
ever told:  I want love, immortality,

power over my surroundings,
warmth in cold and cold in warmth.
Always on the wrong side of the moment.

If the universe is expanding,
I’m the center.  Farther away from my limits
every time the clock moves.

One of these days, I’ll say,
"enough," and it will be.  It may be enough now
that I know that.  There was never anything

to be created here that hasn’t been created already
in the rush of light and dark toward…
what’s out there, beyond what we know? Oh…

settling down to watch.

There is a corner —
always, there’s a corner,

perhaps with a bed crammed into it,
or perhaps it’s the end cushion of a worn couch. 

Sometimes your back
is pressed against cold walls

while you look out
upon a small room.

Sometimes
there is a window, sometimes

there is a door.
Sometimes,

all there is
is blindness,

your face crushed
into an angle

that lets nothing
in.

Israel warns Gaza residents: We’ve only just begun…

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

in an open field
in farmland
among the rocks
of mountains
among the dunes
of a desert
in a boat
on a cove
or out at sea

enemies are small targets
on a background
hard to hit
without someone’s strenuous effort

but in cities
the bodies are packed
so close

it is hard to tell
who exactly has died
until after a city’s fabric is torn
into mourning garments
bandages
flags

so what someone has to do
is drop enough bombs
in enough places
fire enough bullets
into enough walls
cover enough of the street grid
with enough clusters and bursts of flame
to ensure
that the targets
desired will be struck

if the barrage rips off
the heads of children
the arms of anonymous old men
the faces of doppelgangers
for old enemies

they will remain uncounted as anything more
than strings from the ragged hems of war

until a face
found unstitched from its skull
can be identified as a target
after the fact

then someone can declare the garment
finished

and the scraps can be swept away

Around here, we learn at a small age
how to look for pink glow on the lowering sky,
the sign of the shadow waiting to fall.
We’ll never stop it from coming, and we know
we’ll be digging out of it soon enough
if we don’t drop from a heart attack in the driveway
or slip and fall to freeze to death, only to be discovered
weeks later.  Every storm is a lesson in precarious
living, no matter how comfortable we are inside.

History
is
the sneaky itch
on your instep
that promises
it will feel good
to scratch it
and that it will be over quickly
allowing you
to get back to sleep

but which instead
just keeps itching
and breeding more itch elsewhere
which you believe
is all branching out
from the first itch
but that makes no sense because
they’re all on
different parts
of the body so there’s no way
one irritation could pop up in so
many places driving you crazy
and making you suspect
against all conventional wisdom
that you’re filthy
and complicit somehow
in causing the itch

and you lie there
wondering
what you ever did
to deserve
this and
why has it fallen to you
to take care of something
that should be
over by now and
when exactly
will you have scratched enough
for one lifetime and lastly
are you ever
going to be able
to get back to sleep?

January 3:
cold feet.
A year ahead,
and it starts like this?
Whose idea was it
to start the year
before the first green shows
through the snow?
I’m going to find that man
and make him stand
barefoot, outside, on ice.
If we’ve gotta put up with this,
he should have to as well.
I don’t care how dead he is:
there must be things he never got around
to doing, and he ought to know
how much hesitation hurts
when you know
you should be up and at it.

I have lived a life aimed at making
The Big Statement.
Handcuffed to a lust for spectacle,
I have always swung for the fence.

Out there is where the crowds are, after all.
Out there is the World Beyond, waiting to see someone
touch every base. They worship
at the throne of Babe Ruth, who said once

when asked if he could have hit .400 for a career average
if he hadn’t tried to hit so many home runs: “.400? Hell, kid,
I could have hit .500.”
We’d still have known his name, of course,

but it would have had so much more dust on it, layers building through time,
brushed off only when some fan, some hardcore fan,
came hunting for the name of the guy who was consistent, made it work
one base at a time, moving others ahead. Most of us would have forgotten him

in the day to day, preferring to honor the home run kings
who shot themselves out there with every torn off cover,
every leathery poem whose distorted round made the watchers
shout, “Yeah! Look at that mother fly…”

I’ll never be that guy. No matter how I change my swing,
I miss far more than I hit.
I’ll never be the one whose name sits on every set of lips,
no icon for the masses to stare at and whisper about,

my appetites the stuff of legend, my face
a whetstone for the sharpening of ambitions, my name itself
a charm to urge the fast and ready. I’m ready to say it and mean it:
give up the fence for the sacrifice and things will fall

the right way more often than not, if not for me, then for someone else.
Those crowds will never call me out, but the game will go on,
a better game for my having played it.
That’s enough.

— 12/31/08

all of you
have disappointed me
in so many ways,
she said.

just look at you —
you’ve all
so obviously failed —
each of you

with your two eyes weeping,
two ears shuttered,
one mouth
muttering.

I ask you,
all of you,
where are the mirrors
I deserved?

I woke up to the sound of a pipe being banged
and then the sound of a cough. No one
was home beside me. I did not think of ghosts
or intruders. These were outside me,
coming out from inside me. I’d dreaded this day
for years. I’d always suspected
that I would eventually
become secluded among them,
lost in a grove in my head.
What appeared at first to be fertile imagination
was in fact the crazy coming on for its first show.
“Do you have a name?” I asked. No answer.
They would speak in their time which was not mine.
I wasn’t important. I could be if I agreed to listen
and it was hard not to, even as some part of me
stepped aside from the sweats and the beating chest
to remind me that there were likely some pills for this.
“Stay awhile. I’m lonely. It would be nice to have someone
to talk to, even if it’s only me, even if all you can do
is bang on pipes that aren’t out there, but in here.” Still
no answer. I can’t even talk to myself right, I thought,
or heard. I bet there’s a pill for this. I bet again
that I could talk them back inside. I don’t know yet
if I have won. There’s nothing out there now, or in here,
except the furnace and the light in the living room,
the clack of my nails on the keys, my chest still heaving.
I’m no longer worried about waking anything up, disturbing anything.
A good night’s sleep among the gray firs I can see in the kitchen
(formed I am sure by bars of moonlight or perhaps the neighbor’s porchlight)
will be enough to make it all go away. There’s a pill for it,
at any rate, or so I’m told. Someone keeps telling me that, anyway.

Gaza

is approximately
25 miles long
and between 4 and 7
miles wide, contains
around 1,500,000
people, is the 6th
most densely populated area
on the planet with around
4200 people per square kilometer,
although due to issues
with access and administration,
many of those figures
are a matter of some controversy.

It is controlled
by Hamas
and that is a matter of some
controversy.

Hamas has frequently launched rocket attacks
from Gaza into Israel. In recent days
(speaking now at the end of 2008)
said attacks have killed 1 person
and wounded dozens,
although numbers may change,
and the figures remain
a matter of some controversy.

Airstrikes by Israel against targets in Gaza
have led to the deaths of at least 275 people
to this point, with the Israeli government promising that
operations will be continuing for some time.
This is a matter of some controversy.

The pronunciation of the word
"Gaza"
is a matter of some controversy.
Some pronounce it
"My Lai," or "Sand Creek,"
while others pronounce it "necessary
if regrettable" or "a situation that must be
closely monitored."  Which pronunciation
will prevail, even who gets to choose
which pronunciation will prevail —
these are matters of some controversy.

Under the arc of rockets and bombs
there is little to debate.
A limb severed is a limb severed.
A hat still moist with scalp
and brains is irrefutable.
A baby’s arm dusted
in the matte silver of concrete dust,
protruding from rubble and still twitching,
is described the same way in every account,
with wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Controversy
is the art of saying something
that is in opposition
to what someone else is saying.

Silence
is the art of saying nothing.

War is the art of attempting to end
controversy.  It works best in concert
with silence.

Whether a particular war
is a masterpiece of the art form
is frequently
a matter
of controversy for a few,
upon which the majority
is mostly silent.

somewhere near megiddo,
empty dust city in a poor valley,
with armageddon
its holy unholy avatar;
with detroit in background,
new york in background,
washington left to fend off dogpack imaginations,
london a screen for chopped limb and stink,
paris a mistake now corrected back
to abandoned marsh village on septic banking,
moscow ice darling,
beijing concrete boiling,
with a black breeze
hurtling over all
through all
and into every crevice,

he finds a rent metallic casket
by a ravine trash-full of mango peels,
flutes, silk pajamas, and books.

terrific, he said.

early on
we had opened up that lid and let it all fly —
dead trees, faces shrouded in magenta
with burned eyes,
a wailing that went on and on
but we had stopped our ears and pushed ahead
with lamps and bulldozers,
guns and gin.
hammers to nail hands to charred symbols.
nails on blackboards.

it had all ended too slowly to be officially noticed.
rot increasing far out at sea.
sargasso triangle in our heads
becalming solutions.
land falling before relentless chewing of greedy teeth.
unexplained mutations of remembered familars.
oiled-up trivia on papyrus, on monitor,
on showcase pillars on street corners,
on every mind ad infinitum,
"per aspera ad astra"
no more than mystic hokum
from a man
behind a curtain.

he spat on a patch of bare earth.

his blue gray muscles
remembered what had failed
and he recited that bullet dharma:

no more demands,
no fear of summons,
no still unbroken law.
no etiquette, no condescending nod
to willing suspension
of social code.
no notion of art. 
no blisters. 
no callused palms,
no ridges on index fingers.

terrific,
he said.

I can do better
next time.
yes.

he bays

yes
Yes
YES
at an unchanged moon.

someone, he thinks,
will answer,

YES.

that box
may creak,
but it will
open,
someone will say
yes,
and we’ll get back
to work.

Each of us is no more
than a vault of moments,
a bank for remembered scenes.

Poets spend all that they save,
and I am one —
or rather, have been one,
for from this moment on

I refuse to fritter
a second more
in letting my mysteries out
for the world to pick up
like so many stray pennies.
Let it be someone else’s turn.

Yes, there are times
when it comforts me to think again
of the way her hair felt
the first time I touched her
on a Providence street;
there is more to say about that,
and I know ways to make others feel it too,
but I want to keep it for myself.

I could describe what it feels like to press
the point of a hunting knife into my chest,
adding a quarter pound of pressure
with every breath,
shaking and snotty with tears
until I pulled it away…
I could make that real
for anyone who asked,
but could anything I got back
make it worth my while
to transfer that
from my own private store
into the public treasury? 

So much that I saved
from youth to now
has ended up on stages,
spent for others’ amusement,
traded for glad hands
and shifting feet. 
What has it ever gained me?

Just give me now, at last, 
my hoard to hold for me alone.
Let me count my terrors and my ecstasies
in my own time, sitting up late at night
to avoid dreaming them out of my grasp.
Call me a miser if you want.  Complain
that it is not in my character
to be this selfish, and I will agree;
but Lord, how I wish I had been
less profligate with these
when it would have been wiser
to keep them close.

If I can learn to be tighter
with a memory now,
I might yet be happy. 

I could get a job
where no one will ever ask me
about who I was,
where I’d been,
how I view the search for meaning,
how I got here. 

It’s none of your business,
I will say if they ask me. 

Write your own goddamn poems,
that’s what I’ll say. 

We have lived
too long
among replica altars
among liars
among stars full of gunpowder
among jars of fatal honey
among tongues that sharpen crowns
among feral cats who eat sleep

Now we say
This is war

We can taste old tobacco tonight
in the snow-heavy wind

We believe power can be stunned
by an army of empty pockets
Believe the honor assigned to our charming foes
in their secret councils is a paper-poor foundation
for their church of generals

We are coming into our own

Set phosphorus by their sinks
and lay mines in their marble yards

Speak machete in their stores
Spell our names with letters threaded on fuses
and sign away our lives and theirs

We are coming
Magnet doctors
Shoestring traders
Slim warriors with bones akimbo
Reptile headed whores and their lovers

We know this land as well as they do
Better —
we know where the damage is
how to worm a finger in there
pry out loose bricks
for the throwing
at eagle darkened
sale junky
wealthy dog
soon to be
dead