You gave me a hell of a choice —
take a dive before the little one
you’d just dreamed up
or take the bigger plunge
out of the ring for good. 
I took the second option,
figuring pride would give me better wings,
and I’ve always been one
for the grand gesture. 

In the long years since
I’ve had no regrets.
I watch the little man
and my feathers
just won’t stay still. 

If I had agreed
to bow to him,
I’d have forgotten
myself by now.  This way,
I am still a contender.
You rat bastard —  don’t forget:
I was the favorite
once,
and I have learned 
how to wait. 

If I ever change the world I will do it through memory,

recalling that once I could set points and change the dwell
on a distributor; could change a manual typewriter ribbon;
could go all day without a phone call — indeed, I could miss phone calls
and never know they had happened unless someone
called back to say they had called earlier and that they were glad
to catch me at home;

recalling that friends who moved away were lost to me
unless I called at great expense or took great pains to write them
regularly, keeping their letters close at hand
to ensure that I never lost an address or a zip code; recalling that
I knew how to look up their numbers in a phone book and could send them
clippings of items from the local paper to keep them up to date
on what they were missing;

recalling that every kid in my neighborhood could fire a rifle,
spent Saturday nights shooting rats at the town dump, never thinking twice
about the danger of guns because we trusted our guns the way
we trusted each other;

recalling that stores were closed on Sunday, that we waited till Monday
if we needed something, that if we needed something on Sunday
it was not important unless we were dying for lack of it, and that need
rarely was anything more than want amplified.

This is not nostalgia.  Nostalgia is for those
who believe nothing is retrievable from what we remember.
I can believe that everything once possible — the things I recall
of how we made it through before — is still possible.

I can recall the sound of a simple car falling into a purr
under my own hands,
ready to drive because I made it so.  I can recall
being ready to go, being unconcerned about who might miss me.
I can recall how it was to be in control of so much, of so many simple things.

If I am to change the world,
it will be because
I can recall how it was
to live 
with my hands always dirty,
and proud of the same.

Just a trifle while I sniffle.

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

send gibson into marshall
send fender into mesa boogie

direct line —
no pedals! screw pedals!

see what can happen
with just knobs and strings

with divebomb upstroke
downstroke pickrake slap

twist it up flame on
wake the damn neighbors

they’ve been asleep
long enough

tell them that the signal path of excess
leads to the roadhouse of wisdom

and god did not damn the guitar
no matter what they are yelling right now

Roast beef,
cheese,
mayo on untoasted whole grain white.

I don’t always want
flavor.  Sometimes,
sustenance is enough —

fill the hole,
move on,
enjoy something else.

Who would photograph me
more than once
after they realize

that the only pictures
that show me happy
show me onstage?

All other images
make me look as though
I’ve just swallowed a pillar of salt.

Apparently, to fake confidence
in the future,
I require an audience.

My motivation? 
A singular view
of the end of the world,

paralyzed inside me.
In the moment,
I regret it all, blame myself

because I gave up everything
to gain a spotlight in return.  But
that smile you see up there

is genuine, if fleeting.
Stick with that
if you want to look back

at what I’ve done.
No flash, no video. 
Remember me instead:

standing there,
with dark all around,
pretending like mad.

With the first chord, I know
she’s out of tune enough
that this is not going to be pretty.
I don’t care. Two more strums
and I can tell which pegs
I could twist just a hair to bring her back.
I don’t care.
Right now, it’s all I can do
to keep from plugging her in
just as she is
although it’s late
and everyone for a block around
is sleeping, and will call
for my head if I do it. I don’t.
Instead, I bang on for a hot quiet minute
like neither of us has a future.
As if this dissonance, this breakdown
between tolerable noise and
“what the fuck is he thinking,”
is an imperative. Because of course,
it is; at least for tonight,
right now, before I go to bed angry;
right now, as I try to keep myself
from going to bed angry.

an old piece revisited and revised.  the "made up" words for some reason returned to me today, so I figured I’d let them out to play again.

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

1.
i open every night with a prayer: sleep, come sooner than the flood.

then, the flood.  then, the lifting faces.

julie’s blonde hair floating out. paul robichaux’s rockabilly daring submerged in white. grandmother’s dear severe wrinkles. grandfather’s mean low brow. eddie with his broken head still full of tar. blue glaze of paul gentile holding a gun up to a temple. mysteries upon cellar stairs: blood stars, whimpering, sticks breaking underfoot.

impossible things happening: see my own head, my own hands on my own ears. palaces built of centipedes. sharp stones set like crystals into  the back of a baby.

ineurope they have gargoyles for moments like this. in bali there are chants for them, but in new england we simply do not allow moments like this, so when they come we keep them under our scalps.

still, the lifting faces.

george and jerry barone rise from the shell of their Volkswagen. the twins died angry.
wayne king never knew me but i knew him and he was everywhere after he died and now he’s here again.
that man died surprised that he was the only one.

in the corner my hands fling my head to the cement mouth first. i spit a tooth out and it lands and grows into the next piece of me to be terrified.

the myth of the hydra explains everything: a horror killed begets more horror.

still, those lifting faces:

stricky the flying head, veech the forlorn missile, carole the rolling bag of bones, jacob the ghost before he even passed, martin the bisected prince of the railroad track.

all their sleep that has lasted to this day, and i am still awake.

those lifting faces.  that’s me in the center, my eyes shut, squeezed tight, knowing what is coming…

2.
some sounds will not go away: a woman’s voice saying slink, dove, scrap, green face, sun on a gourd, crumbs on a dragon, coupons, carver, slide, rumble, escapement, clipping, stolen, pulse, penlight, painting, bands, pickup, relate, lard, gungrease, quillon, medallion…

then, words appear that mean themselves and no other thing:
unspecific twoolyala, skevot, abbredient briest...
if they could be translated they might fall in love and breed me my absolution.

no word means nothing.
deny that and the clock stops.

3.
when faces float up to see me i pretend to understand heaven and hell, perhaps even purgatory, buying my peace from my parent’s store. when i shrug it off god laughs like a steamboat whistle.

4.
again, the lifting faces: who understands why they never quite break the surface? who understands why they do not speak? why the random soundtrack? why the words i don’t hear well enough to force them into service?

i sink myself in the clouded pool and dig into my ears with my eyes closed. i know what is to come.

A man
believes he controls
the size of the world
with his voice

Like any common finch
he strings his fence loud
and stretches it until
he’s sure it will contain
all he sees
forever

Like any common finch
he will die young
and another finch will claim
his trees

No one listening
will notice he
in particular
has gone

The yard is always
full of finches
and it’s often hard
to tell one common finch
from another

I’m not interested in
the heartbreak
or despair of anyone
and I don’t care for happiness
or ecstasy either
because they are always the same:
the blues are the blues
and they pass, the joy of living
passes as well. We are made to bounce
from one extreme to the other
and we are certain to think
we are the first to discover
the territory,
wherever we land.  Talk to me instead
of sitting
on your porch
waiting for the mail
because you’ve got the chores done
and the day is warmer
than it should be this time of year;
tell me how the neighbors are moving out
and you never knew their names;
tell me you’re not exactly happy
or unhappy, that you’re mostly just waiting
for the mail, for new neighbors,
for the day to day to finally feel comfortable
and for your own words to match at last
the truth of living: that there’s nothing much
going on in your life
that no one else has never heard of. 
That everything
passes into the next thing
without much fanfare.
That the new neighbors
will be pretty much like the old ones,
and you’ll probably never learn
their names, either.
This is truth
I have known for years.
It’s something
I never think about
until someone else
mentions it.  I need to think of it
more often.

Ten years from now,
you’ll look the same,
You’ll look in the mirror
and say, "hey, I know you."

You’ll point at yourself and
you’ll point right back.
You’ll be pleased with that
and you’ll sail out of the house

convinced
of your uncommon nature.
"Haven’t I proven my fame
by being able to recognize myself, again and again?" you’ll say.

"All that self-destructive
feeding and drinking, all that
lax attention to the body  —
good to know I am still myself."

In the second you die,
another ten years on, you’ll think of that
when the pang hits your heart, when your ass
refuses to lift from the couch no matter how hard

you will it to rise.  You’ll recall
that there are stories of vampires
who look ruddy and fresh
for years after apparent death.

"Who was that liar
who looked back at me that day in the mirror
ten years ago?" you’ll ask yourself with a Gothic blink
right before you forget you ever existed.  "Was that

some already undead notion, some spectre
that represented an unwitting corpse?" 
You will die regretting
that you will not be buried with a mirror

on your chest
so you can accuse yourself endlessly
in the endless dark.  You will die forgetting
that mirrors do not show vampires as they are;

at most, there is a mist in the glass.  A mirage
of immortality looking back
at a dilapidated house which, if it notices you at all,
only does so to mock you.

tony is thinking that green is the new black
tony is imagining a stem in his forehead
tony is sprouting starfruit

tony is dancing with an architect to the music of ionic columns

tony is capitalizing the second letter of a full sentence
tony is confusing the cat on the bed by standing on his hands
tony is fattening himself for snakes

tony is daddy to a bush baby’s mama
tony is sleek in the rain
tony is privately closing a library door
tony is cracking under pleasure

tony is singing "oh atlanta" to a snow globe

tony is your best friend

tony is your dangling participle
tony is a black male of indistinguishable height wielding a gun
tony is a blonde hottie with a mole on her right temple

tony is pastor of the right temple
tony is a right living cowboy
tony is the right wing of a left flying duck

tony is stringing together unrelated words
tony is throwing dice under a shower of scorn

tony is a social network anchor
tony is a reclusive ringleader
tony is a refusenik twenty years late for martyrdom

tony is naked
and running as fast as he can
toward you
in case you are blind to his own nude need
and hoping you’ll accept him anyway

tony is trying to think of what he could say
to redeem himself right now

Yes,
I know,

the first official Thanksgiving Day
was ordered to celebrate
the massacre of
700 Pequots
in 1637;

yes,
I feel

accountable to the dead
for eating too much every November,
thus joining the rush to hide behind
the legend of the feast 16 years earlier
in Plymouth
that is used these days
to screen us from
an ocean of blood;

yes,
i must balance

gratitude and shame
when I sit with family and friends
and look at a bounty
built on theft and genocide;

if I say no
to every contradiction
I face every day,

I will sit alone in a hermit’s cave
barely breathing for fear of hurting another,
spend the rest of my life in mourning
for every cruel act done in my name
and never try to see the glad faces
of those I love
as anything more than a lie.

So yes,
yes

to making a temple anew
from sharing bread with others; and
yes, yes to holding tight to the memory
of death in the fields around villages
burning like candles on the shore
of Long Island Sound;

yes
to believing

that while the past is alive
in every bite of every dish,
all I have is the present
and the hope that the future will be born
in a revolution rising
from injustice I do not forget;

in the remaking of myths
through truth applied as lesson,
and not as bludgeon.

It’s 7 AM
and there’s frost on all the windshields,
thick enough to scrape for the first time all season.
Trash is all outside, the cat’s all balled up in his window,
all’s right with the immediate world —

so I shall consider having a shot of Jack Daniels
just because I want to sleep some more
and I’m too awake to do so,
just because I can…

People will think it alarming, and crazy.
It will cause concern among my closest friends.
Others will think I am more artistic for doing so
and others will think I am alcoholic simply for considering it
and I’m sure someone will suggest I try some tea I’ve never heard of
or some rare yogurt or perhaps some exercise or yoga
or quote me something about the drunkard’s soul
that they read in a fake shaman’s latest book
or maybe someone will say, "Right on!"
in a fake 60s libertine voice they don’t understand well enough to use
and someone will refrain from commenting but secretly agree with me
while reaching for the tumbler she didn’t empty before falling asleep
and another friend will send me a message asking, "Are you OK?"

I’m fine. I’m good.
In fact this morning
I can welcome the entire world
to my arms,

which is why I’m publicly considering
having a shot of Jack Daniels
on a Wednesday morning at 7 AM…
really, there’s no reason not to have one
beyond the reasons I choose to entertain —
no one’s waiting for me to be strong and corporate today,

and the thought of that
is enough to make me sleepy,
and laugh at myself,
and pet the cat,
and then head back to bed
to sleep like a drunk, like a baby,
only getting up when I’m damn good and ready,

in pure spite of all the judgment
in the freezing air.