The pond by the side of the road
is clouded in a green-brown mist
and if I had not been stuck in traffic
at this early hour
I would never have seen that color
that may be the result of the sunlight
pouring through the green leaves behind it,
or perhaps it is caused by the oak pollen
so thick in the air that it has changed
more than my breathing, but no matter the cause
it is something I would not likely have seen
if I had gone whizzing by intent
on my eventual destination, or if I had noticed it
I might have missed its hue
and if it showed up again in my thoughts at all
I might have decided that it was mist colored,
the default silver-gray that shows up in every poem,
and it might have become a metaphor for something else
instead of standing on its own as some anomaly,
or perhaps there is no anomaly here and all morning fog
in late spring carries a shade worth noting, a shade
only visible when the viewer is halted in his progress
toward important places long enough to see it, long enough
to be content in the viewing and the knowledge
that everything that is known and believed has a loophole
in it somewhere that is large enough to drive through.

He buys a ring from my table
with that familiar look in his eye; still,
I’m surprised that he says it out loud.

“Most modern wealth
is built upon historical theft,”
he tells me. “I’m sorry about that.”

I suppose I should want to seize him
and kiss his skinny hands
for all they’ve done for me,

but it’s too late.
He’s already on his Blackberry
and my gratitude, while it might be welcome,

would be an inconvenience to him.
Maybe next time? I really should say
something to one of them.

Bored as fuck on a Saturday night and
if I’m going to make it Sunday meeting
I’m going to need some hard blues and harder disturbance.
I need fuller pockets, empty lungs,

a shot of something fiery in the syringe,
icy in the needle, nullifying when it hits the blood
and when it makes it to the brain it paints a picture of
some easily accepted new God.

If I’m going to make it to church on time
I want my new God to be a churchdweller, not the sanctimony
peddler of the conventional mouthpieces but a dumb bum
strung out on lack of contrition who hides in the pews

looking to tap me a hard one if I rise for hypocrisy. In fact,
with these drugs in my head and this wrong in my heart
I’m going to need a God with a mountainous backhand
to crush a landscape into my face

so I will always recall
where I’ve been
and always know
where I’m going

as I stumble toward
the place I go when I’m bored as fuck
on a Saturday night, full of knife and manglehatred
toward the holiness of Sunday, hoping for the altar

to blow skyward in a smile of lightning and Biblical
movie truth even while the Bum of Heaven
stinks up a blue dome of rot behind me, making me grateful
for the ruin, looking forward to the rebuilding

as he screams in my ear, “Believe!
Believe, you fat ass apostle, or don’t believe —
I’ve got a creation in me tailored just for you
no matter what you end up thinking of Me!”

“the answer is always in the body”
— heard in passing; a line from a TV crime show

1.
licked and prodded,
it still refuses to give up
a secret

2.
in the dark, lit blue,
misted with laden rain,
our signatures revealed
as clouds on our still skin

3.
the mottled shapes
of shared blood can be read
as a novel: here the plot
is thick, here thicker;
here is a second theme;
here, the pooling, the co-mingling,
so confusing to the outsider

though we understand
what has happened here

4.
cooling happens
at a predictable rate
once all factors are accounted for
so something unknown to science
must be holding all this heat

5.
the answers
are always in the body

the body is always
asking

Posted on the doors
of my chest
and the footpaths of my arms
are mottoes
I don’t believe in anymore
but now I’m stuck with them
and I should learn
to live up to them hoping that even if
the act is not backed with faith
at the start, faith will grow with
the results.

There are mountains,
tall for a geological moment
and unconcerned with their eventual erosion,
that know more
about how to be a man
than I do. Butterflies float,
mosquitoes leave marks that sting
and disappear, the next door sparrows
shit on my car without concern for their image
because they know they can fly, and none of them
ever feel the need
for ink to explain these things.

I know I could find some doctor
to do the job, buy long sleeves and double up
on T-shirts until I’m too dead to care —

but none of those are things
I can do myself, and I have sworn to be
the one who does that, my fatty chest
screams for that duty to be fulfilled,
so I will buck up. I’ll do it myself,
make a go of the dooms I’ve claimed
until there’s nothing left to fail,

until the waters wear me down
and wash me into
the next person I will become.

He says, “I think
of individual happiness
as an overpriced commodity.”

Runs a finger around the soft edge
of the tumbler.

Two rocks, single malt, half gone.
Another glass empty on the bar.
His silk tie
has a stain on it,
looks like an old one,
darkened from fingers worrying
the edges.

He says, “If I still had the money
for every tie
I’ve had to buy in a rush
from a hotel gift shop
before a meeting where I had to look my best
or risk losing the account,
I’d be richer than a goddamn pimp
at a convention.”

He says, “Come to think of it,
I am a goddamn pimp at a convention.
We’re all pimps here. Selling whores
we keep back at the office, all lined up
waiting to service people like you.

People like me live off of people like you,
and no thanks to you.”

He strips off the tie faster than
a superhero changing for battle.

Downs the last of the drink, slams
the glass down, gets up to go back to his room —

no one’s heard what he said back there in the corner,
far away from the people laughing at the TV,
the flirtations, the deals wisping in the air:
smoke foretelling fire.

Trying to imagine
why a single spider
working her way from ceiling to floor
would be the only one I’ve seen in here
despite all the cobwebs —

is it possible
she made them all?

I watch her sliding up and down
in front of me,
not three feet from my nose.
I’d say it was a taunt
if I could be sure
she is even aware of me.

Eventually, I’m sure,
I’ll swipe her lines from her
and if she lands upon me
or next to me, I’ll flick her
across the room, muting the music
in the room before doing so

just so I can hear the tiny click
when she hits the far wall.

She’ll be back and we’ll do it again
in a day or so. In the mean time before that,
cobwebs will continue to build up
in the corners,
I will continue to blame her. Every other
spider is safe from me as we go to war,
as I drown in the drapes of silk that
she never made all on her own.

By now, it’s an open secret
that I made you up, worked you
until you were real enough
for what I needed. You were ready
to serve when called upon and
although you never drew
breath in simple daylight,
I could hear you breathing
in my sleep, which is where
we were all three most awake.

Yesterday, wide awake,
I thought I heard you
in the neighbor’s yard.
You were moving in
together, sisters, roommates,
and neither of you thought
to knock on the door
and tell me you were here,
and I tried to speak with you
but you couldn’t hear me.

I tell myself
that’s it’s natural,
the order of things.
I tell myself
there was nothing more
I could have done
for you, or you for me.
I know you’ve moved on
and forgotten me; I know
too much about what I put into you
to believe
it could have been otherwise.

Still, there are nights
when I stand up and read
what I wrote about you
to other people,
and for those minutes
we’re still family
and I realize
there’s a better man in there
than there is out here.

what he did when he young
was a secret to everyone.
he refused the trees’ offer
of consolation and stayed close
to the asphalt instead.
foot followed foot from here to
the next breakfast and he still
didn’t talk much about anything
even to strangers. his childhood was
forgotten. he made up stories
to spit out like an insect
that had flown into his mouth
and never been internalized.
he told people he’d been
born so salty his mother exploded
like an ant and his father ran
from the delivery room never to be seen
again. he recalled astonishing details
of fights and concerts so stunning
the listeners could hear the bands.
he fooled everyone, no one
bothered to check on anything
and he became successful. he was notorious
for blunt honesty. he learned to wear
suits on weekdays and plaid shorts on weekends.
he got bald and laid and stepped up.
he was a standup guy, a regular mensch,
a buddy and a pal. he filled in gaps.
stayed away from cliffs, kept a few close confidences
better than anyone the tellers knew. when he died
he left a headstone and a secret about a body
in the weeds somewhere faraway, casualty
of war or love he never said, never said a word
to anyone, no need to talk about it
since he’d become what the other guy
could have been and dead men tell no tales.