“friends don’t let friends vote republican”

“liberalism is a mental disease”

“vote this way and save the country
you sexist or racist pig
if you’re not one you’re the other
and no matter what you are
if you’re not saved
you’ll be forever cast into the pit –”

this is the gist of
our declarations of disgust
with each other

i, i, i
own
the answers and
i, i, i
am the medium and the massage
which loosens the muscles of thought
i, i, i
am flabby as a baby
and i, i, i could care less if
i, i, i
grow up if someone else keeps
taking my shit for me, me, me
in fact,
giving a shit
is the toughest thing
i, i, i
do all day
because it’s harder to care
than it is to just be

look outside, it’s a lovely day
with my car in the yard telling you
i thought this was a free country
and that i don’t equate corporate interest
with patriotism
meanwhile the tv’s on
and i pretend to care about the nba finals
so i can have a superficial conversation with someone
in case i actually talk to someone
who isn’t in my social circle
who has a different car
who wears a different baseball cap
who i hate on principle because
he isn’t a poet or an artist or a baker
of erotic cakes and candies
who gets uptight once he’s safely around the corner
from the gay couple
with whom he’s shared hedge clippers
for eight years

he and his
vote with their feet or asses
to make sure the right people
get properly screwed for improper screwing
because certainly
that’s all this is about
the whole country’s more concerned
with improper screwing of all kinds
literal and figurative
we improperly screw with so many things
punishing select examples of improper screwing is
penance for what we think we should really be beaten for

so watching sexual predators get screwed is fun
watching teen panties win cheerleading competitions is fun
watching obviously guilty people die virtually is fun
watching injustice become a pop song is fun
unless it becomes a hit
and then it’s just selling out
which feels great while it’s happening
which increases hybrid sales to celebrities
which becomes a rising tide that lifts all boats just above foundering
which pushes the train back to the platform empty
which leaves the trees gray as a confederate

and watching confederates get sauced on a comedy special tonight is fun
because that makes it easier to forget that we insulted a black customer yesterday
if we even recall that the customer was there at all
watching every dumbass on TV speak with a southern accent is fun
writing dumbass dialogue in ersatz southern accents is fun
because we get to pretend that particular war is over
and all the bad things that were there before it are over
and all the bad things that happened afterward
are well positioned for our edutainment
somewhere well south of here

and if those people
don’t stop distributing free
abortions to the children
someone’s gonna have to wax them
so we can pry those babies
from their cold dead fingers

there’s so much more to say
hell, you can’t say enough good or bad
about us
but i, i, i
bet
i, i, i
can fit it all on the ass end
of the biggest car i can buy
with my short money

it all comes down to this

even though
i, i, i
don’t even know what i’m talking about
over half the time
i know THEY hate me

i don’t know any of THEM
i just know their bumpers are watching me
and i’m scared of THEM because I know
i, i, i
would wreck them for my gospel if
i, i, i
could get away with it
and i, i, i
can see
THEY
feel the same

Catalyst
comes in
and things happen

Not her fault
Blame her parents
for giving her that name

Those were the days
eh? Hippies thought
a name could change the world

so kids were named
God and Peace and Rainbow
Catalyst

(Cat for short) comes in
on little catalyst feet
and what happens next?

A breach of contract
or an infidelity
Someone gets lost in her fog

and a chipped mind slides to one side
and falls into a dirty heap of shards
after she’s been there

There’s a bubbling wherever she goes
as stability becomes ferment
the substance of what she touches is changed

two become one
one becomes three
Catalyst is the same afterwards

always the same
Agile little Cat
with her hippie name

keeps her motility intact
as she turns her free spirit
to the next reaction

When the time comes
for me to ripple off this stage
(tremors
in my hands, eyes fluttering,
my body a mound of organs and tissues
taking their leave
according to their own music),
I fear that all I will recall
is the way the world has sounded
inside me.

I was never a visual man. My eyes
did their job but the sight of things
mattered less to me than their voices.
The stones whistled softly at dawn.
The ocean beat the shore, the trees
howled just below the human ear’s reach
every time the wind called them out
for daring to stand against it.

When I heard these things, they did not sound
the way they were intended to be heard,
I am sure: everything had a song, all the songs
were hymns, God was the subject of every song
and all praise of God was in all songs. Nothing
sang of devil or evil, the lace threads of each tune
were woven into patterns that made the word “beautiful”
a sad attempt at explanation, barely able to hold
a clip of each measure long enough for me
to understand what I was hearing. I only knew

that somewhere under the tide of sound
there was a rush of steel wings. I heard them
in my sleep and when I rose it continued
until every voice, every word from another human,
contained the undertone of the Hymns of the World
and it was a struggle to hear the meaning of the people
who spoke.

When you and I sat at table, or in planes and automobiles,
and I seemed distracted to you, it was because I was
hearing that sweep and thrum that had rolled over any chance I had
of listening to you. Forgive me, I was unhappy
that it became so hard to hear you, and it seemed to me
that nothing had prepared me for the pain of knowing
that human understanding was lost to me as long as I
could only hear the other voices of the world.

You would think it would be easy to hear
those same cathedral echoes in your voices, but
it was all failed song to me: I was so enslaved
to what I could hear in the floors below me
that what walked upon them was mute to me.

So when I roll off my bed at the end of my life,
when I shake myself into the last moments, be kind
to me. Lift my head to let me hear something
as lovely as all I’ve heard before, but something
I never understood: come close and whisper in my ear,
so close that nothing else can pass between us
and deafen me to you:

come close enough for me to hear
the hiss of feathers in your voice.
That way, when I am at last still,
it will be all I have to take with me.

rock river flows
up and over
the rough bed

follow the bumps in the surface
and it’s like seeing
“shave and a haircut” mapped

like seeing bo diddley’s sound

down farther along in its progress
the river has slowed
to
mud and crawl
these days

but up here
it’s still

“shave and a haircut”
driving
the stones ahead of it
carving the earth

you will dance to it

dance to it
shout to it

who do you love?
“bo diddley”
how much you love him?
“two bits”

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

just a quick homage…

you are telling the truth
when you say that what drives you to

the need to question
then disregard the answers
the need to chop down hard on the belay rope
then seize on the joy in the snap as it releases
the need to be heard
no matter the discomfort given to the one who hears
the need to be felt
even as the one who has touched you backs away screaming
the need to say something that seems true
even as contrary wisdom is spilled useless on the dry earth

is quite mysterious

then you learn
that there is also a species of moth
that sucks tears
to survive
and you say

ah-ha

then roll yourself up
and fly into a fire

The Mother of All
is here again, wind-hearted
woman, no harpy, just an average
woman and therefore
extraordinary to the average man

who has no sense of the tides
or the moon, who sees a world
as struggle and chains laid out
to catch him and hold him until
he is taken to the shore and drowned.

The Mother of All
doesn’t care about the average man.
She sees the careworn face and touches
his near-dead eyes, but her proper role
is engaged when she shows him

that there is nothing
he feels that is not felt by the others
who walk the streets as careworn and dead inside
as he. In isolation is the true death of the world,
she tells him.

The Mother of All
turns him back toward the clutter of his room
and leaves him alone again but outside the sound
of the streets compels him to turn back to the window
and listen: the whining lawnmowers, the children

screaming for what they want, the mothers
who stoop to care for them, the men who laugh
at jokes shared with other men who stand on the sidewalk
even though no one man knows any of the others,
passing each other on the narrow streets is enough to connect them.

He yearns for one more push from the Mother of All
to show him that he can join all of this too:
the laughter, the humor, even the wanting that the children
feel. It has been so long since he last wanted something
that strongly. It has been so long since anyone

stepped to him and bent to hear his needs.
The breeze picks up and his window crashes down suddenly
and someone turns to see what has happened. A man on the sidewalk
waves at him and laughs at his startled face.
A cumbia starts up on a porch across the way.

He waves back,
moves to the door and
turns the knob.

In front of us all
are so damn many
fascinating moments that make
this place worth staying in
and crowing about,

yet many people
will take their lives tonight
and deny it all as if they had become blind
and their tongues had fallen
out of their heads.

Outside my front window
the sole poppy is raising
nascent heads from its center
toward an eventual explosion.
I will wait for them,

at least through their eventual reclosing
into pods whose jade ribs will cradle
a future for their source;
they say they promise a chance
to see them again for years if I stay,

and while poppies are notorious for deception,
the possibility that there is some song for them
only I was meant to sing makes me clear my throat
and settle in for the duration, with no clue
as to how I will do it, but knowing I shall.

I’ve got a plan.
It’s a good plan.
It has secrets and contingencies,
and takes into account
several alternate scenarios.

The plan includes flowers on the piano
and coffee with cocoa powder.

Some of the plan
has room for expansion. I’m thinking of adding
a plan B if I can get a variance. I might have
to bribe someone, and I’ve built that into the plan
so that I may have the resources readily available
if it comes down to that.

Planning is a skill I had to learn on my own.
Some parts of the plan really stretched my abilities.
It’s good to do that, to have a plan that helps you grow,
even if it’s just a little.

I’ve kept the plan hidden in a secret room.
That was part of the plan too. It took me a while
to build it without getting a variance, having to keep it secret
was difficult, but I triumphed. I do that sometimes,
triumph. It’s rare, but it’s good to stretch yourself.

So now it’s time to set the plan into motion,
while I stare at the flowers on the piano, sipping the coffee
with the cocoa in it that masks the flavor of the secret part of the plan.
The whole thing is laid out over there on the desk to be admired
when the plan is at last revealed. It’s so good to stretch yourself,
and I will stretch myself out now, here on the couch,
secure in the knowledge
that I have at last done something industrious, admirable,
careful, thoughtful, detail-rich, fragrant with accomplishment.

It is possible that no one will discover the plan, of course, even after
my triumph is known to all.  They will think this was another random act
in a random life.  They will say it was ridiculous to think that after all the failure
I could have produced anything that required this level of focus and attention.
But they will not say the one thing that will strip their arguments down to absurdity:
that it was clearly something I had worked on for my entire life, out of their sight,
kept far away from what they expected of me.  There is nothing they can say
I have not planned for.

If it’s peace you want
to promote, breathe enough war
into me
that I can taste cordite and see
the volcano that is man’s joy
in mayhem.

If you want me
to understand enough of prejudice
that I want to end its reign, give me
a bit for my mouth and allow me
the pain of struggling against it.

Fable me. Tell me a story that ends with me
seeing a hated face and loving the impact
of my fist against it while I learn to hate myself.
This is how
I learn the ways of violence.
This is how
we will end violence.

We each have to enter a battle
through our cells,
and you can’t exhort me enough
to make me want to change. I only change
when the skin itself tells me it’s time.

No slogans, no easy answers, no stoking
of the heat around my better angels.
You will never ignite me
with a carved diamond.
Blacken me instead
with the honest coal of someone’s dirty
tale, and convince me it is mine as well
before you light the match —

I will only catch fire
for myself in this world
that keeps us so separate
from one another.

Rosemary Dogface

with the huge chest
and the diamond ass
but just one blue eye
gymnastic afterthought
I can’t remember her
saying anything afterwards
or ever for that matter

Patrick Remoulade

(so named for a French Class error)
stumbling through study hall
smoking weed in the vent in the back of Civics
handsome man
(I’d have never dared to say that aloud)
told everyone about Rosemary
after swearing he wouldn’t

Donald Donaghy

then
started doing it
with
my Rosemary and I’m laughing
about it now
although
I went home and stabbed a pillow
that night

someone touched me
someone stuck it to me
someone different made me happy
a little
and I was heedless

everything I need to know
about my worth is here

In a language no one
has ever learned to speak fluently,
the word for “chop shop”
is “America.”

No matter where the chop shop is located
the operation is the same:
steal a vehicle; rip it apart;
sell the pieces to people

who put them in their own vehicles
and drive to places they want to go.
The parts work fine. They don’t care
who’s driving, or that the vehicle

is not their homeland.
It’s the victims of the theft
who raise hell about it. After a time
they get another vehicle,

which may or may not be stolen again.
If it is, they may take the bus from then on
and sit next to others who have
no vehicle of their own.

In that same language, the word for peace
is “revolver” and it is used as a synonym
for “justice.” “Justice” is pronounced
“America” as well. You would think

this would be confusing, but the language
doesn’t care about the speakers who mix the words up
and most people get along fine, or think they do,
since no one is fluent in the tongue anyway.

This language, suprisingly, has no
written alphabet. There is no literature
and there are no schoolbooks to teach it. All knowledge is assumed to be
common to all, and when a disagreement arises

about usage or grammar, arbiters send the dissenter
to America and suggest that justice has been done.
(The word for “arbiters” is unpronounceable
and is only thought, never spoken aloud,

not even incorrectly.) There are millions of native speakers of this tongue
who cannot discuss anything with each other.
The language doesn’t care about them. Someday,
they will vanish on the highway to the next terminal.

Overnight,
one hundred and seventeen million dollars
was stuffed into my head.
Whoever did that
rammed it in there with an Aston Martin,
left it running in my ear canal.

I walked around
for several hours before sunrise
imagining how I’d burn the place down.
I broke two cheap dishes and
kicked the furniture until I bled.

There is no room
now for thoughts about paying bills
or simple dinners, lovemaking or the way
a cat feels early in the morning.
All I’ve got left is five dollars
burning a hole in my ratty pocket
and a roaring in my head that won’t quit.

usually, you’ll get no argument when you say that
it’s critical to choose good
over evil. but if it were easy to apply that,
there’d be no need to argue about it endlessly
after the choice.

you’d just act, you animal,
limbic and limber in whatever movement followed,
be it attack or embrace. you’d sit back afterward
and lick the wounds from the battle
and forget it ever happened.

instead you trouble yourself with proverbs
that became cliches right after cain
tried to explain why he reached out that first time to abel,
trying to convince yourself that love is hate and
hate is love.

so admit it. evil needs an ass-kicking.
you don’t so much desire non-violence for all
as you wish that different people were dying. kill the
homophobes, the racists, the bigots and haters, exploiters
and rapists — admit it, admit it, your version of love
would allow this and you’d only hate yourself a little for it,
and only at first.

that’s all there is to it: we say the good is easy to choose
and pretend we can’t understand why evil is so present
in this world, but the truth is that we act first
and let good and evil sort themselves out later
when we’ve had a chance to rest
and wipe the blood from our mouths.

we learned this when god chose a blood sacrifice
over the gentle fruit,
then put his thumb on cain when he did the same.
what was good, what was evil?
that ought to be an easy one.
he’s god, after all.

Every window’s open while I clean house
There’s a lot to do and it feels great to be doing it
The radio agrees with me
It’s a good day for some Bob Marley

Don’t worry
‘Bout a thing
Cause every little thing’s
Gonna be all right

Gotta love that island music
Gotta love that reggae beat
And that universal message

One love
One heart
Let’s get together and
feel all right

Christ, I love that song too
I learned it back in college
I learned it from a bong-loading friend of mine
I learned a lot from songs back then

It’s some kind of Marley Festival today
Because it sounds like they’re playing everything —

Cause I feel like bombing a church
now that you know
the preacher was lyin’

I must have missed that one
With that violence that’s more than just implied
Doesn’t sound like the Marley I know
This isn’t on the Legend album, is it?

If you are the big tree, let me tell you that
We are the small axe, sharp and ready
Ready to cut you down

I never heard that one either
That’s not on the Legend album
Where the hell are they finding this stuff
This isn’t really Bob, is it?

Them belly full but we hungry
A hungry mob is an angry mob

oh, come on…

Forget all your troubles and dance

That’s more like it!

You know, I am thinking of a friend of mine
Who took one of those adventure trips
He went kayaking on the Mekong River
and around a bend he came upon a shrine to Bob

He said there were white stones embedded on the bank
and they spelled out his name below his poster on a post
He said the ground was swept clean all around the stones
and the jungle was cut back so anyone could see

He thought it was there for the tourists
I can get behind that
I used to have his poster in my room
I might still have it somewhere

Build your penitentiary, we build your schools
Brainwash education to make us the fools
Hate is your reward for our love
Telling us of your God above

Again, I don’t know this song
I don’t recognize that suspicion
This isn’t what I thought I’d be hearing
when I started jamming in the living room
with a dustpan in my hand

It’s time to turn the dial
If I’m ever gonna get this house clean
How anyone could ever clean house
to music like this
I’m sure I’ll never know

strain your eyes
hard enough
and you will learn what is perfect

dampen them with fatigue
and it will be easy to make
diamonds from the night’s coal

the facets will glint through tears
and halos will form around
headlights

the world becomes more precious
as you become
more tired of it

the moments that will stand out in the dark
will stand out precisely because
you have come so far

and still have far to go