Highbrow was sorely vexed
when (while riding into town
upon his tall horse) he spied
Middlebrow crouching on the roadside
waiting to fawn all over him
or bite his ankles, perhaps at
the same time.

Middlebrow, seeing only that something fast and lovely
saw the world from a different level,
just knew he wanted some of that,
was set on getting some
whether it be by wooing or attack.

Meanwhile, Lowbrow
loved both of them not. But
both of them noticed him there on the porch
with his bluff shoulders and fat lip, his eyes
sexy and dull, his ever-chewing mouth loud
with a cheap song they could believe in,
and they dreamed of catching his eye.

That’s the North Star, he tells himself
as he turns from the window. That’s
the way to go.

He’s wrong.
It’s Betelgeuse, but it doesn’t matter because
he’ll never get to share the thought,
and no one will get to correct him.

Then, there’s one final act
of tragedy:
it comes unexpectedly to him
that her hands
on his forehead feel false, as if
her compassion includes some measure
of contempt. He grasps at the hope
that he’s wrong,
but it eludes him
as she shuts his eyes.

There are six billion people on the Earth.
Only seventeen of them
have ever seen a real UFO, only six have seen
a ghost, and only thirty-seven have seen
a yeti.

All of them keep quiet because
they have rationalized their experiences thus:

“it was lightning…”
“it was a trick of weak light…”
“it was my eyes making dumb sense of odd shadows on the underbrush…”

and so on. This is the way truth is made.
What they saw is a matter of fact, how they explain it
is a matter of faith. Sixty separate miracles
are filed sadly away as bad angles, old vision, and
unremarkable moments in unremarkable lives…

so how can you say
you are sure
you don’t love me?

On the wall of the commune’s living room
someone’s pasted all the topographic maps
for the entire area, connected them carefully
and made sure that every contour line
matches its continuation on the next map.

Over time, you’ve put a pin into every place
you’ve been where something happened. You
define that broadly — place of the first
owl, the first slimemold, the orange shine
of the last place you fell and laughed about it

instead of cursing the ground itself for its treachery.
Red means good here, blue means bad, and everything
is based in silver sharp and true that leaves holes in the map
where you think you saw something meaningful once.
It’s not like there’s blood in there —

oh, there’s something seeping up from within,
but it’s clear. It’s like plasma —
there are things floating in it you can’t see, things
critical to life that are carried through you without you knowing
exactly where anything is at a given moment.

You are here. Here is
some mall, some array of
food courts and petty mayhem. You are
the man staring at the glass map
which is telling you that you are here,
but of course you knew that.

You imagine that the mall’s
on someone else’s map, a map
sitting on a lap in a Toyota
inching toward the place you are.
The Toyota’s slowing down and the driver
pitches a butt out the window to snuff it.

Heat gives way to snow-soaked cold just as
you’re losing your own fire to move —
where the hell is the bookstore in this place,
and now that you see how far it is
from here to there, do you really need
to read anything more
than you’ve already read?
Maybe you’re only here to be the vessel of frustration
for the ambiguity of red dots and yellow blocks
that promise destination, and another book
would just complicate matters.

Instead, you wish you were in
your own car and that you were passing that Toyota
going the other way, away from
your current location which is still
the place you were a minute ago.
Which way is the parking garage? You sink
back into the dots and blocks on the black glass.

You are here
and anyone who tells you
a map is not the territory is naive:
without this map would you be this antsy
that you’re not already somewhere else?
That’s a map for you: places with meaning
marked for your pleasure and convenience
with clear paths to the next place you want to be,
except that the cars on the road out there
are on different maps
and when you slump onto the hard slats
of the industrial benches before the glass
that holds you, tugged to immobility by that red dot,
you sense the number of journeys
you could be making, the number of maps
you could be looking at —
but you are here.

What was once
a mission has become
a compulsion —

I’ve stopped thinking
and feeling except in poetry,
and I am no poet, so

if You can find a way clear
to letting me go
without another word from me,

then do.

She’s unloading Barbie dolls again. She does this
once or twice a year, dumping their limbless, headless bodies
off the edge of the back porch
into an old refrigerator box.

The neighbors watch her, the way we always do. Hell, I watch too.
From every building, from every roof, every window
and stoop, we watch her doing what we wish we could.
The neighbors always know the truth — that her hours of collecting

the broken toys from sad girls all over the city have led to this
again, and while we can’t imagine what drives her, we understand obsessions like hers,
obsessions like how Mary’s always calling Dali time to one and all —
“it’s eight pigeons past yesterday’s news,”

and how the mean ass beat cop is practicing the Miranda warning sotto voce
so he never gets it wrong again…”you have the right to remain
silent, anything you say…” Show me irresistible urges and I’ll show you
any down at the heels neighborhood full of mistakes no one will ever forgive.

You ought to join us. Use these words in a letter to yourself: “I was only looking for a free ride
past my own obsessions when I moved here to Anonymous, USA.” Prove to me you belong with us. You’re new here, but I bet you’ve got your own urges to deal with —
and if not, maybe you can give Barbie Girl

a hand moving that box to the garage
once it’s full which should be some time past the longhorse
vault of heaven, if Mary’s got it right today. If you’re not crazy like us,
at least prove you can hang with the gang.

when I put my mouth
on you

I think of the figs
and cinnamon

I can’t afford to buy
right now

and which
I don’t miss much at all

On a June Sunday
a jam session
sets up
outside the
Church of the Immaculate Conception
on Elder Street.

Maggie
stubs her Djarum butts
on the lines
of her gospel.
JoJo
comes with his guitar,
needles Jesus direct
with no desire
to choke down
white bread.
Gabriel
burps his horn
and fruit bursts
from the limbs of the Bare Tree.

And Mickie
on the battered snare
holds herself tall and bold
even as she ducks out for a moment
to enter
the tomb and see
for herself
what the Madonna’s
come to at last.

Up front
the Virgin’s
downturned face
shines.

“Did you know,”
says Mickie to Mary,
“that your storied Inside
is just our Outside
that’s been approved and gilded?
It may have all happened a legend ago,
but it’s still a fact.

We’re not that
different. I could have been
you, could have let God
clasp me tight —

but the way Maggie smokes and
shouts, the communion
JoJo lets play on his face,
righteous Gabriel thinking
every hymn’s a gas
to be ignited:

how could I come in
from that hothouse
and love this too-clean cold?

Do you recognize
me, your sister, a fellow
virgin paroled by jazz
and smack? Is it too much for you to say
that the Outside is what makes
the Inside?

That Baby you had —
you gave Him up, let go
too soon because
something called you. We know
how that feels better
than almost anyone in here

except, maybe, for that former girl
in the back pew
who keeps turning her head
toward the door
and tapping her foot.”

Once she’s back Outside,
Mickie matches
JoJo run for run, and Maggie
belts a pulse across
Gabby’s fanfares.

The girl
who was once inside comes
out at the end of the service
then walks home
thinking of the shattered handcuffs
painted
on the shell of Mickie’s drum.

The guy on stage says
that poems are always
about beginnings and endings. If
you want middles, write a novel, he says.

Some in the audience nod,
but my first thought is that
he obviously can’t think
outside the box.

Later, I decide
that you should not write a poem
about your drug experiences
unless you know for certain that you are
the reincarnation of William S. Burroughs.

(If you are unsure,
you should be able to answer ‘yes’ to the following questions:

Do you know better?
Do you have a birthmark that looks like a bullet piercing a shotglass?

Note: it is a requirement that
both criteria must be present
to confirm the incarnation.)

Later still, I realize
I want to hear someone say,
“Y’know, I used to cut/drink/drug/fuck inordinately
and insanely, I once had a broken heart
and a vampire fixation, I’m broken beyond repair —
but doesn’t the revelatory taste of this coffee
just CRUSH that precious little pyre to embers?”

And then I get it,
understand that the first poet was right.
I realize suddenly I’m the very personification
of the middle and I am indeed
useless here.

The young here
share their heart’s content,
seeing that as
a means to an end. The logic goes
that once you’ve got

the easy stuff knocked, once you’ve
picked all the low apples
from the smart tree,
it’s gonna be a sweet glide
to closure.

Let them angels like them apples. Let the young
imagine Eden sprouting from their trials.
Me, I’m gonna keep worrying this old bone I found
buried at the base of that tree
before the sword and the fire drove me away…

it must fit somewhere, probably between other things
I haven’t found yet, but if I have to get burned
hunting for them I will, if I have to lose a limb getting close enough
I will, and if I have to keep barking
about the things in the middle…well, woof.

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

NOTE: that first line refers to a poem by Dean Young that Chris Fortin read at his excellent feature at the Asylum last night. I used it as a starting point, and my poem should in no way be construed as a comment on Chris’ fine work and/or his superb set.

I’m safer
when I’m still,
sleeping or comatose
from something or other —

I don’t hurt myself
when I’m unconscious
because my mind
is my worst punishment — in there

there’s a whipman on a merry go round
and what passes over and over
leaves marks — so when I am
not using it, not allowing

the inquisition to roll
on and on,
I am snug
within —

let me sleep now,
my dreamless heart
blue from lack of oxygen
but otherwise unbruised; please,

let me sleep. Let me
go into the night.
Let me go the way anyone
goes who doesn’t know this —

and bless me that I will be
unfamiliar, one day,
with how it feels to prefer
dead calm to the whirl of day.

I’m not sure how I used to stop the world,
but there were times when everything
slowed and each of my moves was perfect,
no wasted effort,
arms synched perfectly swinging
as I turned toward the yard
away from the screen door closing behind me,
and then I discovered that my vision
had sharpened at the edges
and deepened at the center of the field of view
so that a jonquil stood out dead still from the lawn, its petals
honed against the green behind it so it seemed
cut from life and yellow as piss, as sunshine,
and no stigma came with either definition of that glow —
there was a time I could stop the world
but I didn’t understand how useful that could be,
so I have forgotten how.
I have learned how to think instead.

Instead of making the world stop
I stop myself
and sit ass-heavy on the couch thinking of
good times. When I leave the house
I close the door behind me carefully now, never
letting it slam, afraid of the consequences;
I don’t know how good times
happen anymore and I don’t want to scare them off.

I step out of the door and
I don’t see much color
out there, so I tend to stay in more,
getting excited now only over monochromes:
marathon television viewing, the relief
when the cigarette is finished and I can breathe
something that’s not grey fire in my throat, the relief of
the fire that lights the next one, the ice cubes in
the Canadian Club, the longing for a good night’s sleep
because the only time the world stops now
is when I am not thinking of it, when I cannot see it at all,
when the dark eats my dreams and I live quietly for a moment,

living dead for an hour or two at a time,
at last not regretting the poisonous hope
that one day I’ll remember how to stop the world,
recall how I used to see
the razor beauty of things
that grow without the curse of thoughts.

Alone in the dim living room
I approve of some thought that passes
through me, and out of my mouth
once again comes

that unexplainable awkward “hmmmm…”
in a satisfied tone
that I can never explain adequately
to anyone who hears it: how can I be
agreeing out loud
with a half formed idea that
I can’t even explain? I am glad I am
alone, until I realize
there is one being here beside me,
the only one that
ever understands why sometimes
I speak before I think, even before I understand it —

the guitar in the corner
responds to my ecstatic grunt
with a low chuff, a resonance just below
the level of music — close enough that I know
I will wrestle it later
and try to have it tell me
what it was that I meant
when I made that sound.

I wrote this for Mike McGee to use during his 24 hour feature which started tonight, and was honored that he chose to open with it.

Go hit his blog at mikemcgee and you can connect to a live stream from San Jose…

He sent me one to debut tonight at the Hut. I will try to do it the justice it deserves for the great premiere he gave mine.

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

Poetry Shoes

It was an ordinary day
( by which I mean to say
it was as beautiful
as every other day)
when I walked up to the edge
of the roof
of the twenty story
Bank Of America building
and stepped off.

Since I had my poetry shoes on
I wasn’t worried —
in those things I can do anything.

I sauntered along,
high over Tenth Street,
twenty stories above the people below,
sustained by sestinas and clouds of clerihews,
and the wind in my hair and my face
(and even the small gusts that would sneak up
the legs of my pants) felt as cool
as anything you might see in a fashion magazine —

“gonna have to use that line in a poem sometime,” I told myself —

and by chance I looked up and I saw
I wasn’t alone. There were people everywhere!
People stepping out from their offices,
people who’d snuck up to the rooftops on breaks,
people who’d slipped on their poetry shoes
to rise above it all,
just to get through their rotten days —
by which I mean
their ordinary days.

We all need a way to soar.
Everyone needs a new pair of shoes.
Get away from the bank, the school, the office and slip on
your poetry shoes, brothers and sisters,
your sonnet sneakers, slam slippers, brawny
epic boots, haiku ballet point shoes, beat tap sandals,
cowboy flippers — slip ’em on!

Step out into the air
and take a walk with me, or show me where you’re going
and I’ll follow you anywhere,
high above Tenth Street,
away from the banks and the dangerous pavement;

on this ordinary day (by which I mean to say
on this beautiful, magnificent day)
the sky’s gonna be crowded with hikers who know
the best journeys always begin
with one
well-shod step
off the edge.