Sometimes a work of art
is just a work of art — lovely
of course, even perhaps fraught
with transcendence — but there are times
when even I hold my breath at what I’ve wrought.
The blue jay is a good example, at least to me;
I blended a loud scrape with a royal robe
and got something more, an elegance
with a voice of arrogant pain. Or the jellyfish
I placed in the southern ocean, the one
that learned on its own how to make clouds
by banding with its billion fellows — never saw that coming,
thought I had the cloud thing knocked without any help
and here comes this simple thing
(not a throwaway exactly but not a strong effort —
more of a sketch really)
and it teaches me how numbers in concert
can do so much more than one simple existence
can muster. Things like that –it makes this
worthwhile, this constant churn in me
to make and make.

When the baby came out shining,
not yet formed but ready to open his eyes
and hold the sky inside him even before he could speak,
I was not surprised — yet. It took years for him
to find the Other that taught him how to make me
visible. I never intended that, of course, but
when it happened — oh, that first moment
when he set down words that turned my pockets
inside out so that everyone could see what I carried
close to me, so that everyone could see the tools and trinkets
with which I adorned this world! He said a little more
and the reeds I thought were already so complete, so simple,
came alive and drew my toil up through their hollow stems
so anyone could suck the marrow of my intent
with a simple recitation — this was it:
the God I always knew lived inside me had stepped out of me.
He was there before me, gentle hands
first making a palace of the stones underfoot,
then framing heaven anew.
I knew at last I’d never been alone,
and all the birds in the sky
and all the creepers on the land, all the trees and wind,
all the flowing monsters
of the sea, all the things I thought I’d made and let go,
were with me, in me, were me.
He was the masterpiece I’d always known was possible.
He spoke. I was. He still speaks. I still am.

i’ve been told
i am simply supposed to be
god’s repeater

what i say
isn’t mine
it falls off my mouth
rattles on the tiles
is carried off to the crowds

but what is left for me?
what do i say when all the words
that come out of me
pass through without finding any place
to stick?

a prophet is without volition

when someone says vile things
am i supposed to do something righteous?
when someone whispers left side words
am i supposed to lift my right arm?

and when i am silent at the end
will there be anything left to bury?
what eulogy will i give for myself?
or will another prophet
speak another’s words over me
and thus no one will know me
as i do not?

it’s said we see the future
but all I see is the shit it grows from
and i’m the asshole who put it out there

Moving from
the nose back
to the tail
I let myself
fall into
the slipstream
and now
it seems obvious
that I was never under
my own power
anyway.

It was supposed to be easy
but every thread that holds you
seems to need
a unique knife, and you just don’t have
enough.

Still, at times like these
when you awaken at 3:30 AM
and find you’re warm and not alone,
you find yourself bearing down
and sharpening your teeth while the city sleeps.

There’s a reason they say that smiling
can lift your mood, and once
you can smile again
you’re armed
and ready.

It ought not to be
that warfare is the only metaphor
you can find for this.
You decide to call it
self-defense instead.

Hungry, staring down
creditor’s barrels, leaping from
slick stone to rotted stump,
you chew almost free and manage to approach
the fortress.

In a blink it may all
go south, but if the battle
is not to the swift, it will at least go
the way you choose. You smile at the walls
and tug on your bindings until something

gives way.

First, I prepare the needle: slim,
paper-sharp,
easy on the skin
from first prick to withdrawal.

Then I raise a fire under God:
smack, coke, or meth, it could be any of
these whitest of deities but I will not tell you
the secret name of my Lord.

When I pull the precious
up from the spoon and
hold it ready,
I do not consider

how Kandahar, Cali, or rural Missouri
may figure into my love.
It’s only later, next day, next week,
nodding before the news, that I have a dim inkling:

when I see the coffins coming home as a leader
wraps his arm around a man who kills for him
while farming the deaths of others and the oil
swelling up from the sand waiting for the line to fill;

when I see the boy saluting, his parents
fraught with pride as he leans into the march,
the countryside near his East Prairie home green with old habits,
the empty barns filling with new poisons;

when I hear the streets of a city ringing with Spanish laughter
even as the doors are barred against a bullet,
even as the dark cars zoom toward destinations
hidden in plain sight;

every turn of my every slow hour
seems to show me the pieces of some stellar judgment
that’s not clear enough yet
to be avoided.

This is the substance of choice for me:
not the needle or the spoon, not the joy
that bubbles above the fire below:
it’s that yearning for connection, no matter how hellish.

At night when the longing
catches me again, I tell myself
I’m the savior who will break the
circle. I tell myself:

give me a moment with the men
who make the world their spoon. I will embrace them
the way I embrace the high. World leaders
and shadow priests will come to me

and we’ll kick together. We’ll kick together.
That’s the hymn for this service, the one we cannot seem to sing.
You would think we’d be smart enough by now to see where we’re headed.
You would think that wherever we find ourselves, we could stop nodding.

I don’t think of this as a first draft exactly; more of a poem I have to write to get it out of the way so I can do a better job with the topic. People seem to like these better sometimes…I don’t get it, really. Anyway…
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

kiss my ass
if you don’t like it —
i’m all in favor
of performance enhancing drugs.

those bodies on the field
are already sculpted just for us
and our desires. if a cream or a shot
of the clear gets them over the lip
of the bowl of the common gene pool
then i say why not?
no one expects the artist
to go without absinthe, no one imagines
the guitarist without his joint, the heroin
sponge saxophone player is practically iconic
and an MC without Cristal is like a day without night —

so, my dope fearing
blunderbuss moralists, stop kidding yourselves,
not much in this world gets done without recourse
to higher powers, outside forces, help from friends —

for example, imagine your world
without the black fig flavor of crude oil,
or your war without the taste of cordite;
could you have a foreign policy without the fix
of raw blood spilled in a Beirut market —
copper on the tongue,
seasoned with oxygen from the open air
and more than a dash of the families’ tears,
sweeter than blonde hashish?

would you have your pleasant life
without mainlining the sewage and rot
of a Ninth Ward street? you inhale
the dust from crumbling bridges —
does the rush come from the secret thrill of knowing
your taxpayer dollars misapplied
made this batch just for you,

or is it the deaths that get you off?

how is it exactly
that you can take a boy from Detroit
and kill him in Kandhuhar,
stand there glassy eyed at his funeral
praising
the way the Army saved him from the drugs and the street,
and one week later pat the shoulder
of the man who grew
the poppies you claim
you saved him from
just because he kills more selectively
when he’s at home?

you have to be high on something.

addicts, junkies,
athletes, artists,
captains of industry,
lords of creation,
all of us
need a little help.
we can’t do it alone.

so kiss my ass
if you think that steroids are cheating, that
weed’s a gateway drug,
that there will ever be a drug-free performance
on the scale you demand for your pleasure.
toke, suck, snort, boot, lick and drink up,
there’s a world out there for the crushing.
we need a little something
to give us strength.

rock,
i’ve spent years
trying to talk to you.

rain,
it’s been a while
since we had anything
to say to each other.

wind,
you ought to write
more often.

i don’t bother
even trying
with the trees and anything else
alive, really.

fire,
at least you tell me the truth.
in return
i let you lick me
until i’m ignorant, crazy
from the heat.
i let you eat my home
and busy yourself with your crying joy.

fire,
over and over you’ve taken the very clothes
you made me shed
each time i stopped, dropped, and rolled.
every conversation with you ends up with me
babbling naked in a corner
while you dance.

fire,
i’m a boy and you’re a man
i could grow up to be.
scorch rock, burn trees, outrun
wind and rain. i’m listening, fire.
i’m all fuel and ears.

History tells us
of a rock
on the edge of a parking lot
in Irvine, California,
that decided it wanted to be
an independent nation.

It made up an anthem
and an economy. It drew a flag
on its downside
with the help of mercenary
sowbugs.

“Glory, glory,”
it sang to itself
when the sprinklers came on
at four in the morning
as the office blocks slept.

The Country of the Stone
was neutral in most
international disputes
but loathed its neighbors
and defended its borders
through a clandestine policy
of leaching dangerous minerals
into the adjacent soil.

With a population of one
it had little internal conflict.
It parsed its rich history
to obscure anything beyond
the Ice Age and the volcano
that spawned it.
Unfortunate incidents
like the Cracking
of the Bike Messenger’s Skull
were hushed up.

Dark in the damp morning,
gray in the sun of high noon,
indistinct in the glow of the streetlights,
concealed by the shade of the gingkos,
national pride swelling within —
this was a proud place
and the rumbling of bulldozers
coming to expand the parking lot
was as nothing to the rock, all the way
up to the moment when the steel
struck sparks from it as it raised it
high in the air toward the dump truck
which carried it away without a second thought.

Dog them early while the scent of their sulfur builds.
Maze the rules you make them play by until loopholes become jaws.
Stack them where they belong till God approves of the height of the pile.
Open their prison doors and pour on lingering fame.
Approve their paroles with a voice full of long chains.
Denounce them at the whiff of impure thought.
Relegate their romances to the dustbin of hysteria.
Imagine their lifestyles as moldy bread.
Bite mincing mouthfuls from them till they spit back.
Reject their strapping response to infractions.
Blow them rat kisses.
Darken their doorsteps.
Assume their compulsion if you have it not.
Burn their books.
Own them.
Remove them from their lands.
Speak of universal love only when they aren’t there to hear.
Steal their women for a cabaret of night monkey wars.
Splay their men’s genitals upon a flea market blanket.
Drown their children in salt.
Rend their garments.
Bruise their heels.
Bivouac where they pray.
Infiltrate them when they make their own worlds.
Imitate them.
Give them names to conceal the names with which they were born.
Carry a sponge to sop their servant blood from your white loins.
Blacken their teeth until yours are moonlike in comparison.
Honor them with caricatures while you shred their portraits.
Play their music in your nurseries.
Wear their feathered robes while you drop their bastardized secrets on the tiles of your temple.
Cut off their water.
Tell them the righteous can live on dew alone.
Suck their grass dry and watch the edges get crisp in the bright daylight you have made from their smiles.
Let your mercy rain down upon them as a mighty river.

“If there was a way
to be sure he’ll never find us, I’d feel better
about all this,” she said to me
as she tied a ribbon onto her daughter’s present,
evening the ends
and taking scissors to them to curl them
so they lofted, just a bit,
and bounced when she let them go.

When our backs were turned
the ribbons gave one languid flap
and the box
rose and

soared around the room, not quickly
but deliberately, moving among
the scattered boxes, avoiding the just-placed
new knick-knacks that were much the same
as the old, broken ones she’d left behind
on the night she raised the little girl from bed
and took the two of them away from
the ruins.

It hovered by each
unmarked wall, blessed
the unlisted phone for a moment
with a near-kiss, slipped off to the bedroom
and drifted over their clean beds.

“I wish
I knew something about hope —
how to find it, how to make it stay
for more than an odd breath,”
she said with one hand out
gesturing at the new walls, new TV, new
shelves, and not a fist in sight.

She looked down at the present
(suddenly back in its place
with its travels undiscovered)
with its floating ribbons and perfect creases,
and smiled
for the first time that day. “She’s gonna love
that, I know. It’s nothing big, but she’ll love it.”
She brushed back the hair
from her bruised cheek.

The box — was it a trick
of the light? — the box shook a little,
its wrapping rustling.

A little obvious, but I’m working toward something else — this is just a first step.

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

1. on the radio

hit me baby one more time

we are willing it
willing to hear it
and claim it means something else

hit me

baby
me, she says
powder me wrong
glue me back together
delicately under the spell
of apology

no go

me baby

one of the many who owned
the record just slipped away

baby one

more and more
we open our hearts
as much as we close our eyes
to how easily this happens
how often do we miss it

one more

time? not likely
how many every
minute
hour
day
fall and no one says a thing
where are the songs they didn’t sing
and what were they hearing when the door
opened for the last time

more time?

not likely: when he moved toward
his place in the books
he was counting on this being the final act

hit me baby one more time

because he knows schoolgirls
are nicest when they’re naughty
and bad girls don’t go to heaven
bad girls just go
and
they’ve got their own
soundtrack

remember how I used to have really long hair? With a ponytail down past my shoulders?

Yeah, that was kinda fun.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
New piece.

Collusion

I know a lot of people around here
and if I thought they’d believe me
I would tell them the black story of how

you did so little to save me
how you pushed and shoved past me
to get your ass out the door to where

he was waiting to take advantage of the time
and the circumstances to make
sympathy his bitch and where

she stood next to him with her finger
in the corner of her mouth and pretended
to care what was happening right in front of her as

we tangled our way past the cameras
I know are there people out there who would notice
the way we fell down the steps cradling each other as we fought but not

you, oh no, all of you who
stood there watching with your whistles and graveyards
and stared at the impossible blue of the sky while

they let us nearly bleed to death in front of the whole
stinking town and now the newspapers might as well write it up
as an example of how low everyone’s fallen when no one steps in

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

And for Cowboy and the rest of the gang:

Cleansing The Undermeats

Uncle Justin
was in trouble: his sister had asked him
to watch the kids and make sure they got lunch but
his famous spinach and artichoke dip
ran out early so he called for back up from
the guy he liked to call “the
corner store.”

As soon as the “groceries” appeared
he delivered a mighty “harrumph” and departed
to his room to relive his favorite daydream
for the thousandth time this week: imagine
being forced to cleanse the undermeats
in a public shower in front of
the Grateful Dead and their legions!

“Harrumph!”

Enough mushrooms
can make even the soapiest junk
beautiful, he thought. He was certain
that Jerry would be proud of him
if he weren’t already dead,
and for real this time.

Even after his sister got home
and found the kids painted with spinach
and chowing Fruit Loops dry while “Europe ’72”
blared in the basement and the endless tour
trucked merrily through the house, Justin
kept the faith: Nothing to do but smile, smile,
smile!

And so, kids, the moral of the story
of Uncle Justin, his fabulous
(and spotless) undermeats, and
the adventure
of the spinach and mushroom afternoon, is this:

the Grateful Dead suck.

— trust me, you just had to be there

1.
the lady hand extended off the couch slightly curled at the fingers and sleeping. it’s drunk flower night. candle plants fly through the sleeper’s nose and she is gardened, rose-willed, remarked on in the literature of the tables and chairs. carpets ground themselves waiting for her.

2.
remains piled in the sink — flies slain during a recent invasion. their ghosts like politics, imagining the swat of magazines aimed at them and missing over and over. the bodies lie still, staid revolutionaries who will not agree to a truce.

the lady hand is the culprit, they whisper. no surrender.

3.
if a man enters here, he is set upon by vaccuums cut loose from their engines, gray winds drawing him in, coating him in all the old they’ve got.

these interior lands are a reservation of the highest order, dead sands, forgotten sacraments, gods unnoticed still imagining they are the drivers of creation.

4.
the lady hand stretched out and sleeping. a branch of forgetting. no argument for relevance. existence its own justification.

what the body burns at its hidden rituals is the solitary business of cells and electricity.

5.
flies open revenant eyes. multiple windows look onto a city of durable goods. the lady hand, the marble of a temple. blunt demands on time, meet the resistance of art and memory.

she has loved once or twice. eats pulp from oranges to recreate the sting of nourishment.

candle plants can exist for years on the fading glow of romantic notions. men cannot fathom their own small place in here.

6.
when the lady hand moves, the audience leaps up, applauding the triumph wrung from the misbegotten play.

if the curtain moves, it’s only to fall. the lady hand holds nothing. everything. the swooning youth, the old rigid honor of the black-tied suitor, the credits read aloud in transparent wings.

this is the medium of the candle plants, the soil of the night.

7.
aztecs, priests of drunk flower night, opened the bodies of their daughters to see if the gods were home.

knock, knock, lady hand. your house is on fire.

your eyes, your stone flavor.

danger is the blessing of the candle plants, the flies sing.

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

Ursula LeGuin used to talk of “bung pullers” — pieces that opened new gates. This is one. Meaning? Haven’t got a clue. You tell me.

Whenever they do it
it is dark and they move swiftly.
They do their work
as carefully as artists.

Whoever they are
they go for the intimacies first,
removing lips and tongue,
eyes, the heart, the anus and the genitals.

Whatever they leave behind
is lucky. It’s left alone
by scavengers and other beasts.
Its neighbors low and scoot away in fear.

However they do it
they do it without shedding blood.
They do it without leaving
a signature.

Wherever the body is finally taken to
and burned, the grass will not grow there
for a long time to come. When it does,
the living will have to decide whether or not to eat.

Ever so, ever will be:
mysterious dead left behind,
perpetrators gone, survivors shivering,
body by the wayside, spring on the wind.

Faith says Facebook does a body good.
All that contact does the job, all that
rubbing against your privacy wears off the rough edges.
Pretty soon you’ll be smooth, and no one will know you.
Then the offers will come in, once you’re
superficial. Once that happens you can find a friend
who’ll be salty when you’re salty, sweet when you’re sweet.
It’ll be something else, you’ll want to roll in it
as if it were a sugar scrub.

Faith tells this to everyone. The world
revolves and the names you’ve borne go with it, sliding
across the surface of things until they strike against people
who think they once knew you. They’ll drop a line
and you’ll respond and Faith will be proved right, as she always is,
as you desperately move your bumps around until they mesh with theirs.
Everyone’s getting smoother these days. Everyone’s a matter of fact
until they’re called on their history, and then
the tumbling begins: you’ll make yourself shiny,
tell yourself that this time
it’ll work. The past is past until it strokes you
and you bloom like a supermodel, like a genie
looking for wishes to toss away.