Give me a key. Any key
will do — long old time skeleton, short
cylinder for a chemical cabinet, an
ordinary key
with ordinary teeth. I will take it home,

I have a door that might be perfect for it.
Maybe your key will work,
maybe not.
If not, I’ll add it to the pile
that’s rising in the corner.

If by chance it does
turn, if the metal inside
slides aside and the handle moves,
I’ll let you know. I’ll wait for you
to come over and you can watch me go in —

crawling into the tiny chamber
I’ll bruise my head but it’ll be worth it.
You can hand me all the keys once I’m in,
even the one that did the trick,
and close the door

once that’s done. You can walk home
knowing I’m safe, a little headachy maybe
but secure behind the door that was closed for so long.
It’s all I’ve ever wanted —
my own place, somewhere

I fit; somewhere
I could nurse wounds
old and new until I was either
satisfied with them or they faded away.
(I do not expect them to fade away.)

You’ll get home and open the door to your place
with the key you always use. You’ll sit on the couch
and wonder how I’m doing in here, now that you’ve gone.
It’s like this: I’m not unhappy. I’m just another guy
wondering how I got here. I’m fine, all things considered.

sorting it out today, wondering
how much of what I have believed
about myself and who I am
is so much plastic wood

I fell in love early with “assume a virtue if you have it not”
assume a story if it works
assume a face that bears your chosen hue
assume there are those who won’t look past it

but somewhere in my true wood
there are knots and burrs
and I can’t veneer them enough
to leave no lumps in my surface

even when I dare to touch
the places I suspect they are
I can kid myself into the thought
that it’s my fingers that are suspect

but the ripples I refuse to feel
are there even if I cannot admit
that they are — all those years of covering
all those years of making it up as I went

and when the day comes to strip away
the last pieces of the fake decor
what will I say to myself when I look at the gnarling
the burls and the wormholes and the split grain?

will I say then i was a beautiful man
or will I despair and wail as I light a match
assume the peak of a pyre I should have built long ago
to watch myself fall in upon myself

instead of assuming that a life of wounds and scars
was less valuable than a life of obvious subterfuge?
will I tell myself I was dead either way
and let the wreckage show at last?

In a spotlight every facial expression looks deep. Bring it!
I can count three minutes off in my sleep. Bring it!

Give me a place to stand, and I’ll stand there.
As I sow, so shall ye out there reap. Bring it!

What I have to say needs to be said.
It’s mine to offer, yours to keep. Bring it!

If I move you, you’ll tell me so.
This is the moment: I breathe before I leap. Bring it!

I lay the words out faster than I thought I could.
Every moment of my life is at your feet. Bring it!

Numbers mean nothing beyond the moment.
I am the only poet I need to beat. Bring it!

This is the truth I was born to tell.
I am the vessel for the change I seek. Bring it!

I am the only thing I know perfectly.
I wrote this poem because I can no longer weep. Bring it!

When the moment’s over, I breathe again.
Somewhere, but not here, evil still sleeps. Bring it!

Poetry’s the point, but not the only point.
Any poem may slay the strong, save the weak. Bring it!

Next poet come up and does it all again.
This is the staff of our lives; come and eat. Bring it!

——————————————-

and now, back to the stuff I write for money…

Water cuts rock all the way downhill
with no strain on itself.

Wind turns leaves all at once,
or do the leaves turn themselves?

When the moon moves the ocean
the earth changes without troubling itself.

Wool grows long. We feel the need to shear it.
Before we saw them, sheep governed themselves.

Walls and bridges rise and obscure the fact
that there was no need for them till we troubled ourselves.

What does the tree feel as it grows?
Nothing, it tells us. Is there a truth it keeps for itself?

When I imagine peace in the center of this
I am happy enough until I notice myself.

When I dream, I break a sweat. Water
runs down my face. Wind cools me. I reproach myself.

Willing as I am to be still at the core, I cannot be
the wind and wave without rejecting myself.

Why not, then? Why not turn my face from working
toward the path of no effort? Why not be myself?

When I sit with that, I feel unloved.
I will not enjoy myself.

When I work, I feel removed.
All day, I remove myself.

Tobacco in a god’s broad hand. What does it matter?
He dies a little from each drag’s demands, but what does it matter?

He looks out his door, imagining his last words. What does it matter?
He’s not caring to understand, and what does it matter?

Abraham nearly shed his own blood. What does it matter?
That knife in his outstretched hand — what does it matter?

Stars prick the sky as dusk deepens. What does it matter?
Each light’s more than he can stand, and what does it matter?

War’s got more meaning for him than peace. What does it matter
that he lives each day all unmanned — what does it matter?

He draws the rich smoke in, blows it back out. What does it matter
that he seeks death, something grand — what does it matter?

American-eyed, haunted, unwelcome, and what does it matter
that he rules the stolen land — what does it matter?

He draws again on the fire he’s chosen. What does it matter
if he dies? The future’s best when unplanned — what does it matter?

A king smokes his way toward his own death. What does it matter
how many others he kills by command? What does it matter?

~~~

…ok, a loose ghazal at best, I know…just experimenting with the form…

When I first learned
that I was to be the Footman,
forever holding the coat open
for the next one to wear, I was afraid.
I only snickered to cover the air
hissing through my rattling teeth.

It’s been a long time
since then. Since then
I’ve held so many coats, sometimes
several thousand coats at once, sometimes
one at a time, standing in bedrooms
before desperate men clutching
their sharp little heads, waiting on curbs
for tender children to step into traffic,
hovering in hospital corridors, avoiding
the fists of angry husbands as they beat
their wives into my arms.

I have almost
stopped talking altogether, even when I am
ready to say something good and true, because really,
what would it matter? I am
unremarkable in the scheme of things, commonplace,
not worthy of being heard
beyond “your coat sir…your coat, madam…
your coat, young gentleman, young lady.” No one
gives a damn what the Footman says
until it’s too late.

You wonder why
I snicker. It’s not at anyone
waiting for their coat —

it’s that in all that time I’ve been doing this,
I’ve never understood why I was the one chosen to do it.
Maybe it was these arms, lean enough to seem burdened
by the weight. Maybe it was this face, my brown bagged eyes,
round chin, simple jowls that shake when I move. Maybe
I just look good in the uniform —

but I think, just maybe, it was the snicker
that got me here; the twitch born of fear
that made me seem the Perfect Bastard.
If I’d kept quiet that first time,
I might not have worked out so well.
I might have been fired.
I might not have had to do this.

Pity.

I have to go. There’s a coat needs holding
in a room across town, where some young writer
who imagines himself old and tired
thinks he’s ready to put it on.
I do not think he will this time,
but I will be there just in case.

Writers, by the way,
are the worst: they keep you guessing.
Will this be their time at last, or is it
just a ploy to wring more material out of
the misery they so seem to enjoy? Sometimes,
just for laughs,
I want to wrestle them into the coat
before they’re really ready.

Sometimes I do just that.

what I love about you
is your hands.
no need for concern
on my part about being held.

they move and
sound off. I understand that.
it’s a way of using hands
that I have grown to love.

there is the striking,
but it’s not a striking
to worry about. sometimes
you make a noise without

using your hands. I can enjoy that
from here, all the lights keep me
from seeing your mouths.
seeing you bend the ear

of the person next to you
might tweak me a little, but
the hands fluttering and snapping
take my mind off that.

afterward I wait and you will
come to me and try to talk to me.
that is the best part because I find out
how well I hid the fear.

after that is the night
and the way home. there’s the desk
and the guitar and the bills and the way
back to the crowd.

you can follow me home
if you promise
to bring those wonderful hands with you
and never let me see your mouth.

it is the last day of the world
and everyone moves
to the extremes.

crowds die on the slopes
of the hindu kush. bengal
drops into the ocean.
bodies float like floes for miles.

a teacher from Blaine, Minnesota
goes mad in a parking lot
and scribbles lines from Blake
onto her children’s eyes
before taking her life
with a sharpened book.

it all goes. white, black, brown,
all go. male energy, female energy,
go. pissing conservatives go
as swiftly as disparaging liberals.
the money changer leaves his table
and the communist hands over
his party card before
running to the outskirts and drowning
in a vat of francs.

but in my back yard
I’ve buried a steamer
full of rice. I dig it up
and eat it with a spoonful
of champagne.

give me a clean planet
and I will soon be
as smug as I ever was.

Walking him
to the edge of the roof
I can tell so much: his
childhood scent, his
stumble at a whisper
of street noise below,
his eyes wide at the view —

whether he was born to be
dragon or lion, leaper or flyer,
he’s nothing but stone now.

When he falls,
the wind in his ears
explains how he will soon be
relaxed. He will
rest, the hint of a smile
leaving last thought guessed
but unsaid.

We took every step
from first toddle to last drop
together. I loved him once.
I loved him when we chose this.
I love him now most of all

as he is lifted to the back
of the ambulance with no urgency,
sheets tucked in, riding with the sirens on
as he always wanted when he was a child,
racing through the streets like a lion, engine
roaring like a dragon,

and I will be the wind as I go.

I wrote this many years ago, updated it just now for my age. It’ll be in the new chapbook, its first time in print.

Peppermint Schnapps

August 16, 1977:
it was pissing rain the night
Elvis Presley died

I want the night back anyway

the way I want the switchblade back I threw in Thompson Pond that night
that German switchblade with the brass shoulders and ebony scales
I want it clean I want it shiny and I want the tip to be back to the way it was
before Henry Gifford snapped it off trying to work it out of the floor
after we’d played drunken chicken for an hour or so
I tossed it in anger as far out into the water as I could
and then I hit Henry Gifford in the mouth when he called me a stupid fuck
for tossing such a beautiful knife so far away
and even after he apologized I hit him again and again
until I saw his sister watching me

I want to take it all back so Henry Gifford’s sister Diana
can see me again the way she used to see me
and furthermore I want to kiss her right this time
I want to kiss her the way I can kiss her now
not like the sloppy teenage drunk I was that night
all on fire with weed and schnapps and inexperience
I want her to not turn away from me
without knowing that I had just tossed my beloved knife out into the nighttime lake
I want her to know what passion can do to me
I want my passion back
because I think I lost it that night I tossed the knife into the lake
then let Diana run from me when she saw me beat her little brother bloody
without having a chance to make her understand why it was all so
necessary

and though I have had many knives since then
even another German switchblade just like that one
and though I have kissed so many people since then
in love and friendship and lust and grief

and though I‘m so much better at all of this stuff now
because control is everything
and control is all I have at 47

still there are times – rainy summer nights – when I get up late to use the bathroom
and while I’m standing there I look out my window across the manicured grass
I can just taste a ghost of peppermint schnapps on my lips
then I fumble for the light
I pick up a pen
and I write myself back toward August of 1977
when the radio played the songs of a dead man
while I nursed my bruised and tender fists
and cried like a baby for the very last time

1. “What If She Were Your Mom?”

In the picture
the representative Mom is in sleek black
bra and boyshorts, ass
to the camera, face pitched back
over her shoulder. She’s been classically
styled as hot Mom, MILF I suppose,
and the article (I further suppose)
must deal with the problems
a MILF’s daughter must face knowing that
some proportion of the men around her
might be thinking of assuming
some of the duties of her father,
as if having one Dad wasn’t enough trouble
what with him already having a thing for her
cheerleader friends. And who knows
what Mom thinks of all this?
Everything’s always been
a problem when it comes to Mom and Dad,
of course, even before
Mom’s emboldened fashion sense and Dad’s
sudden devotion to “Veronica Mars” reared their
strangely alluring heads. Daughter will have to look
elsewhere for guidance now…

2. “How To Work A Skirt”

You can work a skirt
to say “I love you,” obviously. But did you know
you can work a skirt to say
what a good MILF you’ll be someday?

3. “Tragedy In Dafur”

Read this
so that the next time you’re working that skirt
you can reference it so someone will know
you pay attention to things other than your Mom’s
lingerie and Dad’s lust for the new. You can keep a copy of it
clipped under your hem, just out of sight.

If a hint of it does accidently appear you can laugh it off
and mention all the things no one knows you keep up there.

4. “Hollywood Hookups”

The kiss she laid on him
at the afterparty
was like nothing
seen before by any reporter
and if you had seen it you’d understand
that your Mom’s lingerie is a way of recapturing
a moment from a time before the way to work a skirt
became a glossy prescription.

5. “Where To Buy”

Buy it anywhere fine goods are sold —
one-named stores, multilevel stores,
small stores on Elizabeth Street in NYC,
stores on Fashion Island in Newport Beach, CA,
upside down stores near the back lot of a movie,
stores reconfigured to look like distressed auto plants,
store where you can get a Darfur bracelet, stores
your Mom hasn’t heard of yet, stores Dad can’t hang around.

Buy it here before that skirt works itself out of a job.

note: all section titles taken from a magazine a young woman was reading on the ferry trip from Hyannis to Nantucket. yes, I was reading over her shoulder — the titles, anyway.

thinking tonight of the taste of blue.
veins savored gently through the skin,
eyes perfect for just that tart hint,
light sipped from along the edge of fine hair.

what was I imagining just now? a slinky
roan flank of night covering the house,
an old jazz horn lifting the air around me
and flirting with my fingers as I pass them

over my rumpled clothes, new oils and old pleasures
heavy in my nose, and all i care to do
is taste your blue on my lips, take in the crumbs of the week,
sing out about the way they make my mouth sing.

Blue faced, onion taint,
vapor trail of grief, sticky
old feeling on the lips.

Many times charmed
and blessed, tonight unable
to move —

old man looking in
on a party that
twists for hours.

Sum total of life: he ends up
sitting in a bathtub sobbing
while his books fall apart,

ink blackening his skin.
No one’s got a care in the world.
No one’s bothered when he slips away.

What I first wanted
from this
is lost to me now.

Later, I wanted
every word to bring me back
the scent of my grandfather’s
after shave, even though
I’d never met him.

Later still, there was something
gained from the sound of gasps
and murmured assent or dissent
when I tried to explain
the scent of my grandfather’s after shave
to people I’d never met.

I learned something from chasing those
who reminded me what the scent of my grandfather’s after shave
was like, even though they’d never met him
and they were as surprised as I was
when I found myself begging them to tell me
what he was like.

Now all I get from this is a lot of late nights.
I don’t shave much. The paper
and the screen are as odorless
as they’ve ever been, and all I can smell
is old sweat on my own weak muscles,
atrophied from inaccurate use.

Still, I sit down all the time
and hope for some token
that will pay me a way
down an old road to the place
where he sits, fresh as I can imagine him,
waiting for me.

He’ll turn and welcome me
and I’ll bury my face in his neck
and breathe.
He’ll say something like
“I’ve been waiting for you”
and I’ll cry.

If the poems mean anything
now, after all this wasted effort,
it’s not what I meant them to mean
when I first sat down on fire
to burn off the past’s overgrowth,
reopen the roads
and reveal the man.

What I first wanted is lost.
What I wanted next was someone else
and now I’m losing the One I gained in his place, but
if I shut the notebook, turn off the switch,
leave the stage to the next seeker
and walk away from the jungly history
where I thought the answer lay,

what will I do then with all this time
in this flat place, cleared of brush
and not worth replanting?