1.
here, men once buried one city
under another city. buried
ancient words in silt. buried gods
in a swamp. buried oracles
who choked on mud.

2.
here, you don’t need prophets
to see ahead, a glimpse
at the bottom of a fresh, stinking trench
says it all:
look at the pissed off gods poking up at progress.

3.
a few hundred miles north of here
at the edge of a dead empire
men are still
planting corn,
still hoping for water.

4.
now then:

if you found a wall
of black plaster in your basement,
would you tear it down? if you thought you knew
what was back there would you
stab a pry-bar’s fork into that wall
and pull? if you expected
something to step out before
you were halfway through
would you stand there waiting for it?

5.
back in the city they announce the discovery
of another earth god under a construction site.

the rain begins to fall,
the cities fills with water,
all building comes to a standstill.

in the north, the corn grows tall.

6.
and you:

how long
are you planning to stand
with that pry-bar in your hand
staring at that black wall
in your basement?

Fuck me
and my public face. I’m
too stuffed with my own trouble
to pretend I’m bearing it with grace.

Time now to drink and smoke, time
to wash down pills and read evil books.
I’m a lying sack of shit lying on a bad bed
waiting for the wrong joy to come.

If ever I was ready
for the last bark of the black dog,
this would be the time. He can flog me
with his carrion breath and I’ll accept every blow,

biting back tears and rage because I think I deserve
whatever I get. No “woe is me” bullshit.
I bought my woe and wear it like a crown.
Watch it tumble off my head as I go down.

who’s asleep? everyone.
shhhhhhhh. don’t wake
everyone up.

everyone’s asleep. you can hear
mechanical things. power, water,
heat —

but bend closer (shhh) to hear
what awakens when everyone is asleep:

shades walking step-in-time
to all the breathing. shh — you’ll
see them, perhaps. they’re thin

and pale, sometimes one is
grey or pink but most are sheer
and white.

they are commuting home
from their jobs — moving the fulcrums
and tipping the levers that make
everyday things happen:
falling in love, screaming
at the boss, pool in a semi-dive bar,
test driving vans, counseling children,
daring to eat from a street vendor’s stall.

they swirl away from everyone,
undulating, rising from the ground
once they’ve stepped past the sleeping
bodies, slipping through windows
and under doors.

you see that one hangs back.

she gestures to you.

who are you now
that she should want you —
are you another power like her
escaping from servitude? are you
a spy who’s caught a glimpse
of something unheard of till now?

tomorrow morning
they’ll all clock back in,
slip into their assigned bodies
and then everyone
will wake up and go back to work

except for you and her. you’ll
stay with her and find out
where she belongs, her real name,
how this all started —

shhh. you have only so much time to work
on this. don’t wake up. everyone
will want to know
if they see you’ve figured it out.

DISCLAIMER FOR THOSE GIVEN TO INTERPRETING EVERY POEM POSTED ON THE INTERNET AS THE PERSONAL HEARTFELT AND SINCERE TRUTH AS POURED FROM THE WRITER’S HEART ONTO THE SCREEN:

This doesn’t remotely represent how I feel right now. Everything’s terrific today. In fact, I’ve been trying to write something peaceful and graceful all day, and nothing’s coming.

So I decided to write a truly depraved piece to get my juices flowing again.

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

Dressing Up

Red gloves, so my hands can disappear
into your heart even though
I’m feeling nothing.

Brown silk shirt because
I’m such good earth. You can grow
anything here.

My shoes? My shoes
of course are black, my pants of course
are black. When I walk toward you
it will be hard to tell where
I end and the road begins.

And under everything else, nothing.
My clothes brush me unhindered,
and I know and you do not.

I do not know now
how such an evening will end,
and neither do you.

Even after
it’s over, you’ll be thinking
it’s still midnight wherever we are.

Not me. No.
I won’t be there.
I’m not the one you think I am.

It’s not me you’re falling for.

Well, at least I got a few hours in tonight.

I recently found an Internet station called SKY FM — all modern jazz, and by that I mean the good shit — in the past hour I’ve heard Sun Ra, Albert Ayler, Ornette Coleman, Cecil Taylor, and Thelonious Monk.

If I’m gonna be up, this is a good station to be up with.

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

The following poem expresses the opinion of one poet. It does not necessarily represent the views of all poets or their affiliates.

WHY THE MUSE IS A SADIST

why did you wake me up? i was
so joyfully dumb, lumpy and dreamless
on the flat bed when you insisted
i get up and talk to you.

so i’ve turned on the laptop
and I’ve been waiting. what is it
you want to know? i know
you’ll make me sit here all night
until i figure it out, so
offer me something — a hint,
a sign, even a direct question —
and i’ll snap to it.

what was it
that made you think you could
set me here in front of a blank screen
and say nothing? if there’s something
i’m supposed to make clear for you,
tell me — i’m all yours, there’s nothing else
to be done now, i’m ready, my hands are on the keys,
i’m as angry with you
as i am breathless to find out what you want.

then, if you’ll let me get back to sleep,
i’ll do everything else i must tomorrow —
earn a living, make friends, save myself.
and after that, i promise
i’ll come back to you and take down
everything you tell me. i’ll be all yours again tomorrow night
if you’ll give me back the hours you stole tonight,
because, seriously, i just want to sleep now. there are things
more important than poetry, you know.

What Ed at the door said was true: they were all tired, all the time.
Tired from pushing themselves through double shifts
on behalf of houses, children, better lives —
whatever they had to have.

Half the dancers were former high schoolmates
so there wasn’t much mystery about why they were there.
Half the reason we came was to pay to see
what we’d once tried our best to see for free.

“Brandy” used to dance
to the most radical rock songs she could find.
I saw her dance to the MC5 once. She made me believe
the revolution will be a miracle of taut thighs and dissociation.

You push a commodified body
against the pulse of commodified rebellion long enough,
something begins to happen.
The ones who watch them don’t usually see it,

but I never met a stripper who didn’t understand
the balance of power in any give and take relationship.
What it took to gain power, what was inherent,
what could be assumed, what was the coin of the realm;

all was there in the tall shoes and the soft tummies
of the dancers who didn’t speak
until you’d set them up with a drink or a couple of dollar bills,
who then told you everything in high brisk voices laughing now and then

at some drunk who’d gotten crude with them earlier in the night.
I’d sit there secure in the knowledge that they’d never say that about me.
After all, I only went there for the sociology and the irony
and I told everyone that, even when I couldn’t stop staring

at Sharon from my math class who whipped my ass in every test,
at “Brandy” and her hip-pulsing anger, at Ed
whose scars and meathook hands welcomed everyone
to the Gardens, even at myself in the mirror behind the dirty bar.

NOTE: This isn’t remotely finished. I’m just tired of looking at it for now. Critique welcome.

NOTE THE SECOND: Nah, it’s done.

if it has no direction
if it has no rules

if it does not rise when oppressed
if it does not know how to define rest

if it changes clothes to hide
if it revolves around fallout

if it recognizes color and responds to light
if it rejects the far ends of the spectrum

if it barks when it smells panic
if it pants and rolls over on the neighbor’s lawn

if it bites its own hand
if it chews and never completely swallows

if it is a country
if it is a great power

if it is alive
if its surface well described reveals its interior

if it is anything like its surface
it is hollow

while driving home
the teenager passed as always
the house where his ex-
girlfriend lived.

his habitual angry honk
startled a possum
who was crossing the road.

the possum froze on the center line,
and the boy swerved toward him
but thought better of it.
at the last minute
he straightened the wheel
and drove on.

when he finally pulled into his own street,
the boy was still unsure if what he felt
was regret
or relief.

1.
i’m going to stick a chrome pipe
in my culo
so people will think i’m an escalade
and maybe look at me when i walk by

2.
the stone embedded in the pavement
holds a trace of everyone who’s walked there

my feet have never touched it
i float everywhere and i don’t know
the ground below me

3.
jimmy’s deli
once owned by jimmy nordstrom
now owned by virapa patel
still sells butter for six dollars a pound
but at least his cigarettes are cheap

4.
the neighborhood bar
is a gentleman’s club
aka strip joint
and the entertainers
aka as vicki
alice and
the other vicki
change faces every so often
leaving their names behind
clumped on the floor

who knows what animals they were
in their past lives
perfect in their camouflage
or leaving tails behind them
as they fled

5.
if this city were a banana leaf
i’d cover myself in it
and drowse in the heat

walking down a street past asian markets and
suddenly this city is a banana leaf
but now i don’t believe i could sleep here

something there is here
that doesn’t love
me

i press my hands to the walls
of the thrift store and think
of the worn jeans inside
that hold the forms of past owners
men and women who shucked them off
in familiar places before familiar faces

not everyone gets naked in the city

some of us walk ten inches above the stones
dressed in someone else’s clothes
smoking butt after butt
jealous of the running lights and huge rims
moving obvious and rude
past the nameless in the night

cracking along
with corduroy rhythm
with lyrics i don’t understand
that nonetheless promise me blue hips and red nights
with danger and regret in equal parts
that sound like guns tucked in a waistband
with smoke and dull stoner haze coupled with rum
that sits on the tongue a reminder of young couplings
with chingaling harmony and urgent slipbeats
that tell me there’s a woman out there for me
if only i get up and move
toward her and away from the couch
from the small room
from the air conditioning
from the peace and quiet
when peace and quiet roar in my ears
when comfort feels this much like fear
man
i gotta go

this afternoon i thought of you, thinking of the days
we tore the laundry off the line and then ran
to avoid being caught:

the freshening clothes hanging on the line; you,
running into the sheets, hiding between them,
burying your face into the stiff cotton, the air-smell.

it had been a while since i saw sheets on a line
but tonight, right in the backyard of the apartment,
two fitted sheets hung, billowing in the slight breeze,

and i dropped the briefcase and went right up to one
and stuck my face up close and breathed air and sun
and your breath.

you are the bed i lie in.
you’re everything i learned as a kid.
you left before i could tell you so.

i forget that most days, except when
there are sheets on the line that smell
of dried rain in blue percale,

but i can’t sleep when they’re on my bed,
so i throw them in the dryer.
it’s better that way.

the devil stops by
to offer you a deal:

give up all your poems,
past present and future,

and you’ll at last know peace.
what do you do?

do you run to the fireplace.
toss in your awful mounds of paper,

throw a match into all that pressure
and watch your story disappear?

do you then turn to the devil and smile
and say “now what?”

because you know that whatever the devil
has planned it’s gotta be good;

or do you turn your back on the devil,
sit back at the desk,

open a new document on the computer
and type, “now what?” for an opening line

without knowing what it will take
to answer that?

every life is uncertain, alternately terrible and beautiful,
you tell the devil,

and you have yet to write the poems
that explain that.

There are days
when I’m sure
that the only way
I can short out
my memories of you
is to gnaw though
my brain cells
the way a rat
gnaws through
insulation.

I have come to believe
that the resultant fire
would be as cleansing
as it would be destructive,
and I yearn to discover
if I am right.

This is why I show you
such sharp teeth
when we speak.

I would ask you
to forgive me
but I understand
that some things,
however necessary,
are unforgivable.

Let the sparks
fly out and ignite
where they will.
I am content
to stop caring now,
to let this burn,
to allow a fire
to begin in my mouth
and spread.

He rolls his r’s
and the water molecules
shake as they slide down over him
and enter the drain.

Off to the sea they go
still holding the notes.
They evaporate into the sky
and rain down upon

a soldier trying to stay dry,
a woman shielding a hungry child,
thousands of trees falling
with no one around.

The President’s song
sinks into everything,
even though
he didn’t write it;

he sings the song he learned
at the knees of giants
who lifted him up
and set him down

behind a desk, still a little
wet behind the ears, humming
to himself. When we wonder aloud
what it is he is humming,

he shuts up. Elsewhere,
the soldier goes deaf, the woman
claps her hands over her child’s ears,
and the water begins to rise

over the wreck of the forest. We ask again:
what does the President sing in the shower?
He has forgotten
the name. All he knows is that the tune

drowns out the inconvenient truth,
and that’s enough to keep him singing
in the shower, in the office,
in the back of the limo, in the night

when he wishes he were sleeping.