It’s his second cigarette of the day
and the man is thinking of how his body’s flaws
are starting to link up — the strep swollen throat
aggravating the apnea and disturbing sleep enough
to make him fearful of a depressive outbreak to follow —

watching the kids out of school strut the street
hand in hand saying fuck this and fuck that
every three steps and he’s thinking now of how green
the new leaves are and saying to himself that
fuck this ought to be his new motto:

his body is falling apart slowly, gracelessly, while his center
firms up sweetly into melon balls, cantaloupe, honeydew;
why tell the world there’s a pain in you when there’s so much more to see
of the good? These kids don’t know shit, he decides;
only an old man can say fuck this with the proper inflection.

So he does — whispering it into the twin ribbon that rises
from the end of the cigarette. He practices with a smile on his face.
He says it out loud a dozen times, and his eyes become wet from the pleasure,
he can taste how sweet with defiance he has become, and the kids don’t come
to mind at all as he scrubs out the butt and goes smiling back to work.

my grandmother taught me how to do it:

to see the headache
as a ball of blue light

to see a needle and slim
but strong thread

to thread the needle and begin to stitch
around the edge of the pain

to draw the string tight until
the pain shrinks and then

to take the ball and throw it away

and that’s what it took to get rid of hurt, she said back then,
and sometimes it works, i say now

i don’t know how well it works for other things —
history, accumulation, regret — my grandmother

hated my father for example
and he never disappeared —

but she made the most elegant lace
and her pillowcases were beyond compare

so something besides the headache indeed yielded to her needle
i am trying to forget that now

sitting here holding my head to one side
and thinking of the last conversation i had with you

the father i would never have had if it had been up to her
the redskin who soiled her baby girl

i was always her perplexing favorite
“i don’t like the indian peoples why you dress up like

the indian peoples”
i couldn’t tell her why it felt more right and i still don’t really know

but i never got any closer with you either, dad
and you’d drop gems like “this headache

would kill a white man” and you’d brush me off
when i tried to teach you how to stitch it away

i wish we’d had a sensible story
i wish we’d had a stitchable life

and we don’t talk much anymore, i know
when we do i end up with a headache, don’t you

but i’m not stitching you away
i cannot do that

there’s been too much of that here already
and we need each other undiminished

by embroidery
and remote viewing

in the bed
of an old pond
that sinks low in dry times
stands a single granite piling.

someone must know
if there was a bridge there,
or a dock. but no one’s
telling.

everyone with a clue
will be dead eventually
and it’ll be up to archeology
to tell the tale.

archeology will get it wrong.
it will be a ritual marker.
it will be a revolutionary find,
or a pampered dog’s toilet.

today it’s lonely and silent
when i drive by it. i want it
to speak to me and tell me
its name. i want to believe

it had some prosaic use: something
the common folk depended on. royalty’s toys
are uncommon here. it was surely something routine
and happy in its routine.

i drive by it
as the radio speaks of the gospel of judas —
the new found traitor’s testament to the need
to let god go. judas

was buried in clay, jesus in granite.
we’ve built a sour bridge from the lord’s tomb.
we hid judas’ word for years. we made of him a piling,
and no one is sure now what truly happened.

i want the stone
to speak to me
before we forget
who set it there.

CHECK, PLEASE

i sat across from a woman at dinner last night
and asked her a question
and when she opened her mouth
the angel of choice flew out
and streaked across the room
into a plate glass window
and fell stunned and bleeding to the floor.

she sat there picking feathers out of her teeth
as i rushed to the angel’s side.
i picked him up and settled him on the sill.
i asked if he was ok. he said,

i’m fine.
this happens.
sometimes, choices crash into invisible things.

i opened the window and he took off,
a little unsteady still.

back at the table
she was demolishing a chicken leg.

my god, i said, as i sat down.

eh, things fly out of people
all the time, she said.
get used to it.

after dinner, i walked home alone,

my mouth shut tight.
something
fluttered inside me. I was damned
if i was going to let this one get away. but
a choice flies on certain wings
and it has to fly to be a choice,

so i opened my mouth and let it go
and it flew off
and i feel empty
with it gone.

1.
i am your blood and treasure.

split me from my gun
and rummage through the leavings.
open me like a kit bag
and spread the wealth around.
pour one hot cup
of the tears of my unborn
over me. bury landmines
in my belly unexploded
so they may burst
when you stoop over me
and marvel at my sacrifice.

an old man promised me
a sacred place then lifted me
like a candy to his mouth.

i was not made
for the old man’s dreams.
i had my own: forest, desert,
slipstream in a perfect jet. but the old man
ate my dreams like a teacake
and nourished himself, and only himself.

2.
there are places in my body now
where the crows
are no larger than a pinhead.

the vultures
can fit in a wallet.

the maggots whisper to me that i am
remarkable.

3.
under my head
is a stone that wants to be a pillow
but doesn’t know how to be soft
and the face i used to have
slides off me like a yolk
and onto the dark ground.

4.
in last night’s dream
there was a bullet that spoke
prophecy. it said i would die
unaided.

the old man is still hungry.
i was not a full meal
for him, i was just
the first course.

if i had a brother i would tell him
all men are brothers, all women are sisters,
all the hunger in the world
won’t make you a meal unless you offer yourself up.
before dinner, sing the old song:

the bombs i have known
i wouldn’t let tie my shoes.

i am your blood and measure.

i am the scraps
left from the hunger of old men.

a warm day in late march
and i’m sitting on the porch.
the sounds
of a rock crusher
rise from the bottom of the hill
where they are tearing out the roads
i used to drive in my sleep.

where are my bars and liquor stores?
gazo’s bait shop is closed and razed.
petersen’s cheap gas is cracked and gone
except for the small shelter the old man
used to hide in until a car pulled up; now
it gives a roof to the workers
when they need to smoke in the rain.

the crocus is up and the daffodil
is chasing it into the grey light.

where are my bars and liquor stores? where are
the rare hookers who cruised here, far from the main action?
they are tearing out the places where i used to live
or pass through on my way home to my life. they are calling it
rebirth. but i used to see a city here and now
i see a ghost:

the irish club is transparent and its lilting illegal voices
are drowned in the grind of the crushers.
i pick up the usual single beer for the short commute home
at andersen’s and find it will not stay in my hand. i wave to the shade
of a crag-faced whore, sad and unnoticed on the corner, and gazo’s worms
wriggle free and burrow into the soil of the remaining yards,
bringing flowers to the surface to decorate the tombs.

violets clinging
to the rock on the lake shore —
the waves fall just short

break the night’s fast
with absinthe and
glazed donuts. spend the morning
back in bed twisting the sheets.
buy drugs in the early afternoon
and walk for miles talking of crippled
ducks under the highways by the
dirty river. back to bed and then
when that’s done, eat roast beef
sandwiches and hard cider in front of
fictional crime. throughout,
cigarette after cigarette and
kiss upon kiss.

tomorrow, work or love
or work and love.
pay too much for bread.
steal books from a grocery store.
maybe fight again
and make up, then
go out to drink hard cider and
stare into the pierced faces
of those whose stories
are as weird as this one.

in another time,
someone would have called this litany
surrealism.

something there is these days
that does not love a foundation,
a normalcy. something there is these days
that demands chaos from lovers.

only the stillest moments
of our meager sleep
remind us
of our parents.

You roiled me and
set me hot enough
to shine red and angry
while still being
in love with you.

How dare you make me
insecure? I was
solid as a leftover coal
and I was sure
there was nothing left
that could burn, and now

the innermost piece of me
is raging and I’ve got
to handle all that
consuming flame.

Mistakes happen.
I am tempted to say
you are one. I am tempted to say
I made you happen without
you being involved in the process.

Sitting with my hand
on the warm and cooling phone,
I’m ready to dial again just to see
what opens up into full fire.
The only problem: you
would be on the other end, and you
fan the blaze until I can’t control it.

Instead I will wait for you to arrive tonight.
You roil me, you and your simple words, your
easy grasp of the easy that goes against
my own love of the complex. You roil me,
set me hot enough to let anger
draw me out — first a thin trickle of smoke,
then a thread of flame, then
something transformational —
a tangle of heat and destruction
that gives off sacred, addictive light.

After you’re gone,
I touch my legs, my belly,
run a hand down
over my cock.

This morning I’ve learned
the words
of an ancient language,
and now I am waiting impatiently
to say them again
without embarrassment.
At last, this is how
to explain the way
the left leg
holds everything together, the way
the right leg
slides against thighs
while the hands move
(apparently randomly to the casual observer)
over and under and into and around.

Afterward
there is joking.
There is more
than kissing,
as if a deserved blessing offered
more than a deserved share of hope.
Then the legs again,
the hands
again, and the tongues
that become involved
once words
no longer suffice.

You told me once and now it is obvious that
I have been dumb for years.
Poetry was sign language.
My tongue has been born again
into a new way
of saying
old, old things.

i needed
three beers
and two bourbons before
i could say this

there are more things worth imagining
than i usually bother to imagine
and when i do bend to that task
it’s not all that interesting

i fantasize like anyone else
power
sex
love
god and inclusion
we all have the same head
this is why freud got recognized
this is why people bothered to learn
how to pronounce
jung

i am not old enough to recall
those days before our brains understood
their power
i do not recall when it took
a cranky woman or grumpy man
with a mystical reputation
to tell us what these flashes in the night
might mean

now we understand
most everything
and forget it
before the first coffee

however
tonight i’m
loosened
enough to swear
i’ll not forsake
the fantasies that spring
unbidden from within
this head

i will lie down
and pretend at first
that the dreams i have tonight
are new and
personal
i will refuse the interpreters
i will banish the seers
as if this head were original

but then
somewhere in the night
i’ll recognize that i am
nothing
i’ll find myself in the fact
of my simple sweet
normality
and recognize that this
fantastic head of mine
is no more splendid
than anyone else’s
and my dragons
and flying carpets
and water
and naked assemblies
are the ones we all have seen
ridden on
floated on
feared

and then I shall
thank god that you are here
my friends
thank god for the prosaic nature
of all our dreams
for
it is good
not to be
alone with these things

when i close my eyes
and see the Shadow
i will reach for you
knowing
that you understand

Watch The Usual Suspects
and Reservoir Dogs
back to back
and become amazed at how
peaceful you feel.

Stare at the last guitar
in the room, but do not play it.
All the others have moved out
and it seems disloyal to play it here, now,
with its family far away. Wait until the reunion,
you whisper to it.

Keep petting the cat. Startle yourself
with tears. Startle even more when
at 5AM the other two cats stir in the bedroom;
they never sleep up here.
Thank them. Get up for a bit
and feed them earlier than normal.

Lie back down.
Listen to the outdoors: the cars
going up and down the road
again — out for breakfast, early work,
quick runs to the store for the paper.

Count the number of times
you’ve loved this life
in the last few years
on one hand.

Throw off the covers, and rise.

small words
can find us
a place to grip
that truth which slips
through our hands.

do not reach for
hard words that
use more than one breath
to get to the point;

few of us
have a clue as to how
to cut through the smoke
they give off and get to
a clear view of
what we seek.

tell the tale that should be told
in small tight words
and see what should be seen.
seize it at once.

then, with one hand
clenched tight on the scruff
of the neck of what we’ve caught,
we can call it as we see it in short
bursts, tell it
to stay or go, beg it to live or die,
and we know it will get what we say;

and we will know that what it does next
is what it should do and there is no
chance it did not get what we meant to say
of what it meant to us.

we can go home when we are done
and know we did what we could.
we will not cheer or cry. we will say:

small words can save or kill.
what they make clear stays clear.
what they kill stays dead.
what life they save shines.

too much to pick up and pack up.
knives and guitars, too many of each.
books and magazines and paper to sort.
clothes to donate, discard, fold, burn.
until now i did not realize
how much life i’ve lived alone in this room.

the bed goes, the table goes,
the flute, the hairbrush, the drugs go.
i ought to be able to find
some more of myself under all this
once I’m done, but what there is of me
wants to just up
and go, leave it all behind.
i don’t care to be that much more
than what i am
anymore.

question: how many knives
does one man need? question: how many
guitars does one man need? question:
how many books, poems, clothes,
does he need?

answer: apparently, enough of each
to make him forget all the others
for a while.

i want to close this door behind me
and run weeping from this house
until i lose everything, and that’s
where i’ll settle down.

your world isn’t ending, it’s just expanding.
the fact that you can’t see the boundaries anymore
doesn’t mean they have fallen, only that they’ve
moved out a distance.

it’s amazing to think
that you might have to walk for miles
to limit yourself now.
buck up, little camper;

bring water, carry a notebook,
don’t forget to write. the walls are somewhere
out there, in every direction. pick one and
don’t look back.