be sweet with yourself
while donning your arms and armor
for the day.

drink fruits newly juiced
from a cup fashioned from
the skullcap of yesterday’s enemies.

be fierce as a broken daisy
not yet browning
as it droops toward decay.

ask yourself: if you are not
a warrior, 
how are you still here?

in your shelter
as night, whether ripped tent
or bungalow, dim tenement

or high glitz studio:
are they all not 
battlements? lay your hands

upon your sleeping beloved
and swear the only oath
a warrior should take:

here is what I am, here
is what I love. may I not let
this coarse need for war today

grind away my words 
and my deeds. may I
recall the sweet even as I 

traffic in the bitter.
may I come home. may I
sleep there. may I not be alone.

I’m dying I say
and you say I’m going to be fine
and I’m dying I say and you say
fine. You’re going to be fine. We’re all
going to be fine. You’re dying
and I’m dying and that’s fine.
Nothing that inevitable
can ever be anything but fine. 

I’m scared I say and you say
I’m going to be fine and 
you are going to be safe. I’m scared
I say and you say there’s no reason 
to be scared. I’m dying I say 
and you say fine. I’m fine, you’re fine.
It used to mean fuckable, now it means
dark is the night and cold is the ground
no matter how fine you are so you can’t be
anything but fine.

I’m cold I say
and you say I’m going to be fine
and I’m dying though and scared and now
I’m cold and you say fine. You’re fine
and are going to be fine. I told you
the ground would be cold and 
look how fine you are even on the ground
coming up to hold you. Your planet
longs to take you in. You can’t be
anything but fine.

1.
Imagine your sins were laid out upon
a buffet table.  Where would you begin?

Would you save the best for last
or plunge your face and slobber it up

first thing? You know if you do the rest
will pale in comparison and you

will lose your appetite. Then what? 
You’d likely sit there wondering

if you missed out on subtleties 
by falling into such gluttony. 

2.
Imagine your sins have been laid out
upon a table short but wide. The dishes

holding them are few but they are vast.
You’ve sampled throughout your life 

but the rib-sticking ones, the ones
upon which you based your diet

and sustenance, are in deep bowls
covered with drip. Where to begin

is the big question. How to finish
is without question. You will finish

eyes open and unable to swallow
one more bite.

3.
Imagine your sins had never fed you.
You still wouldn’t have lived forever.

You’d have sat there wasting away
without one smile on your skinny little face.

You’d have been one clean bag of bones
but you still would have no clue about 

how to eat right. How to digest
the hard stuff. How to add spices,

how to know all the differences between
evils and indulgences,

how to thrive
in the gap.

It’s been enough
to have been here.

Built my home
on this lot you offered.

Moved here from
a busted shack.

This made me work.
This made me wider.

Gave me more rooms
and all outdoors.

The home is not
a spacious place.

Neither great in width
nor wild in depth.

Either one’s
too grand for me.

It’s been enough
to live this place

and call it home
as I am called

so many things,
though none that simple.

As far as I can know
I’ve been completed. 

It’s been enough
to have gotten this far.

Time to light the lamps
on the end tables
in the clean, dated living room
and welcome expected guests
to your home for sitting time
where all will talk to each other
in awkward tones as they’ve not sat
together this way for a few years. 

Now to the kitchen to unwrap
the gifted food and the soft drinks.
A few from the other room come in
to offer help and together you move
the food around, the plastic glasses,
the napkins, the paper plates. 
Everyone’s so careful not to spill
a thing and in fact nothing spills.
All remains perfectly placed as if
that’s how the rest of the world
stays intact.

After, you speak out loud
to the remaining guest:
the invisible, the unspoken,
the one they came for.

“It was nice, wasn’t it?”