An event is taking place. 
An incident happens during the event.

People run toward it from their seats. 
People see what they see,

react to the incident,
then react to the reactions.

The reactions add layers to incident and event. 
It all thickens and gets lumpy with all that’s being added. 

History adds its own layers
as people refer to history

and then there are reactions
to the event as it also becomes history.

People rip the incident out of the event
and turn it into a plank for whatever floor

they will walk on from now on.
It doesn’t fit as smoothly in some as it does in others.

But there was only one incident in one event —
how can so many people install it in their flooring?

Maybe they were all watching different events
and there were many different incidents,

or perhaps reaction and history created 
the multiplicity of planks people use to build their homes.

They walk the floor from now on
and other people who come by now

stumble on that plank because
it never is quite smooth enough

not to stick up a little. It’s not like it is
in their house, where to them the floor

is as smooth
as a good story.

All planks stick up a little to someone.
Everyone’s tripping on a different plank.

No one walks a straight line anywhere. 
Every last one of us

tripping, stumbling,
falling into one another.

This young couple
holding hands,
walking over the bridge 
toward Walmart.

Her knee-ripped jeans, 
his puberty-popped beard;
heads down, talking
with apparent intensity

about something we
won’t ever know and maybe 
they won’t even know if
you ask them about it tomorrow.

It’s early April in the city 
and the city spring, wearing its con-artist smile,
promises so much future to these two
they can’t see more than two steps

ahead of them. Cross your fingers
for them, friends;
cross your hearts
and hope they thrive. 

Living unclowned 
by others sounds
wholesome
until the day
you are taking
a principled stand
and the mockery starts

Your wishing well becomes  
clogged with bad laughter
so you retrench and imagine 
things are already different
and the clowns have been silenced

You imagine that
on the other side of the clowning
there will be the grace of 
the trapeze artist flying
high above the astonished 
and grateful crowd 
so you take a deep drink
from the well and get up
and take your stand again

I do not
much like
my head being 
on fire.

My head is
always on fire. Therefore
I do not much like
“always.”

“Always”
never stops, by definition.
It may cool down occasionally
but is always throwing sparks.

You think this is 
a metaphor (as it is)
but real people come by me
sniffing the air, asking

“do you smell smoke?”
even when I am
standing in the rain
or when it is obvious

that I am in deep water,
in over my head by choice.
They ask me to come up
for air and ask if I can

smell the smoke. I say,
why do you think
I am in the water? why do
you think I am trying

to stay under? how is it
that you are not ablaze
as I am? I am
always surprised

that they are always asking about
smoke they can smell
and never about a fire that by now
they should be able to see. 

These cats won’t eat 
what I give them.
They come to bed, 
sit on the dresser

and night stand, staring me awake.
Sitting right behind them?
Ghost cats who will eat
and are also demanding food.

What does one feed
a ghost cat? They’re so thin,
so ornery. Maybe ghost fish,
fresh from the docks?

I get up, walk to a harbor
not far from here
full of boats
but devoid of docks;

fog on the water, the boats
and their catch
rotting in the fog,
the exorcised demon fishermen

of twenty centuries
wailing to come
back to shore. 
I flee. Is there a market

somewhere near here
that might have canned food
for ghost cats? I left the house
with no money, though.

I don’t have money in general,
but no matter: all the markets
are closed for a holiday. No chance
of filling my needs that way

so I head for home through
streets full of paraders, naked,
brandishing willow wands,
striking each other across

the thighs, everyone squealing.
I pass apparently unseen by anyone;
re-enter my house, throngs of ghosts
around my feet, their eyes glinting

like swords. If I go back to bed,
no matter; all that hunger will slosh
around the room and there will be
no sleep. Let me sit here for a while

with you instead. We can imagine
a better world where neither live nor dead
shall feel want. Where the boats 
come back to port, where the willows

grow green in spring, where the naked
can wear what they want if they want,
where I don’t need ghost money to feed
my ghosts, where what I don’t have

doesn’t rouse me
from sleep to try and do
impossible things
to achieve peace of mind. 

To be fully alive
one must stall the engine

that carries you through
this ossified human stage.

Egg as you are now, indebted
to your job and reputation 

to hold you together
for lack of a being inside,

you must break the engine
with the understanding  

that as messy as you may become,
you are on the verge

of true incarnation at last:
not reincarnation,

for that is your first life
gestating within

the thin tough walls
you have shown the world

while your shell ran on a track
toward the shattering moment

when you will come forth from it
not as human — perhaps as dragonish

snake or armored hawk; smoke 
trailing behind you, the wreck

of the engine piled in your wake, at last 
able to breathe deeply, to fly.

Choosing the right bed
for your longest nap
takes a lifetime:

shall it be firm or soft,
wide or narrow?  Or are you
resigned instead

to sleeping wherever
you eventually fall upon 
a flat space 

long enough
to stretch out
and be silent?

No matter how you do this
you live toward your sleep
from your first waking.

Some choice,
some chance, 
same sleep. 

Understudy to the lead screw up,
bogeyman in the wings
incessantly running lines
to stay ready, so ready to go on stage
and flounder, fall, fail.

A big break is coming
for certain. Small ones
keep happening
and momentum being what it is
all that’s needed is readiness.

For now, maintaining is enough.
Getting the inflection right 
when keening, having the right gestures
to accompany stepping off a cliff
into disappearance. Practice

makes for a perfect disaster, a step by step
breakdown of breakdown. Others
who’ve done this never have the chance
to make it better so first time must be
the last time and that last time had better be

so wrong it’s just right.

see that bone
that bone that
dry bone

connected to
nothing
for too long

a bone 
long ago pulled 
from its wet nest

lies beside
the road 
leading out of here

it has been drying
forever out there
that bone could tell

some stories I bet
if you are willing
to listen 

imagine it is your bone
imagine you could put it back
it might offer wisdom

as to why
you gave it up 
in the first place

that bone
that bone that
dry bone

like you
connected to
nothing for so long