If I am tolerant
of friends
who define me, if I
accept those definitions,
remain mute
as they forget
who I am
and choose what I should be,
become what little they think
they see of me,
I deserve to be stripped
of my own definition.

If I allow
smug anthropoogists
to set my name and limits, 
remain quiet
as I am measured
and fitted, let them
titrate my blood
and unstring
my helix,
I deserve
all the pins and tags
they stick me with.

If I allow bureaucrats
to grant me my ID,

if I allow my company
to give me my straitjacket,

if one drop makes some
one thing
and one sixteenth makes some
quite another,

if how I grew up
and what I was called
and what made me smile
and what I ate and drank
and what I was told I was

and what I faced
and how I was shaped 
and how I was warped
and how I was cold beaten
and forged
are discarded
because it doesn’t 
show — 
if I allow myself
to be all theirs,

I deserve to lose
what little I’ve cobbled
from my shattered history

and shall not dare to be
what I am 
again.

I’m partial to the sound
of a rising uncertain
inflection these days

as the world is no longer
made of atoms
but of questions; answers

are now bombs,
wrecking balls,
crowbars. Questions

offer foundations that
can flex in quake or storm;
firm responses snap or shatter.

When everything is
in question, best just
to stay still and listen.

Two answers at least
for each question; two worlds
at least deriving from each;

demanding right answers 
seems insane — so much
dies when minds slam shut;

in love therefore 
with the uncertain inflection
as it rings with life.

If you knew
your date of death
you’d turn yourself into
a candle with wick enough
to carry your flame 
to its sputtering end.

If you could predict
the time you’d end
you would put on 
bright clothes and dance
on the sidewalk in front of
your future cemetary.

If we loved you enough, you say,
we’d let you do those things
unfettered by our impending
grief; in fact we’d ask you
how you did it and then
we’d try to do it for ourselves.

Now then, the crisis:
we must decide
at once how much
we love you.  
Do we love you enough
to disobey, or do we dare to obey?

Worth sharing:
a description of the light

streaming between the houses
onto the melting road ice, but

better to share the light itself.
Come over and see it with me,

or wait until I’m gone to come see it
for it doesn’t matter if I am here,

or will be here
when you come; although

it would be good to see you,
what’s most worth sharing

is that light, and if I am gone
it will remain. Come see it

and if I am gone by then, think of me
for a moment, then let me go.

In my last years I swallowed
what I was supposed to,
drank not what was forbidden,
moved as I was advised to move,
and nevertheless ended up dead.

Can’t speak of what 
that’s like — there are contracts,
and it’s different for all anyway.
I’ll say this:
nothing about the passage itself

should terrify you.
It is as simple as changing
clothes, easy as a dressing room,
calm as a Saturday morning 
without mirrors, with nowhere to go.

That said, here are things to consider
before you cross over.  Kindness
to others, yes.  Taking stands
against preventable agony, yes.
Relating, loving, speaking passion,

of course.  But also,
there is a remarkable
emphasis here on whether or not
you occasionally stopped 
in the middle of the day to listen

to the day — to all of it
from truck snorts to humming bees.
You were expected to hear the world
as a symphony now and then;
they never tell us that soon enough.

So — go do that.  Go stop the moments
and sit with them.  It will prepare you
for much of what it’s like here — cannot
say more than that about it, except that
it’s not at all a bad existence.

It’s nothing like life to be dead.  
There’s more singing, if you can believe 
that.  There’s also more silence. You
are always comfortable.  You 
are always fine — it’s going to be fine.

The stink
draws from you
a cry of “my goodness”

for the whale
of a whale carcass
stranded on the beach.

You call out for goodness
as if it were perfume
against stink.

You call out “my goodness”
as if it would help
at this point,

as if death
were opposed
to goodness,

as if goodness
could deodorize
death.

What you call for
doesn’t matter now
to the whale, or course,

but it’s all you have
to reach for
in this life where

we say
cleanliness
is next to something

we see as akin to goodness,
and stink and decay
signal evil.

My goodness — with this
attitude, you and I will never know
the other half of the world —

the half that stinks,
the half that lets us down,
the half we cannot avoid;

and if we killed the whale somehow,
don’t we need
to set our own goodness aside

and breathe in
what we’ve done
if anything is to change?

study these maps
and atlases

find aerial views of
our current herds
of obscurantists

lose the shock and awe
and welcome to what passes
for us:

a faked enthusiasm
for intelligence
that skips over intersecting complexities
and human behavioral understanding
in favor of  belief in
Illuminati

when did we get so scared

when did we surrender
the spirit of Chautauqua

to rutting and beating our way
across information
toward specious theories
simply to excuse ourselves
from actual thought
from being pressed to action

what was in our hands once
we handed away to high and mighty
heirs apparent and
we lose and lose and are lost

maps and atlases
only help so much
the GPS device dumbs us

no more spoonfeeding
look up hard words
and then we have to talk to one another again
learn to read a landscape
strip myth from our eyes
start walking

with a glint and a purpose
and pitchforks
always pitchforks
if we can find them

if we can even recognize them

look it up

Quick-draw heart,
an ever-overwrought gun
set to rock and roll
when triggered.

Small thermonuclear
mouth, hardwired to blow
when coupled with
strategic command ears.

Hands, not as deadly
but as willing to bash and bang
as the rest.  Eyes, tossers
of darts and daggers.

I’m an armory waiting
to be raided.  Waiting
to be looted and then have
my weapons turned against me.