while you listen
your eyes close
and it all changes.

what were once words
become symbols
burned into dark slate.

what were once urgencies
become meditations.
chants become mandalas.

whether asleep or simply engaged differently
than when you are
wide awake, what matters

is that you are absorbing this.
what seems passive is in fact
osmosis, which is still an activity

on your part. soft, inexorable transfer
of knowledge, feeling,
the backstory unspoken behind spoken.

when you open your eyes
you will have changed.
not all will notice. not all

will care to notice. wait them out,
closing your eyes again
if necessary.

Those who must
for the sake
of family or form
mourn in public
a person they did not love,
one who may in fact have been
loathed and feared,

shall after the funeral
be granted
a huge, selfish wish
by the golden handed saint
of compassionate lies.

Those who must
in the presence
of general or specific bigotry
bite their tongues
to save a job, to provide
for their loved ones,

shall be granted
one roundhouse swing at
and full connection with
a target of their choosing,
and they shall get away
clean.

Those whose lives
are slated
for demolition,
slotted for
dimunition, whose
lives regularly break
beneath the blows
of ignorant policy,

shall be given
keys to once-locked doors
and matches
and gasoline
and violins
for when the burning
begins.

This shall not be called
“karma.”
You should not have to wait
that long
for recompense.

Balance
will be determined
by the formerly
oppressed.

In mid-journey
inevitably comes
a point

where we
are already tired
beyond rational
explanation
and are
asked to do more,
to plunge into
the possibility
of being
swept away.

In mid-journey
we invariably come
to a river
that flows
between us
and the future,

stand
on the bank
amazed
at
how deep
this water is
and how cold,

recall that many
have attempted
a crossing,

that many have
made it, many
have fallen in,
many of the fallen
remained afloat,
and many
have drowned.

We hesitate.  We
think it over
and we wade in
somewhat comforted
by others
and the number of stories
that have come back to us
from those
who made it across.

In mid-journey
we wade in
and some make it
and some drown
and some are swept away
to places from which
we have no stories
so their deaths or survival
mean nothing to us —
at least
nothing
to us mid-journey,

but once on the other side
and firmly back
in the forward trudge
we recall in wonder
the ones
who disappeared —

how they cried out,
at first afraid
that they would join
the ones
already drowned,
then
simply thrilled
to be aimed thus at
the unknown.

without fanfare
or introduction
people were at my door
who led me out and
placed me tenderly
upon the ground

and then 
with similarly
ritual care
clubbed me and
shocked me
while screaming tasteful
epithets

was then elevated
raised by hard hands
manacled and
placed
into a car’s
backseat
taken away
to their castle
and
upon arrival was
laid in a concrete room
bedded upon stone
my head coddled by guards
until 
I slipped peacefully 
away

all the while
dreaming
that my rights
and privileges
would soon swoop in
on downy wings
to save me

It did not happen
overnight.
It started forever ago
with fire

and advanced
with every technological answer
to the question, “Why am I not
God?”

Electricity, light bulbs,
fans, refrigerators,
stoves, irons, telegraphs,
telephones.  Barbed wire.

Steamships
and ironclads.
Repeating rifles and revolvers
and Gatling guns.

Rails
across the country,
the Golden Spike,
the end of suicide pioneering.

With every change, we changed.
It started with fire,
and after that we changed,
kept changing, kept it going.

The first car
needed a driver.
The first television
needed a watcher.

How well we have raised it, this ending,
how thoroughly we have celebrated it
and spread it around.
How determined we’ve been

to keep it safe
behind barbed wire,
our guns at the ready.
How confused we are

that it has gotten away from us.

Up early
to take out the trash
and to write.  

It’s too easy to say
those acts are 
similar.

Recycling
is a part of 
each, of course.

It’s too easy
to draw
such parallels.

It’s too early
and too easy.
Instead, let’s talk

about the welcome scent of 
spring skunk in the dark
when I was at the curb.

Let’s talk about
the city’s voice
at this hour,

reduced to 
what sounds like
breaking waves.

It’s always too easy
to find my subjects
within.  Let’s talk instead

about anything but that.
Alive this day
before dawn — still alive!

So humbling to be able
to walk away from the house
bearing a week’s worth

of what I’ve been able 
to discard,
paying attention,

choosing
to be fascinated
by all that remains.

Each night hours pass
with no reaction
from millions
lying in their beds,
where nothing
outside their heads
exists except as
dreamfuel.  

They refashion
what they know into
nonsense or
perfect sense
without once opening
their eyes to see
how what they’ve made
while asleep
fits into all
they did not make.

When they wake
they may or may not
recall all their hard creation
before falling back
into life as they knew it,

maybe or maybe not
regretting how it dissipates,
but not dwelling long upon it
before rising and moving on.

You see now,
don’t you,
how swiftly
all can vanish?

Go with that.

Pretend
you’re a figure
in someone’s dream
and it’s not long before
an alarm sounds.  

You have little time left
for outrageous stunts
and passions that barely
make sense as they happen.

Do them anyway,
pretending
it will all cohere
when it’s ended,
just before
it falls away forever.

We’re blowing up
a thing we’ve called God

Many will rejoice
at its demise

not the least of whom
will be the god
who has been hiding

unanthropomorphized

behind the mask
on the one
we demolished
for almost
as many years
as we have called 
upon God

FACT
A 9mm bullet
travels at roughly
820 mph

ACCURACY
A 9mm bullet
travels on average
800-826 mph
depending on
the specific
cartridge

TRUTH
A 9mm bullet
travels
swiftly but
its exact speed is 
irrelevant
to the body
in which it 
stops

and to those
who loved that
body and its 
Passenger
who is 
now departing
at the blinding
speed of
loss

Brownfields,
old factories:
this town has plenty,
like pockmarks.

I drive away from my house.
I won’t get out of the car. I just want to stare.
I want to imagine breaking in and beginning.
It wouldn’t take more than all my blood and treasure

to take an abandoned firehouse,
skin everything out, leave the pole.
Put a rebellion in the bays
where the trucks used to sit.

Charge anyone
who drives to see it,
but the walk-up traffic
gets in free.

Inspired,
clear at last,
I park the car in
a vacant lot.

Walking now with other
abandoned persons
who all walked away
from a house somewhere.

There’s
an ocean
in front of us,
a boat waiting. But

there’s so much to do
right here in our brownfields
that we don’t need to go
anywhere else.

Let’s all go back to bed
at once.  

Let’s not get up with an alarm
or with the sun.

Let’s stay in bed, alone or accompanied,
for a couple of days.

There will be time allotted for bathroom breaks
and trips to the fridge
but the only people allowed to be up and about
are the fomerly comatose
or otherwise ill.

Sex is not the point, but will no doubt
happen anyway
as it always does when forbidden
or when circumstances are
especially awkward.

Let’s make bed the new revolution
and protest against 
the status quo.
It’s been done before — witness John and Yoko —
can we get an amen?

Let’s prepare for a long time at rest
before we rise again.

Let’s put a bed under every roof
and a roof over every head.

Let’s put clean sheets on every bed,
just in case.

Let’s not argue over who is in which bed
and with whom.

Let’s go back to bed and not think too much
about not being in bed.

Let’s enjoy horizontal peace.

Overheard
early on 
a Saturday:
slow
breathing 
underground.

Animal stirring,
or a human, or

something older
than either of those.

The sages will want to call
what’s happening here
Spring, 
but it’s much larger
than that:

it wants
to be out and away
from explanations
and plantings and 
plowings and such
trivial scrabblings
as we provide.  

It wants
to breathe easy
and here we are,
stuck to its hide.

It’s ready
to scratch.

Inspired by this story:

http://abcnews.go.com/Health/wireStory/pope-reveals-late-confessors-cross-22796088

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

The Pope speaks
of how once he lifted a cross
from a corpse’s fingers,

left roses
in its place, and now
carries that theft

with him always
under his clothes.
Those innocent

severed roses
still rot in the dark of the tomb.
Mercy in any amount is nowhere to be found,

and there’s no redemption
or resurrection
to be had

when the crime is revealed.
No one is shocked.
Everything stays the same.

Traditions say
the use of fire
was given to us by
a coyote,
a wolf, 
a seabird, 
a mantis; they say 
that water fell for us
thanks to the word of
a butterfly,
a worm, 
a snake,
a maple tree; they say
we exist
because of
the will of mud,
stone shards,
spittle,
milkweed feathers.

I don’t know
if any of that is true.
I just know 
it’s what I’ve been told.

I know
for you
the answer is always
science
and maybe science is
more solid, maybe 
it’s truer
than what I know,

but 
don’t pretend
you know anything
about it all,
really;

you take it
all on faith
just as I do.