Admitting failure,
complete collapse,
Ernest “Fatman” DiCicco
spends his last days
hoping for a warm spell
before first snowfall.

He looks over 
all he’s done and 
gives away most
of his best things,
his favorite guitars, 
his pens, his knives.

Burns his letters, 
every book he’d ever 
made a note in, 
all the cheap jewelry
he’d loved, clothing
and caps and gloves.

When all is done,
Ernest begins to starve himself —
Fatman changing before our eyes,
such peace in his  — 
will not speak of what he’s thinking,
and for once we won’t ask.

When he’s gone, we won’t notice
the absence for more
than a moment.  Why be hypocrites?
We have always wished he would go away
and once he has, everything’s
fine, everything’s for the best.

If it’s not
wind, or storm,
it may be meteor,
may be earthquake. 
May be 
downfall, may be
uprising;

all I know is that
today feels 
like it’s violently moving
while I am not,

that I’m
less than a second
from tumbling over

still believing I’ll be able
to somehow hover while
apocalypse is happening —
while underneath that,

knowing even more deeply
that I will fall
as all else falls;
earlier, farther, 
and harder than some,
later and softer than others,
but I will 
fall.  

Mid-fall, delusional
but happy,
almost levitating,
I believe I may yet fly
in spite of my fear of
that imminent hard landing —
in fact, it may be
that I fly
because I know
it’s coming.

1.
No more, I said to the people.
For me, no more Battles.

Leave me to the scattering mice
and the enveloping sunset.  

Leave me to the prettiest parts
of this gruesome world.

All my people are
clamoring for release or reinforcements,

but I say, no more.  Insistence tugs at me
when I see all the blood but I say, no more.

Shame grips me like a barnacle,
scarring my scarred flesh, and I say, no more;

guilt rips a gash in me
and plunges both filthy hands in, and I say,

no more; rage pours out and cleans me
and stains me, but I say, no more.

Take me to a creek and an uncomplicated mating
of good mammals just being good mammals.  

Let me side for once with not doing anything
but retiring from Battles.  Let me hand back my medals

and let the people hate me for inaction, 
for I am old and less inclined to war than once before.

Just let me lie.  Let me lie a while longer.
Let me lie, I beg you, let me lie about some more.

2.
The Battles are so large, and I am so small.
The Battles are so long, and I am so tired.

The Battles, in blackface and headdress, 
in rape gear and pesticide incense,

will not let me go.  The Battles,
armored in tongue lashing and armed

with rough justice, with pure oppostion as holy writ,
with the explosive love of fire and crush,

will not let me go.  The Battles will not let me go
no matter my age or service.  

If I go, I die;
if I stay, I die; 

so why not let me lie a little longer,
let me lie here a little longer;

Battles, let me lie; if all that happens
is that I die as a result a little later,

let me lie.  You’re going to win anyway,
and this empty night for once is so beautiful

I truly cannot stand to turn
back into the struggle.

A fine and lasting
conflict between
my fixed-fate stars and
my taste for free will
is all I have
to work out with
when it comes to making
a muscle of my soul.

Try to flex
as much as I can
between letting go
and digging in,
hoping that
when I’m forced
at last to choose,
any choice
will be easy.

A hot knot
in my core, then,
is my indicator
that I’ve been putting in
work.  Stepping
where the struggle
is taken in with
the oxygen.
Crunching
past pain
to get myself
lean; sometimes left
wanting, other times
full up to the brim.

1.
The potential attacker fell,
jaw slightly askew.
That was a hell of a froggy noise he made
as I relaxed and let the bat
slip from my hands.

I suppose I could have waited
to see what he wanted,
to be certain he was hostile,
before I started swinging.

He did not report it, though.
I guess that says something.

2.
She was that remarkable,
wasn’t she?

Damn.

3.
I was offered, once,
six months in a foreign cottage
with nothing to do but write,
nothing to do but collect a stipend
to sit and write in a cottage overlooking the sea,
a cottage in the middle of nowhere,
a cottage so remote there was no
electricity beyond what a generator
could provide…

at 21, with all my work ahead of me,
how is it that such an offer seemed
so not ideal?

4.
I should have cut him
right across his good white face
just a little, just enough
for what he said and what I did
to be commemorated
every time he saw his reflection.

It sounds awful to say it, still.
But it is the truth.
I did not stand up for myself
regardless of consequences.
No matter what might have followed,
I should have.
I should have.
I should have.

5.
These greatest regrets,
it seems,
turn upon
a pivot of violence and art
and sex.  This afterthinking
is logical revisiting of poor
or ill-considered forethought.

6.
Except for this one, today’s,
an afterthought
not drawn in fact from thought,
but from a pure, deep fear:

I should have come
to the doctor’s office
much, much
earlier.

Done at last
with satisfying
the masses
with all that explaining

I shed the last
of my complaint stained skin
and emerged
still me and
thrilled with this me

though this current shine
on my familiar face
has made me  
scary to others

as I seem to them
somehow crueler
than before
somehow
not worthy
of a past sad self 
who was kind
when kindness
was deadly to me and tolerant
of poisons that nonetheless
also were killing
over time

Done with that 
I say to them
I understand your fear
of what you don’t understand
but you can love me dying
or hold me at arm’s length
while I learn how to live
in this new armor
with these new weapons

Those are your choices
I’ve made mine
I can’t go back

I don’t believe you,
sky; I don’t believe you,
stars, moon, and most certainly

I do not believe you,
Mercury,
you fleet hot liar.  

For some of us, “Mercury
retrograde” is code for
“this stuff happens everyday

but sometimes
people pay more attention to it
than others.”  For others,

it means “my whole life
is retrograde and 
I can never tell the difference.”

“Retrograde” screams a question:
who made the sky-pictures
of the West supreme?  Who chose

these myths to exalt
when every culture’s
that’s done the same

has drawn
such different
conclusions?

I’ve let myself become
so sour about all this 
I don’t even trust sunrise

to lift this weight
off my chest.
I’m so sick of all this

I want
to stop speaking
to people for days.

I’m so tired of all this
I might be ready
to believe.

The dream game is offered:
chess, or some variant,
played with the tiny severed heads
of friends, strangers, and celebrities.

What if I refuse,
I ask the darkness that gave me this.
Suppose I go back to sleep
and shove this nightmare aside?

Do you want to be a knight
or a bishop, the darkness responds.
I’ve got many players lined up for this one.
Play or I’ll put your head in the game.

Play or be played — this old line again.  Still, I refuse.
At once I’m asleep and bleeding between the fingers
of some stranger who looks, oddly enough,
completely at peace.  Of course, in his game, I’m a pawn.