Never fails:
at some point
boys gathered together
will tell each other
warrior tales.

It makes them so drunk
they offer each other
rogue proclamations and vows.

They say:
if my enemy’s head
were made from memory foam,
I would make my best impression
by punching him. And after 
he went lights out, after I rocked him
to sleep, I would lie pillowed upon it.
That would be sweet.

They say:
this one time
I was a hawk, I spotted my enemy
from too far away even for a hawk
and I fell out of the cloud upon him
and though he was steel himself
I dragged him into sparks,
and after I did not feed on the scraps
but left them to rust, 
and that was sweet.

They say:
one of these hours
I will make an enemy 
and break an enemy.
I will be an enemy
and we will be
silver and gold, and metallic 
though we are we will still bleed.
All of us will bleed.  Then I will 
drink my enemy’s blood and refill,
and it will be sweet.

They know enough already
to have started seeking
the sweet
in the sour world ahead;
with any luck,
they’ll learn soon and
with minimal harm
that a bruised head is a lousy pillow,
that blood tastes like copper
and to grow up is
to stop confusing it
with nectar.

red revving my
redlined engine, revealing
my dormant speedlove,

this one reminder of how I miss abandon
in this life strangling now
upon practicality,  of how I am

in my dreams still ahead of the curve,
high against the wall on the bank
of daytona’s turn 4, or alternately how

I am somehow also still ray charles
or his piano, sister rosetta tharpe
or her white gibson, krupa or his skins.

red revving the suv in the driveway
right up to the redline on the tach,
backing down before I burn something

out, before I bust something, before
I have to come screaming into
the too-narrow street on two wheels,

stereo up and subwoofer banging,
proclaiming that I am the last
suburban daddy of high, and

no matter how sub par the job I hold,
no matter how slow the commute tends
to be, no matter how swiftly I turn 

the volume down so as not to wake
the kids — NO, in fact,
I will not do that — kids need to hear

how daddy can still
boil like whitewater
when wildness beckons — that wildness

matters across generations
and danger matters in a small pocket
of his being at the least —

it matters, reinvention matters,
beings like me
who dream another being

for themselves still matter,
still are utterly alive
as they practice for someday

long after
it looks like
someday will never come.

My left hand became a web of roots.
I seized a rock, pulled it open
all at once instead of over many years —
thus, the power of will over instinct,
of intent to destroy as a power itself.

You may not question the truth of this.
All you are allowed to do is accept
that my hand gnarled and twisted and rooted
in the stone and pulled it to pieces, that I wanted to
do that, and that what should take years took seconds.

You are not allowed to shiver.
Fear is forbidden as disbelief is forbidden,
as is any knowledge more detailed than I’ve already given
about how the deed was done.  It’s enough,
I think, for you to know what I am capable of,

or what I can convince you I am capable of.
What if I am lying?  Enough to know I thought this up —
this rock breaking, this tree-handedness, this secrecy.
It’s a religion if you believe me, a threat if you don’t.
Or perhaps I’ve reversed those two?  No matter;

just don’t show fear and everything will be fine.
Everything will be dandy;
you can watch the rocks shattering.
We can hold hands while it happens, my beauty;
we can party, and bullshit, and party, and bullshit, and…

I was moving ahead swiftly, nearly skipping,
flying over everything, heard noise
from behind, turned.

Saw a leash caught on a thorn tree
and a white dog upon it thrashing,
howling, speckled with his own spit.

I recognized him.
This dog was mine,
was named for all the dark acts

that were done for me via privilege and in my name;
whether or not I did them myself,
I owned the hound and couldn’t ignore him.

I untangled the leash
and took it on though he bit me hard.
To this day as we walk

(I can neither run, skip, nor trot anymore)
he snaps at me and at all who pass, and never stops howling.
I strain to hold him back simply because I must.

There’s nothing heroic in it.
I own a crazy white dog
and his name is

“The Stubborn Adherence Of Hidden Favor
On The Path To Success.”
Like most show dogs’ names,

it’s too unwieldy for daily use.
I just call him Whitey
and keep one eye on him always.

Parents lie awake
in late darkness
thinking of
the previous day,

afraid
for their children, afraid
of their children. 

The children
are all asleep.

Perhaps
they’re also all
lucid dreamers,
so in control
of their fantasies
that they may as well
be real.

If these children’s dreams
do become real?  Well,
if that happens…well,

if dawn is coming,
if dawn ever comes again,
if all are wrong and it comes again,

if after this night
something recognizable as dawn
can possibly still be coming,

no one in this town
is likely to recognize it.

Certainly,
no one
can feel it yet.

If I could still dance
I’d dance a pavanne to coax back
my recently lost cheer and gumption — 
I’m sure they’re still nearby,
just barely out of reach.

If I could sing as I once did
I’d holler a big band blues shout
five times the size of my latest defeat,
and I’d drown out the whimpering
I left in the dust around it.

I can’t dance or sing anymore; 
it’s a pity that every trick in my book
was dependent on those lost skills.  Living well,
they say, is fine revenge.  Trust me,
it’s not as good as actual revenge,

which is a harsh word 
for the moment I’m in
but it’s a harsh moment.  
I want a little revenge on age,
just to still its laughter.  Just to ease

the ache of the memory
of singing and dancing and abandon
and calling them both “the answer
to a bad week.”  I’m out of such answers now,
though I can still hum and tap my foot a little

and that may have to be enough now — 
the ability to follow along
when some are living well.
Alive, responding, remembering;
it will have to be triumph enough.

Pray you never see me
coming toward you with my baggage
of wrong mistakes

not like Edison’s correct mistakes
that got him ever closer 
to the lightbulb

nor like Tesla’s right mistakes
that weren’t mistakes at all
but quashed revolutions

Like them I pulse with invention
Unlike them
I never patent anything

because I make the wrong mistakes
inasmuch as none are original enough
to sustain hope on the way to success

You will never read about me
in a book of genius
(except perhaps in a chapter

called “Cautionary Tales”)
You will never see me in a documentary
(perhaps instead a reality show

called “Really Missed
The Clue Boat Here”)
You will never see me

again 
unless I screw this up 
too

A voice or animal spirit
or other being of great impatience
screams into my ear until I wake up,
demanding that my next words
must absolutely be
about how karmic debt
is always carried in blood.  

I attempt to resist. I say 
that I don’t believe that it is, that we can rise above
such impulsive belief.

The great impetuous force
screams again that my own belief
is subverted by fact, and how
is blood not an obvious river for inevitable war
when it carries so much iron?

I am not yet awake enough to argue
so I draw my knife.
How are we now, Great Force?

It screams that I am to address it
as Lord, that I am to listen
and obey, tht I am to await further instructions
as it wails around seeking 
a justly identified enemy past or present
to hate and damage up to and including death.

I want to ask if we are doomed, but it screams
that I need to be writing. Tales of atrocity, it screams. 
The enemy’s name will as always be added when it is known.

Blessed be the youth
and fuck the youth
as they dismiss the past
and caress the old mistakes

Blessed be the youth
and fuck the youth
as they eat the best
and slip away to new feasts

Fuck the flat-footed youth
who will not flee though we scream run
Bless the fleet-footed youth
who flatten and hold on tight

Bless the youth
who manage some surprise
at every vintage act of oppression
gussied up as new

Fuck the youth
who turn away from intersections
with a headdress
and a stupid rap on their lips

I alternately bless and condemn youth
as I have alternately blessed and condemned those my age
Blessings for being human
Condemnation for imperfectly feeling humanity

We live in a time of great fuckery
and grand blessing
and cannot always tell the difference
or balance well between those poles

so fuck and bless the youth
for their maddening cavalier living
for their unwillingness to stop
for their inability to avoid our mistakes

Nine years old
I wrote something
Teachers liked it
I got noticed
I was doomed
I instantly knew it
I kept at it
Was picked on for it
Was applauded for it
But soon it became
Its own reward
It was how I breathed
That was enough

I found my doom
Another voice
And offstage sustenance
Onstage became pure and creamy junk

Still doomed

Someone loved me
Someone real loved me
Someone real paid me a bag of pennies

Now middle aged
Still doomed to this
Still amazed at how often it’s enough
Though too often because
I have to eat
I have to lay my head somewhere
I have to be warm and able to breathe
I have to have an arm around me as I sleep
I have to set it aside

I kept going
Long after I should have
Should have stopped
Should have kicked the junk
Should have died and taken
The acclaim accorded to a dead artist
But
I am what I am
Not happy exactly
Wholeness isn’t always nirvana
But doing something else and
Being something else
Aren’t my doom
And doomed
is who I am
Is why you are reading this
Piece of apparently necessary
Crap