Good afternoon, armed meta-
physician; good afternoon,
thug drug dealer; good afternoon
to all the ships in port,  
good afternoon to all
the tanks in formation, all
the gunners straining to shoot,
all the cavalry wondering
why their horses are flying
so hapazardly overhead;
good afterpart afterglow
of the afternoon
of another day of war…
bang bang BANG,
yes I meant afterglow; how
can the similarities
have escaped you? 

How did you miss the foreplay
all morning, the undercard, the small
scatterling bullets
taking a life here and an arm there;
surely you were here for the main event,
the top of the bill, the monstrous moist licking
we took, the thrust
of what we gave right back?

How did you miss it? How do you not see
that it’s the only reason 
the armed metaphysician and
the thug drug dealer ever find
common ground — when the horses
fly through the sexy air and land with
grand breaks and splayed eyes,
strange bedfellows practically
spoon, war seems less violent
and more romantic, more red,
more chemical reaction, more
of what men have decided
makes them come.

A redtail in the backyard,
startled from its prey
as I stepped out to water the garden,
rose with mouse or squirrel in hand
and then was gone.

This dense city around it of no importance —
here was a hint of wilderness.
Its abrupt departure loosed energy
into the morning, which surged into 
my arms and at once I longed to fly.

Forget it all — the city,
its violent moves, its daily suppressions, 
its suspicions and its
easy flipping from embrace to smother.
Forget it all and rise to the simplicity

of soaring, swooping for meals, 
endless hours watching from high above.
God, I said, make me a hawk
and I’ll worship you like a hawk
with bones and blood and implacable eyes.

And then I went ahead
and watered the garden
and picked some cukes and 
killed some vine borers, came inside
and had coffee and searched for hawk videos

while I waited for it to happen. I’m still waiting.  
I’m sitting in the city
imagining not only
that I’m not here,
but that I’m no longer human.

Suddenly,
I find I am beginning
to laugh at myself.
I am not sure a hawk
can do that.

Elevator music
The sound of what’s wrong

In small rooms rising and falling
The sound of what’s wrong

In offices 
The sound of what’s wrong

These songs used to be actual songs
Now they’re the sound of what’s wrong

(In the restrooms the workers come and go
humming along to fake Coolio)

Someone likely my age who likely looks like me
takes raw music and polishes the edges off

Puts together a soundtrack
made for maximum uplift

and boost to productivity
or to calm a jittery rider

(man who isn’t a jittery rider right now?)
Isn’t it lovely instead to hear

something soft and pointless
and harmless and clear

(while back in the toilet they come and go
pissing and pooping to something slow)

Sound of something wrong
made comfortable so you don’t have to be 

uncomfortable
rising from street level to penthouse

or falling slowly but certainly
from penthouse to street level

What instruments are being played
Why is no one ever singing

These used to be real songs
They contained real people

Used to be sung now and then at least
Sometimes conveyed real feeling

(while in the hallways the sleepers come and go
stumbling along to Curtis Blow)

Elevator music
the sound of something wrong

No one knows anything about it
Songs used to be

full of fire and bad notes and grit
but in the elevator or the doctor’s chair

we don’t have a second thought 
we lie back and take it

and later we fall from on high
to watered down Clash on invisible speakers

and are not the least bit ashamed
It’s the sound after all of everything wrong

and who would debate that 
everything is wrong

meet the new moss 
same as the old moss

growing on the gangster
paradigm

all we wanna do is have some fun
lost in the supermarket

forgetting the words
as we shop

and the streets that bore it all for us
fall to riot and killing

but thanks to elevator music
we never have to hear about that 

Section One:

In a single essay, explain 
intersectional oppression.
Include the following terms:

a dugout of blood. 
a pitted bone.
a shop of rape. 
a sharpened stone.

Section Two:

If you turn out to be 
a scapegoat,
will you survive
your turn in the wilderness?

Show your work.

Section Three:

What five words
ought to be erased or respelled
in order to lift their magic?  

Defend your choices
without attacking others.

Section Four:

A piece of history
is sticking out of your eye.
Define the process
for removing it.  

Section Five:

Is there any room
for mercy in the new world
that has not already been shown
in the present one?

This world is going to end,
but first will come more rainbows.

The terrible beauty of supervolcanoes
when viewed from space
will likely look like an erupting field
of red and gray poppies.

The best and most startling
sunshine yellow in nature
is found in the dank moist center
of a slime mold.

Enough, enough,
modern prattlers,
supported by your self-referential peers
with affirmation alone
and negation alone;

enough with positivity
and abundance meditation,

enough with pessimistic messiahs
and apocalyptic vision.

Instead, balance your opinion
of the world
on the edge of this well-worn
dagger.

It’s a skilled cutler’s delight,
art made for killing
by someone who
could wring such perfect steel
from earth
and fire,
you just know
he had to be in love
with living
if he could put
such care
into creating this.

My face startles me
as I pass a storefront.

That shadow self
in the window
looks smart as hell
when he’s indistinct.

I know better, of course,
than to listen to him,

trust him even less
when he’s in a mirror
across from me.

Bastard,
I say, I bet Dad
(whoever he was)
broke his own mirror
the first time he caught
a glimpse of that future me
in that image.
He saw the kind of son
he was likely to father,
and that’s why he ran.

You’re not so smart,
I tell my reflection.

It says
the same to me.

Maybe
it’s smarter than it looks,
but it can’t be by much.

So considerate!
He hangs my blue towel
on the correct nail.

We only tango
facing the wall,
our heads snapping about 
as we turn. 

I don’t like your sister watching us,
he says.
And your piano
is in need of tuning.

What I would not give
for a long drive with him
in an MG,

a red MG,
revving up, rolling out
over the long miles of country,

laughing at the signs:
no vacancy,
no vagrancy,

I’d go anywhere with him
though forensics are imminent
and may show soft crumbs of others 

on his knife.

This morning,
I salute the earth.

It should be with tambura,
horns, drums, finger cymbals,
and flutes, I know.
I have none of these.

It should be done with dancing:
heels never touching, a toe-tip reel
grounded but striving upward.
I’m afraid to move too much,
terrified of a last-straw-to-this-body tumble.

I can only do it
with nerve and 
a celebratory shiver
in my stiffening limbs.

I can only do it
with hard-found words
in the one language
I manage to speak.

I may only do it
once well,
and the earth may not catch it
except as a stirring
behind its global back,
once.  

Not to salute the earth
breaks a commandment
that was left out, 
perhaps on purpose,
from the Ten…unless
the one about parents
is supposed to include
this honoring of our source,
but most likely
was not meant that way
so, 

I add it.  New commandment:
“Salute this earth
with whatever you have.
Keep it holy as if every day
were a Sabbath.”  Perhaps
it is? Let us find out:

salute the earth in the morning 
every morning, and let’s see
what if anything
our customary God
does about it.

Him with his flattop cut,
bowtie on short sleeve shirt,
bad pants often plaid pants,
cheap shoes, pocket protector,
lived with his elderly mom
and drove her older Cadillac.  

Him coulda fallen
out of the typecasting folder
of a typecasting agent
but I knew him, he was real,
not at all a bad guy,
an accountant, one of the best,
loan you his money on your word
as to when you’d pay him back,
buy you lunch if you were strapped, 
hard to get started with
but once you were in with him
you were in.

Him unable to use a 
computer, him with his
paper, piles of it, boxes of it, 
him burrowing through
his paper to find fraud, waste,
nuggets of wrong; no one better
at it, all agreed, they handed him
every hard job, impossible error,
stubborn case.  But — 

him?  Him? Inflexible,
they charged.  Not versatile,
they whispered.  Too limited,
they agreed.

On his last day
he cried on my shoulder,
awkwardly, for all of 
ten or fifteen seconds.
He died 
within the year.

I heard a painter
railing against
nine-to-fivers,
a poet railing against 
nine-to-fivers, 
a musician shuddering
at having a nine-to-five
need-to-have, 
all variations of 

how can they go to work each day
and do that with no creativity
or room for play in a schedule?

I want to say,
you should have known him.  
Should have asked him.  
Should have
seen him cry to lose it,
should have
felt him die to not have it.
Should have
had him tell you
how he loved it, how it was like
mining, puzzling,
like a writer finding the pieces
to tell a story.

I want to say
art,
fucker,
is where you find it

and there are more places 
to look
than you, evidently,
have the imagination
to discover.