“Every angel is terrifying,” said 
Rilke, and I love those words, 
and I long have agreed.

I have them tattooed, you see,
across my back
right where wings would be. 

I thought a long while
about the language I should use
for this — English, or original German —

and settled for English, so that no one
at the beach or gym
with All American monolingual ignorance

will ever assume
that based on the look of the words,
I must be a Nazi — instead,

they’ll maybe think I’m a lapsed Catholic
or troubled Christian of another sort,
with a blue-black charm across my skin

to fend off the possibility
that I might be terrible too, someday.
I’m certain most will still not understand.

How is it possible, most will say,
that what God created for His comfort
and support could scare anyone?

Isn’t it supposed to be lovely in Heaven, isn’t it
peace beyond understanding
expressed as real estate?

And I’ll laugh, and say that
it’s ‘personal,’ and at any rate
I’ve only ever seen the words on me

backwards in a mirror, so maybe
that way it means something else?
And they will move away from me,

which is all I’ve ever wanted.
Every angel is terrifying, even one
without wings, even one waiting

to return home.  I must keep the people
away from me, I cannot be responsible
if they discern the truth and begin to scream.

It’s not polite to say this
Why don’t you go away
We want you to die
or to not have ever existed 
would have been better

It’s not right to say this
Why aren’t you a memory
or not even a memory
We want to not know you
We want you to be fictional

but who would
have written you
Whose idea could you
have been
Where would you have
percolated up from
What oily bed would
have given you birth

It’s not possible to understand
why are you what you are
Why aren’t you extinct
We’d love you more were you fossilized
We’d love to ponder if you were real

The hot wars, acid suspicions
and other pleasantries
of our families both blood and chosen

keep boiling into the fabric
of our robes and threaten
to scald the threads,

stripping them bare
of any color and half or more
of their strength.  

We are soggy and scared,
burned, either afraid to stand up
or defiant and ready to scream.

What are we going to be —
the same cloth as always,
or something new

that drapes us naturally
and shows us off with deep color
and soft hand? 

islands began to sink
yesterday

(it was in fact a few years ago
you only noticed yesterday)

oak trees are spotting pink
in open places on their bark

half the moths
are immigrants

half the toads
are emigrants

mostly all the bees
are genocided

listen to the
rain’s complaint:

this is not
soil
I recognize

and the wind’s confusion:

whose hair is this
so rough and sparse

what’s to be done?

dear humans:

you are
ours too so as family
you are requested to stop calling
hurricanes twisters and floods (oh my)
“natural disasters”

the preferred term
from this side
is

“affirmations”

It started with a humble
scratch in the dirt
that turned into a trench,
then a mine, then a canyon.
This week has gone startlingly deep;
there are ancient roots

showing everywhere
and now, here I am
in the lowest bottom
where the only smell is dirt and
all around me is dark,
but I can see stars

when I look at the blue noontime up top.
From where I’m standing,
that appears to be the only reason
I’m here: to see stars in a daylight sky
that’s a mile farther away from me
than it is from everyone else.

67,000 perfectly lovely
gods out there.
One of them wants us
to believe there’s just One.

67,000 facets
to the diamond of God-Being
and one of them says
the light’s coming out of just One.

Try to be serious!
That one must be
the God Of Cosmic Jokes,
or of the Ego.

67,000 little gods
out there,
and that’s just what
we can see.  Probably

another 67,000 at least,
invisible to the poor
human eye,
that we could call on,

yet one god in that mix
demands we believe
in One God,
claims there is only

a God of
Umbrella and Blanket
covering every possible
need for Deity.  

We keep listening
to that one,
we’re going to be
in trouble, I think.

All you need to do
is listen to this world screaming
right now, from its roots
to its crown canopies,

from its abyssal waters
to its rock peaks; listen
the old way, the way we listened
before we stopped listening

to 67,000 gods and started
listening to that One
with the blanket and the umbrella
and the sword and the plow.  

67,000 gods: at least that,
perhaps twice that
or even more than that,
reminding us that

before we ever heard
that insistent One, they were talking
directly to us in small voices
all the time.  

Remember how that sounded? Like 
whales, like crickets, like wind, like water,
like fire: the 67,000 voices
of our particular patches of Earth.  

Good world,
I will today
not force myself
to look down on you
from rage or sadness.
I will not manufacture
excuses not to marvel
at the light
and the dark of you.

When I cannot control
a storm within me,
I will today remember
to close my eyes
and hold that cyclone
in, let it whirl and bash me
and not you, good world;
neither you nor your people
shall suffer because of it.

Neither you nor your people,
good world, will today feel
what disease and
the crippling coping
with disease
have done to me — good world,
I know you’re good even if
I am blind to that now and then.

Some tell me
to open my eyes
and let you heal me,
good world; some claim
your Buddha
or your Jesus all alone
could make it so; some say
your skin and your nature
are enough — and good world,
I believe that may be true 
for some; 

but oh, we’ve been around,
you and I.  Tried so much
and failed to change the inside
storms.  Better still,
I think, to say: 

Good world,
I will today let you be good
and not malign or slander you
if I cannot stop the storm
from seizing me; I will not
forget the difference
between what I am
and where I am.

the cat is again
in horse mode,
rearing up on two legs
and prancing the house
as if it were
her paddock…

perhaps she is 
a horse reborn?

I don’t care about
orthodox ladders of rebirth.
it is not a question of learning a dogma.
I am just idly asking:
if this is a sign of reincarnation,
is horse to cat
a step up or
a step back? 

I seek to understand my role
in her karmic cart wheeling.
I seek to know hers in mine.  

if she has
nine lives do they all
return at once?

that would explain a few things —
how it seems there always are
a lot of souls in her
asking for food.
a lot of souls in her
pushing hard enough 
on my old legs
to often make me
almost fall.

she is crashing about the place again.
she’s no saddle broken nag, 
this one.  

whatever the reason she’s here,
whatever the lesson she needs,
it’s one not to be learned through
obedience, lap sitting, purring.

neither, perhaps, is mine.

There’s not enough time —
we have to start now —
everyone, quick — 

each of us
has got to find common ground
at once with a fish — AT ONCE! and

it won’t be enough to say
“I have affinity with all living things” —
I’d call bullshit on that if it didn’t insult the bull —

one fish, two fish, redfish, bluefish: pick
a single fin-buddy and get cracking — learning
language, meeting the family —

it’s not been enough — the abstraction, the symbolism —
it’s not been enough — the fact of extinction and the stink
of oil balls in the sand — maybe

if we actually thought of
a few of these guys as neighbors
and friends it might be different —

not just for breakfast anymore — now
a tornado goes through their school
everyday — we eat the holocaust — soon

perhaps we’ll be the survivors
or the remnants and we’ll need
our friends — all the potential friends

we’ve been killing — dunno; maybe
it’s grasping at straws full of death
but we have to start somewhere and soon —

If I could be the 1990s,
I’d be
the O. J. Simpson trial.

You would go through me
certain
of certain things.

I would put on
airs and gloves
demonstrating that nothing fits.

Someone would notice
that the narrative
fails at key points,

and someone
would raise a fatal,
reasonable doubt…

then all hell would break loose
and you’d swear never to forgive me
for raising your prurient hopes. 

If I were the 1990s,
if I were the Simpson trial,
would you revisit me now?

Would you whisper 
“maybe I got it wrong?”
when you saw me again?

Would you take
all the factors into account
and reassess and realign?

If I were the 1990s
would you be willing 
to relive me

even if you could never be sure
that I was not the dark stain
you have always thought me to be?

hey Brown
yer dying here
of weight
and waiting
of fat and facts

hey you
no shit 
I’m dying here cuz
education and art demand
sacrifices — I give you me