My arm, darker
than the tip of the candle,
cooling like the dead wick.
I was meant to give light —
but see the curl of last smoke
from the end?  Call that
the last will, or the last
bit of my will, at least
for the moment. It tells you
what I want done with me
now:  I want to rise away.

My arm, stark little twig black
against the garish night,
holding nothing, pointing.
See that distance it indicates?
I’ll never get close to the end
of the ourney. Call me the forever
step-aside on the path.  My arm
tells the story: over there’s where
I’m going, I need to go,
but I’ve been standing here 
for a very long time now.

Do this long enough…right,
it’s never long enough.  Never
the grip needed, never a long enough
fire.  Always the knowledge
of the destination ahead; never
the attainment of such a thing.
So perhaps I am meant to be
the One Who Does Not Arrive.
The one who tells his story
to the traveler who has made it 
this far.  The old one 
without so much
as a dead symbolic bird
to fall back on
as his arm drops,
at last, in surrender.

Today, yesterday,
for a long time now,

no depth seems deep enough
to get to the bottom of anything.

Tomorrow
and beyond tomorrow,

no horizon’s far enough away
to represent a future

instead of a brief extension
to this present we won’t abide much longer.

Join me then as I sit upon this ledge
in the side of Tiger Mountain.

Together we can distrust
anything not cold and damp and immediate,

anything not here and now.  
If there’s no understanding the past

and no getting to the future,
let’s instead seize hold of this granite, these maples,

the thought that somewhere during the climb
we may slip and fall and gain death’s certainty,

and the greater thought that in climbing
we might reach a place where certainty is unimportant.

A man who has never been rejected
is watching women on Highland Street

Looking at women on Highland Street
as if this were ruins in the Yucatan

As if in the ruins of a Mayan city
these women were exhibits to be viewed

Exhibits to be viewed
as if they were souvenirs

A man who has never been rejected
is shopping for a souvenir

among the women of Highland Street
imagining he is a prince of a lost realm

Prince of a lost realm he learned about in school
or perhaps in books from his father’s library

In books from his father’s library
that displayed women as souvenirs

Souvenirs for the taking by princes of the realm
Who imagine the backdrop of old roads and palaces

Ruins and palaces and even temples for men
who have never been rejected

from the Yucatan to Highland Street
never rejected ever at all

because they’ve never asked permission
when they take a woman for a souvenir of the realm

A man watches women
on Highland Street 

Imagines himself a souvenir
carved in obsidian 

Imagines himself as player
in a usefully bent myth

When at last
we’d overthrown 
what we’d let become
a bloated squid feasting
upon our heads,

we reeked so badly
it wasn’t long before 
we swooned, fainted, 
passed into a fog of stench
and fell into sleep

as deep as the one
which had given the squid
its opportunity.  This time,
however, we all held hands
as we dozed, secure

in the knowledge that 
whatever came next,
it would be our very own.  

And it was —
it was our own new squid we woke to,
our own stink weighing us back down.

I know nothing
of a human heart.

Mine’s not that, of course;
it’s an entire animal instead — 
leaping inside, eating freely,
tearing at me for purchase. 

What kind of animal, you ask —
reptile, mammal, something
fantastical?

No fixed label —
call it Angel Dog, call it
Devil Cat, call it Alien
Intruder At Home Now.
Call it, if you must, Unicorn Snake.

Whatever we choose to call it,
it’s a badass.  It makes a hole,
fills it with meat, sleeps in it
fitfully, comes out mostly
spoiling for war; when in love
it’s far worse — in truth
it’s colder, calmer when it hates. 

Do you see this tale
of the Unicorn Snake as a
metaphor, smart guy?  No
way — I’m a zoo, a terrarium
of great size with a big creature
inside and not one ounce of training
has ever stuck. I don’t bother labeling
what cannot be described or held. 

Alas for the drugs
you will not eat, alas
for your dark appetites
that will not be fed —

alas for a modern need
to use an archaic word
for this slight grief, for this raw fact:
we’ve come up with no better word

to lament a passage
so anticipated as yours.
Alas was the key word of your life,
what we said whenever we saw you;

alas, alas that we still have to call it out,
put breath to the ancient word that openly grieves
and regrets at once the simple fact
that you have existed and now are gone.

He announces that
he can stick a knife
in an eye
from across the room

and thus disturbs
the party’s universe
of care and laughter
three times:

first when all realize
he means it; second when
all realize he 
has, somehow, probably

practiced; third,
when all realize that
someone known to all,
someone allowed in this universe,

is the type of man
who not only thinks of knives,
throwing, and eyes in one sequence —
after all, they all do that —

but who has taken the pains
to ensure that the thought
is no longer secret, but, in fact,
potentially actionable.

too linear
this model of living one way
from birth to death

wish I could
loop the loop
laughing all the way around

it ain’t death I fear
but predictability
why end up where we all do?

why not say left turn, Clyde
and go straight on
till waking up yesterday morning

in another’s bed and bag of bones
starting over for a week
hell of a vacation

or best of all, stasis
no aging at all
pick a target and stay sharp

one day you go poof
one day you surprise everyone
by not dropping dead

listen
fuck immortality but fuck death too 
as automatic end result

if it’s gotta be life unto death
I’ll just take death now
thank you — at least it’s an unknown

I looked and saw that the wrong things were beloved
and stood up to say so, and to point and say:
love this instead.  

I stood up to point and say
this, here, is more worthy of your love,
and these other things should be burned.

Others stood about and shouted
and pointed, some at the things I loved,
some at that which I decried, and they proclaimed

that their choices were more worthy,
that my choices were aligned well with theirs,
or that my choices were those of the insane and evil.

Seeing us all pointing and shouting, all at different things,
all at things we liked or disliked, some of us using both hands
to praise and condemn at once, I became weary of it all

and dropped my arms and my choosing. Very well, I said,
I shall have none, shall love none, shall loathe none.
Good bye, I said, to all of this and to all my former fellows,

fare better or worse as you choose.  I turned from it
and moved, really, for the first time in a long time, 
to the blankest spot in the blankest part of the country

and looked at nothing and chose nothing to like or dislike.
I think I remember this, I said; this is the place
of making it up.  Of simply being there.

Of relearning how to look at things, how to see purely 
what is and is not for each.  The place to find knowledge
and never feel a need to found a school.

you know what they say

born in snakebite
die in hemlock
accident and healing
one and the same

they crack about cracks
say that’s how
the light gets in 

I was fractured early
thank Hell
a good flow
seeped in
a dark syrup
no light
no filler
when it crusted thick
I sealed

that badly broken
that closed up that early
I could have become one
of three things
artist
who makes it shine
criminal
who makes it pay
amateur actor
who makes it disappear

I was two of those
by nature already
so I said gimme more
I said
fraud
of thee I sling 
garbage in
and prophecy out
or vicey reversa 
I said as much as I could
never stopping to breathe 
still at it
still grinning

there is an analgesic effect
when one is wordslinging 
you can forget a lot
even when you’re writing it down

I can’t talk about the side effects right now
buy the book when it comes out 
this is just the short con
you want the big one for the full payoff
trust me on that

nod your head and I’ll
set the hook 
afterward you’ll call it art 
I will too
if you’re listening 

For certain at some point
you’ll believe in God or not,
and it will be in some way
a different belief than you held
earlier in life.  On that day

you’ll be rewarded: you’ll detect
a color in the base of the cup
of a simple yellow tulip,
a gray no one will ever have seen.
You’ll be blessed — and yet

at the same time you will lose your fondness
for Doberman Pinschers, start to see them as alien
and hideous, and turn your face to the wall
in sick disgust whenever you see one,
and you’ll be cursed.  

God, tulips, Dobies…nothing has changed
about any of these things.  Blessings, curses, ditto;
whatever you call it
when nothing has actually changed
but everything has?
That is what you call this. 

You’d best believe in it
if you haven’t already.  
Get right down in that gray
and squish around.
Pay no attention
to the barking since this, too,
shall pass.