The modern mourner
regrets genocide and repression
immediately upon opening his eyes
while listening to radio news in bed.

He rises every day
with a few fat tears.
They fall into his coffee cup.
He sips, then sours
on the taste — is this fair trade?
Next time, he decides,
he’ll buy fair trade

so it will taste better.  So he
will be better. To halt
genocide and repression
in their tracks. Economic, social
justice from this warrior king
every time he finishes a coffee
he has yet to buy or brew —
wipe away those tears,
you beautiful man!  Someone
will be bound to love you for this.

Good Night Song
rattles around the cave
with all the shadows
for audience.

The shadows say,
“Tell me a story.” 

Good Night Song says no,
story is what’s wrong
with the world.  Story

draws a line through
layers.  Things are 
twice, three times connected
while other things
fall off the bright line,
it’s a sin and a shame.

Out in the valley
below the hills 
that hold the cave
we are shadows too,
also looking for a story,
and we don’t care what 
Good Night Song Says,
we will have one.

We sing
Good Night, good night;
make it up as we go along
here in the valley 
as dark as the cave.
We catch hold of the bright line
Good Night Song won’t anchor
and pretend like mad
that we understand
while whatever we discarded 
to make the story clean
becomes a shadow
and squats in the night,
prepared for a long wait.

There will be no room for Jesus
or Mohammed or any old messiah at all
in my afterlife.

I will have a God
in charge of tomatoes,
wind, and rain. That’s all.

We ghosts will govern ourselves
by the rules of ghostkind:
number one, pass through.

Number two, it is over
and now insignficant.
Number three, pass through.

Come sit, have these good tomatoes
with me, I’ll say to every ghost
passing through.  There will be many 

and God will provide. We will suck the fruits
dry, pick more, laugh at how the wind and rain
shape and reshape us.  Do it all again and again. 

I just must stop myself before I am stopped.
That explains it better than saying

a life of yarn after yarn
got old.

I am tired of paying
attention and cost;  comes a point

you ought to stop messing yourself up. 
That’s all I’m saying.

I know, I know
a few things are going to be around

a long time after me, but will they be
understood as I desire?  I guess

that’s not my problem, I guess
I ought to stop worrying and loving

and suchlike.  Stop myself, then,
as I should.  As is desired.  As is 

going to happen anyway by dint
of my doing, probably, no matter

how safely I proceeded — you can’t do that
and remain safe, really.  I stop pretending

here, now.  Anyway
you’ve got the work to look at.

I’m tangential to it.  Always have been.
Enough to say:  don’t waste time.

I stop here because it’s a waste of time.
Never, though, the work.  The work stands.

Don’t waste time thinking otherwise;
I’m good to go now.  It’s been enough.

— for James Acord

Look into these woods and see
how old wheels creased a road
into the yielding earth.
Follow it
to where it peters out
in a clearing and 
a cellar hole.

New England’s
full of these — gray stones
stacked into the cold ground.
Memoirs of lost families, 
homesteads.  

The new woods
around them conceal failed orchards
where deer rejoice, a little drunk
on fermented, fallen fruit.  

Sit here a while
on the ruins and think of seeing
Nipmuc or Passamaquoddy ghosts,
though they are gone.  These woods
aren’t even the ones from their past.

Pretend it’s all still happening here
because it’s all still happening here —

seen the foreclosure rate lately?

When the phrase
“I want to hurt him”
comes into your mouth or brain
about a variety of men
as often as it has lately,

it must mean you’ve been spending time
on the Web,
on the TV,

in the good old US of A.

Some will deplore this, but 

man up — surely,
someone’s got to do it and
you’re the obvious choice.  You’re so
calm, usually,  So level headed.  You
can be trusted with such wet work — 
you’re no hot head.  

I’ll bet the eagle 
on the Great Seal that given
a sheaf of arrows and an olive branch,
you’ll choose to beat the offender
with the olive branch.  

When your picture comes up after the fact
on the Web,
on TV,

in the good old US of A,

please try and have the grace
not to be shocked 
at what they say about you.

If given one
I’d lick a gun
some nights.  
Other days
might see me
rub a knife sharp.
I’m no liar — weapons
please me, steel my
blood.  I’m not alone in this,
I know why:
there’s a tangible
thrill in my sack
thinking of craft put
in service to
a dark reflex, 
the second oldest urge
after the obvious.  
Is there shame in feeling it?
Yes.  Is there an action pending
from it?  No. But lie about it?
No, nay, never.  That
would embody it so swiftly
that I’d stop thinking
indeed.

the radical self
loves itself into
distraction from what
it needs to hate

the radical self
loves itself into
comfort with ideas
it needs to spit out

the radical self
puts itself into
positions from which
it needs to escape

the radical self
leaves itself no room
to pull away and twist
when it needs to change

I have been a radical self
who put himself into
a cage with his animated
need for validation

I have been radical
and eaten at myself over
the contradictions I embraced
when I needed to just stop

this once radical self
loves nothing completely
and is safer now
I like what I am well enough to know

when to hate myself