Out of control
from the bees who’ve nested
in your glove

Fling it off then reach
with a bloated hand for the doorknob
to get out of there

Bypass
the kitchen sink
the cold water and antiseptic

Run to the easel
Try to paint the flinging
and the urge to do it

Call it
“Art by accident and misadventure”
It’s crude and fascinating

Makes a splash
Go buy some more gloves
and try to replicate it

Stick your hand in a hive
over and over again
React in paint

The word “pain”
makes up the greater part
of the word “paint”

Some days
it’s the whole word
and the whole world

The chase, he says, the chase is
what’s most exhilarating. 

Try it,
if only for the weediness of it —

how it leads you
from the trimmed lawns
and edged paths
out to the cattails
left neglected by the waterside,

out into the weeds and mushy ground
where you’ve always wanted to seek things out.

Try it, like you would
a rollercoaster.
It’s the loveliest fear by far
that you might lose yourself
in the wonder of what might happen
if a bolt comes loose or a memory
breaks rogue-free
while you’re out there.

Try it,
I’ve opened my hand to you, he says.
Take it,
or don’t;

the moment of choice,
of knowing there is a choice
and agreeing to choose,

will be more important than what you actually choose.

pretended indifference
to what the tree sheds on my car.
in truth, rage as comprehensive

as any felt toward evil
or avoidable tragedy, which
is the same.  no filter

for fault.  it’s all my fault —
parking the car there, my fault
because I can’t afford a garage.

my fault the weather that kills
and floods and refuses to quench thirst.
my fault darfur.  something will pay

and it’ll likely be me.  my fault too,
that: self-destruction a sin, an incurred cost
of doing my business.  those maple wings

aren’t going anywhere except
between me and my hairshirt.  same with
words regretted, actions untaken that led

to trouble — between itch and rash
they go and when i keep quiet in spite of
the insane sensation i know it shows

on my face and my fingers
and the twitching of my cheek. pretended
indifference fooling only me. everyone else

knows i’m bugging and all because
nature and i are at war because
i can’t tell the difference between us.

Charging the phone,
keeping the windows open.

The cold air, the light snow.
First coverage of the season,
and it won’t last long into tomorrow.

The phone not ringing this late:
both a bad and a good thing. It’s waiting,

and I’m waiting for the snow to fall and then melt.
I keep the windows open a crack.  Might
hear a person calling

from out in the snow, where sound gets crisp
and carries far.  Phone’s on, windows are open:

it’s cold, snowing, and the night
is breathless.  I’m huddled here waiting
for something, someone.  A good thing.

Lock me down for the night
in the ghost’s house.  I’ll come out
in the morning and tell you everything.
I’ll explain the halting voice
that reaches peak whisper-rasp
in the ears of the scoffing father.
I’ll explain the knocking doors
that stick rock chopsticks
in the mother’s head. 
I’ll tell you all about
what the youngest child stares at
through the slats in his hell-closet.

Lock me down for the night
in the ghost’s house
and I’ll come out and tell you
how easy it is to raise the dead.
The unfinished business of rickety attachment
is what keeps them jerky and repetitive here,
monotonous and bored within these walls.
Nothing in there’s got an ounce of harm
in any ectoplasmic bone it shakes
as it strolls partway down the halls
and back again.  

Lock me in with them
and I’ll come out and tell you: 
I lived through worse
a long time ago when I was a kid like yours,
the one who lives here now, and what he fears most
isn’t the dumb ghost who’s hung on so long here,
but the one he might become if he doesn’t figure out
how to get past your fright and fear and learn to live.

listen to the counsel
of your neck

hairs at full salute
chill rolling up from the shoulders

how it twists
stiffens

it says
mortality is a sense

centered in the line
between head and body

which comes alive
at moments of great need (such as this one

when he speaks of love —
listen to the counsel of your neck)

I think there’s a problem
in my walls: clicking, voices,
the flavor of flowers.
I hear Italian radio, dubbed popular
songs in the other room.

The violet walls shake like a speaker membrane.
The clicking of tuning knobs, switches, antennas
scraping the studs.  It sounds like
cursing and goes on all the time.  The house
broadcasts bad memories.

I think there’s a problem in me, too, now.
I hear myself speaking with an accent,
call the pain in my ankles
“my grandmother’s
disease,” can’t keep my hands

off switches and knobs.
Turn them
incessantly.  Try to communicate
with others.  Try to keep
from crawling in there with them.

To try and break the spell, I’ll go outside
undressed, nude as a buttonmaker protesting
the trend toward zippers and elastic waistbands.
It will be dramatic.
It will be seen as having a subtext by some,

but I’m just trying to find a place
where I can’t hear whatever’s in the walls.
I’m not that crazy.  I’ll leave my clothes behind
because I don’t dare open the closet,
and haven’t done so in weeks.

Once out here, I’m relieved to find
that out here the only voices are in plain English
and I understand them at once.  That clicking
out here is clearly just handcuffs.
That pain in my ankles is because the cop tripped me

to make me go down.  I don’t care, and I’m only crying
because things are making sense again,
and I didn’t even need a radio to tell me that.
Between my sobs I’m making up a song.  It’s for the cops —
the refrain:  “Don’t go in there, and block your ears if you do.”

Do me a solid —
flip me
what used to be a word
we all knew.

Then let’s dig that word,
that daddy-o word,
that makes it all copasetic
when we hear it.

Dig that right-on word
that grooved in and delivered
back in the day, that Kilroy word
that was everywhere once;

caught the vibe and held it,
nifty and neat and tight,
like a wicked cool spell
making it all happen.

I’m going with the radical
word, used to be the word
we said was Word, boss word
holding court, groovy word;

word sharp as scissors, cut slack with it,
slang it like David’s stone against
old Goliath rules, then didn’t bother to pick it up
because something smoother came along.

Gotta love the word, the far out word,
old word sure but it’s still all aces.
Sometimes reaching back gives you
all the solid you need to make it new.

A river,
a bridge.
A hard faced hawk
over the water
as I passed.

A mountain-stone in Georgia.
Peregrines on updrafts
hovered six hundred feet above
the ground, ten feet off
the edge of the cliff
where I was standing.

Were those eagles, there
above me on a Portland street?
Were those buzzards above the field
down the road?

Do they ever touch down?
I only see them in trees and on
the wing.  Once, one carrying a snake
let it trail across my car’s hood
but if it came to ground I did not see.

And now the cries of this mated pair in the backyard —

will they come down?

Go ahead and impersonate
kings and queens. 
Assume air
bends for you. 
Claim blood
you only have ever scented from afar.
This is not a country
for unbalanced assumptions.
This place is as much
the Wobblies
as it is the Carnegies,
as much the Underground Railroad
as it is the Border Patrol,
and when you primp and stir
and expect so much, you
should stop and recall that nature
always restores balance.

What moments my face etches within itself
are not those of my choosing:
what lands upon me and inscribes itself
is not often recognized when it comes.

If the air were as acidic as these impressions suggest,
I’d have been liquid long ago
and would long ago have soaked invisibly away
into the earth, most likely leaving no trace.

Only a mirror away is an understanding
of this erosion and resculpting, yet rarely do I look
at one.  I keep myself rigid and blind,
stare ahead thinking of how much I’d love to melt away.