They say there’s a revolution coming
and they say it’ll be bloodless and unseen
but it will happen as if the change that’s needed
will require nothing more than words spewed
in place of bullets and the swathe of knives
or a sudden hurricane change in the stenchwind
that roils over the land

I say there’s not a thing you can do
to make it happen with a word or a gesture
that won’t at some point also require a cutting
or a hole punched at high speed in a wall
or a chest

They say there’s a revolution coming
and they say it will be peaceful
but Gandhi himself couldn’t have changed
what needs to be changed
without a fire or a sudden decompression
that will leave some who have been in too deep
with the bends bubbling within

I say there’s not enough breath to spend
to change slavery to freedom
by just proclaiming it to be so
when so many want to keep it in place
and have the means to maze you into thinking
it has disappeared when it has not

They say a revolution is coming
and they tell that to the already convinced
but there’s not gonna be a revolution
if the only weapon you have is a patented speech
about who will see it and what it will be like
or a pronouncement on the lessons everyone needs to learn
when the schools are still nailing down the planks
on the same old soundproof boxes they’ve built for years

I say you have to fox the fox
and rat on the rat
I say you ought to stop listening to me
and everyone else who tells you what to do
and snake up the rafters of the house
and bite every hand empty or not
with a hiss and not a song
I say you oughta serve up a poison pill
with a vow of destitution as a side dish
and admit what you want
is not a revolution if you can’t stomach the sight
of thick blood pooling
in absolute silence
as you walk empty streets of palaces
and marvel at how the loud
and streaky scream of war
gave way to this

At a concert
I always just miss
the synchronized clap
all the rest of you seem to make
so well.
No matter how closely I follow
the music
I move on the offbeat,
lift the wrong foot
far enough out of time
to make it obvious
that I’m no good at this,
but I have a great time anyway

watching the lines of your hands
chained together in sheepish rhythm,
your feet shuffling perfunctorily
exactly as they’ve been shown, and

it’s even better when I spot a fellow traveler
who thinks he’s alone in the crowd,
who’s as messed up as I am and I try
to catch his eye;

we share a little
comfort then, knowing we’re hearing
the same tune that’s a proximate echo
of the party line
and getting a kick out of how clumsy
you all think we are.

Cross my toes,
as my fingers
are busy worrying.

Wear an old clover
in my ear, buried deep
to keep the voices out.

Stick a whole rabbit
in my pocket, let it squirm
until it’s smothered and I can replace it.

Count the angels who won’t look at me
and the devils who laugh at them,
forget the count and start again.

Stab a dagger into my thigh
and tell no one of the hurt.  If I can
take that, what matters of the anxious flutter

of my stomach as I wait, wait, and wait
some more?  A little dizziness from loss of blood,
a little magic, a little forethought about the cliffs

that allow a man to leap into the void
and do not care if he flies or dies; I’m there
and luck’s the only brake I’ve got on my heels.

i know this is not a new message
another stupid poem
about old hats

but we keep killing so
here it is again

to remind us all of those casual killings
which keep us alive and happy

we live off the deaths of those
we do not stop to consider

perhaps it will get us closer to the truth
to admit that we were made for deathmongering
and that to lie awake too long overthinking our steps and missteps
is to ride unicorns
into the flames around the sword protecting paradise
from the likes of us

there have been many societies
in history
who believed that what they hunted
and what they gathered
the animals they slaughtered
and the plants they cut down
shared equal consciousness
that veganism is a clumsy rationalization
when all life has a face
whether we see it or not

but they did not stop eating
from guilt
they simply understood
that one being’s survival
costs another’s life

this is not to say that we should sleep on
unnecessary pain
suffering
and war
this is not to say that we should sleep on
factory farms
the business of existence as commodity
or exploitation of others
or anything that divorces us
from the bite of the cost of living

these old hats are full of blood
but we should wear them
not proudly but humbly
because they are ours

perhaps we should say that
meat is murder indeed
and so what if it is
when the corn cries we don’t hear it
but it cries nonetheless

perhaps if we agree that abortion does cause death
but also propose that choosing it is not evil
or perhaps say that war is atrocity
but we are all atrocious

perhaps if we count the blood metals
in our cellphones and computers
and think of the dead miners
and call them unfortunate victims
when we message our likeminded friends
to join us in an online discussion about them

we can at last admit who we are
see each other as beings locked into slaughter

and see each other at last
with some compassion
we have not allowed ourselves to feel
for fear of revealing
the vital hypocrisy
we need to survive

that we all claim to want fewer
or even none
but we each have caused many
and will not surrender the living we love
until we each cause many more

hey canvas,
I’m gonna make a sail
outta you. or a painting,
or a pair of pants.

canvas, you say
you’re material.  I say
I love you more than
the material.  spirit says

god made you bleachy-pale
for the writing upon, tough
stitchability, force a curved needle
to do that and it’ll punch my hand,

don’t care.  god’s impersonal enough
not to care about you if it’s better
for me to make you creation-ground.
I’ll get my blood on you, canvas,

and no backtalk, no ticktock
or ripsnap when the wind gets at
your back.  mine, canvas, you’re mine
and I’ll sail you wear you cover you

in vision and oils maybe all at once.
I can do anything, says god.  not yours,
mine.  thank the bastard of my head,
he’s on my side.  canvas old buddy,

you’re never gonna know what hit ya.

This is how it happens: your voice finds its word
and it’s suddenly bigger than you are.
You’re carried to the top
of its eruption…

now you’re lava,
ash, sticking to cars and walls
of compounds in tropical plains
at the foot of the word,
it builds a cone
so steep, you’re going to slide off,
become a refugee fleeing it…

then you stop,
dig in, be honest and ruthless
with yourself: you were always
a nascent chimera, embryo dragon,
you roared but didn’t know
how to breathe fire or how to be
your combinations, here is your chance to learn
as you tumble across
smashed landscape of home,
your backpack full of notes, letters;

and you craft the next word
now, your voice so shattered settling
like Atlas moving a little to make the weight
bearable, now you are blackwhite crawler on moonscape,
first time visitor to naked rock: perhaps
traces of past natives, but who cares, you’re here…

and now it is fire and now it is a sea boiling up ahead,
and it’s time for the next word,
you’ll coin it
for the pinpoint bludgeoning of the rolling soil
cooling to blue now, red now and again and after,
roads melt, glass melts, salt melts,
the sugary drug of not caring where the word goes
and how the voice roughens around it;
for you know now you were never
just a throat, a lung,
you were always more
than a bearer of air in a vessel
you didn’t build.

You’re a damn good pure sight to see
for those who flee this, looking back at you
surfing your voice on that word,
riding atop the archaic spit
of the mantle below the crust
making new land
that once tilled will be rich.

Whenever it stops killing
and smoldering, wherever it stops,
that’s where you deepen into your own.

That when you
can claim it.  Call yourself writer,
story teller, poet.  Call yourself
volcano surfer.  Call out the name
you choose for it.  Pick the next word.
Call up the fire.

Tags: poems, poetry, meditations