The curtains
that fall across the light

when we try to explain to each other
how we put our fingers
on the mercury
in the language
that we use

are damask
and metal-threaded
and heavy

and they block the window
from which enough light
would come in
to make the slippery little domes
shine enough
for us to catch them

We all understand
how the words refuse to be corralled
easily
at our mere command

but cannot explain the methods of the chase
other than to say

it is difficult
and it requires an openness
to seizing them on their terms
as if they had minds of their own
and lives they seek to lead
independently of us

Some will invoke
a muse as the keeper
of their skill at the hunt
and others will speak
of rules and skill and craft

but in the end
we all know
if we let the light in
and scramble enough
we catch
what we need

and those damn curtains
just get in our way

My last name
is likely derived

from the color of a swept wooden floor
or the dirt swept from it
into a pan
into the trash

from the color of shit
or the body of a dead blossom

from the color of waterlogged pilings
under a fog soaked dock

from the color of

things walked on
things discarded
things never seen

unless you’re drowning

Again, for the second night,
stupendous winds in the dark.
I should take greater note of it —
after all,
everything is a mission —

but instead I sigh
and turn my face from the window.
It will wait, I say,

but will it?  What blows across the weeds
tonight?  Is there angel or demon
in that wailing?  Some lost spirit
looking for a translator?

The wind doesn’t care. 
It tells its stories
to anyone who will listen
and leaves it up to me
if I want to answer.

It will wait, I say again;
less certain, though, I fight sleep
and wonder if there is something
I should be doing now
that should not wait. 

Everything is a mission,
and who am I to decide
not to undertake it?

Knowing
that demand, I turn my face
to the wall anyway.
Sleep robs the wind of me
tonight, but the wind
will wait me out, knowing
I will have to respond
eventually.

Thinking hard during
a night drive north
on an empty road,
the dark rolled tight around me
like a cigar wrapper.

This evening
a young girl with a strange name
asked me why so many of my poems
seem to include some reference
to being apart from my body,
inhabiting it as a foreign entity.

I know it’s true —
I am a passing voice.
Every moment a container,
a long tube awaiting flame.
I’m the filler made
to go up in smoke.

When she asked me if
I ever feel whole

I could feel the weight she was ready to hang
on the answer…

and said yes,
there are moments. 

And then I stopped,
unable or too shy
to explain.

We looked at each other.
She shook my hand and left…
and what I should have said
came to me on the road, here, now,
hot with the urgency of needing to get home
to my bed, to her…
should have said:

Don’t worry. 
It will happen,
It will be better.
Someone will set you on fire,
or you will find your own source
of spark,
and you will understand unity
as a curl of white in the air
that scents everything, that makes you
and the air and the breath and the fire
one.

no broad brushstrokes today

this is no day for sweeping
rationale

instead allow
only detail
through

pray that by bedtime
your eyes sting from having seen
what is directly before you

having concentrated
on tiny ants
sand between toes
fine blond arm full of hair
flaked lips
scent of garlic on sweet tongue
tomato flowers (yellow toothed bells)
finger whorls
may you then know that
there is no global only local
to be revered

and stop claiming you care for what you cannot hold in your own hands

The only true art I’ve ever made

is the C-shaped scar I bear
in the back of my left hand
where I once laid a cigarette down
to burn through a fifty dollar bill
in an old bar trick.  The trick
is that you challenge someone else
to do it and tell that person that
if they can hold their hand stiff
till the bill is burnt through,
they can have it.  You of course
say this knowing that the bill will not burn through
because the heat from the cigarette rises
and will only char it, but in my case
I knew this and used my own skin and cash
to demonstrate the folly of such an act,
and thanks to Jameson’s whiskey
was able to shock and horrify others
with the resultant minute long endurance
of the pain.

My hand swelled and a cavern opened
on its back, weeping pus
for two weeks after, and I never had it treated
because where would my point have been
if I had, if I’d acknowledged how much stupidity
it took to point out stupidity?  To make a fool
of myself to the point of anguish?

Now I touch that scar and proclaim

that everything I’ve done since that night
on a stage or a page, every word I’ve written
or placed in its round hole,
has been a fraud and a cheat, and only the single “C”
on the back of my left hand has been the truest Work
of making my point known,
and the only thing that mars its perfection
is that I did not put it on my writing hand,
my good hand, my false right hand
that now lays down
ersatz spectacles
of vulnerability and sacrifice for others’ pleasure,
and there is not enough whiskey in the world
to make me believe it does not hurt
worse than the fire on my left hand
ever did.

The matter at hand
is this boiling pot.

A first bubble rises and bursts
to herald the success
of heated metal
at causing the water
to roll. 

My own contribution
has been incidental —
I filled the pan
and turned the knob,
and this happened.

I’m trying to recall
why I did this.
All of tomorrow
sits before me
this late at night
and I don’t remember
the smallest thing
about what happened today
or why this was
necessary.

Seems a shame to let it go to waste —
what shall I cook and eat?
Let it be breakfast time!
No one ever made a law
that a day must start
at first light,

and even if I don’t know why
I started this,
I can put it to use,
certainly.