Long-ago mapped
fault lines diminish, 
become invisible
from space, vanish
from the surface
of the earth
in the aftermath
of your sundering.
Your chest
opens from within,
spews lava wind;
the forest tumbles
outside the blasted doors.
Fire becomes you
as well as a suit of armor
fits an obsolete warrior —
you are an obsolete warrior.
Unfit for battle.
Reckless, easily 
withered, you
will dissolve
to ash before you can
remove your armor
and run.

Beauty
on the interstates
searching

comes to an off ramp
Imagines that this will be
the last stop

as in that old TV series
where the main character
is always hoping for the leap home

Beauty
always gets back on the highway
after a night or two

Remains the same
Not a leap as much as a trudge
Next ramp like this one

It’s a grind
Everyday physics suggests
entropy is setting in

Listening to space
for secret messages, David
simply is, and that’s enough. 

Asking a tree
for directions home, Sheila
simply listens. This is plenty.

Big Stan is an ear and 
an eye who points out
the other two are “nuts”

when he leans into your car
to tell you you’re alright,
not like those two.

You give everyone
a dollar. Everyone
gets a dollar. It won’t help

but it’s something. God Bless,
they tell you. God Bless.
Which god, you wonder — 

the one in space, the one
hiding under the bark
of the tree? Or maybe

Big Stan’s a god,
or the God, or
there’s no gods at all.

That seems like bullshit.
Even if they are nuts,
all of them, something’s

talking to them
from somewhere else.
We are all nuts,

Big Stan. David’s
disdainful of the tree
Sheila talks to, and Sheils

has been to space
and knows David’s 
hearing nothing.

I give everyone
a dollar. I do what I can.
David’s closest to the truth.

Big Stan is only half right,
and I wish I knew how
to get the tree to tell Sheila

how to go home.

I used to be
such a goober
when it came to
how I acted around
someone I was drawn to
(although it was I gather at least
somewhat endearing to most except when 
it became clear that I did not understand
how far off I was in my estimate
of the level of interest the other person had
in my attentions) — regardless of the reason
for my interest — hero worship, attraction, 
a desire to learn,  general admiration seizing hold —
I used to be such a goober, stumbling through
conversations, asking all the wrong questions 
in even more wrong ways — touching subjects
that should have been left untouched, oddly breaching
spaces personal, professional, social, cultural, even now and then
spiritual — I used to be such a goober, addicted to the excitement
of finding someone who sparked me until after years  of corrections
and shaming I became silent before the mystery of such attractions
and now, now I’m not; I have become calmer, stiller, socially acceptable,
and far more numb within. 

Waking in darkness
to do…what?

Walk around the house
thinking daytime’s near?

Pretend this
was intentional

and go sit on the couch
in the living room

where all the light comes
from electronics

and think about yesterday,
all you did and didn’t do.

Daylight is a long way off,
it seems.

Mark this as night, still,
not early morning.

Rectification
for what was badly done

and what was undone
will have to wait until sunrise;

any wisdom that comes 
from the struggle

needs time to be born,
and this is not that time.

To sleep now, with a spoonful
of honey on your tongue.

Morning will offer
a ghost of that sweetness.

As always, you should begin again then:
lay the ghost to rest, grant it 

passage from dark to light
in tandem with your own.

The big cat in the window
with a little bowl of catnip
poured from the bottle that sits
next to the bottle of Jameson’s.

In the next room the big man
sits next to an emptied glass.
He’s used to big Scotch whisky.
Irish whiskey barely touches him.

The big cat comes in, sits down,
stares at the big man. “You looking
for more?” he asks her. She walks away.
He knows she’s not. She knows when to stop

but it gives him the excuse he needs
to go back to the kitchen and pour
something into his, something into hers.
“Don’t mind if I do.” The big cat is gone,

probably to the bed.
He should do the same.
But now, a second glass
as the first barely touched him

and he wants to be touched.
“Here’s hoping,” he says.
It comes out somewhere
between a purr and a hiss.

Like a bite of lettuce 
drenched in oil
on a salad plate
that’s about to be taken away,
or an irregular corner torn
from some unknown paper
blowing through the yard
fast enough
you can’t catch it so
you don’t bother
to try. Not to mention
those people
on your supermarket corner
for whom you feel
twinges of regret
that it’s so difficult
to rescue or clean up
after them. Must have had
a purpose once. Must have
been good. Or at the least
shouldn’t have been left behind
to litter the place.

Long night recalled
only in fragments.

Yellow apple skins glimpsed
in a refrigerator drawer.

A voice as clear
as cirrus clouds in sunset.

A remnant lust
fading into regret. 

What needs to be
retold for a different world.

Instructions on
how to be old. 

Sickness and health
interchangeable. 

Hard words: love,
damage, porcelain. 

The same old “used to be” 
shifting: is memory

credible, imagination
no more than a broken cup?

The pattern on the tablecloth.
The tablecloth on the floor

and whose eyes are those
watching from the pantry?

Fatigue in the form
of question marks.

I had better get home
before answering any of this.

Want to lie down
silently and let doubt

slide away like a kid giggling
in a downward mountain stream,

all the way into an icy pool
then coming up for air. 

A yellow apple for breakfast.
Afterward, cleaning up

the broken cup. Afterward,
memory kissing me back

to just after childhood
and the eyes of an early lover.