Simply stated, tonight
I have looked at my life.
Where there should be

terror and misery, I find instead
the face of peace and
a sliver of beauty,

what Rilke called
a form of terror
located this side of terrible.

Maybe I’m not far enough in
to see the far side tonight
and fall to my knees in fear.

If so, then this is as far
as I care to go right now.
I will allow myself to pretend

for an evening. The horror
in my life can remain beautiful
tonight. Let me sleep till

the broad light of day.
I’ll deal with it all then,
and at least have the memory

of this peace to steel me
as I turn to face
that deadly angel.

If your shadow ever
breaks open before you
and a shinier you pops out
like a fresh chick from a dark egg

what you should do
is eat the shell at once, swallow it whole
(because nutrients, y’know)
then shoo that newbie away into the forest
or desert or teeming city streets —
wherever you find yourself —
to fend for itself.

Swallow enough of your shadow
and you will change for the better,
we promise. Look
at how that new you is doing,
for instance. Whenever its shadow
hatches a shinier child
it sucks up those fragments
then mothers that new bird
all the way, every day.

You wouldn’t do any of that, of course.
You wouldn’t have a clue.
You would drink in front of the kid
and kick it and call it names
until it wilted or rotted clean through
and dulled itself right back to being
just like you —

which is why we’re telling you,
don’t do it. Don’t try.
It will hate you for it
but be infinitely better off on its own
even if it doesn’t survive,
and the rest of us will be, too, because
no one needs another just like you.

To all my well-loved ones
throughout this time,
across all this space,
I beg you not to despair
for more than a moment
over that which appears
desperate and beyond change,

for the single lesson of history
is that anything
may shift in any direction
at any point
through the appearance
of something unexpected:

a plague,
a wayward ship,
a rogue wind,
a single bullet.

All we must do,
always, is learn
to see the open door
beyond the moment,
gather ourselves into
a phalanx of hope,
and walk through.

If only I could tell you
everything I know
about this space
into which you have come

and see how your face might change
as you learned of what is in
those dark corners
and got a glimpse under

its shadow-born foundation
to see the hard stone
it is built on,
I might feel better

about how I breathe now.
I might learn to inhale
without fearing the worst
has entered me.

I might imagine
exhaling no trace
of poison into
your available air.

Instead, wordless and unable,
I sit and wait for you to just feel
the same nameless
everything I know.

It’s all I seem to be able
to do: this waiting, this stunted
breathing, this fear of full living.
This selfish dying within

that offers you nothing
but precipice.
It is unfair to assume
that you should fall when I do.

Any time at all, the sacred.
Over the moon with that which calls.
Behind the diner, making God.
All night. Staring at the ceiling. Unable to breathe.
Break syntax in case of emergency, is what the doctor said.
Pick up after. Leave it as good as it was.
Did you wash? Are you clean enough to be jewelry now?
Want to see you, sparkler. Want to see you, altarpiece.
I require nothing from you, sacred. I take you whole.
Whole and puzzled and here we are at church everywhere.
Profane left behind, mundane made sacred. You’re the priest.
Also, the deity. Also, the adversary. (Also, no adversary, no deity.)
I am coming to look you in the eye and beg you to stand up.
Stop pretending you are anywhere else.

At the drop of this season’s
first red leaf

I was no longer
what I had always been

and appeared
to those looking on

as something other than
surely human,

a figure obscured,
backlit by evening-slant glow.

Dear friends, fellow citizens
of this hard-changed world,

know how far we have come
and how far is left to travel;

know as well that I see you as
more or less the same way.

I assume we are still
the same as we were before

but, tempered now by isolation,
shifting light and cooling air,

we have somehow
moved closer to becoming

implacable, pure spirit; humans still
but now grimly enhanced

by a sense of how little time
we have left

before all around us
grows terminally cold.

I am not a fancy man
Just a man bound
in service to
necessity

To stay there
I drink
a pot of coffee by sunrise

and by this I mean
neither a pot
of French press
nor a pot of artisanal brew
poured from some new invention designed to extract
the floral flavor from some ancient strain
of mountain grown wildcat shit bean

I mean instead
that I drink a pot of coffee
made in a Mr. Coffee using
whatever decently farmed bean
is on sale in whatever market
I went to on my way home last night
from whatever
last rideshare I gave
or long return commute I made
from some far too far away
per diem contract job
I just completed

I drink a pot of whatever coffee I can get
that will pull me awake before sunrise
after too little sleep

then sit down to steal some time
for trying to tell the truth
about beauty and justice
and all the good abstractions
we live for
before heading into the concrete

terror at unpaid rent
nagging pain in my teeth
worry about every stranger
I let into my car
who might carry not one
but every virus
the memory of
every sugar shock
that laid me out
for lost days unplanned

I drink a pot of coffee
not for its flavor but its effect
and ritual
I can’t afford flavor
I can afford effect
and can make some comforting routine
out of the gurgle and hiss
of the old machine

All I look for from each day
is not to curl into a ball
or end up laid out
on a cold bed
to never write again
or work again
or love again

Flavor is a luxury I can’t afford
to seek

though I do remember it

Behind Mr. Coffee on the counter
is my grandmother’s stove top
Bialetti moka pot
and behind my regular drip grind
is a can of Lavazza espresso grind

for someday
some afternoon respite
with a blank screen
and a free from worry hour or two

When I see these things I tell myself

Soon