Start 
pointing fingers

Stop saying
how is this is happening here

Start saying 
this is being done here

Stop saying
this is being done here

Start saying
they are doing this here

Start
pointing fingers

directly
at those who do

Start recalling
this is not the first time

Stop saying
how is this is happening here

Start saying 
for some this is how it’s always been

Stop
wringing your hands

Stop pretending any of this
is new or out of character

Stop 
gesturing at old paper

Start
reading old paper

Start
pointing at old paper

Stop
saying “But…but…” when you do

Start
pointing fingers

Stop
ignoring your mirror

It’s a neighbor with a bad car
parked on the street
without plates, the cops
hovering around then having it towed.
It’s the couple screaming at 
each other on the sidewalk and 
one of them tears a rock out of your wall, 
raising it overhead, and now
it’s your concern. Did they screw up
the succulents that grow there,
the hen and chicks? You yell down from
the bedroom window to put it back.
That breaks the anger spell.
They leave after tossing the rock
onto the top of the wall.
You will replace it later
now that all is well and after
the tow truck leaves with the bad car?
It’s almost as suburban out here as it is back home
where high school friends live who say
“the city is a cesspool” and trot around
boastfully shaking their heads at me 
from their beautiful yards 
where the hen and chicks grow from holes
artfully cut into the sides of barrels 
transformed into planters they bought
at the hardware store down the street
from the place where that guy 
stabbed another guy in the back of the head
at a lazy evening barbecue a couple of years ago,
an isolated incident among isolated people,
insulated people who choose to turn away. 
To those high school friends I say:
welcome to the cesspool
where I see my shit and name it
while you hide yours.
In the longest of long runs
it all smells the same. 
It all spills out eventually
just like those tough little plants do when they 
bloom, long translucent stems and flowers
drooping out of barrel holes and stonewall cracks,
trying to make the best
of wherever they find themselves.

There are very few clues to find
when exploring how
he became this narrow. 

His permanent record
barely explains anything
as no one ever felt much need

to put notes in there.
His employment file
describes his mild job history,

annual satisfactory reviews,
merely adequate
bumps in pay year upon year. 

Tax returns tell nothing
and there’s nothing of note
in the newspapers of record. 

So how he got to
hollering about the “woke mob”
that’s killing him, is a puzzle

when there’s no sign of damage
from anyone in his history. 
It all looks pretty clean.

Except for the bullshit 
on his tongue, he could be anyone.
That may be the problem: perhaps

he thought he should be exalted
for being so much like 
what he’d been told he should be

that when being ordinary and 
bland and safe-pale was not enough
by itself to make him king,

he drew a sword on his face
and stepped up and out screaming 
for his kingdom.

He makes it up
as he marches along
behind the bulls, feeding. 

More than a little 
distance between 
me in a car
being pulled over
for speeding or bad light
or something or other
or nothing at all

and the ones
(you know the ones I mean)
who don’t drive away
from being pulled over
for speeding or bad light
or something or other
or nothing at all

I’ve got my head
in my hands
most days when
I sit on the couch
and think about
how the news plays
on and on the same

look at me there with
my head in my hands 
as I sit on my butt
I’m a circle a wheel
a stone in a catapult
I just can’t
launch myself

through my TV screen
into the fire around
the scenes on screen so instead
I’ll drive fast and carelessly
into the next city town village over
See what happens — aw go on
Nothing’s gonna happen most likely

Most likely the worst
that can happen is a wreck 
and I’ll just be a tragedy
of my own making
The lights will be blue and benign
The tones of the news anchors  
will be mournful resigned

In the next life
I wanna be a boulder
no one can find a use for
until I’m hurled a little distance
over the walls of a fortress
I can wait till the next life
for someone else to get justice

They long to be
elsewhere

People who are not
in their places want to be
anywhere but where they sit

seeming to be
comfortable

Happiness
and ease don’t look
the same on everyone

They long to be
elsewhere and

it feels like my duty
to assist them and help
move them along

to their next place
It’s a sacred duty

We have a right
to move the uncomfortable 
to where they belong

and these people
clearly don’t belong

here in my neighborhood
They are smiling but
they look so lost

whenever we make eye contact
They look like they’d be happier

one street over
One town over
One country over

There’s danger
in poisonous lands and water;
simply being there
and breathing
is enough to make you
sicken and die.

There’s danger
among the venomous;
if you know
where to look
and how to armor up
you may walk there but

if you
blow your cover
and your armor fails,
a single sting 
may get through
and be enough. 

There’s danger
where the infectious
roam free, spewing 
plagues and slipping germs
past your defenses when you thought
you’d done enough.

You can’t stay safe inside forever;
you are going to have to leave
the safe house one day.
Down the block, all over the country,
you see houses with trouble flags
and deadly yard signs.

Is the air around them infectious?
Are your neighbors in fact venomous?
Are these signs that the whole damned world
is poisonous and this is what 
a mass casualty event looks like as it begins?
Are you enough for whatever comes next?

is what 
we thought 
was most likely
to kill us 
when I was
a grade school kid

and why 
we believed
it was out of 
“stranger danger”
that the End and the Evil
would come

all the news
all the way
through USSR and PRC
to PLO and ISIS
initials that stood for
the Other

till one day
it became as clear to us
as blood
on a forensic slide
that MAGA could kill
without pressing a button

that without
a single ICBM launch
it had been war
against us from back
when it was called
KKK 

which I learned 
as a kid
we’d crushed or
relegated to history
with a hey nonny nonny
we shall overcome

what we learn 
out of school these days
is that nowadays and always
look next door instead of overseas 
for the End and the Evil
as your neighbor’s face

might hold
a loaded silo
a bastard flag
an LOL and a J/K
waiting to open
and let the Great Death fly