Spending the scant treasure we have left
on the mundane. Breathing’s now as expensive
as sleeping. How we’ll balance the books
is unclear. Feels like we will owe forever.

They gave us a cursory accounting, 
said there would be no full reckoning 
until after we were done with being;
we accepted these lies. Accepted this decline.

Silver and gold, folding bills, 
electronic ghost money; even our best lives offered up
on collection platters to the liars we have always 
honored who claim destitution is freedom.

So: they call this broke. They call this
poverty, poor, bereft and adrift. We call this
now.  We call this eye of the needle;
exit of the labyrinth; birth canal.

Midday gusts
push my car
from side to side
while driving on an 
expired license,
just above speed
limits; stalling at
lights — fuel filter,
I hope that’s all 
it is. Hope gets me
home to collapse
where I start to think about 
how expensive gas
has become and
how long till my money
comes again;
and yeah, there’s 
nuclear war and 
my long ago relegated
to a far closet
childhood fears
knocking to come
out. Around here,
we call this Monday
or Tuesday or 
any old day of 
nothing definite
but precipice.

The news is showing a rally for Ukraine
and I bite my lip till it bleeds
as I think about all-American flag waving
and wonder how many of those people
out there tonight waving the Ukrainian flag

will go home afterward 
whistling past the fact
that their own flag stands above 
a killing field, waves daily
above a graveyard
right outside their front doors
as they go off to a job
built on another graveyard
and pass ever-growing graveyards
of even more on the way, 
every day?

They whistle past
their own fascists, grave diggers all,
palefaced dogs in tactical gear.
Someone’s calling those dogs to war
right here, right now, and they ain’t just whistling
that dirty old song, ain’t just blowing 
old dog whistles; they are running up
all their dog-dirty old flags
to see who’ll offer the flat-hand salute

as the masses look away, look away, 
whistling past this graveyard
called a neighborhood,
this nation that increasingly
heaves and floods
in new heat and new cold.
Some are falling to their knees now, it’s true.
Some others are still falling into holes
in good old American ground.

The bombs are falling on Kyiv
and we cry
as we should
for what happens there
as it happens everywhere, 
as it is happening here
and has always happened here.
Cry now for Kyiv
as you should cry for Yemen;
cry now as you once did
for Hanoi, for Da Nang;

as you should have cried
for Sand Creek,
for Wounded Knee,
for Tulsa,
for Philadelphia. 

From not far above comes
a movie-tuned whistle
we all understand:
the keening of a bomb falling,
a song of all the world.

Whose flag is on the nose of the bomb?
Under what flag do the people stand
who shall soon be killed?

I bite my lip
imagining the colors
of a yet-unstitched flag
that shall proclaim: 

We see you, bombers;
we see all of you.
No more. No more
of this, of you. 

That one.  
That’s the one to wave.

I’m telling myself
I’m not here
but I am
here in front of
a duplex bearing
on one side
a rainbow flag bearing
a peace sign and
the redundant word
PEACE and
on the other side
that Nazi-sanctioned
thin blue line version
of the American flag
and in this town I’m certain
someone thinks 
it’s a beautiful thing
that they can coexist
but all I can think of
is crematoria and 
my god this is 
the town where
I grew up and
how the hell
did it happen and
how the hell
did I not end up 
here and 
how the hell 
is hell not here

Snail on
the porch rail.
A friend says,
look, a snail.

I say, no,
that’s just 
a snail’s house.
The snail’s inside.

They say, but
it’s an extension 
of the snail, grown
from its body. That’s
how this works. You
can’t separate the snail
from its house. The snail
without its shell
isn’t a slug, it’s 
a dead snail. 

Down the street,
a snake flag on
a house. DON’T
TREAD ON ME,
undulating like
the swirl of a shell.

I stare at it often,
but after this I’ll be
imagining the house
is not a house at all

but is indeed the
odd woman 
who lives in there,
who will not wave
when I drive by,
who is her flag and
is waiting
to strike.

Do not say how horrible
this world has become for you
without speaking as well of how horrible
it has always been to others.

If you are surprised to feel at last
its downward slant and how
you now struggle to walk anywhere
when every destination is now somehow uphill all the way,

imagine lifetimes of doing this; imagine
the millions now alive and millions now passed
who have needed to be ceaselessly wary,
clutching their hearts, guarding their footsteps.

I’m going to tell you a secret 
that’s really never been a secret:
your prior ease was grounded
in the uneasiness of those others. 

I’m going to tell you a secret
that’s really never been a secret:
your recognizing it today and calling it new
feels vaguely insulting to those vast crowds.

I’m going to tell you a secret
that’s really no secret at all:
some of what you wail about, what ails you
now, what hurts your back and strains your lungs?

Some of what feels so new to you
is age-old and so common
that your shock and anguish
look at least a little like a lie. 

Did your bogeyman tell you
there was just one villain
to blame for all pain?
Did your bogeyman tell you
that everything wrong trailed 
from one leading edge?
Did your bogeyman sell you
a volume of such misdirections,
then eat your liver?

Put your bogeyman
in a capitalist hat.
Paint your bogeyman
as a white cat with perfect teeth.
Dress your bogeyman 
in an able bodied suit.
Cast your bogeyman
in a heterosexual play.
Mask your bogeyman
behind a bottle full of money.

I don’t believe your bogeyman
has stopped laughing at you yet.
I don’t believe your bogeyman
adds anything fresh to fear.
I don’t believe your bogeyman
can never show their face to you.
I don’t believe you own
the necessary mirror. 

I believe that if you are riding a unicorn
and said unicorn bucks you off, 
you get yourself a plain old horse
and get back up. 

I believe you then ride after that unicorn,
lasso it, hold it still while you ask it
how it became so trendy and why
that whole virgin myth got started. 
I suspect it will shrug, if unicorns 
can indeed shrug. I suspect someone
started that cockamamie story as a way
to get virgins to sit out in the woods
for hours waiting for something to happen.

Meanwhile, perfectly good horses
sit lonely in their stalls back at the stable
and despite all the stories they play a role in
they’re considered too common
for the magical bandwagon these days. 
Everyone loves a unicorn, so much so
they don’t think enough about
the horses and narwhals
who made them happen. 
(Don’t get me started on narwhals.
I’ve roped a few in my time
and with that whole lack of shoulders
they shrug even less obviously
than unicorns do.)

You’re shaking your head
at all of this. After all,
you are currently riding a unicorn
that shits rainbows wherever you pass.
You live as if you’ve haven’t been
repeatedly betrayed 
by the rest of the mythology
which gave us unicorns
as it formed us.

It’s an apocalypse out there.

Soon enough
you’re going to need a horse
to get somewhere
because once the narwhals
go extinct, the slow forgetting
of unicorns shall begin
and the only thing to do then
will be to create
some new chimeras to ride. 

You might as well start now. After all,
none of us are virgins any more.