If only it could end
as a bad dream ends,
with no resolution except that waking
reveals that none of it was true.

If only it could end
as a fairy tale ends, with all of them
swallowed up by something improbable
that sweeps them out to sea for good.

If only it could end 
as a good movie ends, with heroism
and vanquished villains
and a sunset bright as dawn.

It won’t end that way, 
of course. It’s going
awry and sideways and
no one is going to win.

It won’t end that way
because someone is making
a different movie, telling
a different fable, scaring us from sleep.

It won’t end that way
because we can’t imagine those stories
are ours, because we like to think
we’re awake; because they own the night

it won’t end the way we want.
Not in light. Not in sunset
or dawn. Not unless
we steal the night from them, and soon.

Say no
to the poisonous dead
who run this world
from their mausoleums. 

Say no
to killing rules determined
by the tyrannical dead
in other times.

Say no 
to how our language
was etched by the venom
of those savage dead.

Say no 
to boundaries that cast out
those living beyond those limits set
by the narrow stinging dead.

Say no 
to the rotten dead
who built this world
they do not have to live in.

You are alive.
Why do you allow yourself
to be changed and molded
by the venomous dead?

You are alive.
They stole your birthright.
Why do you bow and scrape
before the impotent dead?

Say no
to the dictates of the dead,
their corpse dominion, their 
insistence upon tradition.

Say no
to the insistent dead. That’s all
it will take to upend society.
Stop living as if they still ruled.

Say no
to the vainglorious dead.
Leave their bodies below ground.
Leave their ashes on the ocean.

Say no
to taboo and stricture.
Say no to the frantic dead
who still long to hold you down.

Say no 
to the decomposed dead 
who should
nourish, not govern.

Say no
to the stubborn dead
who have been stuck in memory
long after they should have melted away.

this nation has 
so many chances
to blind a person

from how
land and sea
appear gemlike 
whether up close
or from afar

to how staggering
ideas of its mythology
can become

from musical blessings
bestowed upon
those passing by

to how a random smile
from a stranger
might shift perspective
ease pain
offer comfort

this nation has so many ways
to indulge in camouflage 

blood in its soil
is easily missed
is sponged up quick
used to paint flags

To be a broom is to be —
if you’re lucky —
old school,
built of wood and straw;

of course, you could be
metal and plastic and 
still get the job done
but somehow I suspect

you’d be yearning
to bristle naturally
at the cobwebs and grime
of the world.

Maybe you could
hope against all hope
to be a pushbroom,
industrial in size

and scope, heaving aside
the remains of work
with great arcs and strokes,
guided by a professional hand?

To be a broom 
would be an odd dream
come true for some
who lie awake wishing

to cleanse, 
to remove and leave behind
only shiny and new and
devoid of all except what you

countenance as useful
and needed. It would be
the perfect manifestation
for people like that —

people yearning
to empty great spaces
of those they see as dirt;
once they’d transformed

I could take them and put them
carefully into a corner or closet,
forget about them, leave them
to gather dust.

It’s gonna be OK,
new awakening,
new birth,
resurgence,
gonna get it all
figured out,

some say.

It’s a puzzle
how we got here,

some say.

OMG,
damn,
sigh,
who could have guessed,

some say.

Meanwhile
those long suffering masses
grown tired of screaming it out
sit on their worn hands
and aching legs

and say:

stop just reacting, 
proving as we suspected
that you’ve never listened 
to us;

it’s 
an insult and a 
crime to see your 
shock;

did you think

we were just frogs
croaking on cue

from the swamp,

background nature, 
seasonal messaging
to be heard but never understood?

May this swamp rise.
May your ground sink.
May you learn to hear
what we say

before we drown together;
most of all,

some say,

may you
(pretty please
with a strychnine cherry
on top
if that’s the only way
you can hear this)

shut up.

I shall honor today 

by eating lazy man’s lobster
out of a silk lined top hat,

butter slopping
aristocrat’s felt,

swigging leftover sherry
from the bottle.

I will honor today

by setting my feet 
on an autocrat’s skull

and sighing contentedly;
the smell of blood thick upon me.

I will build upon today

when I get my fat ass up
and make this mansion over

into shelter for thousands,
although right now I’m too full

of lazy man’s lobster
and sherry and port and bloodlust

to do more than acknowledge
how easy it would be

to just move in and take on
the mantle of the master.

I will honor tomorrow

only after I vomit
the greasy richness

that seduced me
onto the marble,

push myself away from
this bad table,

whistle
a Who song

about a boss as I 
walk away from the pyre

of this old world
toward something

terribly different,
differently terrible.

Do you have

right music,
right slang,
right stuff hanging under 
correct clothes?

How do you pronounce
your family name?

How do you count 
your money: with one hand,
two hands, a boatload
of servants to help?

Do you dream
America as you’ve been told
to dream it? Do you perform

your Body
as given,
as you’ve been
trained to do?

Do you consume as required?
Are you ravenous
for pleasure,
abstemious
with self-sacrifice?
Just enough pain
to pass around?
Is the resultant gain
yours alone
to take
and hand down?

In other words:

do you know the codes,
where to punch the keys,
into whose ears you should whisper
the passwords?

If so,

won’t you share them?

There are those who say,
do not succumb to despair 
in these days. Do not
hold the Adversary in contempt,
offer love in your heart, try to 
listen, try to understand

how their arsenic nation
was founded, how they closed
its borders and were shocked
to find us, terrified and confused,
within the walls. Wisdom, they say,
use your wisdom 
and keep compassion

for how threatened 
the Adversary feels these days, how
the bloom is off their funereal rose,
how they see the sky as a casket lid coming down
even as we have begun to dance
under our suddenly visible moon. Love them,
say some, honor their shaky hold on things

for we should know what it must feel like
to see the walls closing in after the grand history
of their fortress Earth. And then what —
as they crush us, do we offer them a kiss?
Look into the Adversary’s teeth and say,

so fine and pointy, so ready and built to rend?
There are those who say, we need to come together
and those who say we need to find common ground
with the Adversary: when their teeth come together
should we offer ourselves to be gnawed
in the common ground of their maw?

No.  No. Am not fodder, am not
ready for this.  I will not succumb to despair
but neither will I turn and open my arms
to the Adversary as they snarl into movement,
heavy limbs crunching live ground as they march.
No.  No.  You may offer compassion
but I will keep mine for my children, my land,
my own dance below my moon. My wisdom
for defense; my hand for any necessary blow;
my arm, weak or strong, for the War.

One by one they fall;
one by one in response come formal inquiries.
One by one, throat clearing and disapprovals.
No one calls it a pileup or a pile on.
No one calls it a trend or epidemic.
Each instance is an isolated incident
and unique and now we move on.

One by one by one and now there are
three and then three dozen and then
three hundred or more of them. Thousands,
perhaps hundreds of thousands. 
No one calls it out the same way twice.
No one says it’s deliberate, built in, systemic.
No one knows the right thing to say
and now we move on.

One by one by one and now there’s wind
and red glare and names and mistakes 
and deliberate choices. One by one. Steady drip
of incidents. Steady drip, drip, one by one by one
of blood and tears. No one dares admit it’s a war.
No one thinks fighting back makes any sense.
No one by no one saying the right things.
Body by body, one by one, no one calling it
until no one left can say a bloody thing.

Something
bleaching on the lawn:

is it bone, is it 
turd, is it even worthy

of remark today
when so much else

is immediate and true and distressing?
Something white,

pale and toxic on the lawn.
Lawn that looks like

face of a forgotten grave.
The long grass of neglect,

something white there
seems out of place,

to approach it
is impossible. To get near it

engenders fear. Something made
of recent shit or aging calcium. Something 

discarded. Something
you don’t want to look at,

something no one wants
to admit is there. But there it is

right there on a family grave
in broad daylight and we might have

put it there and pretended 
to forget about it — a bone

we took from a body, a shit we took
from within ourselves, left it

visible and obvious though we know
its toxicity could be traced

directly to us, as a crime scene
it’s all pointing our way, something

bleaching white in broad sun,
never becoming clean, left unclaimed.

1.
You arrive, there’s
a church ready made
for you.  A grand car lot.
Sign spinners
and blinking neon.
Plastic pennants point shaking, 
acolytes rump shaking.
Come on down, step right up,
huckster gospel hour of power,
walk on in and be approved,
drive away in your holy wreck,
come back soon for more new shiny.
Like that song says,
ain’t that America. 

2.
Stick here long enough
and someone
may slip you a whisper
or maybe you find out
for yourself 
not to trust deities
who keep eight decks of cards
up each sleeve. Who invert
at dusk to hang inert 
in their Paradise, ignoring
desperate prayers
so they can wake up 
refreshed for their new day
at the expense 
of refreshing yours.
Who play you when they play.
Who made this house that always wins.
Ain’t that America?

3.
You leave feet first,
they always say,
unless of course you don’t
and you depart while still
upright, walking around in debt
to those gods of the house
with the church and the holy tables
where you laid your life out
and kept betting chunks of it
in pursuit of happiness.  Midnight
prayers unanswered except
through the last radio left on
all night in a tired coffee shop 
full of other mesmerized folks 
singing along. Ain’t that America?

Amid the shock and awe at the final arrival of the long-inevitable,
at burn patterns already veining surfaces, at cities that smell like mistakes,
at villages cowering, at collapsing sea walls in hot rising surf, at isolated farms
where life’s winking out as flames consume…you’re here

where deep down you believe all that mess can’t bother you. You’re here
where you can feel the heat and think it’s…nice. You’re here
where you can watch and shake your head in time to the crackling
and you’re here where you can tell yourself that at least the art

may soon be as good as it always is under such stress.
It can’t be helped, you say.  It’s the way of things, you say.
Forget the bucket brigade, forget the hoses, forget
pulling livestock and children from the flames.  Their owners

and parents should have known better — but they aren’t yours.
You now may wring your brutal, soft hands. You need do nothing more.