A year ago,
prayer for some,
drums for others,
glee in secret for some,
public fear
for others. 

Not so different today

as meanness walks the land
with a bared sword in a dirty hand.

Some words once whispered
are now shouted by those
raised up by fear and loathing
to seats of power.

Those opposed
barely know each other,
fight pessimism, share
sketchy rumors, grateful
for moments of agreement
while under suspicion
for our nods and smiles.

A year ago we didn’t know
how hard it would be to hope.
A year ago, we didn’t know
how vital it would be that we try,
how much it would cost us to try,

but a meanness
walks the land,
and we have no choice
but to try.

The last bottle,
once knocked over,
drained quickly.

When someone
set it right, there was 
less than a quarter remaining.

At that point
someone far less thirsty
than we were threw it away.

It drained its last 
into the trash bucket.
We were left wanting.

Any of us
would have taken that little bit
to tide us over.

Any one of us
would have shared it
with the others.

We died 
thinking of the one
who threw it away,

no doubt with the best
of intentions. No doubt
that they saw themselves

as virtuous, perhaps even
slightly messianic. 
No doubt in our fading moments

that had they even seen us
sitting there parched,
they would have pitied us.

Spooky
the black cat 
is missing 

the neighborhood
snoop who would
let you pet him

anywhere anytime
as long as it was only
on his head

Been gone a month
now and we’ve seen
a silver fox and coyotes

around of late
City predators 
bolder than in the past

It seems to be
a predator’s moment
right now so

I’m not holding out 
much hope for Spooky
However hope is

one of those things where
a little goes a long way
and tomorrow is 

the shortest day
of the year so it can 
only get brighter

and even if Spooky
is gone for good
we can hope that 

somewhere he’s
fine and thriving 
even as we look out

into the city night
for unaccustomed 
predators at the door

as we do every day now
peering into every corner and under
every rock

into every office in city hall
and into every Church of
Fox and Coy-wolf Triumphant

We treat it like a prayer
to listen to the news
and cross our fingers 

for Spooky either
to come home
or find a new home

Clearcutting
began years ago: the ground
in some sectors
is nothing but leveled
stumps. We
didn’t always know
they were
there until after they’d
left but
when we tracked sawdust
into our homes
and looked out into what
we’d once called
“forest,” we saw the white disks of
stump-tops
shining in the moonlight.
How were we
to build now that the stuff
of worship
and sustenance were gone?
We never took 
more than we needed and now
there would not be
enough. There would not be
enough and we
shivered and stared into
the barren night
until someone — one of the children
or an elder, it’s
still not clear — someone drew
a handful of seeds
from their pocket and gestured
that there was
room now we could fill anew,
and we fell down
and wept for the loss while
planning
to sow for the gain.

A well-schooled 
experience of poisonous
double talk would suggest that
if one controls 
the language, one then
controls the thought.
Science-based, evidence-
based conclusion: if not true
then why do we believe in the 
rarity of diamonds? why 
advertising, sloganeering, 
marketing, speechwriting?
We are as vulnerable as
our ancestors, curled
into word-coated wombs of
belief as tightly as any fetus,
stuffing our entitlement
into spaces too small
for us to feel comfortable
holding our tongues for long.
Let them try to chain down
this diversity of song. Let them 
forbid “transgender” or any other:
we will spring out in a birth
of allowance, saying all the 
words at once: revolt, ignore,
engage, detach, disrupt,
resist.

It doesn’t feel as good as it used to
to breathe in this country.  

I used to fill myself with good air
in the mountains now and then

and head for the ocean on other days
to draw in as much as I could.

I’m so busy running now from morning
to morning, through mourning and grief

and rage, that my memory of the air
comes only when I stop, briefly, short

of breath.  I chop out little gusts of the past
and take in sick gulps of the moment.

I’ve got friends who will say: the mountains
are still there, and they will cure this, and others

who say there’s an ocean and a sky above it
not far away and you can suckle all you want

of the atmosphere there and you will be healed;
but when I go to the mountains or the ocean

it’s one long drag, one long inflation
before I fall back wailing.  This is

no clean world anymore.
I cannot escape into 

amnesia, somehow. I feel every razor,
every bullet.  Every burning tree, every

cloud of coal smoke or flame from 
a funeral pyre. I choke on how close

and how far it’s all come to settle in me.
The world in my lungs like glass

shards in the agonized air;
joy, shredded, bubbling

as it strangles
on blood.

Looking into 
deep white cold
as a man in shorts
walks, bent forward
at the waist, uphill
into wind’s mouth.

I’m staying in.

I’m not
that man, apparently
comfortable with
how the wind
is blowing. With
lack of heat, 
with danger of
hypothermia. 

Staring into 
deep white cold,
knowing 
I will have to
go out into it
sometime
just as everyone
does.

Knowing
I’m in it even when
I’m snuggled down,
even when I sit back
and worry,
even when I pull
the blankets tighter.

Even this act — this
scribble of fear —

laying these threads of dark
in the middle of 
deep white. Trying
to convince myself I am
dark and hot, not
white and cold,

and deeper
than these lines
on the screen.

Dear Baby Baby,
I’m going to shut up now
after saying I’m sorry;

you must know I lament how
this world is all so very
violent. The sky is violent,
the sea is violent, I am
violent, ashamed of this,
don’t care who
knows it, but I am sorry
and that is peace, isn’t it?
I dare anyone to say it isn’t,

dear Honey Honey, dearest
Sugar Sugar. I am sorry
that when I close my empty hands
they become fists — what is man
except a tree of fists, swinging
like figs on his arms? I dare anyone
to say these fruit aren’t natural and
I’m sorry, sorry I grew this way, but

dear Sweetcheeks, Sweetcheeks,
dearly beloved Ladyfriend, most treasured
Helpmeet, I’m sorry, sorry
you’ve taken all I am the way you have.
Dear Bloom In My Garden, Loveflower
Of My Eye, I’m as natural
as you are, limited, constrained, 
a square of edge and mass in a round world
that contrasts and conflicts and isn’t that
what the good God intended, what
Nature and Nurture intended for us both?

Dearest, you flee me and I’m sorry 
but I’m angry and some words come hard
to the angry and when I call you “Dearest”
I’m sorry it comes out like a war cry but
I am forced to become the Violence I claim to see
in the world and when I call you “Beloved”
you are meant to come as you are and I’m sorry
if it’s not as you’d most desire but I am
sorry, Love, sorry you see me as such a 
disaster but I am at least a natural disaster —

when you say I can learn, Sweetness,
when you say I can change, Dearest,
I’m sorry but I don’t see how
or why.

1.
I came to the Palace.

One of the force
who run the Palace
stepped to me, asked me
to halt.

One of the lackeys 
who haunt the Palace
stepped to me, asked me
to dance.

One of the underlings
who manage the Palace
stepped to me, asked me
to cuddle.

One of the bureaucrats
who finance the Palace
stepped to me, asked me
to pay.

One of the royals
who decorate the Palace
stepped to me, asked me
my name.

The monarch
for whom they built the Palace
stepped to me, asked me
for a light,

then tossed the match into
the debris on the floor of the Palace,
stepped away from the instant blaze, asked me
to cheer as it burned.

2.
I am in flames, as is the Palace, each of us
burning unremarked like a stick
being held in a campfire
by a child who doesn’t know 
the potential disasters hidden
under the red cherry of its flaming tip.

I am here, I cry out, I am here
and burning and the Palace 
roars in time with me as it burns;
no one’s coming, we look up
to the sky-God we’ve both believed in
to drown the heat and are left wanting.

3.
In the flames I think I see the Palace
struggle to rise to its full height
from its knees.

4.
Does this Palace truly labor to breathe,
as my hope and eyes labor to convince me,
or is that slothful thinking?
Is the Palace human at heart or 
merely a structure of human heart
that keeps moving 
merely to battle inertia
or in fact does it not move at all
and all the hope I have
for it rising from its ashes
is misplaced?

5.
Someone who helped to build the Palace
steps to me and asks me
to stand aside
as it burns.

Someone whose land was taken for the Palace
steps to me and asks me 
to stand aside
as it burns.

Someone who was never allowed into the Palace
steps to me and asks me
to stand outside

and let it burn.

6.
In the distance,
the Palace is burning.
Those of us
who burned with it once
but escaped
sit in the dark
and watch it go.

It was just a thing we built once
upon a time.
Let it burn.
Let us burn as well if we must.
We can always build another thing,

or our children can
if we find we can never stop
smoldering.

Given the nature of
martyrdom and how it
leaves a piercing where
a person once was,
I shall choose instead
to sit by the river and 
be whole. 

Given the nature of
soldiering and how in
the fog of war a soldier
moves from aiming at
an enemy to simply 
trying not to be one,
I shall choose instead
to sit by the river and
be whole.

Given the nature of
being here and part of
the Machine Of The End,
no matter how much one
tries to step away from
it and make it stop,
I shall choose instead
to sit by the river and,

unable to be whole,
at least become still
and less present for
my role as a cog. 

Curtain up.
A lone figure stands 
stage left. 

At once, you
begin classifying: 
Male. White.
Fat. Old. 
Badly dressed,
uncomfortable,
and so on.

Maybe you’re wrong?
Who cares?
What you don’t know can’t
hurt you as long as you
are just watching, after all.

What you don’t know
shouldn’t trouble you.
You paid to get here.
You paid for the privilege
of deciding plot and character, 
set and theme…

The scene turns.
You see that it was all done
with complicated lighting:

he’s not white;
those clothes
are better than you thought;
you’re clearly projecting discomfort 
where there is none —
he seems completely at ease,
looking right at you without a word.

You’re pissed off — after all
you pay the players’s to play,
and if they aren’t playing 
what you paid for or thought 
you were paying for,
that has to be on them.
That has to be a mistake.

They don’t seem to be playing.

No wonder
you’re shifting in your seat.

You are completely
unsettled after you thought
your settling was over
and done with

and there’s no indication
from the action on stage
when the curtain
will be coming down.