A man lifts his head
from his despair couch,

sees pictures of 
his family on the table

across from his seat,
imagines them seeking

comfort. Right out loud
he asks the empty room:

where will we hide
if the fire comes?

I grew up and away
from having to think 

about this, and now
I have to think of it

again, not only for myself
but for loved ones, 

wondering how
to keep them

from the fire if it comes — 
and if fire comes

will I be ready, will I
know how to shelter us

from flame
and storm and

the long night
that will surely follow?

The pictures
do not respond,

staring into his
numb, silenced face.

A breeze shivers
the house.

The summer air 
simmers.

The couch accepts
his face as he falls

back into its warm,
illusory hug,

the night still safely
dark around him,

no sudden spark out there
breaking the world into coals.

I rise early to start work
upon a treatise 
to be called,

“An Inquiry Into Not Being
Violently Sick To My Stomach From
Reading The News.”

I don’t have a clue as to 
how to begin this. There
is no talk therapy for it.

Every effective pill is either fatal
or so obliterating that
the rest of my life

would be swept away too.
I could do what some do and 
never open a book or paper

again and try to forget, sink into
coffee or beer or weed, play 
the oldest music I could remember,

plug into unplugging from the right now.
I’d be lying if I said I haven’t tried
all that; I’m not capable of lying

anymore. My stomach keeps me
honest, spits up truth in spite of my fear.
As convulsed as I am minute to minute 

it would be hard to say
I’m not a better person for it:
my gut’s well-toned enough now

from retching to take whatever
stab or blow or bullet that comes;
even if I am pierced, even if I am killed,

I will leave this work behind and survive.
I dip my head over the page,
fight back what’s in my throat, and begin.

A bald brown man
is out on the curb with a black
trash bag of a kind disallowed 
by my city carefully picking through
our building’s recyclable bins
for cans and bottles, almost tenderly
placing those he cannot use
to one side on the pavement before 
adding to his bag with what little
he gets from us and then
putting the ones on the pavement
back into the bins, although
I cannot be sure
he puts them back into the ones
they came from they all go back
into the bins where they belong
without ever touching the yellow bags
the city makes us use for trash
and then he straightens up and 
moves on, up the hill, up the street
to the next three decker, then the next;
then he crosses over and descends
doing the same on the other side 
where I see him one more time, 
directly across from my window, 
picking through the plentiful options
from the green building’s bins,
and I note as an afterthought that
he’s new, not one of the usual crew
who come through on Wednesdays
or Thursdays if Monday was a holiday;
he’s younger, fitter, more neatly dressed,
stands up straighter, looks like he can carry
more weight as the bad black bag the city
won’t let us use for trash is full now
and he is tying it off and pulling
another one
from his back pocket
where you’d expect
a man
to carry
his wallet.

I’ve seen stains
on the road where 
it happened.  I’ve seen
ambulance lights
heading away from 
where it happened.
I’ve heard weeping
and screaming, 
tortured explanations
of torture and death,
condescension turned to
terrorism, eventual drift
from truth to shrug, and
blue, blue winds blowing
any remaining truth like
so many dandelion seeds away
from where it happened;

if you want me 
to testify about where 
it happened, where
exactly it happened, 

we’ll be here a while
as I point and say
there and
there and
there
and there and
there

is where it happened.
Everywhere
is where it happened.

To the people who stopped dancing
after the Twist, after the Frug, after
the Robot, after the Dougie: pick up
what’s left of yourself from the doorman
and leave the club. Why are you here

when there are so many people waiting
to dance? You’ve crowded the floor, 
taken up a lot of space.
No one can move unless they do
a shuffle like yours. So many have

so much wildness to unleash
that this is killing them.
You might have known that feeling once
and you might want to know it again, but
what you’re doing right now doesn’t come close

to the free shake they long to do. Maybe
that’s why you want this. Maybe them dying 
without a leg to dance on is part of some plan
you’ve hatched to get your own rhythm back
but it’s nothing that will stand. So: get off the floor

if that’s all you’ve got. Get out, get
out the door without looking back.
There’s a new crowd waiting.  Stay
if you are ready to move again. If not,
there’s a wind outside. Go be in it.

Whenever they buy a country
they have their names tattooed
all over every open patch.

We lived here before they got here
or got here after the inking up but
our names don’t look like theirs, so 

we have to hide in the spaces 
in the letters, the gap of the upper
“A”, the narrow rooms afforded

inside “D” and “O.” It helps your chances
if you are comfortable
living under a thin sheen of blood.

Hearing of your latest
spurt of hell, I wonder
who will ask the question
that will close your throat
at last.

I wonder if you
will be at a podium 
in the middle of some
hateful, stupid sentence
full of self-referential, self-
serving pablum for you that
will deal terror to so many others
when someone blurts out
the right spell, the right curse
in the form of an inquiry
you can’t deflect, or

will it come from a half-trusted aide
on a golf course
somewhere, mid-swing,
while you’re trying to forget
everyone else and focus on
your own perfection that’s always
just beyond your grasp, or

will it come from one of your children,
checking in on you  
long after midnight as you stare daggers
into the screen light between 
your soft little hands, or

will it come, most improbably,
from yourself as perhaps
a chunk of clot hits your brain
in the right spot to release you
from this unrelenting lust for 
the reverence and squat obedience
of all others. What question will it be

that takes you down, pours you
into a puddle of gray flesh on 
a public floor, terrified as always
but with a fading awareness
that this is what you always wished
for so many others, what you dealt
with so many of your labored breaths,
and now you may meet them face to face?

No one’s certain,
but rest assured,
we’ll keep asking
until we see you fall.