To be fair, right now I’m mostly
whistling as I pass
this nation-sized graveyard.

I have been dissatisfied
with every option 
that’s ever been presented to me.

Yes, I could have claimed
the easiest identity
and tightened my grip

on a White illusion of 
safety; could have
raised a banner 

on behalf of the Native
that lay hidden in me and 
fought a valiant, visible

losing war; could have straddled
that weathered fence and swung 
a leg on either side of it until

it broke under me
and I died as stupidly as I would have
if I’d chosen anything else.

I have America to thank for 
these choices, I know: 
a choice of skewers, a plethora

of demises. In the long run
we’re all as dead as flagpoles,
no matter what flags we fly.

Is it worth the fight at all?
I’m comfortable saying no,
for the moment at least. Right now

I’m sitting in smoke and mirror land,
thinking about writing new music
in case songs survive what’s coming.

They’ll need lullabies, dirges,
everything from ditties to pretties
to small hymns to whatever is left

of the nature we’ve grown to know.
The only song I hope
they will not need again is

an anthem.
As I wait and fret
about the end, I pray:

whatever choices I have left to make,
let me never have to raise my voice with others
in such a song as that.

As ever, I am blessed
by this country. As I
damn this moment, I
resurrect one that never
existed. As a wheel,
a cog, I am integral.
As a misshapen wheel,
a crooked cog, I
have been forced to 
work. As
I am crushing, as I crush it, 
as I am crushed I am
able to rationalize
my fault.  As I live,
I can breathe. As I am made
safe, I breathe with lungs
not my own.  As I dangle
over pits and fires, I am
daredeviltry of a prescribed 
movie. As I stunt, I
fall short. As a wound,
I mostly just bleed. As a man,
I am thus drained. As ever, 
I am blessed and healed simply
by dint of all I was born to
and no more than that as long
as I let that be. As it is, I let it be.
As it is I am ashamed unto death
but survive by
whispering, wait
for your moment. As it is,
that is all I have ever done:
wait.

Look at this book —

someone’s
torn pages from it — a math
textbook — no mystery
as to what has been excised —
missing the entire
chapter on quadratic 
equations as indicated by
a peek at the table of contents —
who would do such a thing — thieves
stealing functions — 

And this book —

Organic Chemistry —
missing a chapter called
Introduction to Synthesis — how will
we learn synthesis without a proper
introduction now — who takes such things —
who deprives us of such 
knowledge as this — how
we are built into being
from the basics — 

Can’t find a full book

of history anywhere —
truncated civics lessons only — they’ve torn
proverbs from biographies and changed
dates, places — how we were before now — 

but these books

that display the flowers
typically used in funeral wreaths — these posters
of disarticulated bones, muscles — these ancient
paintings of Heaven opening to judgment of
the corporeal, the material, the easily
touched? All intact — all mounted
in places of great honor — all placed
within easy reach —

as holy books
would be

For those

who have made
their existence in pain
that shifted early from
personal and acute
to social and chronic,
learning
against their will
how long it takes
to go from one gasp
of strained breath
to a lifelong struggle
for dignity, life, air;

for those
who see doors
open for some
and closed to others,
those who cry out
against the custom
of closing doors, those
who kick against 
doors that are already closed,
those who put themselves
in the way of closing doors;

for those
forced to war against war
and those who reluctantly step to war
and those who step back from war
and those who lead others
to step aside from war;

for all those
arrayed against
what hurts and strangles
and blocks and combats.

I see you, am
with you,
not against you;

hear you and say
listening, not
talking over you;

say
yes, right here,
not over there; say
with you,
by your side, 
at your back,
at your service, 
at your call.

Breaking news
from another city, this time
one of ours,
full tonight with new war: dozens
or hundreds of brand new dead or
injured in an attack
on a theater or bus station
or another place in which we are unused
to seeing such things; tonight, we see them
over and over, splashed in
the familiar colors of our flags.

At the same time, in the same old war zones,
the same old bombs fell again
and the same old dozens or 
hundreds once again died or were wounded,
the same ones who are always dying or 
wounded. Their bodies are only rarely

shown, chalk-dusted,
red-splashed, pulled
from ruined hospitals,
theaters, mosques, wedding
tents. They look the same
every time to us.
We don’t even bother
to post pictures of their faces
and who knows what their flags
look like? Who among us bothers
to learn their colors?

I want to introduce our own dead
to their dead in some place
beyond flags, somewhere beyond
the rooms where it is decided
what is breaking news and what is
a passing mention.

I want to see if,
once they are joined
in the aftermath of
such a sudden detonation
of their lives, they hold each other
and sob for each other
as we apparently cannot.

America got sick,
turned and looked
for someone
to hear it complain,
said:
“Why am I sick?”

And people all over,
even right here, people
who’ve been sick for
a long time, some
sick unto death, replied:

“You’re sick from
eating the same trash 
you’ve fed us for years —

just, perhaps,
a little more raw.”

browbeaten
people glad
to hand off
judgment to
others and
curl up under
them. sad little
mouth open
no head game
people with all
the time 
they’ve robbed
from the rest of
the planet. as it sinks
they’ll be seeking
hot dogs and
blast shields and
not in that order.
stoked to be
alone in charge of
wastelands with
the right flag flying
above. with a song
in their sores. with a
skip in their amputee
step. with a thought
and a prayer for
the descent into
finality as long as
jesus is with them
and there aren’t any
of those others
invited. wish there
were enough hours
in a time machine
to have done this
years ago. wish we were
in dixie, indebted
to the song of the
old south and the new
rest of the directions.
wish for a heavy stone
to cover all when it’s done
smoking in its crater.
wish for rain to clean it,
lightning to split it,
thunder to keep it 
awake till something better
takes its place. 

Oh, sure, it’s
a puddle, 
this place:

this watery little hole
in the mud called
my town, built at
a river’s headwaters
with a secret canal
rolling south from here;

sweet puddle
teeming with invisible life —
invisible to those 
who won’t look — 
to those who see nothing
but mud here; 

notice to people 
who want to stomp it dry
or pave it
or make it into a 
golf-course pond
or a scenic beach:

do that and
the old water,
the original water, 
will go

underground, sit there

in the dark, waiting.
Do that and we go
dormant till you forget
about us
podded and safe in the dust
on your shoes,

waiting. 

Putting out trash for pickup;
as much of a ritual
as anything
from my churched days.

More so, in fact.
I was never as devout then 
as I am now with careful separation
of recyclables, compostables; with
the regular observance of
timed placement of offerings
at the curb. 

It is a measure of 
the times we are in 
that this mundanity
feels like a bulwark 
against apocalypse.
In this is the hope

that I am doing something,
that this will matter beyond
not having the house smell
of whatever’s in the single bag
and half-crate of plastic and paper
I put out there. Our remnants, our losses,
our surrendered bits and pieces
given up to an effort
to green the world; they
look a little like a future 
if you squint.

When I am back inside
and see the news, 

I tell myself
that might have to hold me
till next week.  

In my neighbor’s yard,
red poppies.

Scrape a bagel, they say, and you
can grow some flowers.

On the next table over in the cafe,
bagels dotted with black.

Eat a bagel, they say, and you may
fail a test for opioids.

You can’t escape
the prevalence 

of such things.
My little hometown

has both a bagel place and
overdoses. They sell

cream cheese and Narcan
in the strip mall. 

In Afghanistan, 
there are fields of poppies.

In the US,
there are fields of dead

killed around and by
the poppies.

Read the fine print.
You’ll see

I’m right. Policy 
and breakfast and 

poppies, lovely
and filling and deadly,

side by side to greet us
in the morning light. We need

so many drugs
to get through to the next day.

I have lately dreamed the words
“stuck pig”
so often they’ve turned
into music
I cannot stop humming
asleep or awake

Accompanied by
triangle or tympani
and now
and then
the sound of stones
rolling down a hill
into a river from
their former spots
in a castle wall

If this is a metaphor
what does it mean 
that on a recent night
I received
the second verse
in a new dream
of fields and flowers

and the words were

“bleeding out
means
the meat will be 
sweeter”

Who are they,
the ones you call “them?”
It’s hard to explain, other than

they decide, not you — unless
you find yourself on the side
of consensus. 

Some jump back and forth,
into and out of it. Some join
and never look back,

some are born there, some
look up one day and find
somehow they have become “them.”

How immense they are
depends on how small you feel
yourself to be.

If there is a
visible horizon before you,
they are the vanishing point.

Your descriptions of them
have a plasticity of form,
though rarely of intent.

Their mouths
are bound over
to the service of ghosts.

In their hair the ashes 
of torches, pyres, stakes
in piles of pitch-soaked wood.

They may choose to soothe
if you agree, snip and snide
if you are mildly out of line,

rap knuckles and slap down
if you are more recalcitrant,
beat and slay if they see the need,

or so they want you
to believe. They are
avatars of what

you are supposed
to believe and the forms
must be preserved

or else there’s nothing
to be preserved and
things fall apart and

even if that is something
to be desired
it does not happen

without pain and
the circle remains
unbroken as long as 

they hold you close;
as long as you let them
hold you.