Just to taunt my dread and doom
the cat did everything
she did this morning
the same way she always does.

She tore things up.
She knocked things over
and walked my chest
until I was awake

and got out of
my torture bed
with the same back pain
as yesterday,

my feet on fire
with the same nerve pain
as yesterday. In the bathroom
I learned

that somehow I’d lost
three pounds in the last week
and my glucose reading
was near normal,

two points lower
than yesterday.
Overall my body
seemed better than it did

a few months ago —
but no time to cheer as the cat
twined and threaded through my legs,
softly biting my ankles as always,

until her dish was full so
she could, as always, ignore it
more effectively. She jumped
from the floor to the window seat

to see what was outside:
birds, of course;
my neighbor Irving
banging around inside his car

before work;
gray skies, no rain,
last of last week’s snow
disappearing.

Just to taunt me, just to taunt me
and my haughty opinions and full-on
fear, the small things of the world
insisted on their importance: Coco

worked her diva magic, Irving
got on with what needed doing,
and my body reminded me
of its primacy

as it pulled back a little,
for now at least,
on its relentless march
to the End. So

I’m not going to say
we’re going to be
alright,
because we’re not.

I am going to say
that someday
it may happen that
it’s all going to be alright.

Thanks to age and illness
I can’t close either hand
upon a bottleneck,
a lighter, or a hilt.

Two open hands that tingle
with no grip. Two dead feet
that feel just like that; one hard knot
in my gut; still working to be

ungovernable
to my limited extent
I stumble forward,
hands out for balance.

If nothing else works at least
they’re always open; even if
my scant capacity shortens my reach,
stunts my ability to hold what comes to me,

to push off what attacks, to signal
to all around if there’s danger,
these hands and feet
were dealt to me, are what I must play with

in this game for as long as I can, so
I keep playing for stakes higher
than I can afford.  That’s all 
I’ve got —

no win assured and
none expected 
in what remains of 
this life.

Thanks, he said, for playing along
with a rigged game
for as long as you did
and pretending that it was fair 
from start to finish.

Thanks, he said, for being
a good sport, a tough competitor,
a worthy adversary.
Thanks, he said, for giving it
all you had. It was a good run.

Thanks, he said, for your rise 
to a challenge, your grace
in falling short. Thanks, he said,
for stepping aside when all
was said and done. 

Thanks, he said, for not
kicking up a fuss, for 
lying down and taking
a fall, for high roads and 
all that.

Thanks, he said, for being
so understanding, for not getting loud
or making a scene. Thanks,
he said, we got this and
don’t let the door hit you

in your loser ass on 
your way back to the back
of the back of the back. Dark
as it is back there I hope
you don’t fall and break your neck

or something. Hope
you stay upright. Hope
you hope and pray. Hope
you learn some manners
back there in the dark. Next time

you’d better say “you’re welcome”
when someone thanks you, when someone
lets you off this easy.  Next time someone
beats you like a drum, chum,
you’d better dance.

This story isn’t even remotely true;
this is myth on a skateboard
rolling through. It has streamers
and smells like fresh bread but
it’s as fake as a tail wriggling
in a predator’s mouth as the skink
escapes to grow another distraction.
But that taste…you want more, of course
and you’ll get more as long as you
keep your ear to the ground, your nose
to the grindstone, your shoulder
to the flat tire you are trying to make
round. Meanwhile all around you go 
the fast stories faking their paths
and drawing merry millions behind them
with tails in their mouths
while scaly little truths 
get away into the underbrush
and continue growing into
dragons.

It would have been better
to have been born now
rather than earlier.

There would already be rules
for growing into this.
This horror would be normal
and unhappy would be 
default and somehow 
there would be love and
silliness seeded among
thorns.

Daily news
would be a stream
of heartbreak
as it is today but kids
could shrug it off and 
slowly accept gray as
a perfectly acceptable
color for lawns and 
flowers. Someone

would make a game of
bullet casings and 
police tape. Any songs
would be written
around the wail of
a siren,

and children would sleep
at least now and then
immersed in dreams of joy
fit for their times, dreams

that would seem
wounded and dim
to us today.

Lightning over there
already.

Here, we’re still just
waiting for it. Sitting outside
watching the sky over 
the far hills blink red, listening to
the late rumble that follows. 

It’s got a few miles to go yet
before it gets here, 
if it does get here — 
might only get a few drops,
might get a deluge
and a firestorm.

A few years ago
a big one took down
all the power here on the hill
and tore a branch off
the maple out back 
that was the size of a tree
all by itself.

We stared at it
lying there the next day,
adjusting to how different
the backyard looked now
in changed, unfiltered light.
I try to remember
what it looked like before that
and fail. 

So:
lightning over there,
and here there’s nothing
yet. We sit and shiver
from experience
of how much can be erased
in no time at all.

We say
maybe it won’t be that bad.
We don’t say
maybe it will be worse,

even though the sky
is as red
as a torn heart.

Are you truly so surprised
to learn that my hand 
bursts into flame
a few times daily,
and that I have learned 
to shut out the pain
and move on?
You shouldn’t be.
This is old hat
to many
who are
torched so often, 
so casually.
We learn it early and well
or we die
young, curled up
in our own ashes.
Do not mistake
apparent ease
in handling it
as a form of
acceptance.
We still
hurt, we still
now and then
scream with the hurt,
still have problems
with grip and 
feeling — and for me
at any rate, woe
unto those who offer
to shake my hand
while still holding
a burnt match, for

I will accept.

A low-grade fever
flaring: that is how
the chronic urge
to self-destruct becomes
acute, the same 
for one person as it is for
a nation: sometimes 
a dank heat goads one to 
frantic energy, one begins
slashing at anchors; a desire
to let all go bubbles inside
like infection; one may
say it’s better to burn,
better to release and fall
to embers and let another
build again; no matter
how familiar it is
it seems so simplistic,
so terrible, 
to feel in the daily news
a steam that resembles
the heat of
one’s own will to die.

Whisky sip,
smoke draw
across lips,
snow, 

St. Paul
and the Broken Bones — 
soundtrack sweet as
buzz: a breath of peace

before deluge and 
plunge, before

what soul is, where it
came from, who
holds it close, who
cannot grasp it, is
forgotten.

We sit, temporarily
satisfied in deep night,
sibilance outside as
one storm hisses toward
ending, as another
approaches.  

Another sip
of whisky. Another 
deep pull of smoke,
another song, and
at last,

sound sleep.

When I was a lifeguard
there was a shed on the beach
where they kept the tools for lifesaving
and recovery
including
a set of hooks
for dragging the bottom
of the pond
to find a body if all hope
was lost but
I was never taught
to use them 
so I’m currently useless
whenever there is no hope

but I am willing 
to learn

because even if all I can do
is drag and weep
in the aftermath
of what’s coming

I will be willing to learn
for
the willingness to learn
in the face of disaster

is itself
a small but vital
type of
hope

I woke up to
a singed eagle
perched on a limb 
outside my window,

could smell burned feathers
through the glass as if
the bird was still smoldering.
It did not call out or move

once in all the time
I was watching it, but disappeared
silently once I turned attention
to the daily routine;

the smell lingered, clung
to anything it had touched,
so that we could not move
without being reminded of fire.