At the exact moment
you realize that you
have no choice or chance
unless you shoot back,

you will look sideways up from the floor
where you’ve flattened yourself
in order to save your own life
and see through a broken window

a single leaf on a branch.
It will be surely already dead
but have some color left in it,
red spots in dry brown perhaps

or some slight green remaining
overall, and you will surge within
and let go of your own stubborn grip
upon a semblance of being truly alive

and look around
for something, anything,
with which to fill your
suddenly freed hand.

There is a car in my driveway
that will not run. My neighbor
got it for free and plans to make it work
someday. Someday. Right now 
it’s a small white wreck with four flats
and a college parking sticker 
from five years ago in the front window,
but it looks like a promise to my neighbor
that someday it will be the best deal
he ever made.  

There is a thin coat of white
on all the cars in the driveway.
One red (that’s mine), one black (that one is
my lover’s car), and my neighbor’s white wreck
which looks cleaner now that it’s coated in snow.
Someday there will be a full storm — or so
we’re told. No telling when, of course. The weather
has been a lie for years now; we have turned it
into one big lie. Someday all three cars
will be mounds of pure white
to be dug free, but right now 
that’s just a threat and instead we’ve got two
that are ready to roll and one that isn’t,
two that run and one that doesn’t.
Mine is one of the ones that runs 
right now, and while I know someday
it will stop, that day, I hope,
is still far off.

There’s a fear in the air right now,
but someday it won’t be there. Someday
all these broken cars will run like tops
and all these promises will spring into life.
My neighbor will get that scrap heap to run
and off he’ll go, a smile on his face. My car will hold
until I can get another one just as good or better,
and my lover’s car will do the same.
The snow will come and settle and melt
on schedule as expected.  Right now
no one’s got a clue about what’s to come,
about when someday might at last slip into place
and bring a dose of hope at last.
Until then we’ll keep these wrecks running
and dig out when we have to

until someday, when we’ll sit down
and sigh and cry and laugh
about how we got through
right now. Not today, no — 
but someday.  

When I was a bomb,
I destroyed though
I longed to build; instead
I gutted and burned and 
swept away.

When I was a bayonet,
I couldn’t imagine how
I had happened — how
I’d found myself
at barrel’s end, how
I stuck, how I was freed
with a blast right after.

When I was poison
I slept uneasily, like an empty coffin;
when I was a guillotine,
I felt a breeze sift that hair
as it tumbled down.

I used to pretend to be
oblivious to myself as damage
but truth be told: it has always been 
my entire being and life to be
utterer of death
in order to preserve myself…

so I weep and gnash my teeth
and wash my hands of
generations of stains, 

all while
never moving from
my throne.

Mourn your dead till daylight
slips in through your window, then
take a shovel out back,
bury them deep in a corner
with a stone in full view of all,
and move on.

There will be more dead.
(There already are
more dead.) This is not arguable;
if you mourn for all your remaining days
there will still be more dead. Your mourning
stops nothing except your own forward surge
toward an adjusted world. A modified
society — believe no one

who tells you it’s perfectible. People
aren’t, so it will never be,
and as long as Power knows
deaths can maintain or advance
this current version of acceptable,
there will be more dead.

So: if these dead are yours, mourn them.
Mourn if you want for those other dead
and all who fell as bystanders,
cross-fire heroes, accidental bodies,
friendly fired cadavers. Mourn them
and mourn in advance
for your own inevitable ending,

then plant it all and leave it to grow
a garden full of endings for you to come home to
after a day of struggle for a new start. Both
will be there for as long as you live. Mourning
and struggle will each outlast you.
This is not arguable.
This is how it works.

How do you eat an elephant?
One bite at a time.

It helps to have
gigantic teeth.

Of course, if possible
you kill it first.

But if you’re big enough,
perhaps you needn’t. 

Does that sound awful?
It is awful.  There’s no way around that.

But honestly, you might have to eat it
while it’s still alive.

While you’re thinking about that,
consider how you’ll stop it from moving

long enough to get those bites in.
No matter how large your teeth, 

you can’t eat it while it runs.
You’re going to have to stop it

from running.  Bring it
to at least a crawl so you can

get a leg up on it
and open your mouth.

Also, can you make that first bite
count toward the slowdown and stopping?

Think on these things, but not 
for too long.  It’s charging

and it’s huge. Tremendous, 
really. But remember, 

it’s made of meat. Aren’t you hungry? 
Hungry enough to at least try?

Forced to eat oatmeal each day
by my addled blood.  
Gotten so used to it
that a day without it feels like treason.

Once upon a time I liked it well enough. Still
sounds good right up to the first bite —  
a blues bowl of blueberries and cinnamon,
tan pulp gone purple with berry dye. Then

it becomes all bent notes until “good-for-me,
good-for-me, good-for-me” stops echoing inside
as I put empty spoon and bowl into the sink
with that sense of weary duty to a life I truly don’t love,

followed by seeking out morning news. Upon seeing it 
my addled blood so often becomes curdled blood;
all that weary duty feels heavier, and heavier, 
a weight in my stomach as dense as the cursed daily bowl —

but every day I force it down. I do what must be done,
take in boredom and pain and anger because
as much as it hurts, I must stay alive a bit longer;
because “good-to-me” means more than just feeling good;

it’s about doing what must be done 
to save my blood, my country, my life.
Whatever I choke down I choke down to do just that.
Gotten so used to it that a day without it

feels like treason.