Hard not to hear 
that red muttering
underneath too many
breaths:

ancient, violent criminals 
breaking out
from inside so many 
hard-sealed heads,
first in dribbles
and then in packs,
comfortable again as they
mutter and wreck
as if it is finally the season
for such muttering to grow
in volume, grow
toward becoming the cry
of a banshee army turning out
to storm across all and sweep
all ahead of it.

Make no mistake:
not one word of
that murmur
should be mistaken
for old German,
and thus dismissed.
Admit it, at least
to yourself: you
can understand 

every word. 

The hottest places? No.
Even Dante knew better —
he never said this.  

The cold places — the ones
where a candle
in the crisis wind freezes
into a red icicle of pointless pose —
that’s where they belong. Can’t you
hear them sniffling about,
wriggling on the fence?

Those of us
who cannot cease raging
and roaring —

we may be wrong,
may ultimately burn in the fiery levels
for what we believe or rise 
toward the glorious sun — in fact
we may not believe
in heaven or hell but
we believe in heat; maybe
because we were born to it,
maybe because we were
schooled in it, maybe because
it found us and we survived —

however it happened,
burning

is all we know.

Flowers and trees and love and such 
are ours to freely discuss, 
are what is
allocated to us.
When we add a note

of concern or rage
at how each
is polluted or policed
or killed, they call us 
out of line. Sometimes

they call us onto
a firing line of our very own — 
enough, the Powers say,
enough, troublemakers;
you should have stuck to

writing of flowers and trees
and love and such
as they are and no more,
should never have sought or
assumed then proclaimed

connections to wider agonies 
and grander ecstasies — 
damn all you poets.  Stick to
pretty wordcraft; leave
the statecraft to the State.

For us to be of
soothing voice and
half-sound mind
is all they ever ask
of us; anything we choose

to carry or inhabit or disrupt
beyond that,
any words for the choices 
we fight for or against, anything
we choose the words to nurture, 

is ours alone, and we are
too frequently alone
with language — the machine
that makes truth happen.
We can’t turn it off, even if we die

by its churning. We can’t do otherwise;
seasons, rain, flowers and trees
and love and such ask us to speak for them.
We can’t do other than we are asked.
Even if we die. Even if it kills us.

Welcome to
our homeland 
where all roads
lead to shops
that sell tinctures
of mist and mistake
in flint glass bottles,
formulas made
to be sipped
from silver spoons
long tarnished
with foreboding;
where every house
has a cute front door, 
sweet curb appeal,
and a back door 
to an alley, 
a one way street,
or a dead end; that door
is the only exit
once you’re inside;
to be certain of which
you are stepping onto,
read the signs —
how foot-beaten
does the pavement
appear to be, 
how far does it extend 
among these close built,
dim windowed fortresses; 
you’ll have to
walk it regardless
but good to know,
good to be forewarned; welcome
to our country
full of schooling
for jobs and careers,
shootings and padlocks,
schooling
for debts and 
mad sorcery
over the checkbook
once a month,
schooling for
holding patterns,
crossed fingers,
sweaty sheets,
the fevered terror 
of the wolf at the door,
the hijab in the coffeehouse,
the ghost bonfires
of noose and cross
still throwing heat;  welcome
to the place where, 
if you have to go there,
you go there —
they want you
to call it home
whether or not they
take you in; stay — 
you can always
be decorative
somewhere
at the right time of
the year.

In your living room
is a star-covered
couch cushion
that is currently serving
as throne for 
your rangy, yellow-eyed cat
who will not stir from it,
no matter
how much
you playfully threaten
to sit upon her;
you are hovering 
above her 
and she stares up
into your face 
with a deep-gene memory
of having been
worshipped in Egypt
showing through 
her jaundiced disdain.
How is it that you 
are not ashamed 
at having the nerve
to offer such disrespect
to another being — 
how do you explain
the casual attitude
that suggests
that one may sit
on any thing or being
one is big enough
to commandeer — 
how do you explain
your disregard,
your protestations
that it’s all in fun,
that it’s only for play,
that you would
never hurt her — 
how do you explain away
this moment that is
a microcosm of
the entire span
of history 
of the modern world?

Mad old mad wrong
wall hanger of a man;

mighty weary worry wart,
soldier in a dogged war;

finding himself forgotten by
digger and dug alike, suspicious

of change and youth
and their glib prejudice

against his wealth
and his jowls and his fatigue

regardless of how’d earned them;
mad weary, worried, back to

a wall he’d raised, put his own
back, his own back against

his own wall, mad at all who
he thinks backed him up to it;

mad and worried and wrong,
warty with anger, his hand

on a raised shaky weapon
with only himself 

to salute and command
and target and obey.

I wake up,
see that this is Hell,
then go back
to sleep.  

I wake up, 
see that this
is Hell, then go back
to sleep. 

I wake up, see
that this is Hell, then
go back to sleep…  

I wake up,
thank my skin and my wallet 
that I am lucky enough 
to have a good enough bed 
that I can choose 
to go back to sleep 
when faced with Hell…

I wake up.

See that?
This is Hell.

I go back
to sleep
wondering
how long a person 
has to sleep
before they can be 
declared dead, before

they can go to Heaven,

before I can go.
I can’t sleep any more
than I have and this, this
is Hell, this is 
not a good look on me —

disheveled, wide-eyed 
and riled,
staring scared
out the window
at how much is on fire;
how do I extinguish Hell? And

how do I now,
how do I ever
fall back to sleep?

You lay a walnut sized stone
in a near broken sling
made mostly of hope

Praying you get
a chance to launch it 
into the eye of
the Brute Approaching

(who in this case is cousin
Blood is thick between you
There has been 
so much of it)

Pray by taking aim
Pray by letting fly

He falls
You pray again
Exalt the well-answered prayer
of your well-flung missile

Burn his corpse where it lies
Weep the small obligation over family shame
Plant a nut tree in his barren outline
Savor the brain-meats grown there for decades after
Resolve to pray more 
Make a stronger sling with which
to offer future hosanna and hallelujah 
to the God Of Stones

on field 
of the usual hues

silhouette of pistol butt

rocking an angle from narrow cowboy hip

bulge in outlaw jacket
wide black leather belt badge and cuffs
khaki or camo dusty holster

or
in the hands
of patriot or rebel
villain or hero

glimpses of long guns in black hands in news photos 

feathers floating from barrels of rifles raised from horseback in western fable

shadows of men with guns feed America
feed America its young
feed this starved America

all those bullets
so little bread