You make a long journey
into your worst vision 
of the wrong side of the tracks,
obsessed with 

whether you have the weapons for this,
the right tools for the job,
the right answers to the questions
they are likely to ask you —

all the time thinking
you’re a fraud and they’ll shit you out
after eating you still alive.
You imagine being swallowed

all the time.  You think it’s going
to hurt.  Unbearable pain’s
the only thing you can imagine
for a destination, so

what a surprise to learn
that once you’re there 
nobody’s about that.
Nobody’s threatening you

or even caring about your
momentous presence.
You carried everything you had
to this point only to learn 

it was extra baggage all along —
such a heavy journey. 
What a shock, what a shame,
what an outrage.

It occurs to you to start a fight 
to prove your relevance. Maybe
you should assert yourself enough
to win your rightful ending? To make

all the fear worthwhile? Prove your mettle
to the locals and impress them with
your prowess? You open your stance
and prepare. They want a war, you know,

so you’ll give them yours.  
You labored over it
long enough. Someone
will surely appreciate it.

Secure enough
in your person 
to fall comfortably asleep
trusting you’ll
awaken refreshed;

comfortable enough
in your home
that you do not fear 
steps in the night,
flashing lights, the sound of
official insistence upon
your yielding,
having to put all your hope
into a skin-saving
bow and scrape;

settled enough
with the Accepted Backstory
being correct
that you stop listening to 
urgent offers and pleas
for changes in the narrative;

empty enough
of empathy
to get by
all the time, all
the livelong day,
with the news 
being no more
than a buzz, a fly
you can brush aside,
a petty interruption;

easy enough
for your head to be always
shaking off
the daily showers of blood
as if they were nothing
but warm spring rain.

If you wake up as a bomb one day

awakening outward from sleep
expanding from the bed in all directions

If you wake up ticking
but choose to deny it until it 
stops

If you wake up as a bomb one day 
and don’t know it until
you are standing next to your trigger
Don’t know it until 
the trigger is pulled and you
burst into one ruddy scream
followed by your own 
unfortunately 
fulfilled 
silence

If you wake up as a bomb one day
and explode

I swear on the future 
that I will recall
when you were not a bomb
and tell all around me
that you did not begin as a bomb
were not meant to be a bomb
did not ask to be a bomb

I will tell everyone
that like all of us
all you wanted
was quiet when the sun 
struck your face upon waking
and quiet when it came time
at last 
to sleep

Dammit,
country —

I wanted to write a song, 
wanted to sing, to play, to love and dance —

and then there was one violation, 
then another and more, and I began

to see how many there were, how many
there are, how the waves of violations

sculpted and sculpt our shores, how the winds
of violations cut and have cut into our sands,

how the surges and ebbs of violations
have been the surges and ebbs of our 

flags, how we are the surges and ebbs and 
our eyes squint through the violations

as if we were free to sing, to play,
to love and dance with no restrictions, as if we 

were free —
and I have no idea how it will be

to be free, how we will ever be free
to sing and dance and play and yes,

to love as if the violations
were not there in the sand and the shore,

as if the eyes we were born with 
had never been violated, as if the flags

were not the whole story
of the violations…dammit, country,

how I wish you were truly mine
to love, to sing for, to dance with, to heal.

A wild guitar sings
from a dark corner
of a deep porch.

A defiant song shifts gears,
gathers voices, challenges
for primacy

as my neighborhood
offers a show
of slow rebellion.

To stay alive for long here
is to be in full revolt
simply by existing.

To stay alive here
is to have hard, hard work 
always in progress.

The ones who do live here?
I don’t know if they would say
they are thriving, though

in the midst of despair, 
they do not despair. They 
don’t know how to despair.

A wild guitar sings of this,
ringing from a dark corner
of a deep, crowded porch — 

I don’t know the song.

The guns.  I want
the guns.
First the knives and then
the guns.
All the guns.
All of them,
and then the bombs.
The ships after that,
maybe the planes, and that
might be enough.
Knives for the close-by,
guns for the intermediate, bombs
for the absentee moments,
missiles and planes
and gunboats to project
what I cannot 
do with my own hands.
And thinking now
of what one can do
with computers
and with banks, I need
some of those too.
Knives, guns, bombs,
missiles, planes, ships,
computers, banks,
markets, stocks,
lies, half-truths,
statistics,
money, money, money,
myths of social constructs
and colorblind generations,
flags, elections,
eclectics, stories, art, music,
schools that bind hands
to the will of other hands.
I want all the guns
because the tears
haven’t helped, the words
and songs haven’t helped,
the simple reach of saying
this is wrong has never helped.
I want guns
to weight the lifelines
I need to throw
because that flood
of everything else that’s arrayed against me
is rising  
and though I understand
what a gun does
far better than you do,
I want them anyway because
there seems to be
so little else
I do understand
about what it takes these days
to win and not lose,
to not starve or despair, 
to not drown,
not burn,
not die.

By the banks of a flood
we sat and wept — by the

rivers of
Babylon, by the shores of the mighty 
Mississippi. From the rooftops
of a drowned city. Near the edge
of a rising tide.  

We sat and wept
and then cried out:
we were promised
dry land; where is it now? We were 
promised safety, where is it now?

We were promised lives 
and now are being told this is not feasible,
we only ever asked for lives
and now are being told these are not
practical, were promised 
that promises made were to be kept
and now we find that all the air
was fouled from the moment it left
their mouths and then,

then to see you

sitting by these same banks
with your own feet swamped in the filth
of the flood, see you

with the drowning so close to you as well, see

you with your eyes
raised over our heads
to something we can’t see,
see you and hear you

asking us why we broke the dams
and let this happen when all we did
was point at the dams and say
look at the seams, the leaks, the cracks,
look, look, can’t you see we are drowning?

Can’t you see that
you are soon to be drowning as well?

You ask us why we cry out
with our arms raised and flailing.

We stare back at you, we ask:

how can you not?

after the first rejection
the first acceptance came immediately

when your lungs filled with air
upon birth.

feeling the former 
more than the latter,

you cried out in confusion
at once.

that’s how we knew
you were alive.

you kept your eyes closed
so you could pretend it wasn’t true.

that’s how we knew
you were human.

you’re still alive, still unsatisfied, 
still squalling, still longing for the womb.

that’s how we know
you’re American.

pinch enough
of your boss’s stash
to set yourself up as 
someone’s boss just so you

can guard against
a similar pinch
off your own meager hoard
while lying sweat-heavy in bed

worrying about
thieves like you.
you are that well-owned.
you have imprinted

strongly upon
the wings and claws
of those birds of prey
who tear you up only

to fan your open wounds
with their dirty feathers.
it feels like they care enough
to soothe the pain they caused.

it feels like rogue parenting.
a warm snuggly
smallpox blanket.
a red white and blue 

cartoon hero’s cape
stuffed into your mouth and nose
until you can’t breathe
from under all that love.

you’d better find someone
and do it to them quick because
the only way to get ahead here
is to step on one.