Revised.  Older poem — from 1999 or so?

Right after I turned eleven
Joe Frazier’s left hooks
were constantly on my mind
so, although I was a natural righty,
I threw one unprovoked
at Jeff Maxwell’s jaw
while we were goofing around
in the middle school gym
and laid him out
flat and crying.

I admit it felt OK
to see him there, sliding
on his ass away from me as I tried
to explain it was all in fun
to Mr. Tornello
as he shook me and dragged me to
his sweat-soaked office to await
my parents.

I learned something that day.

Right jabs and Muhammad Ali
were on my mind a few years later
when Henry Gifford
got dropped, this time in anger,
on the shores of Thompson’s Pond
for cussing me out over my being angry
because he’d broken my switchblade.
This time there was blood on his mouth
and I admit it felt OK
to see it shining moonlit black
on his face and I was shaking glad
that I hadn’t had the knife in hand
at the time.

I learned another thing that day.

Kung-fu movies and Bruce Lee
were much on my mind a few years after that
when it felt OK to deliver
a straight-arm open palm blow to the side
of Joe Peron’s nose in a work dispute,
and there was blood again
and the gentle snap of his bridge breaking,
and he knelt holding his nose in his hands,
and that felt even better than OK for a minute;
because we were men
we just shook it off
and told no one of the fight,
but Joe steered clear of me after that,

and I felt fine,
and I kept learning.

How good it felt then,
and how good it would feel again
if the opponents I have now
could be dispatched that easily.

I stand in despair
of unpunchable bills,
bloodless banks, ravening for me;
I’m helpless before
the creeping sense
of having no enemy now
I could beat. 

I can’t fight
what I am today:
old and body-broken,
weak and endgame poor;
obsessed with overthinking 
how much harder
I could hit today
if I could still hit,
now that I know
how it feels to be hit.

I stand in the kitchen
thrashing the kitchen air –
cross, jab, hook, uppercut,
palm strike, temple strike,
slash and stab, icepick grip,
sword grip, kick a support
off a rickety chair.

I was such a bully once.
I had such narrow eyes,
fixed always upon the easily defeated.

I’m learning.

I once again narrow my eyes.
The urge to admire again
the sight of blood I drew
is almost more than I can bear.
I don’t know
how much longer
I will want to hold on.

Originally posted on 10/28/12.

How to explain a new color?
How to define it beyond calling it
a crisp, refractive purple
only visible behind my eyes?

I sit in my driveway 
thinking of two women
panhandling in the rain at the end of our street
at the start of a hurricane, 

and of how
to explain this color 
I know I have
never seen before.

I asked them 
if they had a place to go.
One smiled and the other said,
“Thank you, bless you sir.”

I’m sitting in my driveway
looking at a color
with closed eyes, 
resting my head on the steering wheel.

Looking at a color I’ve never seen,
a clear and crisp refractive purple
in the crazed, urgent, irregular form
of a paper flower or a crumbling gem.

This is the color
of a blessing or a mercy,
the color of driving back down the hill
to take them to a shelter,

the color of shame when they refuse
to get in my car,
the color of understanding
why they refuse;

the color of a subsequent prayer
for them, the color of feeling
that I have not given enough,
to them, or maybe to anyone.

Originally posted 12/16/2009.

No one photographs him
more than once
after they realize

that the only pictures
that show him happy
show him onstage.

All other images
make him look like
a pillar of salt.

What’s his motivation?
He gave up everything
to gain a spotlight.

That smile you see up there
is genuine, if fleeting.
Stick with that.

Next time, use no flash.
Catch him standing there
in his natural setting:

darkness all around
as he pretends like mad
that he is the sun.

Call up the old saints.
You’ll find them retired and disinclined to help.

Call instead for The Blessed Version,
The Sherman On The Mount, The Irascible Conception;

read from a new Bible written by scribes
drunk on the manic milk of modern circumstance: speak of

St. Teflon, patron saint of bullet dodgers.
St. Tango, source of comfort against divergent storms;

St. Bullwhip, defender of the wealthy.
St. Lifter, overseer of the doomed.

St. Angelcake, who strokes the heads of the raped.
St. Watchfob, who picks fruit and cleans poisons from the flesh.

St. Linger, warrior with no hard weapons.
St. Rollie Of The Bones, bringer of square deals and luck.

St. Rattler of the found quarter.
St. Lobster of the century reboot.

St. Jack of the feast
upon unicorn meat.

Open that long shot gospel,
hang on a little while

till they make a saint just for you,
maybe even in time to save you.

Revised from 2010.

In this house
there is order

a cut above the order
in all other houses.

There is order in the hamper.
There is order in the drain trap,

order at the bottom
of the garbage disposal.

The compost heap
decays in step with a timer.

Even in the bowls of chaotic potpourri,
there’s order.

This is no place
you’d expect to find a junk drawer,

yet there it is right where
it always is in every other house:

in the kitchen, top drawer
below the most-used cabinets,

close to the most-used door;
there sits Martha Stewart’s junk drawer.

There are of course, the
old screwdrivers, twist ties,

an expired coupon for microwave popcorn
that in fact come with every junk drawer

straight from the manufacturer —
but they do not rest alone

in Martha Stewart’s junk drawer,
because it’s deep. Really, really deep.

In Martha Stewart’s junk drawer
there’s a red 1982 Ford Fiesta

with one black fender
and a donut on the driver’s front wheel.

Fifteen baby shoes.
A bootleg copy of “The Rocketeer.”

A tea-stained ticket stub
for a show in Branson, Missouri.

A purple thong, size M.
A blue hat made from a plastic bag.

A fibrous growth from a boar’s kidney.
A jammed .45 with a broken grip.

Hollow points loose in the bottom,
and a rust-caked cleaver.

A map to the stars’ homes.
A small address book bound in bonded leather,

blank except for the letter “K”
written on the page for “J” in orange crayon.

A broken rib she calls “Daddy.”
One old rose, 

and in the darkest corner,
something squirming

the approximate size of a human fist,
squeaking “I’m a good thing!

You touch it and
the wardrobe in the guest bedroom

begins to shake, the wildflowers
in the far meadow to tremble.

Martha’s far away, but somehow,
her stomach knows the danger

and she sits for a moment in fear,
twisting a paintbrush in her fresh aching hands.

When you shut the drawer,
everything falls back to sleep:

the house in perfect order,
the forks aligned in their trays,

the tissues in Martha’s body
nestling back into place, just so;

while in Martha Stewart’s junk drawer
the lovely chaos resumes its churning

and the house begins to dream 
of its brief sojourn as a home.

Revised, from June 2022.

As if to spite my being human, 
I’m rusting. 

Age, diabetes,
long lack of self-care —

I soak myself in coal tar
for flaking on the surface,

the scent filling every space
in all my rooms; then

take pills and talk for
my internal disrepair,

each breakdown with unlikely odds
for repair.

Nothing about any of this
is temporary or acute.

Chronic is my name,
now — we speak of conditions,

not illnesses; talk of status quo or
increase and not of progress.

Coal tar and skin creams —
odors of one failure

to treat myself
correctly, or so I tell myself.

Others say buck up, it’s not
a fault or a punishment, you

needn’t club yourself with that one,
no matter how good it feels

to feel that bad at times — 
and indeed, there is a sort of blessing

in the hours after
I step out of the shower

onto an apparent path
to normalcy;

but then I lose my way as I start
the day. I tell the others, 

you think so? Then come live in here
and tell me I’m not right

to feel such guilt for becoming hollowed.
I need something to come alive 

in my old center, to build
there as I fall apart.

Comes a point when everything done right
is still not enough, and hope

becomes not a right but
a privilege, just a way

of passing time before time laughs
and then kills; as the scent

of sulfur becomes so strong
you can’t tell

whether it is coming from inside, 
outside, or both.