Originally posted 1/7/2012.

Some days
are just one
turbocharged
evocation
after another;

then there are the ones
where you sit around
wondering why
it’s not one
of the other days.

Frankly, I could do with
a few less of
the former
and a lot more of
the latter.

Every moment of every day
doesn’t have to have a point
and I’m tired of getting stuck
and bleeding almost out
because of the ones that do.

Right now, for example,
all I want it the road,
the wide open engine, and
the loud, louder, loudest
three-chord songs;

a day with nothing to escape from,
no reason to be driving that fast
except that’s how
loud, louder, loudest songs
sound best.

Originally posted 2/10/2012.

A whisky master says,
“I suck the tongue of truth
from the pit of every glass.”
A wine master says,
“This sweetness burning within
pushes my eye toward Heaven.”
A pothead prays
in riddles,
grinning at the answers.

Whatever we do to stone ourselves
revives within us the kick
we last used in the womb.

We fight toward
what’s out there,
though we have never seen it.

We reach for it.  We may not be
steady, we may not be
completely sane.

We may not even be right

when we clamor that it is
all we need — but still 

we go for it, kicking free
of our bindings, punching
toward rebirth.

Originally posted 9/28/2013.

A man I know
calls his preferred
prospective partners
“chicklettes.”
Because they’re young,
young and sweet,
he says.
Because of their fragile shells,
he says.
Because he spits them out
when the flavor’s gone,
he says.

This other man I know
has jokes up the wazoo
about women, about
“how they are.”
Because that’s just
letting off steam,
he says.
Because of the need for a break
in the battle between us,
he says.
Because it’s better than shooting them,
he says, 
and laughs.

This other man I know
likes to stick his elbow into me
whenever he pretends he’s down
for women where we work.
Because they think I mean it,
he says.
Because as men we know the score,
he says.
Because, anyway, where were we before they talked?
he says.

Other men I know lose track
of bedmate headcount.
Other men keep track,
notch something to brag about.

Other men I know have heard about “no”
but they say it’s just a lock to be picked apart.
Other men don’t care much for locks,
bust down the door, swear they heard a cry
for help in there.

I know many other men who I’d have sworn
are none of these,
but too often I learn of one or more who are
not the men I thought they were
and now when I say

this other man I know
or
these other men I know

I stop and wonder 
if other men are in fact knowable,
why I seem to know so many of these other men,
and why those other men 
seem so comfortable with me.

Originally posted 3/6/2013.

A man who has never been rejected
is watching women on Highland Street
as if they were ruins in the Yucatan.

As if in the ruins of a Mayan city
these women were exhibits to be viewed.
As if they were souvenirs.

A man who has never been rejected
is shopping for a souvenir among the women
of Highland Street

while imagining
he is a prince of a lost realm
he learned about in school

or perhaps in books from his father’s library
that displayed women as souvenirs
for the taking by princes of the realm.

He is imagining
a backdrop
of old roads and palaces.

Ruins and palaces
and temples for men
who have never been rejected.

Never rejected,
ever,
at all,

because they’ve never asked permission
when they take a woman
as a souvenir of the realm.

A man watches women on Highland Street.
Imagines himself as center
of a useful myth.

Imagines himself glistening,
a souvenir himself,
carved in obsidian.

Originally posted 10/19/2010.

1.
Billions of people in the world.
Your soul mate will be right next door.

2.
War, horrible in the macro,
brings forth the delicate emotions from men.

3.
The addict, once aware of her problem,
will cry as she swallows the pills.

4.
Loved ones with cancer
ennoble all those around them.

5.
Nature exists
strictly as a foil for hubris.

6.
Things from beyond this world
conform to strict rules.

7.
When love finds you,
you will be unready for it.

8.
Animals are smarter than us
in all the important ways.

9.
The force of a bullet or a bomb
can bestow the power of flight.

10.
The rich are rarely as happy
as the poor, but you will certainly be an exception.

11.
A neat ending is to be expected,
as is a lesson. Things don’t simply happen.

Originally posted 4/30/2011.

I lean in to suck hissing gas
from the unlit burner,
just to see what that’s like.

I’ve got good food to cook,
good enough for a last meal
in fact.  And if I get past that,

there’s decent dessert too.  So
I stop. I will not put myself
so close just yet. It’s the little things

that always, always
do the trick.  The cat
hovering nearby with sacred fur.

The promise of risotto.
The desire not to leave a mess
for loved ones.  

I take what I can get
from the bag of small miracles,
treat them as talismans.  

Anticipation of dark chocolate, 
pear cider, cool night air
on open skin. 

My hand filled
with whatever makes it hard 
to grip a razor.

Originally posted 9/22/2012.

The pup comes right up to my nose.  

When I look him in the eye and say
shushumsmooshumnomnomnom pretty puppy,
I realize I’m actually praying, saying

I recall you stealing meat from my fire
when you were hungry,
when you were young and alone. 

Roll over on my back and let the pup
drown me with his face, his wash, his tongue.
I laugh and gurgle through it.

The pup turns
his belly to the air.
I am saying

I recall you barking, I recall
my understanding of the nuances,
the rough snap of those calls. So much has changed.

There is a book that calls this “dominion.” Another
that calls you “unclean,”  another that calls for you
to be skinned and boiled and eaten as a delicacy.

Pup, you don’t have a book, do you?  That’s a shame.
I want to know what you think of us
beyond the easy slurp gospel you’re preaching

now that you’re pure wag, unfiltered unspeakable joy.
Shushumsmooshumnomnomnom, who’s a good dog?
That is what the wind says when it whistles

around the throne of heaven.

Originally posted 9/9/2014.

Crashing a motorcycle through a window twenty stories up,
plummeting to the ground below — that’s the way to go; 
so much implied backstory, so much obvious preparation.

Strangers unable to mourn such a whacked-out demise
would nonetheless be talking about it for days, 
and those who loved the Rider

would wonder in their sorrow if indeed this was the best way
to go, if this was indeed the obvious final arc
for someone following their bliss to its logical conclusion.

Every death by diving from on high
makes at least one person wonder:
what if they had landed on someone?

Someone else always wonders,
what if they had found themselves able to fly?
Would they have changed their mind?

Imagine putting in all that work toward dying
only to learn that you won’t die that way.
Imagine watching the bike fall away from under you 

as you rise, hover, begin to consider your options,
begin to imagine what those options
could possibly be.

Originally posted 12/3/2013.

On a cold Wednesday, as I’m
putting out the trash, I see
a dead mouse on the porch

that may have died
in the act of creeping along
the siding toward warmth,

or was perhaps killed by
something but left
unconsumed, perhaps

as a warning to others
not to pass
this way?  

I lift it
from the spot
where it passed

and hurl it
into the yard
where it will become

a different message
of how every death absorbed into
its environment vanishes.

Will I even remember
next year
that I did this?

Was that why
this was written?  
Was a mouse

born and killed
just to give me 
a poem?

I think this once
then snort at my ego
that doesn’t even know

why I’m here — maybe
I’m just here to take out
the trash,

and will some day die
and be found frozen out here
with the yellow bags in my hands.

Others will nod sagely
and agree
that I was good at that.

Then, they’ll wrap me up
and put me
out of their minds.

Originally posted 9/4/2008.  Originally appeared in “Flood,” a chapbook from Pudding House Publications, now out of print.

All people can be divided into two groups:
those who divide people into two groups,
and those who do not.

We call the people who divide people into two groups
“them,” and we call those who do not
“us.”  Sometimes, we call “them” “the Others.”

Let us say everything we know about the Others:
they are grown fat with their unjust ways.  They
hate us.  They are the source of the Smell — ha,

they are overripe with it.  If you were to crack open
the “O” at the beginning of the word “Others,” it would be
as though a durian had been split in a closet and left to rot. 

In fact, the Others
are the splitters of all fruit,
the drainers of all carcasses.

We, of course, are the stitchers of that which is split. 
All people, then, may be split into two groups: the splitters of things, and those
who guard that which can be split. We are the Guardians, 

and we call the Splitters “the Others,” “Them,” “Those People.”
They are known for cunning, conspiracies, their inability to follow
laws.  If you straighten out the “S” at the beginning

of the word “Splitters,” you see that it is a snake’s spine;
they have been holding the serpent close to their breasts
since the beginning. Venom is their milk; we

are their silent milkmaids, the ones who carry
the venom to their tables.   It sloshes onto us and we are burned
daily.  All people, in fact, may be divided into two groups:

those who are burned, and those who do the burning;
or perhaps it is those who are poisoned and those who live on poison,
or those who worship division and those who pray for shielding and healing;

it’s as lamentable as it is observable
that this is how it is: lines drawn between us and them,
them and us, the People and the Others.

In the end, of course, we know that all people
can indeed ultimately be divided into two groups.
and the division falls as follows:

all people can be divided into two groups —
those who divide people into two groups,
and the dead.