Originally posted 6/16/2010.

Reading news
of black widow spiders
in supermarket grapes,
lightning that burned down 
a statue of Jesus;

looked at the stories 
with a practiced eye
for meaning,
sought connections;
was at a loss 

until he saw a third story
of a miracle cure in a remote land: 
a blind child touched
by an electric eel 
awoke from a coma with full sight. 

Recognized how to spin it all
into a narrative he could believe:
the sky’s fire stroking down;
the poison in the seemingly safe fruit;
the girl opening her eyes to see

a circle of incredulous doctors
straining to understand —
pride stumbling 
against nature, then
nature laughing.

Congratulated himself
on figuring it out.
Congratulated himself
on besting God
at the Great Game Of Dice,

at getting the Win; then
turned and died
before he could
explain it all  
to everyone.

Originally posted 12/26/2007. Formerly titled “Still”

I’m not sure how they happened
but there were times in my life
when everything slowed
and each of my moves was perfect, 
no wasted effort,
arms synched perfectly swinging 
as I turned toward the yard
away from the screen door closing behind me.
My vision sharpened at the edges
and deepened at the center of the field of view;
a jonquil stood out dead still from the lawn, its petals
cut into the green behind it.

There was a time I could stop the world
but I didn’t understand how useful that could be.
I have forgotten how. I have learned
how to think instead. Instead of
making the world stop
I stop myself and sit ass-heavy on the couch
thinking of good times.
Whenever I leave the house
I close the door behind me carefully now, never
letting it slam, making sure of the lock; I don’t know
how good times happen anymore
and I don’t want to scare them off.

I step out of the door
and I don’t see much color
out there, which is fine;
I’m excited now mostly by monochrome — 
marathon television viewing, the relief
when a cigarette is finished and I can breathe
something that’s not
grey fire in my throat, the relief of
the fire that lights the next one,
the ice cubes in the whisky,
the longing for a long dead sleep
because the only time the world stops now
is when I am not thinking of it,
when I cannot see it at all,
when the dark eats my dreams
and at last for a while at least
I’m not regretting 
the nagging poisonous hope
that one day I’ll remember the world,
recall how I used to see
the razor beauty of things 
growing without thought.

Originally posted 11/24/2013.

This tangled mind 
takes the word “mouse”
and transforms it
to “rocket” or “dagger”

or “fishing shack”
when I hear it spoken;
the thought of vermin feet
in my walls becomes

a space race,
a war,
a life
on the sea.  

Hear mouse, realize everything. 

This is something that is Wrong with me
according to the arbiters of Right, 
but I’ve learned to live with it.
I’ve turned into a poet, though.

I mostly call it blessing and not curse,
though when I thought
the word “blessing”
I admit at first I heard

“California redwoods” and then “magma”
as “blessing” became a vision
of forests jumping into blaze
along rivers and roads of liquid fire.  

Blessing is fire here within me.

Any one word leads me to another
as fire leads to ash, as flash flood
leads to canyon, as mouse
leads to dagger rocket fishing shack,

as blessing leads
to volcano-sparked trees
lit like candles
along the coast… 

Shh, says the Universe,
by which I mean
the dying willow
in the backyard.  

Shh.

Originally posted 2/7/2013.

My dance, my bad, my deep…
gave a sorrow opening,
loosed it on
the gap within, and now:

ornery. Tantrum.
Layabout and cry. Going to victim
this whole long day;  go pick me some kudzu,
funeral bouquet for never-ending grief show.

Still, got rocker hips, roller hips, jazz
groin and lips and hips;
 joy must end up somewhere
when pushed from head and heart…thus,

I end up as one sad grinder.  End up bad.
Bad, sinking in deep but still, there’s
one way to set it off
and hold it back — 

so I’m off to music while still in the hole
to give my bad, my deep a resistance,
give it rhythm, a big mole digging in 
under the roots, charged up,

rubbling my dark village, quake cracking,
flipping dirt into the light.  When I, frightened, shake,
I still gotta dance my dance, my bad, my deep;
I dance, even if I dance sad,  because that’s my gotta happen.

Originally posted on 7/21/2010.

A klezmer band purchases a sheepdog
to act as band mascot.  
They change the name of the band to
The Sheepdog Klezmer Orchestra.

In their hometown south of Detroit,
The Sheepdog Klezmer Orchestra
plays weddings so often
that the sound of a clarinet in the street
prompts proposals, engagements, elopements…

The Sheepdog Klezmer Orchestra
begins to travel widely
and soon achieves a degree of acclaim. 
Everywhere they go, they bring the sheepdog 
(known to the audiences only as The Sheepdog) with them. 

He lies on stage during their sets,
perking up for the dances then 
dropping his sad head to the floor
for vocal lamentations and slow songs,
peering out at the audience
through his fringe of fur,
looking right and left.

The Sheepdog is in private life named David.
The band keep this name to themselves,
as they keep their own names private
from the audiences they play for,
using stage names —

Aaron Out Front,
Judith Judith,
Ronaldo Star,
Jonathan Regretful,
Felix the Cat,
Sam The Fiddler.

Sam The Fiddler, in particular,
loves The Sheepdog and
is David’s closest companion in the band:
walking him during breaks;
petting him for long hours
in the privacy of hotel rooms;
brushing his thick coat
before every gig
until it is nothing but shine.

I only have ever seen them play once,
and am not a fanatic
for klezmer music in general — 

but at the wedding
of close friends from college, I saw
The Sheepdog Klezmer Orchestra
play for hours,
and I danced and wept
as much as the families did
for their offspring.

Tonight on the radio, in the early dark of pre-dawn,
I heard a recording of The Sheepdog Klezmer Orchestra
and thought of you again: I have never forgotten

how your hair fell across your face so often
that it seemed I was always brushing it back
to see your eyes;

how I danced
and wept with you
and we called both
a celebration of us;

how it seemed
that band was playing
whenever we spoke
or loved, and the air itself
blurred into song.

This is not to say
that remembering you
reminds me of a sheepdog,
The Sheepdog Klezmer Orchestra,
or of weddings or dancing

as much it is to say
that when I think of
joy and sadness mixed,
of caring that demands
the constant brushing of hair
from soft eyes, of hours of travel
and the rewards
of keeping private
what is most your own,
those moments have a soundtrack

and you sing to me on that soundtrack
like a clarinet,
like Gershwin,
like klezmorim,
like some few weddings
I have attended.

Originally posted 10/1/2012.

Just let the firetail go, 
said Papa, so I did; 
it singed me
as it flew off,
Jalil pointing wildly
at the trailing flames
as it surged away.
I screamed and Jalil screamed;
Papa aimed his long rifle
but was not able to strike,
and thus it escaped,
never to be seen again.

Our fear and pain became
a legend; to this day
people speak of the firetail
with awe, wondering how Jalil and I
caught it in the first place, how it came
to be where we were, how we were able
to approach it;  with only this story
to go on they wonder:
what was a firetail anyway,
what did it look like, 
was it ever a threat at all,
would we have been burned
if we had never tried to trap it?

Only Jalil and Papa and I
ever really knew the firetail,
and they are both long gone;
I am too old now
to be able to answer,
other than to tell you, truly, 
that the firetail was wondrous to see, 
terrifying to hold, utterly
real, neither bird nor human
nor spirit; I can’t describe it
even though it is the only thing
I see when my eyes are closed
and my entire life since
has been devoted
to trying.

Originally posted 1/7/2010.

First thing to catch my eye
when I sit down to write this morning
is the plastic Halloween glass
with its images
of skeletal girls in pigtails,
shaking Jack-O-Lantern maracas
as they dance.
Two weeks after Christmas,
not the least bit out of place.

When the Tasmanian wolf appears
(said to be extinct but there it certainly is)
by the door,
I’m not at all
fearful.  The animal
must have spun in here by chance
as the earth passed through
its current dimension.
Spider legs, stripes, 
jaws like a car crusher:
in this salvage yard of an apartment
its presence make sense on first glance
since my place is full of discards,
second hands, re-purposed items
finding new lives. I usually can do something
with anything I get my hands on;
maybe that appeals to it.

I decide to name the beast Johnny.
It looks up when I call it,
comes to me as confident
in its power
as any other myth
would be.

There’s still some water
in the Halloween glass
so I offer the wolf a drink.
It begins to lap, the long pale tongue
flickering,
not caring that the water comes
from an off-season source
or that it’s going to become 
a metaphor for something
as soon as it blinks back 
into its usual state
of not being here. 
It seems to sense safety
in this room I’ve dedicated
to taking something
that looks wrong
on first glance
and making it right.