Originally posted 12/05/2008.  
Title poem from my Pudding House Publications chapbook (2009), now out of print.  
I rarely revise published work, but this seemed to ask for it.

i open every night with a prayer: 
sleep, come sooner than the flood.

then comes the flood
and the faces rising to the top:

julie’s blonde hair floating out.
paul robichaux’s rockabilly daring submerged in white.
grandmother’s dear severe wrinkles.
grandfather’s mean low brow.
eddie with his broken head still full of tar.
blue glaze of paul gentile holding a gun up to a temple.

my own head,
my own hands on my own ears.

palaces built of centipedes.
sharp stones set like crystals into 
the back of a baby.

in europe they have gargoyles for moments like this.
in bali there are chants for moments like this.
in new england we simply do not admit to moments like this.
when they come we keep them under our scalps.

still, the lifting faces.

george and jerry barone
rising from the shell of their Volkswagen.
wayne king never knew me
but i knew him.
he was everywhere after he died
and now he’s here again. 
that man died surprised
that he was the only one who did.

in the corner
my hands fling my head to the cement mouth first.
i spit a tooth out
and it lands and grows into the next piece of me to be terrified.

the myth of the hydra explains everything:
a horror killed begets more horror.

still, those lifting faces:

stricky the flying head,
veech the forlorn missile,
carole the rolling bag of bones,
jacob the ghost before he even passed,
martin the bisected prince of the railroad track.

all their sleep has lasted to this day,
and i am still awake.

those lifting faces. 
that’s me in the center,
my eyes shut, squeezed tight,
knowing what is coming.

some sounds will not go away:

a woman’s voice saying 
slink, dove, scrap, green face, sun on a gourd,
crumbs on a dragon, coupons, carver, slide, rumble, escapement,
clipping, stolen, pulse, penlight, painting, bands,
pickup, relate, lard,
gungrease, quillon,
medallion…

then, words appear that mean themselves and no other thing: 
unspecific twoolyala,
skevot,
abbredient briest...

it may be my job to translate them.

no word should be without meaning.
deny that and the clock stops.

when those faces float up to see me
i pretend to understand heaven and hell,
perhaps even purgatory.
buying my peace from my parent’s store.

they never quite break the surface.
they do not speak.

i sink myself in the shallows
of the clouded pool.

sleep, come sooner than the flood.

Originally posted 11/8/2013.

Abandon and joy
have pulled the bit
from your mouth;
you’ve begun to dream without reins.

The broken bell of your body chimes.
Sing to us of the failing ring of its last note
and of the ear cupped to catch it
before it’s gone forever.

Then sing the return, the rebirth,
the orbit swinging ’round.
Sing the bloom gone to seed,
the seed gone to fire.

Sing us a blue-throated love song,
a dense jewel  in full sun glinting;
a dark-tattooed work song, gospel
of opening, echo of pure belonging.

Sing the emblem 
of circularity, the zero;
sing its completion
of the eternal round.

Your mouth is free of its bit.
Your song is free of your knotted tongue.
Sing.  Sing of horses running,
manes and tails, summer’s winds.

Originally posted 4/30/2012.

If this is the last poem I will ever write
I cannot let myself fall back on The Usual List Of Me
for inspiration, hanging all I am now on any of 
my usual hooks. Not for a last poem.

A last poem ought to break into 
new fire as the poet is raised up
in the heat of it.  A flame 
cracking a red consuming song.

If this is the last poem I will ever write
I should set all my weary categories
ablaze in it, and as I cannot,
this cannot be the last poem.  

If this had been the last poem
I was destined to write,
the poem would be burning
and I would already have jumped through it.

Originally posted 2/26/2011.

we all
have a deep longing
to dance on someone’s grave

we all love to sin
that light fantastic
we can’t seem to sit still

red or blue
left or right
we love that happy dance

how soft and yielding
that refilled ground
how haughty our heels upon it

how good it feels to be swinging
above those
who can no longer do a thing to us

every bastard one of us
longing to abandon the better self and dance
spinning in delight for a moment anyway

dancing to the beautiful American word
revenge
stomping a toe dance of righteousness

everyone’s tapping their feet
some on top now
some waiting their turn at the top

forgetting that
it makes no difference to the dead 
which graves we choose to tarantelle upon

Originally posted 8/5/2012.

I’m telling myself the truth
for a change.
I admit
that now and then

it would feel good
to swing a hand
and connect with a
hard yet crackable jaw.

I disregard the claims of
comfortable wisdom and note
that most criminals I’ve known
had mountain-high self esteem.

That war thing, the one
where we rush into it singing?
We’ve all tried for years to stop it,
yet it keeps coming up.

Anger, said the Dalai Lama,
is unnatural. Yet somehow
every baby I’ve ever seen
knew from birth how to make a fist.

Originally posted 3/1/2010.

Left at the top of the stairs
and then another left
and then a right
takes me into the blue room
I lived in through junior and senior high,
the room I drywalled
and painted for myself
with my father’s help.

I chose the color
and the now-embarrassing
blue shag rug.
(Blue was my favorite color then.)

I laid the oak floors
that lie beneath the carpet — 
nailing through the tongues
of the narrow planks,
fitting the grooves to them,
beautiful unstained wood I covered
with blue shag carpet.

I chose these red and blue plaid curtains.
Dirty as hell, limp with fade and dust.
No one’s vacuumed since I left.
I just found a cannabis seed
in the rug under the side window
where I’d smoke late at night
from a homemade pipe
I made from an old steam radiator valve.

I had an FM radio then
that taught me how to hear 
Mickey and Sylvia played
after Rashaan Roland Kirk
and I tried to stop thinking the world 
was rigid and orderly.

One time I broke up with someone 
and dropped acid late that night
and stared at my squirming self
in the mirror for a long time.
Afterward I took a piece of paper
from a spiral bound notebook
and wrote a whole story 
that sounded pretty much

like this one.

If I lived here now
I’d tear up this rug.
If the oak still looked good
I’d sand and stain and polish it;
I’d change the curtains and
I’d certainly have to paint — 
not blue this time,

or at least a different blue.

When I was done I’d play
the modern, stale radio, 
smoke a big joint in plain view of the windows,
sit there and think about
Rashaan Roland Kirk
having the blues and one working arm and no sight.
Dig up a hazed memory of
“Rip, Rig, And Panic.” Then
I’d imagine him singing
“Love Will Make You Fail In School.”
That’s still true. It really will.
I can vouch for that
even if I can’t remember
more than that. Thank God

I’ll never have to do all that —
move back here
into this room
and cobble together
a new life
with the blue
and the dirt
and the leftovers. After all
you can’t go home again
when you never really left

and it never really felt like home to begin with.

Originally posted 1/7/2006.

1.
i was 15
a man grabbed me from behind
i turned and cut him
did not stop to see what happened
ran as fast as i could back to the party

two friends helped me
scrub off the blood
someone else
lent me a shirt

i went home that night
my parents never knew
i have watched the news for years
still don’t know what happened

why nothing has ever happened

2.
she was really pretty and
if i could have recalled her name
i would have called her

i am still trying 

3.
at 17 i stole a book of robert bly’s poetry
and later had him sign it
this was wrong in so many ways

i still have the book

4.
i should have called her
i should have called her
i should have called her
who was she

who am i that i thought i could call her

5.
i should have hit him
i should not have hit him
i’m glad i hit him

i should never have pulled my knife
i am glad i pulled my knife

years later i saw the one
i should not have pulled the knife on 
in a club

he backed away from me
both hands raised

it felt good

you’re the indian, right
he said

it felt good

something like that
i said

i like indians, he said

i stepped toward him
he fled
it felt good

5.
there is only so much of yourself you can handle
before you have to start dividing and conquering

i will own this
but i will not own that

but i am this because
i was that
and was not that

you don’t really know me
and you never will

i know me
but not all of me
and not all at once

Originally posted 5/17/2009.

Ein Jeder Engel Ist Schrecklich (Every angel is terrifying). — Rilke

Close a door, open a door,
write a letter, burn a letter:
endings are as easy as beginnings
when there’s little potency attached.
What makes it hard to end or begin
is the Angel of Possibility who hovers
on the margin of each decision. 

I know much of her scarred wings 
and fruit-toned breath. Each time
I have flown with her
I have been scared of the height
from which I might fall;

tonight she floats 
at the edge of vision,
near the door, beckoning to me
as I pray for my feet
to remain on the ground — 

yet she is an Angel,
after all, and I begin
to rise, attended by
all the terror
I can bear.