Originally posted 4/12/2010.

A little cup of coffee,
hot, black and unadorned,
would be good right now.

Now and then I’ll take a little milk
to ease it down, but not today; and I’ll never
use sweetener — no, not at all,

because I like it bitter and I like the heat.
I like the way it stains my teeth
so my smile’s not as happy-kid bright.

I like how it opens my eyes
to the day
as it has been made.

God may trouble the waters yet
and if so I’ll have to wade them;
that little cup of coffee will help me go.

A little cup of coffee now.
Perhaps another later, and then another,
depending on how deep and swift the water;

a little something to remind me
that the sweet life
is not the only one worth living.

Originally posted 5/27/2010.

I made beautiful meals
which fell apart —
overcooked and fussy dishes
that crumbled into fibers and mush
as I set them before you,

so I made harder, plainer foods.
These curdled into leather
and hardwood — they proved
impossible to chew,
and you turned away.

I made an effort after that to balance
the artful and the hearty
in one meal, tried to be 
master of all you desire.
You just looked at me and said,

“It’s…interesting…”

Now, we just order out.
You seem happy. 
You seem to like this better. 
I am trying to consider this an improvement
although to be honest,

I’m feeling more than a little unnecessary.

Originally posted on 2/23/2011.

In the greenspring dark,
your foot finds a rock.
You trip and fall
as the neighbor’s daughter

skips down the far sidewalk.
Lying hurt on your belly,
you can’t get yourself up
to get inside, so you stay down.

You stay
while the grass
under the moon
swallows you.

Her mother calls her in
for the night and you’re alone.
Ah well. It’s warm out here
under the moon in the grass.

There’s a fence fifteen feet away.
Something moves along its base.
Possum or skunk, no telling.
No scent carries to you,

so something else perhaps. 
It stays away.
Maybe it smells the stink
of your draining health.

It’s getting cold out here
under the moon.  You’re on your belly,
you’re cold, you’re hurt — it’s fine. 
Under the greenspring dark,

it’s not hard to consider
ending here
among animals
who will eventually draw near to you

as at last you drift away.  By day
it’ll be so easy for the neighbors
to see you there, dead
on your belly,

never knowing that your last thought
was a memory
of their skipping child
in the lowering greenspring dark.

Originally posted 11/3/2012.  

When wisdom arrives, it is moving slowly.
It was not sent. It followed
its own path to us.

It says, when asked, “I am here
because this path
brought me here.”

We know what happens next
because our path brought us here
and we understood what would meet us 

at the end. Mountains
at the edge of the scene nod, and 
the long hair of the meadows waves its assent.

As wisdom serenely kills us, 
we accept it with the understanding
that this catastrophe has come to instruct us

because we seem
forever incapable
of learning without it.

Originally posted 3/21/2008; original title, “Thursday.”

you long ago said
“what if.”

now, you say
“I will.”

this is no longer
the argument
ahead of the contract;
this is the contract:

last words;
finger flung high;
grand illusion shrinking
as you speak.

you have opened the black door
to the black room.
you do not turn back.

wiping blood and grit from under your nails,
you ask yourself

if your words really 
put this sand in your gears.
what if it was there waiting all along?
what if the will you agreed to follow 
wasn’t yours? who set these things to work? 
who made this struggle? 

was it truly your words
that made this happen, or was it all ready to go
and simply waiting for you to begin?
wasn’t there someone before you who said
the word would be made flesh?

you find yourself outside yourself,
staring steadily at your flesh
taking those words to heart.

the contract has been sealed.
even if you could take the words back
you’d still be bound by them.

they were never yours to do with
as you wanted

but wanting
has nothing
to do with this.

Originally posted 4/27/2009.

Crystal skulls and pyramids,
sweat lodges and vision quests,
Tarot cards and Zodiac — good night to you,
you’ve served your purpose.

Your creators are long dead.
They’d laugh at us if they were not.
They’d marvel at those who don’t know how
to find prophecy in the mundane, 

in the random jumble of socks in a drawer
or the shadows of skyscrapers 
knifing across downtown streets 
if they tried.  They’d say, every jammed closet

is a cathedral if you know 
how to pray in it and each time clock
offers a mantra in its solid thunk upon
a dreary card.

The Great Intelligence of the Universe
was not absent when those things were created. 
The web of prophecy is splendid
precisely because it snares

the profane and the sacred together,
sees that they are indistinguishable.
When the ancients are incessantly called upon
to tell us where we’re heading, they must ask themselves:

who are these frightened people who do not understand
how to make do with what’s right under their noses,
cobbling a peephole into time
from whatever is close at hand? When we were alive,

we lifted crystals from the dirty ground
whenever we found them.  We took a deck of cards
we’d used for gambling and sorted them to see 
if how they fell could tell us how we might fall.

When the king died, we cut and piled rocks
until they lined up with stars and sighted along them
so we could see where he was headed.  And in the dark
low dome of a hut covered in skins,

we poured cold water over scalding stones,
drew in the steam, blew it out again
to mingle the Inner with the Outer.
It was something we did every day, anyway,

every time we cooked or bathed.  All we did
to meet God was add a little attention
to the mundane.  Shape a little something
just a little bit more carefully than normal.

All we ever did to meet God
was look for God and trust that
we wouldn’t have to look far.
Neither will you. Surrender

your grip on how we tried to get by
and find your own.  Let us go.
What you find may not be God at all
but at least it will be yours.

Originally posted 4/12/2010.

When we have crossed the last line
When we have left unhappy and can see happy
When our teeth stop traveling in search of substance

When we demand and no longer beg
When we are seen fully by another
When the sense of otherness is tamed

When learning is the equivalent of living
When it stops being a big deal
When work is jazz and not techno

When the lovers blow hot always hot
When the cool is demonstrated by a hand in a fire unburned
When warm clothes make the war go away

When street is asphalt and not adjective
When prairie takes precedence
When river is clean fuel

When ocean slips pregnancy to us through our eyes
When bird and snake combine to make historical marker
When tumbledown prisons become flower mounds

When the last butchers fall meatless into our arms
When mean mumbling is sampled and made to rock
When beauty is defined as “every face we see”

When this is all quaint
When no one needs to learn this at any emotional level
When this is so clear it is invisible

Then

Originally posted 3/17/2005.

Ghost, you call me. 
Not The Ghost, 
but Ghost, 

making that my proper name, 
not (of course) my Christian name, 
but the older kind:
the one that means something 
and tells something about you 
that remains true.
There’s nothing new 
about me being Ghost
except that now that I’m dead,
they call me that directly.

Back when I was just a guy,
long before I leaped off that bridge,
I used to daydream about flying
and walking through walls.
I wished for the power 
of invisibility, to blow unseen
so coldly and suddenly
into a space
that everyone in that room
would turn and look for me
and shudder when I wasn’t there.
I never had impact,
I didn’t want risk, 
so my fantasy became impact
without risk: that would be the life,
I thought. There’s a good joke:
I have the life I wanted
now that I don’t have a life.

I used to cringe
when they told scary stories at camp.
Later I laughed at horror films,
pretending bravery.
Once you’re here, you find
it’s nothing like those things.
It’s all so – routine.
You show up at regular times,
whistle a little in a dark hallway,
provide a moment of clarity to someone
who’s used to being safe and warm.
You become a lesson
no one believes they need
until it’s learned.

There are small joys here.
This is a beautiful world,
once you can no longer feel it.
It takes your breath away
to see the way it moves.
I spend years just standing
in front of the strangest things:
not sunsets or rainbows
but garbage trucks and fires
and drive-by victims.
Disposal has become
an art form to me
now that I’ve been disposed of.

I am Ghost, have always been Ghost,
and Ghost is what you call me now.
I’ll take it
the way I have always taken it:
with a bowed head.
Before, I would come when called
because I had no place to be
other than the place I was called to.
Nothing’s really changed:
I blow through, am unseen,
maybe I’ll be remembered
in your children’s dreams.
Maybe we’ll see each other
one night on the landing, where
you might call me Ghost,

or you might call me imaginary.

Either will do. 
I answer to both.

Originally posted 1/7/2010.

First thing to catch my eye
in my living room this morning
is a Tasmanian wolf —
said by most
to be extinct but, well,
there it certainly is,
at least this morning
in this living room. Spider legs
and stripes,
car crusher jaws,
it stands calmly blinking
in my salvage yard
of an apartment;
its presence makes sense
as my place is full of discards,
secondhands,
re-purposed items
finding new lives; the animal
must have spun in here by chance
when the earth
passed through its dimension,
and decided to stick around.
I can do something
with anything I get my hands on;
maybe that appeals to it. I decide
to name the beast Johnny
and it looks up when I call it,
as confident in its power
as a myth. I offer it a drink
and it begins to lap,
the long pale tongue flickering,
not caring that
it’s going to become
a metaphor for something
once it blinks back
into its usual state
of not being.  It’s safe here
in a room that’s become
a shrine to the art
of taking something
that looks wrong on first glance
and making it work,
and to my surprise it curls up
on the bare pine floor
and falls away
into hopeful sleep.