Originally posted 1/14/2013.

Actual question from a test designed to assess creativity:  “Just suppose we had the power to transport ourselves anywhere in the world in the blink of an eye.  What would some benefits, problems, etc. of this power be?  You have three minutes to answer.”

First

I would move
six inches away
and rewrite my entire body of work
as if I had always been
six inches away from it.

Next

I would move back to where I had been
and rewrite everything again
but all of it would be so unlike
how it began
that it would be like starting over.

Then

I’d move
six inches
in a different direction,
see how it looked from there.

I’d probably end up
moving swiftly
around the house
without ceasing,

desk
to bed
to kitchen
to shitter
to shower
to desk
to bed.

I might burn all my poems,
go buy some expensive paper in Venice,
and write them all again
even shorter,
one word per pricey page.

Six inches away from the desk.
Back at the desk.
Six inches away from the desk.
Back at the desk.
Somewhere else far away.
Back at the desk.
Somewhere else again.
Back at the desk.

Not really sure
how different
it would be.  Not really certain
there would be powers
or benefits. Not really certain
how much of a problem
it might be

except for the wear and tear
on body and
the slippery possibility
of ever living some grounded life.

Not sure it would be
that different.  Not sure
at all that this has not

already happened,
is not still happening,

three minutes at a time.

Originally posted 1/7/2012.

Some days
are just one
turbocharged
evocation
after another.
Frankly,
I could do with
fewer of them;
not every moment
or action
has to have a point
and I’m tired 
of almost bleeding out
so often 
after getting stuck
by the ones that do.
Today give me instead
a pure road
with no toward
and no away from;
give me
a Grand Car Sound System
Of Love And Holler, give me
all the loud, louder, loudest
three-chord songs to play,
and let me drive along
playing them
at maximum volume
with no reason to be
driving 
except
that’s where songs like that
sound best.

Originally posted 1/21/2010.

This is how I learned it

On the one hand
Big Shiny Jesus
Sweetness
Little-children-come-unto-me cuddly

On the other
Scary Bloody Jesus
Big wounds
Three days give or take two thousand year stare
Just-got-in-from-Hell-and-boy-are-my-arms-tired

On my own I figured out
that if there had been a third hand
Jesus could have built his own crucifix
Nailed himself there with a rueful smile

so
whatever I wanted most after that
I called on Jesus to give me

I sang out
Lay me like a babe in the arms of Papa Jesus
so he can toss me backwards over his thorny head
in a salty ritual against the enticements of Satan

Let me grab hold of the ammo belt
of Soldier Jesus and bring him
into my trench before he’s cut down

I loved the Jesus of the moment
whoever he was
like a mirror

until one day
Loc’d Jesus
in the blue grime rags of the alley
wouldn’t take my pity dollars
Then Righteous Jesus went through a phase
where he’d only listen to Rise Against
and bemoan my bad taste
and Dice Thrower Jesus
laughed like Einstein
whenever I chewed my nails
over bills and lack of work

I’m not a fan anymore but
because of how I learned

I keep looking over my shoulder
for whatever Jesus
I might have overlooked

Originally posted 12/31/2009.

They’re working on race cars in Charlotte, 
baseball bats in Louisville,
beer in breweries coast to coast
and logo T-shirts in Singapore.
It’s the day of New Year’s Eve
and not much is going to change
in the world tonight.
We only think
we write the music
time dances to.

Someday a hibernating creature
is going to wake up from the winter
and we’ll be gone.
It won’t notice anything different except
an increased freedom to be itself.
No engines will roar, no baseballs will soar,
and the only drunkenness will come
when wasps suck the fermented sap
from fallen pears. 

Everything left alive
will be naked, nothing
will happen as a result,
and we’ll be regretted

only as much
as Creation regrets
any other extinction,

which is to say,
not at all.
Something still alive
will begin to dance
on the melody-free earth.

Originally posted 2/11/2012.

the distraught parents
don’t know what to do

their children
have fallen in love
with dust storms

they reach for a bible story
with which to chastise them

god is coming soon
come in out of the grit

but the kids
otherwise enthralled
aren’t waiting for a tardy god

they start a faith
based on watching the wind
bore holes in rock

with a gospel
of how sand
gets into everything
without trying

Originally posted 3/31/2011. Original title, “Chastisement.”

First time you noticed
that brass smells of dirty fingers and ozone
was the day you learned your mother had died.

The keys were in the hand
you bunched up to your face
upon hearing the news.

You could smell and taste them
mingled with tears and dust from the oak table
upon which you laid your head to weep.

These days you dust the furniture frequently
and whenever you handle your keys
you wash your hands right after.

It’s been years
since you thought about
that day.

Originally posted on 4/29/2013;  original title, “The Unimagined Country.”

Yet-to-be-fully-imagined
next country,

country where we let our own blood
into the garden soil to feed it,

where we sing in our own tongues in the front yards
and kneel silently in the back yards

under the open sky, seeking
guidance or a little rain;

country yet to be founded,
already rich and storied,

abandoned, rediscovered,
abandoned and found again and again;

country, not nation, not state;
country, not homeland, not seat of empire.

Country yet to be ours, country
ours to define — country

for us to defend against the poisons
of borders, flags, anthems, suspicions.

When we come to that country
we’ll look into each other’s eyes

and we’ll know what to name it 
without a single politician’s speech.

We’ll know how to run it
without a single task force.

We’ll know how to love it
without a single weapon.

We’ll know we’ve truly settled there
when we look into each other’s eyes

and see a neighbor, a cousin,
or a self, no matter what else we see.

Originally posted 7/3/2006.

We don’t recognize the tall old man
who asks if he can be on the list.
After he signs up at number four,
he sits in the far corner, alone,
speaking to no one.

When his turn comes he announces
that the poem he’ll be reading
is a gift from the ancient ones
unveiling the dangers of the coming
ultrafascism. 

He begins in German
and if he could speak German
at anything more than a freshman level
we might find less menace to his voice.

We catch snips of words
and phrases, some in English:

holy war,
Taliban,
Allah,
Jehovah,
Freemasons,
KGB.

We shift in our seats
when he reaches
under his shirt. Nothing is forthcoming
but no one relaxes.

His voice rises to a near shout,
concludes with English:
“man cannot destroy
the earth, for he is of the earth.”
When he is done we applaud, as always — 

looking around to see
who else is applauding,
who sees us applauding,
who is sitting unmoved
and unmoving.

This room full of smart people is terrified by — what?
A stranger reading a bad poem in halting German
and disreputable English?  The potential for death by a stereotype
of mental illness or fanaticism?  The invasion
of our comfortable bubble? A secret thrill
of guilty agreement?  Or is it how
his elementary cadence just marched
uninflected over art
straight out of history and into
our best knowledge of how evil
is supposed to sound?