Originally posted 2/17/2009. Original title, “How To Become A Phoenix.”

first, the right lighter. 
a plain steel zippo 
that’ll stay lit
when you let it
roll off
your fingers.

start with something
unwanted and shabby —
the roof
of your daddy’s shed, 
the rotted corner 
on an abandoned house.

stay away from occupied dwellings
unless you’re sure 
the occupants want to escape 
and have 
the skills and access 
to do so.

lift the lighter,
snap the cover
and the wheel
and hold that dear flame
against your choice
until it catches. 

once it’s rolling,
run like hell
then sit and watch.

do this
more than once. 
do it hundreds of times.
you will be interrupted, 
caught and tried,
convicted, caged, and freed.

a thousand years will pass 
until you are at last ready. you’ll be
in your home and the lighter 
will roll off your fingers
as casually 
as a basketball — and then,

o player, you will attempt to dance
a pick and roll
around your red opponent;
screaming for assistance, scheming paths
of fading resistance
until you can do no more.

then, perhaps,
you will rise, 
or maybe not.
it’s all
up to the fire
as to how this ends.

this myth didn’t originate 
in a human hand.
fire wrote this one, and when fire tells it
it’s not about rebirth — 
it’s a story
of the random one who got away.

Originally posted on 11/09/2012.

Open your story with

shrunken tap dancer,
resting camel,
unstable carousel,
parched fingers, shellfish, 
bored gardeners,
a longhouse converted 
from dwelling to storage
and filled to the ceiling 
with duck feathers.

Where is this happening?
Write in a map
of the small roads
somewhere near Barrington, Rhode Island.

Enter now the central conflict
between a socialite and a meteor.
In a subplot that tap dancer
shall struggle to understand her fate,
her sudden and strange deficiency.

A real woman you love enters the room
shaking her dark hair out from under a hat
after coming in from a storm.
She looks at you staring at the laptop
and says, “Are you done playing?”

Are you done playing?
You set the dancer
on the camel
in the longhouse
before closing the computer lid.

Yes,
you say.  
Yes, I am done playing,
though this felt so serious 
while you were raising it to life
that the words feel like a betrayal.
You swear to come back to it later 
to see if it has continued on its own
and if so, to write in some hope
if the story will have it:

all the threads knit together under a night sky
with the meteor as wish-star
and the miniature dancer stretching her hand
to seize it.

Originally posted 3/21/2014.

If I had been born a house,
I would have liked to have had
a family live inside me.  
I’d have enjoyed my traditional interior
and thrilled to secrets and confidences
shared among loving members.
If by chance I’d been afflicted
with a family of abusers, perhaps a light
through one of my windows
might have illuminated a moment of pain
and changed a moment of rage
into one of remorse.

If I’d been born a workshop,
a small factory or a personal craft studio,
I’d have enjoyed the daily industry within,
the making of well-tooled items
by hand or with complex and elegant
machines.  At night after all the workers 
had returned to their homes
light from the moon would enter and caress
the worn surfaces, the works in progress,
the waiting benches yearning to be filled.

But I’m a man.
My interior is crowded with guts and stench.
I can’t take what goes on in there — 
war and self-hatred, spilled bile
souring the slow flow
of my sludgy, sugary blood.
I want to believe
that there is a light in there —
something different,
something handy,
something skilled,
something like family — 

but the evidence suggests
otherwise so
I daydream
of better lives
that could have sprung
from those
very different
birthdays.

Originally posted 10/28/2005.

you say she keeps turning up in your life 
like a bad penny,
forgetting that

if a bad penny
has been beaten
by time and trauma,

it will pull your fingers
to your pocket
far faster than a good one will and

if your bad penny
is made of something other than copper
it will be warmer to the touch so

you will guard it
far longer than you would
any good penny;

you’ll keep it, show it off,
dream of it, cry if you lose it,
die with it on your mind.