Previous revision posted 4/5/2013.  

On Facebook, there is a man
who has 1500 friends,
approximately 800 of whom
he has met personally.

Of those he’s met
he’s had more than passing conversations
with maybe 200,
had longer and more confidential conversations
with perhaps 40,
and perhaps 15 have the qualities
of “friends” 
in the sense of the word
that existed prior to the year 2006.

1500 friends —
800 he’s seen,
400 he’s spoken with in meatspace,
200 he’s connected with,
40 he would tell this story to,
15 who would agree with him
but for the fact
that they are vanishing
into a cloud.

The man one day decides to read
a three volume unfinished novel
titled “A Man Without Qualities.”

He opens the first book,
closes it, opens it again,
closes it…a book,
three volumes long 
and still unfinished,
about a man who is nothing
but what he is given to be
by others.

The book will sit on his bedside table
unopened for long spells
as he talks to 1500 friends online.

If there is a Quality
to “friendship”
it is being absorbed into a cloud.

If someday the man wants to speak
to those 15 friends
after they’ve vanished,

he will have to learn a new word
with which to summon them.

Never before posted.  Originally written in 2010 or so as part of a suite of poems I was planning to use to accompany some music Faro (the bass player for Duende Project) had written.  I ended up discarding most of it, but found a bad recording of this while cleaning up my hard drive.  Never titled.

We have
a problem here
that has many strong legs
and stony little eyes,
mistakes and poisoned prongs
wound round it
like barbed wire.  It’s bringing
the brine with it:
that flavor of soiled ocean,
that smell of sweat
on ancient bronze.
It’s going to be
one dirty night if it makes it
over the threshold,
and it’s coming in hard and fast.

Naming it won’t stop it.  
Connecting it
to something already named
won’t stop it.  
Shooting it, stabbing it,
gassing it, loving it — everything 
we usually do
to solve a problem
is doomed to fail.  

Strong legs.
Stony eyes.
A stink pulsing in the air before it
as it rides its rotten wave.

Our only hope may be
to tear down this house 
it was born to infest,
do it fast enough
to save ourselves,
and learn
how to live rough.

Originally posted 3/2/2012.

You exhort me to know and love
the natural world
of orcas and eagles
polar bears and honeybees

but tonight I must put in a word
for silverfish
spiders flies and
centipedes

who speed around
our feet and food
hang suspended in corners
behind the dryer

nearly impossible to
catch or kill and who
always have
the cellar as a retreat

Those are
the beasts for me
Unlovely
and universally reviled

yet thriving
So perfect
for the modern
broke household

I’m getting
tattoos upon me
one for each
shudder-making pest

I live among them
have learned
their habits
have prayed to become

good enough
to fake my way into
their good graces
as this world is ending

I know
the natural world
You don’t survive just by being
picturesque

Originally posted 12/19/2004.

My mother has always said
that when I was born,
I yelled like kindling
crying for a match,

but I have never yearned
for the fires I’ve started
as much as I have longed
to be soothed by their quenching.

My deepest hope is that 
one can of gasoline away 
from wherever I am, 

there’s a world
that forever smells
of approaching rain.

Originally posted 9/23/2013; originally titled “Lie Of A Brother.”

Wake up at midnight to find
my daytime mask gone from the nightstand.

I can hear one of my fictional characters
typing somewhere.  I’ll bet he has it on

and I’ll bet he’s working
on another fictional character.

I can tell by the tempo —
it’s my tempo. He’s killing those keys.

It’s OK with me that someone I made up
handles my day-face so well he can make up another.

My myth is taking over my life
and my bastard is better at being me than I am.

I built him well, it seems.
He’s caught my spark for creating 

so I think I’ll roll over, go back to sleep, 
maybe skip living altogether tomorrow.

Let him and his creation handle it.  
I like it better here — dozing off 

while listening to my betters
laboring in the dark.

Originally posted 6/27/2008 — original title, “Mass Pike Moment, June 2008.”

The pond by the side of the road
is obscured in a green-brown mist.
If I wasn’t stuck in traffic
I might never have seen that color
that may be the result of the sunlight
pouring through the green leaves behind it,
or perhaps it is caused by the oak pollen
so thick in the air
that it clearly has changed
more than my breathing.

It is something I would not likely have seen
if I had gone whizzing by
intent on my eventual destination,
or if I had noticed it
I might have missed its hue,
and if it showed up again
in my thoughts
I might have decided
to say it was mist colored,
the default silver-gray that shows up in every poem.
I might then have turned it into a metaphor
for something else
instead of letting it stand on its own.

Perhaps all morning fog
carries a shade worth noting, a shade
only visible when the viewer
is halted in his progress toward importance
long enough to see it,
long enough
to be content in the viewing
and the knowledge
that everything that is known and believed
has a loophole in it somewhere
that is large enough to drive through.

Originally posted 3/6/2013.

A man who has never been rejected
is watching women on Highland Street

as if Highland Street were the ruins of a Mayan city
where these women are exhibits to be viewed

as if they were souvenirs
A man is shopping for a souvenir

among the women of Highland Street
imagining he is a prince of a lost realm

A lost realm he learned about in school
or perhaps in books from his father’s library

that displayed women as souvenirs
for the taking by princes of the realm

who may imagine themselves
against the backdrop of old roads

and palaces and even temples where men
are never rejected

because they never ask permission
when they take a woman for a souvenir of the realm

A man watches women
on Highland Street 

Imagines himself 
crafted in sharp obsidian

Ordained as prince and priest
Taker of live hearts

Imagines himself
hero of a bent myth

written by princes and priests
of the realm

Originally written in 1981 or 1982.  Never posted; not certain it has ever been performed.  Significantly revised here.

This is not a face I love
so I’ll gladly give it to you.  

Pull it from my head.
Put it on your own.  
I don’t need another, people would just 
recognize me then, don’t need that.  
Would rather look at them bare
and then scare them away
with my front skull.

Gradations are odious.  
My face is all gradation 
and subtlety and neither
is a thing I love.  
I surrender them
with this new wide smile.

The flesh we devote to expression 
is annoying and extraneous.  
I would gladly dispense with emotions
beyond the largest of them:
ecstasy, terror, rage, despair. 

In the new world
we won’t need subtlety.
In the new world
we’ll stick with ecstasy, terror,
rage, and despair.  These
will be our default settings.
Will guide our appetites.
Will drive our businesses.
Will admonish our gods.
Will break us in.

This is not a face I love.
I’ll gladly give it to you
but you should ask yourself
before you take it:
in this new world
why have a face at all?

Originally, this was three separate poems written over the years 1976-1980.  Never posted before, found in my ancient archives from that period.

I was a kid then, a teenager, and my reach was often far greater than my grasp.  I had an essay and a whole theory about what I was trying to do with poetry that when I read it now (of COURSE I kept it!) makes me giggle and blush.  But I was aiming at something, something larger than the individual Poem, even back then.  Didn’t have the life experience or the skill back then to make it work.  

Not sure I do now either, of course, but I am far more clear on my small abilities and my large ambitions than I once was, so…let’s say I think it’s worth a try.
Overheard from a dusk-dimmed driveway:

“Basketball’s simple —
you take the ball,
you dribble it, you move,
then you
shoot…”
Father, uncle or big brother speaking,
but who’s listening?  There is no second voice —
until after that, the good flat notes,
the rhythm of rubber on asphalt.

Two worn men on the sidewalk ahead of me.

One says,
“Every time I get my check
I try to hold on to the money.
They rob me at the bank
so I keep it all at home
but they rob me at home
but now I got them all fooled — 
I give all my money
to the man behind the counter
at the liquor store,” 
and his companion howls
and slaps him
on his age-sloped back.

On the bus

another old man, taller than I
by a head and a half,
muttering
again and again,
“…had a big
fat fat
fat fat
fat fat
wife, seven kids, forty years,
I know her face I think
but not her name…”

and now, by myself, in bed alone,
I say

may I never forget
that there are innumerable ways 
to get from one end of the court 
to the other
and may I never
scorn a journey
simply for where it ends.

Originally posted 9/29/2009.

In a world
wracked by anger and justifications
for anger

Glass Fist,

weirdest superhero of our time,

breaks his hands
on yet another villain’s face,
leaving the enemy shredded and wailing
and himself
crippled
yet again.

Back at 
the Fortress of Righteous Anger
his snickering friends watch

as he thrusts his hands 
into the Superkiln
and refashions them once again,
blowing shape back into each finger,
gloving them after they cool.

“What, exactly, is the advantage
of this particular superpower?”
they ask him. “You’re only good
for two shattering blows in any battle
and then we’ve got to save
your sorry ass.”

Glass Fist smiles and bows his head
in assent as they laugh — 

but later, when
he is alone in his lair,
Glass Fist pulls off
the gloves
and the mask.

Stares into his palms —
so clean,
no trace of blood.
His true and naked face
stares back from them
stained by tears,
soaked in doubt.