Originally posted 12/28/2004.   I used to write poems “ripped from the headlines” on occasion.  Most served their purpose — awareness, outrage, release of pressure, etc. — in their moment, while not having much staying power.  I thought this one deserved a second shot.

All day a stream of co-workers have come
to the world map on my cubicle wall,
coming to look for the place where it all happened.

Should I be surprised that on at least five occasions
I’ve had to point at the Indian Ocean
and then do a quick finger tour around the rim?

Or should I be heartened that at least
they came by to look? Or that they even knew
the map was here? It’s evidence, after all, that

the wave in fact reached beyond Aceh, that the wave
hit everything,  though not everything
got wet enough for everyone to feel it.

Here, we use money like paper towels
to keep the damp out, and already we’re bundling up
wads of it to ship overseas and make it all go away.

It’s possible that some come by
because they at least want to see
where their money is going.

“How about that tsunami?” “That one in Indonesia?” 
“Yeah, that one.” “I know!  That sucks.”
“Hey, can we look at your map? I wanna see where it happened.”

I wish I knew if I should cry
or just keep going back to the wall
to point it out again:

here is Phuket, here Aceh,
here Sri Lanka, here Tamil Nadu,
here Pondicherry, here Chennai.

Here is Myanmar, which so far
has been silent. Here we are
in the United States,

and here is everyone else.

Originally posted 9/30/2011.

“they have the father wound”
says the handsome minister
speaking of gangbanging boys
not yet out of their teens

“they have the father wound”
he says again to the interviewer
“fathers take off
or are in prison”

“the father wound”
he says it so gently
candles appear in soft focus 
behind his graying voice

“the father wound”
sounds so deep yet
the minister speaks of how
he thinks he can suture it

as if the killers
off-camera were infants
waiting to be picked up
in their fathers’ hands

and cuddled into health
as if assisting them
into the American dream
would be enough

as if that dream itself
would be enough
to keep them from harm
in this country nestled

at the bottom of a father wound which is
at the bottom of a mother wound which is
awash in the blood of other wounds
named Sand Creek, the Middle Passage, My Lai

Originally posted 10/29/2008, titled “Wet Market.”

A woman stops
at one of the stalls
that offers words for sale
and wonders
what nourishment she can take from 
there is a flower
that grows in plastique
and blooms in blood.

Someone else weighs the possibilities
of 
Valkyrie 
against those of 
Knight Rider Barbie,
tries to choose, fails,
buys both and moves on.

A third rejects all the proffered produce of love,
the red breath, 
the silk finger,
the charred emerald eyes. 
The seller
throws his hands out in disgust.

Modern diamond or heirloom adamantine? 
Is the dusk blue or azure?
Is this a stream or a creek
running under 
sky or heaven or firmament?
People head for home
after hours of haggling,
passing
a small table
outside the bounds of the market
that holds bowls of fresh water,
herbs, fresh spiced fish
soaked in lime juice.  

A sign on the table reads:

Whoever tastes the fresh water
will want to taste the herbs.
Whoever tastes the herbs
will want to taste the fish.
Whoever tastes the fish
will turn from the market
and go home simple and satisfied.

If the sign had advertised
ceviche, or if the sign had advertised
magic for the belly,
this might have been
a different story.
But after too many stands serving 
quick meals, too many ways to overfill
basic needs and answer want with gluttony,
there’s no need to ask
Who will stop there?  
because it’s already clear:

no one.

Originally posted 1/26/2011.

Starting with one thing,
leading inexorably to another:
such a steady bore, a boulder
that somehow gathers moss
as it rolls.

Those who first pushed it
believed they had made a revolution
simply because some things
they didn’t like were crushed
along the way, 

but look —
there’s point A, where it began;
here’s point B, where we are; 
pick your eyes up from its path
and step into the cool, unbruised twilight
beyond it.  

Pretty soon 
you won’t need a shaman to tell you
how much of what we think vanished in its wake
wasn’t destroyed at all,
how much of that is still there,
how much we still need
everything the boulder has missed,
and all that it keeps bypassing.

The original version of this was never posted here, or anywhere…since it was written in 1974, when I was 14.  I found it in my first spiral bound collection of poems that I’ve saved since those teen years.  Most of the poems are typical adolescent dreck with a heaping side of drug references, but I thought the concept behind this one was interesting. The first three couplets are direct quotes from the original poem; after that, the original is pretty flowery and hard to follow, but the images are the same.

I believe in
cheating on my childhood church.

I believe in 
closing my eyes during the scary parts.

I believe in 
the efficacy of crossed fingers.

I believe in
a spirit inside my rabbit’s foot.

I believe in 
a bag of smooth rubbed stones.

I believe
whatever I whisper at an altar will be heard.

I believe
whatever I hear next will be the right response.

I believe
everything, everywhere can be an altar.

Originally posted 12/02/2010; original title “Lives Of The Artists”

They begin
when an explosion
turns the inside out
like a burst in the night sky
on a holiday, and they 

burn. One day a look around
confirms for each
that what was inside,
what warmed them and fueled them
for years,  has burnt down

to ash.  Then begins the refilling,
or the attempt to refill; so begin
experiments and failures,
now and then comes a slight replica
of those first fireworks,

but it is never the same. Some
say that’s to be expected, some say
it’s the way, some say nothing
and turn away — no matter.
They keep lighting tinder in the dark.

Hear a recording of this piece: The Lives Of Artists

Originally posted 3/30/2013.  Original title, “The Blue Whale.”

something passes
through the air behind me
I turn and see only

conventional people and
everyday happenings
but I know something

I have missed for years
has just brushed me
and now I want to weep

but only with someone else
who felt it as well
I cannot weep alone

because one man
weeping alone
is no way to offer praise

to such things
that exist unseen 
but are deeply known

Originally posted 10/19/2012.  

Once a rich man. Now, not so much.
Fell over his own feet.  Landed inside a rock.
(How did he fall into the rock, you say?
He lost his money. That made him
porous to tragedy. He fell onto the rock assuming
it would pass through, and instead he was absorbed.)
Can’t get out.  Can’t even see how.

So now he’s a poor man stuck in a rock.
He’s not alone in there. A lot of people
like him got sucked into rocks like his.
He feels a little trapped
but he’s making do until he dies,
which he has determined
will be his only way out.

He remembers being rich.
It was good but there were horrors too
based on the money
being such a big armor and cushion
that he felt under attack all the time.
No more. He’s in the rock
because of how soft and transparent
the money had made him
but he thinks he’s more rock himself now.

Those who are really rich
didn’t think of him as rich.
He knows that now.
He knows they can’t possibly
understand any of this —
too busy kicking rocks.
Too busy being petrified.
Better he came to this —
poor and stuck in a rock —
than to be like them. 

He might have become a jerk
if he’d come into money late.
Better to have entered the rock
poor and soft at his age
so being with these people
has become a community.

He won’t die rich
but he’s OK with that now too:
he’s just glad he’s not going
to die alone.  

He’s so happy
he’s pounding the walls of his rock
with his bare hands
as if he was drumming.

Originally posted 2/15/2010.

In denial
of the wet shine
of ice on the steps,

I slip before I can
prepare myself for the
hazardous surface underfoot.

When my head
cracks into
the porch floor

there are suddenly midday stars
shining for my eyes only.  Novas
of sick burst in my throat.

I am suddenly myself a universe
born of my mistake and my arrogance.
In the dizziness that follows I wonder

if this internal possession
of a galaxy or two of pain
and derangement might make me a god?

Nope. I’m just another schmuck, flat on my back
on the stairs, my bleeding head
resting on the floor of my porch,

yet still I fantasize about power and glory,
the constellation of injury
provoking delusions.

Inside, comets and violet
energy. Outside, blood congealing
in the sharp air

of February.
Between them,
a foolish man

trying to shake it off
before freezing
in place.