Originally posted 11/3/2012.  

When apocalypse comes,
it will come slowly.
God will not have sent it.  

It won’t have been sent at all.
It will just come of its own accord
on its own wisdom path.  

If asked, it will say, “I came to be here
because this path that opened before me
brought me here.”

The mountains at the edge of town 
will nod,
almost too slowly to notice.

The long hair of meadows 
will wave in assent. The rest of earth
will agree with it at once.  

Then, as it serenely kills us,
we will be forced to accept
the expertise that pushed for this — 

Wisdom itself seems bent
on using catastrophe to instruct
as we seem unable to learn

that we are not
and have never been
at the end of that path.

Originally posted 8/7/2012.

Under one of the caskets 
in the spare room I find
a book I’d forgotten buying,
a book titled Art And Fear.

I suspect
being under a casket for a few years
has made it a better book.
It smells like it soaked up
a little something while under there
and I think that makes it far more credible.

This is the part where you ask
about the casket.

This is the part where you ask
why I moved the casket.

This is the part where you realize
I used the plural, “caskets.”

This is the part where you hear an owl
in the distance and cannot tell
if it’s in the poem,
the yard,
or the next room;

this is the part
where you stay awake
long after you should be asleep.

Originally posted 6/5/2005.  From comments on the original post, I’m pretty sure I was in Orlando FL at the time I wrote this. Probably a business trip back in those days.  Not that it matters.

there are places like this
there have always been places 
just like this
where snakes
hold their tails in their mouths

you’d think that people seeing them
would stop pretending that
there is no proof
that every beginning 
contains its end

but people keep saying
if it happened
where’s the proof
that it happened

a snake eating
its own tail?
seems that would be
enough proof

but what happens
is that people
not trusting that what happens
happens and happens
again and again
not trusting those who tell them
that what happens happens
and happens again
and again
demand plural immediate unshakeable proofs
and though such things are common
any wait at all
allows them to forget and deny
that it ever happened

now we are here and
here’s another snake
reaching around himself
his tail wet from 
poison mouth

this is how things end and begin

how it happens
and happens and happens
again and again

this is a song for a snake to hum
as it waits patiently
for lessons to be learned
and things to stop happening
again and again and again

so it can stop biting its own tail
so it can stop dying

Originally posted 3/22/2007, though written well before that.

The brain
knows many things.
Some of them you know,
some you do not.

If the brain
was a flower,
you would be
its scent.

Perhaps
the brain is a
flower, starving
for light, lunging
through the eyes,
seeking nourishment.

If you plucked
your brain out
and held it to the light,
would you have a mind?

The mind lives
in the brain and
hides in its petals.
The mind is the dark
among the riots of color.

You sleep
as the brain tends to the mind.
They talk all night,
pretending they are
you. In the morning
you are nearly mad
from the echoes of their
conversation.

Put your hands
around your mind
and know it’s not
part of the scheme
that you should understand
everything: there are things
shoring up the partners
that would terrify you
if you knew them.

The brain blooms
long after you close your eyes.
The mind rises from its nooks and folds
to escape, moving past you,
playing in the meadows.

The mind drifts back
in the hot late afternoon.
Your head grows heavy
with pollen. You open your mouth
and bees fly in
to take their fill while the mind
avoids being stung
by the danger in the commerce.

When you sleep
the mind and brain bear ideas.
You pretend they are your own fruit.
The brain laughs at you. The mind
strokes you softly, saying,
“There, there…”

You are the scent.
Something plucks your brain
and you die slowly. Maybe
another brain and another mind
recall you for a while, but
you’ll certainly fade.

Anything
fed long enough
on vision, scent, touch,
sound, taste will double back
on its own surety.

The brain
makes you sleepy. The mind
makes you frightened. You
make yourself believe
there are reasons for everything.

A night blooming flower
holds its beauty
until first light, collapsing
at the first touch of your hand,
staining your memory
with a scent you never can
describe.

Originally posted 11/4/2013.

To wake before dawn
is to wrestle
a fat, angry angel
every morning, one
who would prefer 
I stay asleep indefinitely.

We struggle until I put that angel 
into brief submission, then go about
this life where the easy stuff
takes forever to do
and the impossible presents itself
as regularly as church.

Weight and difficulty
are what I know best.
Some of us, it seems,
are born to be
ground underfoot,
born to wear out.

I trust the universe
to get it right,

and when the last of me crumbles,

my remains will serve some purpose,
I’m certain, for that fat and angry angel
who will crush me 
and then lift me
tenderly
from where I’ve mingled with dust.

Originally posted 8/11/2012.

Priests of every stripe 
will tell you one thing
and forget to tell you 
another.

They are politicians as much as they are
holy men and women.
They will do what’s right for them,
say it’s right from God.

If you want knowledge you can trust,
don’t ever listen to a human.
Get to an ocean or desert
or a mountain; in fact go

anywhere high desert and mountains
drop into the ocean.
Go sit near the shore for a week
or a few years.  

You’ll get 
everything you need.  

I would tell you 
to keep it to yourself
and not risk creating
a priesthood,

but it tends to follow.  
You will end up 
lying about it 
to others,

telling yourself
it’s for their own good,
but it will be, of course,
for your own:

that’s the nature
of it, the message straight
from God: we will always
mess up the truth and have to

look for it again
where the high and bright dry
meets the cold
deep dark.

Originally posted 6/18/2008.

In town for a convention.

When not at a meeting or the booth
lives in the back corner of the hotel bar,
alone over soup, a salad, now and then
a rare steak, always
the drink, always the glass.

Right now, running
a finger around the rim
of the tumbler: two rocks,
single malt, half gone.

Half gone as well
the old tie — worn as a slack noose,
silk darkened at the tip
from fiddling with it
under conference tables,
in airplanes, in 
traffic. 

Looks down,
notices the staining
and says, “Man, if I still 
had the money
for every tie
I’ve had to buy in a rush
from a hotel gift shop
before a meeting 
where I had to look my best
or risk losing my confidence or
maybe the account,
I could have retired
by now.” Strips it off,
a superhero changing
for battle. 

Downs the last
of the drink, slams
the glass, gets up to go 

back to the room, getting
far away from people
laughing at the TV,
flirtations, deals
wisping on the air
like smoke foretelling fire.

Says it’s only temporary.
Only till things get figured out.
Only till all the obligations
to others are fulfilled. 

Offers silent prayers
to whatever has made happiness
such an overpriced commodity
that one can survive
on selling it to others
while living entirely within
a fantasy of making enough
to buy some of your own
one of these days,
sooner rather than later.

Falls asleep
trying to decide
what tie to wear tomorrow.

Originally posted 12/27/2012.

We’ve exhausted all leads;
the clock’s running out. People
died. Who and what
to blame is all we care to know

but we’re broke and broken 
and we’re out of time. 
If we want to get past who did what 
and learn how to stop it

we are going to have to start time again.
Build it all again differently —
more windows and doors,
fewer walls.  Most of all,

we’re going to have to
build a better clock.
Something with longer hours,
days, years.

Something based on
the Mayan model,
perhaps.  Something
with resets.

Originally posted 6/6/2012.

In half of my dreams
I see a door
sacred to no two faced God Janus,

but instead dedicated
to a three faced
unnamed god:

one face for out,
one face for in,
one face looking back to the world

that would have been
had I never seen this door,
a face that’s always looking away. 

~~~~

I always wake up angrier
than I was
when I went to sleep.

In the last dream of the night,
I am being beaten
by a masked man.

He asks me
how it feels 
to be beaten.

I lie that 
it is neither bad nor good,
that it has no flavor.  

Let me spice it then for you
with more blows, different blows,
he says,

slamming my hand 
in the door
as I try to push through.

~~~~ 

Always aching when I wake,
always wishing I could
just go through the door

into the day
happy, light
and smiling.

I live in
this wrong world
of in or out, this or that.

I hate walking
through that door.
Some days, I try not to.

On those days my hands
look like meat from taking the beating
as I try to stand in between the rooms —

fingers clawed into the jambs,
terrified of the unnamed man
doing the banging.

Choose, friend, he says.
Crawl through or hang back,
but the door is here;

you have to choose
now that you know
it’s here.

What of
the promise of the third face,
I ask.  

No one ever
gets to look that god
in the eye,

he says.
They all die 
trying.