I am sorry,
but you must understand
that whatever tenderness
I held from birth
as my own

was squeezed early on into
the relative safety of
stony, hard locked fists.

This constant warring,
this impotent boxing
I have called “living,”
has all been
a shadow game
I have played

hoping it might
shake loose
a better man
from inside them.

The more I see
of this world,
the less I desire
to be a part of it — 

though I feel
that every time I say this
I am even more
a part of it,

participating in it
as one of the
customary
dissenters.  

Such a tired pose — 
I would be better off
without a tongue
or an urge toward art,

as the rest of you
would be as well.  
Thus, therefore,
the great experiment

of killing an artist
to seek a man in here,
for at least
a short time.

What makes anyone
think it will matter
at all a year,
two years,

fifty years from now
if I never create
another blessed
or cursed thing?

At best, I’ll be
your footnote friend
or object lesson.
At worst, I’ll be

one more
dead letter
to the future
from the past:

the most
common
thing
there is.

A trigger word in my ear,
key to my ragged ignition,
which when turned
will get my mind racing.

Some visions I’d forgotten
of how I made failure a faith
and disaster its daily sacrament.

Then, a small gun, just big enough
to set a bullet rattling
in my noggin;
a razor blade for picking
my locked arm;
a proper portion of proper pills;
a well-hung noose;
a cliff, ledge, or bridge.

Just give me what I ask for,
if you please.  
I’m being polite,
after all.

Well, you say, none of that
will make you happy;
it will make you angry or sad
or dead.

Eh, you choose
your pick me ups
and I’ll choose mine.

It’s not like you can skip
happy, angry, sad, or dead;
it’s not like any are avoidable.

For me it all comes down to pace
after a while — how quickly
you embrace the inevitable,
how much you value control
of your own timing.  

Me, I’ve got a thing
for punctuality.

I get a rise
out of being early
for important events,
no matter how much pain
they eventually bring,

or how much
I dread them.

Once invaded, 
a home becomes
a broken promise.

Once breached, 
walls and doors become
dark, porous lies
and windows turn into
lesions to be healed.

Maybe
whoever did this
needed the money.
Maybe
whoever did this
needed it more 
than I did — 

but all my voices urge me 
to soften my caring,
harden my heart,
put aside 
anything within 
that’s akin 
to compassion,
join the rest of us
in suspicion and fear
of what’s outside — saying

all the things I hate to hear.

It will take a long time
before I can ignore them enough
to be me again.

Remember that song that claimed,
“…you don’t need a weatherman

to know which way
the wind blows?”

Maybe that was true
once upon a time.

Now we don’t trust ourselves
to know what we know or don’t know.

Nothing goes down smoothly.
Nothing safely quenches our thirst

and no forecaster or fact checker
can say anything

without someone
calling it a lie.

Every expert’s a liar from birth,
their lies bought and paid for

by someone
who lies to thrive.

Your opinion is
the only truth you can trust.

It’s a north wind to you,
a south wind to the next guy.

Both of you are wrong
for in fact it is a westerly breeze

because I said it was
and neither the Tea Party nor Obama

can change my mind;
it’s certain that one of them controls 

the majority of stock
in compasses.  In fact,

it’s entirely possible that direction itself
is an Illuminati plot

to make us think we can get
somewhere else from here.

I just thought of that.
It must be true. It is as good a reason

as any to explain
why we’re all just standing still.

“The pump don’t work
’cause the vandals took the handles.”

Parched, paralyzed,
in fact parched nearly unto death,

thirsty for one sip of truth,
mistrusting each other, fearing 

there’s no point in taking even one step
in any of those dishonest directions

because there’s no place
any different from this one,

no place without liars, leaders,
or parking meters.  Seeing us now,

you’d think no sailor had ever set out
on nothing but trust in wind,

stars, hope,
and a bucket in which to catch the rain.

Your Substance Of Choice
hollers at ya.

It tells tales, says

stick with me
and live
forever.

As proof it shows you
your worst parent,
the long thought dead
mostly unmissed one,
waving at you
from inside a shoebox
you use to hold
photos,
odd linty pills, a penknife
with a bent blade
that won’t stay open.

See that?  Back
from the dead
like I said —

stick with me, kid,
and live forever.

What am I saying, you’re not
a kid anymore — what am I 
saying?

You’re grown, you got this —
hollaback
holla
back
y’all.
C’mon.

A penknife with a bent blade
that won’t stay open.  A brown crust
in the pivot point keeps it
from locking into place.
You won’t clean it.

Odd linty pills
for cold and flu, allergy,
sleep, pain.
You can’t even be certain they worked
when they were new and fresh.
You won’t throw them away.

Photos.  Not enough
and too many.  The tiny parent
waving among them,
a frond in funeral decor,
a skin tag gone horribly huge;
you won’t look.

Back from the dead
come the dead
you don’t wanna know

but c’mon,
you’re all grown up,
the dead can’t hurt ya,
you’re no kid anymore — 
holla back.

Shove the box into the closet
so its load can’t seep up
into your dreams.  Strap on
the getaway shoes. Get the hell
away from the house.

Your Substance Of Choice
can’t run. It can’t
fly.  All it can do
is lurk and lie
and beg you to notice it
lying there. That’s how it got
your worst parent.
That’s why
you never stop moving.

He’s jerked awake in the morning
by a sound from inside
one of the dresser drawers.

Pulls it open to find
a tiny family living in there —
he startles them at breakfast, tells them
to keep it down, goes back to bed
to sleep some more
and not to lie in wonder
at the miniature panic he’s caused
across the room, not to lie in wonder
at tiny people scrambling to hide
among his socks.

That tiny people live furtively
amid his domestication
and it is not a source of wonder to him
is in itself a source of wonder.

He may think
upon rising again
that it was a dream,
his waking was a dream, the faces
upturned in horror a dream, the diving
away from the light a dream.  Or
he may believe he was awake.
He may now believe in the little people
quite sincerely
and decide that they
have been present for his entire life
and he only now sees them.
He may consider his sudden ability to see them
a sign of maturity.  He may tell himself
that these wonders that came to him unbidden
are wonders common to all
if they all would just open their eyes. And
he may fall back asleep pondering
the potential uses of such a family
to darn his socks, arrange his drawers,
care for his small desires, fulfill
need he will have to invent…
right now all he wants
is for them to be quiet
while he tries to sleep.

That’s a source of wonder.

That he does not care to know them
or learn more about them,
ask their names, apologize
for the interruption, offer
to make amends,
that he goes back to sleep
as soon as possible
is a source of wonder.

That this has all happened before
and happens over and over
is a source of wonder —
someone, anyone,
get to those little people somehow
and tell them
to run while he’s still
asleep.

Here’s the myth 
of the new global village
exposed in a single fact:

if all you know of me
is what I post and 
what part of that you see,

when I die in real life
and stop posting
anywhere

you might not notice
for a week or two,
you might twinge

just a bit at my absence,
maybe a bit more if you then learn
why I’m gone,

and then, I know
you’ll forget me
soon enough.

No memorial, no stone,
no tomb to keep me
vibrant for you for a long time — 

oh, perhaps you’ll recall
a line or a picture,
a word or a comment,

but as for knowing my scent
or smile or touch — was I ever,
could I ever have been

real to you if you never saw
anything of me past
what I decided you should see?
 
How is this
different
from how it once was?

Forgetting each other
has become 
as easy as 

meeting each other
across oceans
and continents,

though knowing each other
is as hard
as it as always been.

A visionary
beyond the swinging Doors
signals to me
that from that side
he sees me
as I should be.

I tell myself it won’t be
a momentous occasion
at all to
walk through them
to meet him.
Without fanfare, without
ceremony, I step before him
and ask what it was he saw
back there before
I crossed over
to this space.

He explains
that it can’t possibly be
of any import now
for me to know that
since I’m on the side of the Doors
where the Angel Of Redefinition lives
and the nature of the passage
is that you are no longer who you were
before you came through.

When I demand to know anyway,
to have a complete explanation
for that past,
he shoos me back through
to wait my next turn.

Through fear
and a stubborn insistence
upon certainty
regarding my identity
I have lost
an opportunity to be
new,
and now I’m stuck here rueing
the desperation that drove me
to strand myself
in the muck of what
I’ve always been.

Angry at old women
whispering their racist views
in the checkout line at the store.

Angry at myself 
for putting my head in my hands
while listening to them.

Angry that I did nothing
because of bone fatigue
and a fear of my own harshness.

Angry again, switched to
default position: impotent
anger.  I put my head

back into my hands and weep
that what I am, I despise
and what I despise most, I have become.