we do not wear metal jackets
or leap from tunnels into light
in hopes of being buried in a heart

i watch how you believe
you are right – how bad
is very bad, and good
is only your good.

we do not wear metal jackets
or spiral through the spirit
into the fabric of the spirit

i watch how you believe
in heartbeats and long breaths
the miracle is not the choice
but the mechanism for it

we do not wear metal jackets
or crack like a whip
across the back of a wholly stranger

i watch how you believe
in the softness of sand
as it falls through your fingers
into the tide.

in hollywood they all wear tattoos
of scorpions on their asses
they all judge the righteous
they all generalize about the people
who pay for the tickets to their shows
and they all say things like,
it’s just sex – it’s just a couple
of bucks – it’s no one’s business
it’s nothing – as they sink
into the couch and enjoy the labors
of the little fish cleaning their fruit
in return for another gig
somewhere out there in the big blue
no where.

everywhere else, the tattoos are nicer
and the judging is more diverse.
there are no little fish to clean
our fruit – we have to do it ourself –
and we’re lucky if there is anything
but slavery to a buck and time to pray
whether there is a God or not.

little blue marbles in a pile
by a shallow hole – surrounded
by little boys in smart uniforms
huddled around discussing relative
value, and the merit of each size

oblique sunlight suggesting winter
but lying summer between crab
shaped clouds and thin knobby knees
whispering to the dry dusty dirt
anything is possible

the action starts again – the voices
jibbering about as the dirty-blond boy shoots
a miracle through the air, through the moment
into the midst of the cerulean spheres
cheers the crack and the roll and the stopp
ing.

Silent, he counts.
They count.

Rules forgotten he is punched
again and again and again
– the marbles are gone
he wipes the dirt from his mouth
and walks away.

Lee wears superman boxers
and tells his kid
“everything’s going to be all right”
after a nightmare breaks 2:37am silence

Darnell wears a cape
and becomes a kid as he yells
“everything is going to be all right”
and leaps out from the closet to save his basset hound

Cindi draws an ‘S’ in red
and tells herself
“everything is going to be all right”
as she wolfs down 7 more little white ones

Grant, hands on his throbbing skull,
searches for a phone booth but they’re all gone
“nothing’s ever gonna be the same”
he folds himself into a chair and waits.

the difference between useful and useless and used
is a squirrel collecting nuts
watched by an orange tabby

everything in the instant
holds infinite meaning – and none –
both of their perspectives are true

another nut, a twitching tail
then the realization – I am in the moment
with them.

laying naked on the linoleum floor
a towel balled up under my head
agonizing tentacles inside my gut
twisting my innards into odd shapes
like a bunch of hairless pipe cleaners

when the pain becomes just right
i kneel over the toilet to pray
my life becomes less brutish
and more short.

thinking nothing – only hurt –
misery becomes my silhouette
cramping and aching and spasms
in my intestines harmonize
as I collapse again to the floor
hot and cold, shaking and wanting
all of this to end.

an old man, dark parchment-skin, dry and cracking
quill pen, clean fresh parchment, black ink
thought by thought, stroke by stroke – his story
a son under the cold, under the gray, under the atlantic
staring eyeless at the dark where a gold sun should love him
a daughter in a factory arguing politics, searching
for ammunition against enemies – foreign and domestic
a wife in a tafatta wrap of tears and loss wincing
at every sunset, every moonrise, every last star
that is the first stab of every dream she gave away
for nothing. there is no freedom in hell.

a woman in a blue car
wearing a blue skirt
listening to the blues
window down – wind
she sings along a long long long way
words wrong, she hates
the smell of cow manure
but her window stays
down, she watches the blue
sky become endless, she
wears a puffy cloud
-white top. her father
died years ago. her mother
died more years ago.
she has no money.
she stops singing.
she does not cry.

whisper – dead
whisper – hope
whisper – no, no…
then die.

whisper – words
whisper – faith
whisper – oh god.. oh GOD
then die.

whisper – love
whisper – want
whisper – perfect so so perfect
then
the sparrow, perhaps,
flies away.

Do not wake me – as i walk the knife edge
of a clear desperate dreamless night

If I am lost – let me be lost alone
with bleeding feet and the laughter of gulls

If I am found – let me be the sweet nothingness
where the emptiness becomes me most of all

You are no more keeper of the shadow than I –
so close your eyes, hold my hand, let us walk away

The wind will reveal us quite enough – summer, if it comes
at all – will come with rage and kumquats

The heat is not hot, it is the memory of the cold
That leaves us most burnt.

As you shake me, I hear your voice, “Wake up
Wake up, it’s just a dream”

I smell your breath, thick with morning and bad decisions,
“No. There is no Just, in a dream.”

You do not laugh, or even smile, as I roll back over
in hopes of finding another delicious kumquat
or some other answer to a question I can not ask.