04/15/20 Let’s Talk About Taxes…

Let’s assume everything is dangerous:

words on a chalkboard

from my ear

to your mouth;

an impersonal hello

taken as a signature in parting;

someone else’s carelessness

with your life;

a book I burned on Christmas

as an offering

to the recent

most popular

God,

who stares at us from a distance

as we conjure reasons

for a most ordinary of magic

tricks –

a lottery.

Where were you when the music

stopped,

and you learned that even your eyes

were an accident,

on the other side of which

is the dark?

Where were you

when you had to choose between love

and surrender?

Was your birth order

just too precious

to receive

the gift

of sight?

04/15/20 First Person Singular

Silence isn’t hard,

It’s all the decorations around it that trouble me:

a stack of bills that whines for attention;

an afternoon debate between longing and regret;

the shrill buzzing of the noiselessness outside my window before I put on pants;

and the cavalier abandon of the first person singular

inside my head

who won’t respond

to my offerings of friendship,

no matter how emphatically I claim

I have something new

to tell him

again

04/14/20 The Old Ways

I’m not ready to say goodbye to the old ways
but there’s a black streak on the window
from the years of hurried treatments
and the dew from the most recent configuration of dusk
is rushing to meet it,
and then all those plans I navigated with a bouquet in my fist
will turn
to frost.
Don’t you want to meet
without the defense of second thoughts?
I’m not ready to say goodbye to the old ways,
but every forecast promises a last kiss
regardless of the messenger.
We could go on like this
back and forth to each other,
for another quarter of an eternity,
but the post office may go bankrupt;
there’s a supply line already quavering
with your heat
and other interrupted thoughts,
and someone,
somewhere,
has thought through all of our contingencies
and buried them in paper.
I’m not ready to say goodbye to the old days,
but you’re waiting somewhere, aren’t you?
With a fist full of flowers,
a new language on your lips,
and a fresh sharpie in your other hand

04/13/20 Ouch, That’s Hot

If there was a magic word

I could say,

which lifted this spell

would you believe me?

If it could all be brought back

to the casual

uncertainties

before this mess,

would you buy stock?

They were already dying,

these pale white riders from the stalk of John Smith.

And we were always going to arrive at the fire,

some better

and some less so

dressed.

Well, what now,

as we await our invitation to proceed onward?

If you want me to walk over melting glass,

you’ve got to give me a better reason than the economy.

Don’t get me wrong,

that there is fear enough to move my feet,

but I just know I’ll get stuck only half way along

not ever really there,

can’t turn back,

and without much of anything calling me across

04/12/20 What’s Your Name

I wait my turn,

I submit my report,

I sign up for cleaning duty,

and you give me a name.

And yet,

even this feels like theater

as I perform an assigned role

the world clearly needs

without disclosing its purpose or reasons,

as you usher in the next recruit.

I’d like to meet as strangers again

with all the roads before us,

unmanageable,

deliberating at the foot of every path

as foreigners to strategy,

believing only in the wind

because it’s just visiting,

indifferent to prayer and other expectations,

requires no greetings,

remains unconquerable,

performs no name to deceive us

04/12/20 News Updates

A red haired child

let a dirty one rip

while his brother took apart the microphone;

someone’s grandmother

waived goodbye to the world

from a distance,

and the market barely skipped a beat;

the sonics were crowned champions

of the world;

it was suggested we go shopping

to pass the time;

we prayed for a non sequitur –

a proper ending is everything

04/11/10 Something I’m Uncertain About

It’s hard to keep

only love in your heart

when the whole world is blossoming,

dying,

brothers fighting for scraps

from a master’s table,

the ozone coming back to whole,

wild things rummaging in the park;

silence,

violence,

mania,

the return of hope,

defeat,

disrepair,

and decay.

Shit, to keep all that in the heart

the heart may burst in outrage,

beating indefinitely,

stopping,

and beating only out of curiosity again,

stopping,

and then beating again,

it’s thump like the shredding

of gnarled teeth.

The heart,

you see,

it’s not good or bad –

it’s insolent,

choosing to go on when everything else

suggests it not.

It says “no” to our every certainty.

It says,

“breath with me… breath with me, stranger,

and I will decide when the music stops.”

04/10/20 Charlatan

There are days I can

smell the ozone

on my shirts

after pulling them off

the sun rack,

haphazardly,

on my way to another appointment

where no one brought a pen

and the handshakes grin with disaster

while time takes another

unclaimed piece of the pie

and

I

know

I’m dying.

There are days like that.

A better poet would find a charming way to tell you

you are under no obligation to count them,

or better yet,

do,

but know there is no one keeping the meter.

Hm…

Why would I burn an image

simply for spilling its secrets?

I’m not that charming anyway;

just a charlatan

dancing to an already broken song,

a solar flare from a long dead star,

and a mutable message

04/09/20 Perfect Two

We all deserve our heaven

and hell,

I guess –

what am I building?

It’s all,

false starts,

celebrations,

a company of ghosts

for my personal closet,

forget it;

ego,

shame,

a good hearted attempt

at a breakfast sandwich,

and other irregularly sized bits of what I can.

What if the world won’t be

perfect?

I don’t mean the hemlock

of utopia,

the amphetamine thesis of an

academic dream,

but perfect…

like peace

for the moment,

times 1000;

and a knowing in the blood

that it will remain.

What if this is as close

as we ever really come

To touching –

a note in the summer,

longing,

And a postmark in rain.

04/09/20 Perfect

This morning,

I dreamt about Christmas

(I’m Jewish; shhhh, don’t tell anyone),

I talked to my father

(he’s been dead for years),

and took the cat for a walk

(we did not go far).

Be delicate with yourself;

you only get one shot to make a 14,609th impression

04/08/20 Why is Tonight Different From Every Other Night?

Why is tonight

different from every other night?

Because we now barter

by the politics of longing?

Why is tonight

different from every other night?

Because someone tore up the history book

and another emergency is coming.

Why is tonight

different from every other night?

Because no one taught me

how to plead for peace.

Why is tonight

Different from every other night?

Because the world sleeps in a pod by the sea,

and it opens

ever so slightly

to receive the rain,

and a voice can be heard in the surf;

it says,

“if you are to cross,

you must all do it together,

otherwise you will always be

preparing a bag

to flee.”

04/07/20 Rules for Writing a Manifesto

What if I run out of words?

My last few assumptions of you

frayed at the ends,

neglected by the absence of contact.

I mean,

nature is beautiful –

the quiet has secrets to tell us,

but who are you?

Even the news has fallen predictable and dull; politics,

a rehashing of the same seven stories

from literature.

Maybe I’ll dig a whole then,

plan a garden,

water my garage,

order a joystick on line

and try to play with the moon.

I know, everything is nonsense

without a proper enemy;

words are tension,

fiction,

heat;

every manifesto

is just an attempt at a fire

and the laughter

of a wily wind.

04/06/20 Rasputin

He came to me in the magic hour

but darker,

looking like a modern Rasputin,

with tight jeans

and a vegan, latte beard;

I didn’t know if he was gonna eat me or bless me.

He said,

it’s okay to struggle,

it’s okay to not know how to be free;

it’s okay if your thoughts are on fire but have no destination,

and if you’re a cold fish,

on the mattress,

without a personal dialect at these times,

it’s okay.

don’t be a harsh warden

for your mistakes,

don’t quit fiddling with the lock on the window

if you don’t know the answers;

don’t organize your failures

around your home,

for protection,

or successes too –

I swear that the old accounting can’t save you.

It’s okay,

if you can’t imagine the future,

or when you do

you must crawl into the mouth of a blizzard and become numb;

it’s okay

if trust is a rickety swing

in the park,

that makes terrible music when you push it;

it’s okay

to mourn

and to love

an assassin;

it’s okay

if no one has left

and no one has come

04/05/20 First Gear, Without Traffic

And today, suddenly, everything went quiet,

do you remember?

Not in that;

“hey, I just didn’t want to shout”

kind of way,

but

quiet,

like the neighbor’s dog went home.

quiet,

all of you’s in me,

went on strike;

no,

departed for an errant

without leaving a note,

fled recklessly

on a last minute holiday.

So quiet

I couldn’t drink my coffee

without interrogating it

grain by grain,

pleading with the HVAC system to give me a steady beat,

offered the salt bowl a story or two

and then asked it to dance –

it said no.

That kind of quiet;

have you seen it?

A complete strike in every exercise of thinking,

all of my wants sent to the gods;

quiet,

like

there was never any traffic,

only the memory of you

rushing by

rushing by

and a light stain

on the couch

Where someone once spilled

an ounce of wine,

and someone else,

thank god,

never bothered erasing the evidence

04/04/20 Morning Coffee

Essentially,

I’ll only keep what is essential,

the picture of a friend,

a lover’s scent,

a barely sharpened pencil.

I’ll keep a look of calm control,

but not an answer,

the health care workers in my thoughts,

they are essential.

The man who bagged my fruit,

the quiet necromancer,

and that governor who steerer the ship

through a fat-baby Orange cancer;

the poet,

singer in the dark,

the muse,

the dancer;

the friend who sent messages each morning,

the soul enhancer;

my cat,

my heart,

my lungs,

the family I miss,

and only every other or so thought

and every hero I forgot to mention here;

the fresh spring finally caught

for years now censored by the race towards all that is unsolvable and stressful;

and most definitely the coffee pot,

that is essential

04/03/20 In Place of Something Like a Prayer

Is this a test?

I hated tests.

A strict warden’s

manipulation,

a one eye

presumption of

failure

while the other

quivers with panic.

I didn’t need you to test me.

I needed you to reach out,

hold me

with a mother’s everything

and teach me how to pray regardless of the song.

But look now,

this menagerie

is built out of scales,

hard, slithery,

in-agreeable.

There are systems

that have spun out of our control

and look like gods now,

and you want me to worship?

I don’t believe in a teacher of rigid constitutions,

punishment,

and calculated expectations,

even if your song is popular.

If I will offer anything,

it will be my confusion,

the congress of all these gods

debating inside me;

love, through the fire;

the fear of a foolish boy,

who keeps going on;

regret,

faith,

and surrender; and always,

always,

one more step

past the plan.

If there is an altar,

it’s all of you,

too big to get anything, ever, completely accurate,

sitting there alone

in your pods,

chewing on ramen

by an undecided fire,

and I will place there

everything

left unsaid.

And you will call me strange,

foolish even,

the son of the weaker thunderbolt,

too vulnerable,

but what’s the use of hoarding anything

in this mess?

One way

or another,

we’re all worth the title of beautiful    

04/02/20 My Little Hero

I haven’t exactly passed a kidney stone,

nor was I afraid to meet it.

I waited,

almost patiently,

to see its gnarly smile

as it bent me like that,

as though I was the only dandelion

left standing

in a treacherous storm.

Sitting there,

with a thousand contingency plans for revolutions,

and the revolutions that would follow them,

I named it…

My little stone,

my little

personal

piece of history,

a record of doubt

meditation

and longing,

all those days ago

when I was hurting,

thinking about the gods to come

and when again I would yearn to sit alone.

My little, hero,

passing through the rain,

all shields like that,

and glass;

look at all a man must do to be prepared to meet you

04/02/20 MA

Who tries to hear the waves,

a battered sea,

the creaking of a talentless brass band

embracing music –

when there is work to do,

people to see;

however many of you doubt,

I have no plan of losing.

Who waists another morning in disguise,

lazily dreaming –

I forge ahead

and forgive your careless lies,

eyes only barely seeing;

there is a plan

I know,

which I had long ago

accepted choosing,

and you

my friends

one day will understand

that I was a fighter

when you

had only thought

life was amusing

04/02/20 A Short Literature Workshop

“The well is dry!”

“Give the boy something else to drink,

like the blood of a camel.”

“Sir, the blood of a camel

is not approved for literature.”

“Damn it, this is an emergency, Private!

Just squeeze it into a stanza and make him sign it;

no one will see.”

“Yes sir. Blood of a camel

and one more poem,

coming up”

04/01/20 A Very Foolish Poem

Don’t waste your words by lashing

at fools who cannot dream,

instead come support our gang of minstrels,

we’re more foolish than we seem.

We’ll sing for you

we’ll dance,

we may start a war or two,

but our violence is a humor,

to turn the mirror out

to you